The Military is making a video game - Issue #6

The militaries around the world are making video games. Call of Duty works with the Pentagon on one of their games and the Americans seem to be always winning in video games.

Try to imagine for a couple of seconds, one of the Call of Duty or Battlefield games. As I am closing my eyes, I imagine realistic weapons, fast-paced combat that seems to resemble reality, and tons of destruction around. Someone is shooting a missile out of a rocket launcher, a building collapses, yet I somehow come out victorious. Out of the mayhem, I come out as the winner, and very seldom does it occur for me - of course on the side of the American Army - to lose.

If I were to say outright that the Army is involved in the production of military-like video games, you will accuse me of poor-taste conspirationism. What if I told you that on the 4th of July 2002, the American Army released an online video game called America’s Army in the style of Counter-Strike. You are a soldier, you have to shoot, to accomplish some objectives, and relate to your teammates in a militaristic jargon. The big difference between this and Counter Strike is that it is completely free, and it has no in-game purchases. Nothing. The U.S. Army has enough to keep it going. It doesn’t need our $5 for some skins.

Before America’s Army Proving Grounds, the U.S. Marines were the first to be very enthusiastic about video games. In 1997, they have modified a version of the game Doom, calling it Marine Doom. The U.S. Army is not the only military organization to have a video game which it allegedly uses to recruit people. In 2009, the British Army was using a DOOM-style online video game to recruit potential soldiers. People’s Liberation Army from China uses Glorious Mission, a military, first-person shooter video game, that is distributed through Tencent (the company that holds a big share in League of Legends and Epic Games).

But the military involvement in video games doesn’t only stop at the production of some shooters aimed for recruitment. A couple of years ago, Dave Anthony - one of the writers working on the Call of Duty franchise - was invited for an unpaid fellowship on the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank that advises on the future of unknown conflict. The experience he had by working on very futuristic titles such as Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, where soldiers are becoming invisible by wearing a certain suit, where missiles are even more precise, gave him the expertise to advise on the future of warfare. In the words of Anthony:

On the same title, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, there was a Pentagon adviser involved in the thinking, design and implementation process. Additionally, they consulted soldiers and futurologists to build its vision of war against private military contractors. Michael Condrey, the co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, the studio behind the game declared:

With military advisors working on video games, developers moving into discussing the conflict, and the various military organizations developing their own video games, what is the relationship between video games and the military? Additionally, not to mention that gamers are targeted by military ads, where they show soldiers controlling drones with the game controller. The military conflict is portrayed as a real-life version of the game, in which if you can play a video game, you can fly a drone (if you do not believe me, go and Google some of the images).

Another important point to discuss is the discourse present in those military video games and how does it legitimizes certain narratives. Why is everything just so victorious, despite of the hardships you are going through? Why does the video game industry refuse to talk about the real implications of being a soldier: killing others, maybe being involved in a conflict in which you didn’t even want to drag yourself but there were no opportunities where you were coming from, mental illness, PTSD, etc?

The truth is there are video games who deal with this, but they are harder to digest for an audience that is infatuated with the dopamine-inducing killing of Arabs, in the name of peace and prosperity. If you want, go check out Spec Ops: The Line, and even Kane & Lynch, even though the latter is not as related to direct military operations as the former.

I love video games like Spec Ops the Line and those that shake you from the bottom-up. I do not believe all video games should be fun to play, but rather there should be more with disturbing elements, that could contribute to the awakening of the people. Awakening from a state of numbness in which they find themselves, ignoring politics, not caring about what those in power do and feeling hopeless about change being possible. Only by confronting the disturbing nature of our society, maybe only then we will be awoken.