When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games. Now the wheel has come full circle as they use game-style interfaces for real-life tools of war.
by Marijam Did
Part 3 - War Games
Themes around militarization and armed resistance were instilled in games to build narratives around a variety of conflicts. Jane’s IAF: Israeli Air Force (1998) was clearly intended to raise publicity for the Israel Defense Forces. The content of the game included two types of campaigns.
The first covered historic operations of the Israeli Air Force in the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the 1982 Lebanon War. The second type included fictional futuristic operations in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. On the other hand, a Syrian game studio released the action game Under Ash in 2001, which recreated moments from the history of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli military occupation.
This attention and the seemingly popular acclaim military-themed games received in the early 2000s inspired an entire generation of neocolonial video games that underlined Western military agendas and values as a prime moral objective. Developers of the Conflict: Desert Storm, Medal of Honor, and the now-infamous Call of Duty franchises found it relatively easy to secure funding during this moment. The revolving door of consultants going back and forth between the organized military complex and the enormous Call of Duty franchise is well documented, albeit hardly spoken of.
A colonial narrative can be transmitted through the story plot and the cast of characters featured or, sometimes even more significantly, omitted. Bias can be transmitted through choices as simple as the color grading for different settings: yellow for Africa and the Middle East, signifying “dusty,” “historical”; blue for the West, that is, “modern,” “civilized.” Other choices include what languages players hear spoken in the background, and the tone of voice used.
All these aspects invite an interpretation that often reflects a certain ideological affiliation. In gaming, the introduction of such narratives alongside the development of technology strong enough to support them presented a double victory: a moral judgement and a desensitization toward massacring anyone deemed to be a state enemy.
Today, the modern military complex uses experiences that are styled to look like video games to train soldiers. More disturbingly, they apply an aesthetically pleasing user interface akin to that of a video game in targeting machines for real-life remote bombing action. A 2007 video, which WikiLeaks titled “Collateral Murder,” depicting US soldiers engaged in a helicopter strike that killed two Reuters employees and a number of civilians, has a distinct video game look to it. The user interface in today’s drones was in fact designed to replicate that of a video game.
Today, the modern military complex uses experiences that are styled to look like video games to train soldiers. More disturbingly, they apply an aesthetically pleasing user interface akin to that of a video game in targeting machines for real-life remote bombing action. A 2007 video, which WikiLeaks titled “Collateral Murder,” depicting US soldiers engaged in a helicopter strike that killed two Reuters employees and a number of civilians, has a distinct video game look to it. The user interface in today’s drones was in fact designed to replicate that of a video game.
Electronic sports events and gaming conferences are now regularly funded by local state military bodies. It’s a win-win strategy. Games companies represent governmental organizations and boost their own public image in the process. An image of being close to the state allows studios to receive lucrative tax breaks, too. And the military outsources the building of cumbersome training simulators and attracts new recruits in the process.
Critics of such arrangements and the tight relationship between the military and games companies are rarely listened to. While these camouflage-tainted collaborations may benefit one side of the global games industry, more progressively minded studios suffer when they’re drowned out by these slick and bombastic displays of aggression.
As the arms industries got involved, the propaganda and profit-making got bolder and more cynical. Weapons companies, including Colt’s, Barrett Firearms, Kalashnikov Concern, Zenitco, Remington Firearms, Daniel Defense, Troy Industries, Insight Technologies, Aimpoint, and Eotech, have their guns actively licensed by numerous games companies in order to appear in video games; details of such deals or the money changing hands are undisclosed.
As the arms industries got involved, the propaganda and profit-making got bolder and more cynical. Weapons companies, including Colt’s, Barrett Firearms, Kalashnikov Concern, Zenitco, Remington Firearms, Daniel Defense, Troy Industries, Insight Technologies, Aimpoint, and Eotech, have their guns actively licensed by numerous games companies in order to appear in video games; details of such deals or the money changing hands are undisclosed.
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