Why war games should embrace realism over being feux action movies.

Since the inception of gaming nothing has highjacked the mind’s eye of designers quite like the concept of shooting. We see shooters in 20th century arcade cabinets such as Galaga and they have sprouted the legs to continue influencing contemporary design. Shooters live in a world all their own, with rules and laws all their own. However, war shooters should be seen as a different animal all together. War shooters contextualize the act of shooting in a way should seek to demonstrate the atrocities of gun violence. Some of the largest shooters in the market such as Battlefield and Call of duty have lost all sight of what it means to be a war shooter. They have campaigns that parody action films rather than the true to life horror stories from real veterans. These romanticized war games seem more like the propaganda created by the US government. It is this disconnect that leaves little for development in the way of meaningful narratives. You could say “well that is the point, they aren’t meant to depict real event”, but the fact remains that these games are capable of depicting real emotion. Take for instance the controversial “No Russian” mission in Call of Duty Modern Warfare, where the player takes control of a mass shooter. This scene is striking, cold, unrelenting, and forces the player to commit atrocities that feel uncomfortably familiar in modern times. War games should embrace atrocities and put them at the front of the game, because as Jonathan Belman and Mary Flanagan write “This may be most difficult approach to integrating values in the design of a game, as it requires the greatest degree of originality. Yet, as demonstrated by Marcus’s game idea, the outcomes can be enormously compelling.”(Belman and Flanagan)

Propagating true emotions will always stump boisterous cash grabs, no matter how many cosmetics you get to shoot middle eastern men with.

Works cited:

Belman, Johnathan, and Mary Flanagan. Jonathan Belman and Mary Flanagan, “Exploring the Creative Potential of Values Conscious Design: Students’ Experiences with the Values at Play Curriculum.”