Violence & Video Games: Part 2

Not Playing Fair: The Double Standard of Video Game Violence

Mike Leader:

Ok, we’ve been talking about violence. Video Game violence is a hot topic, a serious debate, with The Good of Society At Stake. However, the effect and influence of video games has been duly noted in more coercive and unsettling ways. At the moment, if you go down to the cinema in the UK, you will probably be faced with an advertisement which closely re-constructs the look, feel and atmosphere of Grand Theft Auto. The parallels should be noticeable to pretty much anyone who has come across the gaming series. However, the main character enters a grocery store, opens a chiller cabinet… and pulls out a bottle of Coca Cola. Antics ensue, based around the character doing Good Deeds, backed by “You Give a Little Love” from the Bugsy Malone musical. Fair enough, it’s a well made commercial, quite accurate and funny in its parody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfhZfSVuup4

It is followed by another ad, which fades in on an indistinct warlord of distinctly Non-Anglo-European Origin. A spirited, poetic voice-over talks about overcoming fear and terror. Due to its placement in the cinema programme, we know this isn’t a trailer, but it feels like a film. It almost comes off as a game trailer, not unlike the PS3 “This Is Living” line of commercials from 2007 (Editor’s note – I’m pretty sure this commercial never aired in the U.S.; it’s slightly NSFW):

Back to the ad in question. As it progresses, the warlord retreats into the jungle, and out of the shadows appear… The Royal Marines. This is a recruitment commercial for THE MILITARY.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Y5Jmc1OC0

I was troubled by this at the time, since its tactic for enticing new recruits was so subtle and covert, comments on the YouTube video talk about how “badass” it is, or how it would have been better “if that bragging Indonesian guy at the beginning got taken out”. This commercial preys on the prevalence of military violence in society. A successful “sell” for the ad would be “fuckin’ A! I want to be that cool/brutal/stealthy!” To be more relevant, this ad also, like the Coca Cola one before it, channels the cultural resonance of video games. Admittedly, this is subtle, but I certainly think that its stealth and “kill the evil ethnics” atmosphere is almost exactly like last year’s FPS PC game, Crysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIRdbrvrAb4&feature=related

The more I thought about this, the more it disgusted me. The armed forces, no doubt needing quick injections of new recruits to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, reject previous campaigns such as "Join the Army: See the World" or focusing on the career prospects of joining. Instead they focus on the action of combat; the kind of campaign which garners YouTube responses such as:

“best advert i seen so far but i tried to join and they said no you have to be conviction free for five years to get in, just 19 more months to go pheww cant wait. want ta blow up stuff”

Troubling. Really troubling. Not content with spoiling my cinema-going experience, the military powers that be have launched an offensive on television. This time, it’s the British Army. In a current group of adverts, which document the experiences of different recruits in different fields of duty, the link with gaming is STILL THERE. Most obviously is the commercial that focuses on a young reconnaissance solder, who is in charge of a UAV remote control aircraft – in his own words, a “spy plane”. What set me off about this ad is the mode of controlling said spy plane…an XBox 360 gamepad. It’s like a game! Indeed, even though the format of this particular series is documenting the diverse and exciting experience of army recruits, and therefore less reprehensible than the Royal Marines example, what this amounts to is “we get to play with some great tech!”. There is still this focus on army life as gameplay, as mythic and “cool”. View the video – admittedly, in the form of a hastily-edited parody:

Another advert in the series is called “Sniper”, and we’re back into coercive, subtle territory. This time, instead of Crysis, the inspiration is the sniper storyline in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare; here is a trailer, which doesn’t convey the link as well as I hoped, but still gives you an idea of the parallel:

Again, the focus isn’t on the necessary recon work a sniper does, or the wider benefits of joining the army; it’s on the tension of staying hidden, the adrenaline-rush of being spotted, the constant possibility of “taking someone out”.

I completely understand that advertising exploits all possible subjects, social or cultural, to convince the punter, the viewer, to try the product. This shrewdness is a part of consumer society. I just don’t like the selective conscience when it comes to the persuasive, coercive aspects of video games. Lobbyists will fight for games to be banned, calling for a situation where adults are not allowed to exercise freedom as consumers, gamers, even responsible parents. But in circumstances like this, where violence is a requisite, the psychological property of gaming is… fair game. The people behind these ads assume, or at least believe that gamers are more likely to want to join the army, so therefore focus on the video-game-like aspects of warfare. Or they try to forge some kind of (utterly baffling, IMO) psychological development from casual video gaming to signing up for the army, like this US Army commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkKF4ZcqW14

Hey, kid! Sitting on your ass playing a console FPS game….want a real challenge?! Join the army!

It’s pretty horrible when you think of it like that.

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