Game: Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Y]

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the only videogames that genuinely disturbed me, and I'm not just talking about the deliberately horrifying stuff like the introduction from the perspective of a soon-to-be executed leader, or the level where you slowly die of radiation poisoning, or whatever. The most disturbing level in videogames was the AC130 level.

You play as the gunner of an attack helicopter on a night mission over the fields of Whogivesafuckistan. You protect your guys doing their objectives on the ground by laying waste to pretty much everything in sight. The level was one of the high points reviewers pointed out in the original Modern Warfare, as it was praised for its graphical fidelity to real aerial combat footage and for the dispassionate commentary from your ground crew (the uploader comment on the video which I'll put at the bottom of the post even mentions he loves that part of the level).

Fast forward to 2010 and the release of footage from an attack helicopter depicting the murder of a Reuters journalist and his bodyguard in Baghdad, Iraq while they are trying to rescue a wounded man from a battlefield. For the non-Americans or culturally illiterate Americans, I'll link the footage at the bottom of this post. Notice any similarities? Not just in the visuals, which of course were crafted in the game based on real life footage, but in the casual discussion the crew has trying to get permission to shoot them to death. They are just waiting for the innocent targets on the ground to do something, anything, that will justify engaging them and finishing the job... like they were waiting for a scripted sequence to begin.

Remember how videogame enthusiasts and journalists scoffed at the media portraying games like Doom as training simulations for killing? When I saw this video and thought of the game level, I actually got a little nauseous. The real murders in the gunship predate the release of Modern Warfare 1, and the release of the video publically postdates it, so I am not claiming these military men were actually hyped up by playing this level. This type of casual disengaged attitude toward violence is developed, with the same techniques, by both the games industry and the US military. Depersonalization techniques, distancing the subject from the actual act of killing though multiple layers of separation... the military has clearly learned from the games industry and vice versa (as evidenced by the ample amount of advisory and support that Infinity Ward and Activision received on this series from US military personnel). I can't help but shudder at how game-like military personnel operating UAVs from the safety of an air-conditioned trailer in Texas is, and what effect that has on civilian death and collateral damage in modern warfare. And the games industry, through direct examples like this level and more broadly through the cultural influence it exerts about violence and militaristic fetishization, has to bear some of the blame.

"Death From Above", November 2007 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAscuD4loh8

"Collateral Murder" July 12th, 2007, Baghdad Iraq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

As for the topic, W@W's multiplayer had better balance than MW2 so I expect Black Ops' is pretty good. But is that really what you ought to be thinking about?

EDIT:

I didn't even think about how insidious the aftermath of the bomb experience is. It transfers a scene unique in reality (the aftermath of a nuclear explosion) from the innocent civilians it was used on in real life by American forces, to something that happens TO American forces.

EDIT EDIT:

And the assassination introduction scene... a country's leader being killed and throwing the country into the hands of reactionaries, something the CIA has been doing for years, fitting nicely into the typical state propaganda of political strife from within.