The ongoing trial of Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Breivik has generated a great deal of media coverage, public debate and analysis.

Much of this has focused on claims made by Breivik that he used the “military shooter” Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to prepare for his attacks.

Critics of games and gaming very quickly pounced on his assertion to claim this was evidence of a causal link between game-playing and committing acts of violence.

Purpose:
To compare the video and computer game play patterns of young adolescent boys and

Ender’s Game is a sci-fi novel about a precocious ten-year-old training to lead Earth’s fleet of spaceships against a looming alien threat. The reveal at the end of the book is that Ender hasn’t been training in simulations, but has actually been commanding real battles, unknowingly saving Earth from an alien invasion.

As it turns out, Ender’s Game has been extremely influential in the way the military views videogames as a training tool for soldiers. According to Corey Mead: “The whole idea of what Ender’s Game is—young people fighting a war—is what influenced [the military]. And they totally did it.”

In his new book War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict, Mead explores the U.S. military’s use of videogames as a tool for recruitment, training, and treatment. This recent interest in videogames reflects a shift in what it wants from its soldiers. “For the first time in its history‚” Mead writes, “the military wants to teach even junior personnel not just what to think but how to think.” This change has taken place primarily because of the U.S.’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, where a soldier isn’t just fighting but is tasked with a number of different jobs, requiring different skills, tactics, and cultural understanding.

Years of research documents how witnessing violence and aggression leads to a range of negative out-comes for children. These outcomes result both from witnessing real violence (Osofsky, 1995) as well as from viewing media vio-lence (Anderson et al., 2003; Gentile, 2003). Ironically, the same parents who take great pains to keep children from witnessing violence in the home and neighborhood often do little to keep them from viewing large quantities of violence on television, in movies, and in video games.

This paper explores how war-themed video games may impact gamers' perception of modern warfare. The popularity of violent video games such as Call of Duty has prompted researchers to investigate the effects that extensive game play may have on consumers. Due to their high potential for psychological influence, enhanced by military involvement and social networking, there is reason to believe that violent, war-themed video games may have psychological effects on gamers that could negatively impact their decisions regarding war and violence.

Althea Vail Wallop
Stanford University

Are games our escapist fantasies, or our outlets for dealing with reality? Either way, why is our most common gameplay choice the pursuit of war?