Not Just a Game: Historical Conflicts and Fun

Tim Stone wrote an important article on the always-fascinating Rock Paper Shotgun this week about the morality of wargames. He is disquieted by the disconnect between the fun he derives from the tactical planning of games like Combat Mission from the true horror that he finds in war memoirs. He notes that he can spend hours on a Saturday afternoon planning ambushes and armored assaults, simulation for pleasure what was for everyone involved a very horrific and life-altering event.

While Stone talks about deep wargames that typically involve large hex-maps scattered with tiny counters and cardboard squares scribbled with arcane abbreviations, his point also applies to the very-popular First Person Shooter. These multi-million dollar productions push the graphical capabilities of their platforms to make loud manshoots geared towards the American male. Today they are little more then Hollywood-style action games set in fictional conficts, and contain about as much depth as schlock like Battle for LA, but it wasn't always this way.

For many years, games such as Metal of Honor: Allied Assault gave a (for the time) unique and visceral look at World War II.  As a kid, I remember playing MOHAA and being flooded with sadness when the words “Pvt. Kelly has been killed” appeared, telling me that one of the friendly AI soldiers had died. They have names? I thought to myself. Suddenly, the game became less action-shoot-em-up and more meaningful. It let the player get in the helmet of a solder for a while and role-play someone more then John Rambo.

After its success, most of the lead developers of MOHAA left and formed a new company, Infinity Ward. Their first production blew their previous work out of the water. Call of Duty went out of its way to make the player feel like they were surrounded by the battlefield. Many more allies at your side, planes swooping overhead, and gunfire crackling in the distance greatly improved what MOHAA tried to do years before. Lots of work went into make the player feel like only a small part of a much larger conflict. It deepened that role-play experience and made this historic war very real and moving to the player.

COD used this graphical fidelity for more then just a flashy action game, it actively used the game mechanics to make these historical events meaningful. Towards the end of the game, the perspective switches to that of a young Russian man just pressed into service at the battle of Stalingrad. You are pushed through a line to get your equipment, but they hand out a gun to one man and a clip of ammo to the next. Supplies were low, but bodies were plentiful. The Russian strategy was literally to throw civilians in front of machine guns until their barrels melted or they couldn’t shoot over the pile of corpses. Soviet officers with sub-machine guns stood back, ready to shoot anyone who took a single step backwards. So, when the player goes from being a heavily armed Marine to a poor soviet draftee, it added a whole new level of depth to what would otherwise be a dumb action game. It made the bloodiest battle of the war seem very real and moving. I felt like I actually learned something about WWII on a deep emotional level.

Years later, as the COD franchise would become the billion-dollar monster that it is today,  the tones would shift. Call of Duty: World at War tried to revisit WWII but without any of the respect that it’s predecessor had. Shocking torture scenes, ridiculous gore and a soundtrack bristling with metal guitars turned war into action movie for frat boys. Marines mowed down enemies while screaming typical xenophobic slurs and all but chest-bumping each other. The soviets soldiers, once pitied, now became anger-filled monsters themselves. CODWAW was a game that didn’t fear the horrors of war, it relished in them, the bonus missions at the end with hoards of Nazi Zombies told that much.

I relate to Stone’s introspective in many ways. Us men are fascinated with violence of all kinds. I enjoy fantasies about guns and war as much as anyone of my gender. However, I feel that there’s a big difference between simulation fiction violence for the sheer visceral thrill of it and simulating historical violence. To turn WWII into the horror-film that CODWAW did is to act as if it didn’t involve the mind-numbing suffering and death of millions of people. It ignores the true horrors of war and makes it into a haunted house for man-children with too much testosterone.

COD continues to be the biggest seller in the gaming world. Even if its mechanics are pretty fun (and over-rated), it’s a game about war that ignores the largest, most deadly important point of war: it’s hell and nobody really wins in the end. That is why it offends me so.

Even though I’m against war as a tool of foreign policy in general, I still respect those that suffer though it, as needless as it is. I'm not against it's depiction (sometimes it's critical), but it's the portrayal that matters the most. It's the difference between the typical John Wayne action movie, with war depicted as a heroic endever that's almost fun, and Saving Private Ryan, which depicts war as a heroic endeavor that's anything but.