E3: Evil Entertainment Effects

The radio is on a timer to come on automatically in the morning, because when I am too lazy to get up early it stops the dog from ravaging the upholstery. I usually knock it off when I get up, but on a whim in the week I left it on.


It goes to Radio Wales, it's a DAB radio, and I'd have it set to 6Music or XFM but there's no digital coverage in my area yet. So Radio Wales it is. The little bit I caught was a Jamie and Louise phone-in segment, the type of public opinion gathering show which is often lightly derided on the Rhod Gilbert show. This particular show's focus was along the lines of 'Do we do enough to remember our war dead, not just the ones what died in the World Wars?'.


What followed was a string of callers somehow affiliated with the army saying "No we don't do enough, X amount of people died in war Y" and then a string of callers somehow affiliated with anti-warfare saying "We do too much, warfare is barbaric". I think if we went around all the time remembering those who died in various wars there'd be very little time to do anything, especially in countries, such as the UK, with quite a long history of warfare. It is also missing the point that perhaps a number of these wars were fought so that the populace could live freely, not so that everyone could live in an unending morbid glorification of people who've died. Wars/conflict starts for a variety of different reasons, and I think soldiers of a war which is generally considered necessary for defence/protection are more likely to be remembered than in a war that is widely considered unjust and cynical. Having said that, I am not knowledgeable about war or its justifications, nor am I eager to become so.

What annoyed me about the broadcast, and is in an area I can discuss with some confidence, was a correspondent they had in the studio who was criticising video games (I can only assume he meant all of them) for glorifying warfare. His argument was that children who played war-based video games would be seduced by their glamour and decide to join the military when they grow up.


I'm guessing this gentleman probably isn't a gamer, and unfortunately a number of individuals who find themselves speaking animatedly about games in mainstream media wouldn't know a controller from a cock-ring, which is the only way I can rationalise the naive way they treat the subject.


I will assume, since he didn't go into any detail, that the games which he believes glorify warfare are first person shooters, specifically the Call of Duty series. I'm guessing that it is CoD rather than Halo et al not because those games aren't glorious, but due to the extra-terrestrial nature of those games, I'm sure that the correspondent wouldn't credit gamers with the imagination needed to transpose shooting aliens = good to shooting people = good. Because as everyone knows, gamers lap up what they are presented without applying any value/moral judgement whatsoever.

I would suggest that CoD doesn't glorify warfare. I haven't played or seen the campaign missions in any real depth so I couldn't really touch on that, but given that the main selling point of the series, and modern shooters more generally, seems to be the online multiplayer. I have, however, played through the stories of Halo and Gears of War, and I would hazard a guess that the characters in the CoD storyline are similarly a group of tedious swaggering yahoos. The characters in Halo and Gears of War work because of the cheesy grotesque macho-invincibility of their posing, summed up quite neatly by Marcus Fenix's "Naaaice!" soundclip, but while this works, and is amusing, in gameplay, I wouldn't want to be around them in real life. I suppose it is the same for characters in any medium (or is that too radical a suggestion?), as popular as Gene Hunt is as a character, he is, by today's standard at least, a tool.


In the multiplayer mode unless you are a ludicrously talented player it is likely that in the course of one match you will be killed numerous times. That's hardly the sort of glorification that'll see people rushing to the frontline. "Let's join the army! In an actual conflict we'll likely be dead within seconds!".


But the actual premise itself of 'kids play games and want to become what they play' is complete nonsense. I grew up playing Final Fantasy VII, Tekken and Vigilante 8, meaning that as an adult I should have modified my car with weaponry, thrown a family member into a volcano and saved the world from being destroyed by a meteor. I am currently having my life destroyed by Football Manager 2010, and despite an incredible debut season with Excelsior, which saw my team be promoted as Champions, I have no interest in becoming an ACTUAL football manager. The stress from playing the game has me pulling chunks out of my hair, were I in charge of actual human beings there would be murder.

When I was heavily into Grand Theft Auto 4 I spent the entire time stealing helicopters, flying full-tilt until I reached maximum velocity and then jumping out and watching my character freefall diagonally to the ground, taking full advantage of the glorious cinematographic camerawork, until he made contact with the ground and ragdolled for several feet, leaving a ragged trail of blood up to his broken body. I then, though this may beggar belief, didn't go out and do this in real life.


Surely the point with games is to do things you wouldn't or can't do in real life. I could never become the manager of a young Dutch football team, I wouldn't chop people in half with a three foot long ubersword and I can't blow up an alien mothership from the inside before jettisoning at the last second in an escape pod. But I can play the games, and I do.


I'd suggest that Alex Ferguson didn't start out playing a Football Manager equivalent on the ZX Spectrum, or that playing GTA lead people to steal cars. It's the same argument people use when they say murders happen because the murderer listened to a certain band, read a certain book or had a particular cola preference.  Isn't it more likely that the individuals were disturbed beforehand and just latched onto one particular thing when they eventually snapped.


It's probable that some people who played CoD or similar did then go into the army. A huge amount of people have played FPS games, it is statistically probable that a number of them then went into the armed forces, just from dint of probability. I'm also guessing that people who are predisposed to want to join the armed forces are likely to play those sorts of games if they also have an interest in games. In which case the original theory of 'games make people want to join the army' is back to front, as it could very well be that it is the original desire to join the army that led some individuals to buy that game. I would also pre-empt an argument by suggesting that it isn't the duty of that game to present war in a way which would dissuade people from going, should they want to. It is a game. But on the other side of that, as I believe I've already said, I don't think the game is attempting, either explicitly or otherwise, to lure people into the armed forces.


Most of my friends grew up playing games. A number of them have played war-based FPS games. They generally tend to either end up in some form of IT or working in the education system. I'm fairly certain that is wasn't playing Extreme Teacher 2 for the Sega Saturn that led them to that job. None of them are in the armed forces.


Although one of them does now work at a Kung-Fu Dojo, teaching paper-thin rapping dogs how to do the kong foo, but I'm sure that's just a statistical freak occurrence.

The next time someone tells you how evil games/gamers are, give them one of these.  Gotta love a lightning screw uppercut.  Although that will only prove them right.  Damn, hoist by my own video gaming petard.