“Truths” need to be consistently challenged and reassessed under new lights to have a genuinely free society, I think. And to refuse to do that in the case of terror and often genuine political demands around the world, which is what I think much of “the west” is doing, leads to a stagnation and a kind of arrogance which only fuels the intolerance and hatred on the other side… too often “terrorism” is used as a label, as a weapon, because we’re unwilling to even think about what it is these people – not maniacs or madmen, but real, angry people – want and what they are trying to achieve.

We get the games we deserve on the whole, with gamers demanding far more in terms of graphics than intellectual content. This explains why our games fall so far short of our films in terms of tacking relevant political issues. This does not mean that they cannot address these issues, and possible have more power (in the long run) to do this as they can allow us to engage in the desision making process rather than simply presenting a narrative of it.

I am not sure Star Wars is the best example to illustrate the twin faces of terrorism, although Goliath (the Empire in this case) would have no doubt tried to paint the Rebels as a bunch of nihilistic extremists. A fare better treatment of these issues is that provided by the recent series of Battlestar Galactica which, despite its soap-opera style did attempt to tackle many thorny issues (and did a fair job on some counts).

I do not think it is at all impossible to engage a gamer into sympathy with morally questionable tactics, and is often done inadvertently, without the makers even realising that they are doing it. Examples of
this are pre-emptive killings, torture, collective punishments or guilt by association, excessive use of force and the killing of the innocent in the pursuit of a goal (either deliberately or without consideration of).

It would not take much to provide different perspectives of the same events to demonstrate that both sides can claim the moral high ground. It is harder in today’s linear games to provide meaningful moral choices, and where it is attempted it is quite shallow. This does not mean it cannot be done, and I am confident that it will.