Taking the fun out of war.

Unfortunately war is a reality. A reality where people die, good people, bad people, innocent people, guilty people, it’s actually pretty non-discrimant in the end. Too often their deaths are explained away all too quickly because it took place during a time of war (usually by people not fighting the war). War has been a part of human history as much as any other activity we’ve taken, at times its saved innocent people and others it was waged on innocent people.

I’ve just recently traded in my copy of Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, after spending a very large chunk of my free time during the last 6 months playing it online, against people all over the world, racking up kills, getting better guns, and getting killed in all sorts of way with all sorts of weapons. It was fun, a lot of fun. It was a blast sneaking up on someone a stabbing them with a knife. It was fun sniping someone, oblivious to my presence, from across the map. It was fun calling in an apache helicopter to rain bullets down on any other player unlucky enough to be caught in the open. I laughed out loud, and taunted anonymous strangers as I killed and was killed, like I said it was A LOT of fun.

The game was also superbly made by a team of talented people, it looked, sounded and felt real. I talked whoever I could into buying the game so I could play with them online, and now I’ve gone and traded the game in for $25. I did it because of Wikileaks. Specifically because the video they posted of two Reuters employees getting killed two years ago in Iraq. I didn’t sell the game out of protest of the war, I did it because watching the video reminded me too much of the video game. It may just be a testament to the lengths Infinity Ward went to create a realistic feeling game, but it didn’t sit right with me. If you watch the video (it is disturbing) the dialog of the soldiers is what hit me the hardest, the gung-ho inflection, the eagerness to kill, the lack of any compassion in their voices. It’s the same thing I’ve heard playing the video game, I’ve heard it from kids that sound to be 10 years old. I understand there needs to be a disconnect for a soldier to do the dirty awful job of being a soldier in a war, I respect that ability. It’s different when someone is almost begging to “Just let me shoot.” They didn’t know that innocent people got killed, or there were two kids in the van, and I’d like to think that if they did the situation would end differently.

In-game screen controlling an AC 130

Wikileaks video screen grab

Playing the game as much as I did and then watching the video, I found myself looking at the line between a game and real life blurred to the point almost non-existence. In trying to make a video game as realistic as they could, they made a real war feel more like a video game. I’m not sure if it was seeing a real war look and sound like a game, or a game look and sound like a real war that did it. I don’t think that it’s a matter of desensitizing, but of disassociation.Violence still affects me, but play enough games that render their virtual world as closely to our real world as possible and you start to lose your reference point. A reference point that suddenly came back into focus while I watched innocent people die. I’m redrawing my line, I want my games to be games, and my wars to be wars.