I probably heard of the Catholic Worker newspaper before today, but I think today is the first time I’d seen a copy of it. There were several copies out on a table at my church, and they had one article in particular circled–it was entitled “Hegemony’s Joystick” by Matt Vogel. I was hoping to find it online, but no such luck. Anyway, it was about the “America’s Army” video game that was developed by the armed forces as a recruiting tool. Here’s a bit of the article (gee–transcribing really feels like hard work when you’re used to copy and paste).
There has been much research on the effects of violent video games on children, and there are many studies that report a high correlation between playing violent video games and exhibiting “aggressive behavior”. While concerns such as these may relate to “America’s Army”, what separates this game from others is that it does not only desensitize people to and sanitize killing, it desensitizes people to and sanitizes war. Not only does this game not show what happens when somebody has been shot, or when somebody is dying, it doesn’t show that war does to people and to communities. It teaches players not to be critical thinkers, to not ask why, but instead, just to do, to follow orders. War ceases to be both a tragedy for humanity and a moral failure, and instead becomes a commonplace fact of life.
Don’t worry, both players and the Army say, people know the difference between what is real and what is a game. Yes, of course they do, but that is not the point. The point is that the game breaks down inhibitions, making war, even killing, less likely to be questioned, let alone resisted or challenged. Jonathan Dee, in “Joystick Nation!” in the December 21, 2003 issue of The New York Times Magazine, sums it up nicely, “If there’s anything disturbing about the relationship between video games and actual homicide, it’s not that the games have become too realistic; it’s that killing…has become far too much like a video game.”
Regarding the part at the beginning of this excerpt, before anyone points it out, let me tell you that I teach psychology and I can probably say the words “correlation does not equal causation” in my sleep at this point. So I do understand that there is no evidence that playing violent video games causes otherwise nonviolent people to become more aggressive. But the desensitizing that goes on all around us is a concern for me. The fact that, because it can further their agenda, the powers that be are exploiting our abililty to desensitized to the horrors around us, is pretty troubling to me. So is the decline of critical thinking. And, once again, because it suits their agenda, we have people in power exploiting that decline rather than trying to reverse it. One more excerpt from the article…
This game is more than a recruiting tool, it is a highly effective vehicle for propaganda. “America’s Army” doesn’t teach people to kill as much as it reframes reality and shapes how players view war. What players learn about the Army and war in the game becomes the new reality, becomes how they are accustomed to understanding and seeing the Army and what it does.
Here is the link to The Catholic Worker web site.
http://www.catholicworker.org/
As I mentioned above, this article is not online there, but there are some other articles that are worth checking out in the archives.
Some articles that are online about the game
‘America’s Army’ Targets Youth
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=hodes20020823
Weapons of mass distraction
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/10/04/why_we_fight/
My brother tried playing it a while ago and gave it up pretty quickly.
I have mixed feelings about first person shooting games. I am completely embarassed to say that I used to play some of them competitively online. I used to love playing them, but the games I loved to play for me were about competition not violence. I think many of the first generation of violent first person shooters had a way of avoiding the “fragging” which meant shooting of “normal people”. In Wolfenstein, one was killing Nazis and in the games I played the violence wasn’t mimicing “real life”, the guns were invented and didn’t shoot bullets. The games were very complicated and involved smart playing to suceed.
It seems to me that many games these days are about knowing real life guns and real life violence. Counter-strike has been a very popular game for years which deals with terrorists and counter terrorist. Although, I admit I enjoyed playing counter-strike, I think it is unfortuneate that young children become so interested in gun culture and realistic violence. Also, the culture in the counter strike world is overtly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
You know, I understand football much better than I did before I started playing Madden. I know many of the intricacies of the formations, positions, plays, and startegies that I was previously oblivious to.
I’m pretty sure that is the main focus of the Army game: to teach kids about the teamwork a platoon or battalion or other team of soldiers needs, what the roles of different team members are and how they are done, what the battle strategies and formations for certain terrains or situations are, what kind of equipment is used in certain instances, etc.
Desensitization is bull. I can’t throw or catch a football any better, or tackle a runner, nor would I be any less traumatized physically and emotionally if I was tackled by a real pro player. Likewise, the army game would not teach kids how to shoot or throw a grenade any more accurately, nor would it desensitize them to the trauma of being shot at, shot, having to shoot someone, or seeing a buddy have his head blown off. Any kid who thinks he is prepared for war by playing a game is in for a rude awakening.
The scariest thing I learned watching Fahrenheit 911 was that the soldiers operating tanks and artillery were blasting heavy metal rock music through their headphones the whole time.
“Oh my God,” I thought, “these kids think they’re in a video game!”
It’s the only thing in the movie that made me cry.