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Columnist: War Games Glorify Combat, Manipulate Youth

By pete_gallagher

War-themed videogames are just one part of 'the man's' plan to promote the glory of war among today's youth, helping to ensure that young minds are distracted so that the war machine may continue to keep filling the coiffeurs of big government.

This thought process is put forth in an editorial on the Orangeville Citizen website, in a column penned by Constance Scrafield- Danby, who hinges some of her argument on the current popularity of war games, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (though the author refers to the older Call of Duty: World at War).

She writes:

Other really popular video games are about wars in space, wars in mediaeval times, killing dragons and monsters, killing aliens, killing scary animals, killing.

… the best, most loved, most played video games in the world are the ones about killing.

Scrafield- Danby argues that the U.S. economy cannot afford peace, and that 'our leaders make a show of struggling among themselves with their own sticky determination not to change anything.' She expands her thoughts to additional areas were change is fought tooth and nail, concluding that changes biggest enemy is greed.

She asks:

But what if young people suddenly woke up to this? What if they suddenly realised what is actually happening to their world and to them? What if they suddenly started to care? What if they suddenly began to insist on change, on peace, on 'going green' and finding other ways to make airplanes fly?

Scrafield- Danby then answers her own question:

The Old Dogs could never let that happen. So, what do they do? They see to it that even WWII is still relevant, that being part of that long nightmare is desirable. It is the most wide spread Machiavellian manipulation of youth in our history. This is not even the promotion of war as something noble, etc.

 

It is the promotion of war, using the full weight of technology, to present the horrors in glowing gore, from a totally unrealistic place of safety.

GP: Obviously this editorial is a little bit out there, but an aversion to "in the box" thinking made it difficult to ignore. While she might be close to the truth on some fronts, it's probably not the case that videogame publishers are churning out war games at the behest of the government.

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).