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Feature
Toy Soldiers: The Morality of Real War Games
Our look at the troubling topic of fun videogames depicting real warfare.
War is the most obvious subject matter available to game designers. Its inherent components -- conflict, change, and violence -- make for engaging rules. If the first pleasure of a game is to make something outside yourself move, then the second is to see that object affect the digital world. One dot projects a second dot at a third dot. The second dot makes the third dot disappear; the first dot is a victor. Our imaginations give the abstract action context based on the familiar. The first dot "shoots" the second dot while the third dot "dies." We see the human conflict between them. When those dots multiply, we see war. Benjamin Busch -- actor, writer and an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps who served two tours in the ongoing war in Iraq -- sees war as a natural subject matter to create meaning for the dots bouncing on our screens. "War is the most dramatic human based event, and it is inherently centered on a contest of distinct opponents making it an ideal subject for gaming. Combat appeals to both our dark animal nature and a strict military order so it combines both chaos and structure in extremity."
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