Game Security - Part III: Militarism

By Andy Johnson

Part 1 | Part 2

By now, our investigation into the way security issues are presented in games should hopefully be coalescing into some kind of logical whole.

We’ve looked at two subjects so far – firstly the presentation of the terrorism that threatens us, and secondly the policing that protects us. It’s become clear that the narratives, aesthetics and ethics of real world issues provide inspiration for entertainment media including games, which then present those issues in a way that can contribute to the constant reshaping of those issues as constructs in the thinking of individuals and society at large.

In parts I and II, I’ve speculated that the games of the future could present security issues in increasingly nuanced and thought-provoking ways - which, combined with the massive continued growth of videogames as a cultural phenomenon, could profoundly change our thinking about our personal and societal security. In the future, our playing of games could influence our ideas about consent, threat, legitimacy surrounding conflict and its prevention, especially if massively-multiplayer games begin to encourae increasingly complex, self-policing forms of online societies, the beginnings of which we are already witnessing in games like EVE Online and the upcoming APB, so intiguingly discussed at the Develop conference in Brighton in July.

To conclude this look into security issues in games, it’s essential that one particular can of worms be opened – that is, of militarism. In part II, we looked briefly at the definition of a state and how a state’s legitimacy and security are maintained by two principle arms – the police, and the miltary. These two tools are the society’s legitimised outlet of force, allowing a society to internally police itself and defend it from external threats, respectively. As citizens, our relationship with our guardians is essential. In recent decades, what is defined as a “threat” to us from the outside world has changed and broadened, which has helped justify conflicts many around the world have found distasteful at best. Similarly, we all know that the West’s refusal to intervene in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 made use of semantics – by refusing to acknowledge that “genocide” was the appropriate word, the Western nations excused themselves from having to act. It would seem that definitions, the words we use, and the way we see concepts make as big an impact on war and military conflict as they do on terrorism and policing. Games display a fascination - almost an obssession - with armed conflict, which has only increased in magnitude over the years. Along with jumping on enemies and driving fast, soldiers fighting one another is among the chief events gaming the world over depicts.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that every depiction of militarism in games is saying something about real world conflicts going on today or even in the distant past. After all, games are by their very nature fantastical escapism, and often shy away from depicting realistic situations. But recently, that has begun to turn around, with games aligning themselves more and more closely to real wars and conflicts around the globe. It’s these games, tentatively approaching subjects like the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as feasible near-future conflicts, which offer some of the biggest potential for changing the way we think in the future. Maybe one day, “docu-games” like the controversial and rather amateurish Kuma\War could become part of our shared cultural knowledge of conflicts that are yet to happen, influencing our perceptions of who was in the right and in the wrong, about whether the methods used we the right ones. What will we think, after we’ve played in the shoes of our servicemen, or those of some other state, faction or group? Now that is propositional content, and it could be just around the corner.

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