A Look at (In)Decency in War-Themed Video Games

By theturk

America loses veterans of foreign wars every day. Often these men and women are self-sacrificing, hard-working, eminently likable people who, after serving their time wish only to live out the rest of their lives in peace. Unfortunately for them, the reminders of war are often ubiquitous, especially for those armed services personnel who have seen combat and have been adversely affected by it. The popping of a balloon, a car’s muffler backfiring, or ironically, fireworks at a Fourth of July parade, can often send these brave men and women into fits of paranoia and fear. So isn’t it the apex of unintentional cruelty when a veteran watches his grandson play a violent war-themed game? Are these games making light of the horrors of combat, while somehow lacking the appropriate tone with regards to those people who have gone through it?

This phenomena is not relegated only to interactive forms of modern entertainment. While viewing the Stephen Spielberg epic Saving Private Ryan, this blogger’s late grandfather, a veteran of World War II had to leave the theatre he had been attending. Indeed, war movies are often more graphic and intense than war-themed video games. The gap between movies and video games however, is fast closing. What happens when video games have the technological capabilities of fully immersing the gamer in synthetically produced combat? Something else to keep in mind is this: war films typically carry with them anti-war themes; the main object in video games, however, is to kill more of the enemy.

Aside from the actual gameplay, cut scenes often portray intense and perhaps for some, inappropriate reminders of real live combat. I recall playing a video game based in Vietnam, where the cinematics between levels showed men playing Russian Roulette, being tortured, and ultimately returning back to civilian life broken and beaten. To be sure, movies have illustrated these very same events; however, when watching a movie, one cannot simply press start to skip it.

Still, isn’t playing war hard-wired in the human code? Whether we are young children playing soldier, basking in combat glory on a paintball field, using war metaphors in our sports, games, relationships, or life in general, isn’t war so commonplace in our lives that to indict video games for being in poor taste is to indict much of American, if not global culture?