The New "Stratego"

Call of Duty 4, just to make sure that no one confuses reality

Is Call of Duty 4 and other war games turning gamers into war mongers?

Every day, my thirteen year old brother becomes a hunter. With his high-tech aerial map, sniper rifle, and endless supply of grenades, he targets and eliminates terrorist soldiers and foreign rebels alike. He has been shot, wounded, and killed, and I have seen it happen with my own eyes.
Mason is not a Marine, nor has he ever experienced war in person. However, my brother is, seemingly, addicted to Call of Duty 4, the popular X-Box 360 video game. The parental concern that video games promote war has arisen frequently in my conversational past. I have extensively considered the issue, and because I do not find Call of Duty or any other war game to be enjoyable, I cannot validate or disprove this assertion from personal experience. So, recently, I inquired of my brother, “Are video games turning you into a war monger?”

Our family has always been against war of any kind. My brother and I are second-generation flower children, always to take the side of the peaceful. Because of these opinions, Mason’s hobby may seem hypocritical to some. In contrast, Mason argues that when he plays Call of Duty, he does not imagine himself as a soldier. When he fights terrorists, he is simply playing, not exterminating “evil.” He competes for a high score; a chance to perpetuate the stereotypical man characteristic of beating his friends at something. And, lastly, he doesn’t mind experiencing the victory of winning.

Mason, who is very wise for his thirteen years, understands that in war, there is no reset button. You cannot shut off the television and go to bed when you don’t feel like fighting anymore. You cannot “respawn in ten seconds.” When you are sniped, gassed, shot, blown up, or knifed, your lifeless corpse does not disappear and reappear at another place in the level where you can safely continue your quest. There are no second chances in war, something Mason realizes.

Call of Duty 4, just to make sure that no one confuses reality with video games, has a certain feature that I applaud. In the adventure single-player mode, after you are killed, a quote flashes on the screen for a short time before you get to try again. Many of these quotes promote peaceful thinking and take the glamour and sport out of the battle. The quotes which I particularly like include:
“War does not determine who is right, only who is left.” –Bertrand Russell
“Anyone who truly wants to go to war has truly never been there before.” –Larry Reeves
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never killing for their country.” –Bertrand Russell
“Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.” –John F. Kennedy
It is particularly interesting that a war game attempts to dissuade others to fight, and quite wonderful that this activity, which seemingly requires no intelligence, promotes the eradication of ignorance.

Hopefully, my brother is not a special case; it would be disastrous if other gamers failed to realize the immense difference between killing and surviving in a game and that which occurs on the battlefield. Even more frightening is the next edition, Call of Duty 5, which according to my brother, has an aggravated amount of gore. He says that while playing the demo version, he killed a fellow player, and witnessed the separation of that (animated) man’s torso from his legs. My brother and I agree that X-Box may have taken it a little too far.

War has become the norm. Our country and our soldiers have seen too many casualties, witnessed the deaths of too many foreign fighters, spent too much money on weaponry, and remained too many days overseas. It is a concept so familiar to Americans, and so, we have turned war into a game.

Even though my little brother remains unaffected by CoD, perhaps it would be safer, because there are so many who play, for the creators of video games to realize when they have crossed a line. After all, games do not have to be morbid and full of death to be fun. I, personally, would rather play Mario Kart.