From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games

Review Roundup

The Village Voice
"Steeped in a deep history of gaming and simulation, Halter's expert tome is primarily about a long-standing American obsession with technology, which he illustrates by examining the adoption of video-game culture by the military. The U.S. military is enthusiastic for things which are transformational, such as tactics and training billed as capable of making it over into something it isn't: an instrument for winning wars without fuss...[Halter] describes how America's Army was an online blockbuster, a thrilling experience for its makers and gamers, unattached to the reality of the war on terror."

Time Out New York
"Outraged parents have been complaining for decades that video games turn kids into numbed killing machines; according to Ed Halter's far-ranging sociological exploration of the medium's military-themed entries, it's something that the armed forces are counting on...But Halter is after a bigger philosophical picture befitting of the subject's moral grey area, and he tackles the queasy coupling of the entertainment industry and Warfare Inc. with impressive intellectual rigor"

Tom Moody
"After exploring the intertwined histories of combat and play, from chess to modern 'war game' exercises, Halter probes the nexus among the US military, academia, Hollywood, and the gaming industries that led to the development and promotion of such popular games as Full Spectrum Warrior and America's Army. I almost wrote 'unholy nexus' but that's probably not the phrase Halter would use. He has a deceptively calm 'just the facts ma'am' style that lays out all the information and leaves it to readers' heads to explode."

BadLit
"An extremely engaging, well researched and fascinating treatise bursting with intriguing ideas about war and gaming in general. It is a scholarly book and Halter obviously knows his shit. But his writing is punctuated by just the right amount of irreverence."

Evergreen Review (!!)
"Halter draws attention to many of the corporate entertainment/military alliances that currently interlace the game world, noting, surprisingly, that it is often the military that demands the most cutting edge technological innovations...Halter doesn't give us much to look forward to, but he is to be applauded for opening our eyes to this grim future in his sober and sobering account."

Hasan Nasrallah web games

From Israeli news site Ynet comes word of two new anti-Nasrallah web games.

In one game, created by Amir Lotan, you send an F-15 to bomb the Hezbollah leader as his head appears at random on a Google Map of southern Lebanon. Ynet suggests that "you must gamble" to win (that is, bomb at random until you hit him). However, I found it easiest to hit him if you only wait for him to appear at the very bottom of the screen. Perhaps the game's difficulty is a comment on Israeli military strategy, though it's unclear.

In another game, you bomb Nasrallah (here depicted as a clucking turkey) with a variety of missiles, including a broken toilet, a pig's head, an old refrigerator, and a dead peace dove. Cathartic ridicule, along the lines of the old whack Osama games from the post-9/11 days, or the celebrity assassin games from which they evolved.

Bookcourt Tonite in Brooklyn

Hey! Come by the BookCourt event tonight!

Tom's already got the discussion going on his blog here and here.

#######

Wednesday, July 19th at 8:00 pm

Author Ed Halter discusses his book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games with digital artist and art-blogger Tom Moody

At
BookCourt
163 Court Street
Brooklyn NY 11201

* map and directions

About Tom Moody
Tom Moody is an artist based in New York. His most recent shows were a solo exhibition at artMovingProjects in Brooklyn, and "The GIF Show" at Rx Gallery in San Francisco. His blog was recommended in the 2005 Art in America article "Art in the Blogosphere," and his writing on art and music has appeared in Artforum, Sculpture, Art Papers, and other publications.

Special Force down?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given current events, the website for Hezbollah-produced videogame Special Force is currently unavailable.

From the inside: letters from Beruit by Walid Ra'ad (I think).

The True Believer

Quote from a book I have only recently discovered, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer:

Dying and killing seem easy when they are part of a ritual, ceremonial, dramatic performance, or game. There is need for some kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or light-hearted dramatic performance.

Hitler dressed eighty million Germans in costumes and made them perform in a grandiose, heroic, and bloody opera. In Russia, where even the building of a latrine involved some self-sacrifice, life was an uninterrupted soul-stirring drama going on for thirty years, and its end is not yet. The people of London acted heroically under a hail of bombs because Churchill cast them in the role of heroes. They played their heroic role before a vast audience—ancestors, contemporaries, and posterity—and on a stage lighted by a burning world city and to the music of barking guns and screaming bombs. It is doubtful whether in our contemporary world, with its widespread individual differentiation, any measure of general self-sacrifice can be realized without theatrical hocus-pocus and fireworks…

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death. We speak of the theater of war and of battle scenes. In their battle orders, army leaders invariably remind their soldiers that the eyes of the world are on them, that their ancestors are watching them, and that posterity shall hear of them. The great general knows how to conjure an audience out of the sands of the desert and the waves of the ocean.

Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or “of those who are to be.” We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.

Compare this to the testimonials of contemporary American soldiers in Iraq I've blogged about. Two things different but related things are going on here. In Hoffer's case, leaders evoke the idea of theater, or play, in order to enable everyday people to risk death in ways they otherwise might not. In the case of these soldiers in Iraq, the metaphor of killing-as-a-game occurs spontaneously—rising up in the minds of the soldiers, at the moment of existential and moral crisis, as a coping mechanism.

Machinima: "An Unfair War"

Via Selectparks: Thuyen Nguyen's "An Unfair War," a short anti-war film made with The Sims 2, can be downloaded from Archive.org. An unusually mature example of machinima. You can also watch it via Youtube below, though I recommend downloading it instead. That YouTube logo in the corner is just so damn distracting.

See also: Nguyen's blog at Devinquest.com.

No Dice

Gamepolitics reports that Las Vegas city officials don't like that the next installment of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six takes place in their town. Game developers have said that "In Rainbow Six Vegas, we are really pushing on the stress, tension and urgency elements. Las Vegas is under terrorists' siege and players will truly live the escalation of chaos."

The Tournament of Shadows

From Guardian Gamesblog:

Bambino_Tostare has sent in his thoughts on a recent article from the BBC, suggesting that a round-up of the continuing war in Afghanistan is awfully similar to the design and format of real-time strategy games. Indeed, upon consideration Auntie Beeb has reduced the five-year "conflict" to a list of the factions, their weaponry, their vehicles and the country's terrain. Sections include "mobility" (with sub-categories including, defences, strengths, weaknesses and cost), "key weapon" (with subcategories including year of development, caliber, magazine capacity, loaded weight and range) and "manpower" (with subcategories including, main weapons, strengths and weaknesses). Creepy

The comments so far are also interesting

OfficePest: Does anyone find it odd that it's creepy looking at this now, but you can guarantee that in the not-too-distant future there will be a game based upon this war? There are games for pretty much all historical battles. Hundreds of WW1 and WW2 games. Yet these don't seem creepy to us now. Maybe we just need time to get over the horror of a war, then we can re-enact it in games without feeling distaste.

Goodnessme: Battlefield 2 IS set there. Though they never come about and say it, and the MEC have more weaponary than the Taliban, the setting for the game is pretty much USA vrs. generic terrorist state (or China). Actually, maybe they don't mention the country it's set in as that would only confuse the American players...And, yeh, I do find it a bit creepy. But I find COD, Battlefield Vietnam etc. a bit creepy in that respect, too. I guess the good thing about these games is they've certainly destroyed any notions I never had of going to war. You've just got to look at your kill/death ration and think; 'ah, but my death limit is 1 in real life.. man my stats would suck.'

Well looks like gamers were thinking about this pretty soon after the US invasion and one company announced an Afghanistan title that never got released.

And even earlier. The Brits called their old Central Asian war of intrigue with Russia "The Great Game" (the Russians, with darker poetry, called it "The Tournament of Shadows") and American artist John Klima has explored this angle.

Under the Flag of the Rising Sun

EastSouthWestNorth covers some in-game political controversy going on massively popular online Chinese RPG "The Fantasy of the Journey West." Apparently a high-level player was placed in a virtual lockdown (in "The Great Tang Permanent Incarceration Prison") by the game's company Netease because of the name he gave his character and guild. The player's character was called "Kill the Little Japs", and his guild "The Alliance to Resist Japan."

From EastSouthWestNorth:

Has Netease ever done something like this before? Yes, there is an online post from a Netease manager (at xyq.netease.com) about some historical precedents:

A guild known as "Triad Society" was dissolved. The manager does not remember the alias of the leader.

A guild known as "Al Qaeda" was dissolved. The leader had the alias of "I am bin Laden."

A guild known as "Unit 731" was dissolved. The leader had the alias of "Kill all, loot all." [Note: Wikipedia entry on Unit 731]

EastSouthWestNorth also points to an earlier story: "The Alliance to Resist Japan" apparently fomented in-game protests over what it perceived to be the graphic of the Japanese Empire's Rising Sun flag on the walls of a government building. Over 10,000 players gathered their characters in an area known as The Summer Palace in collective fury.

"To raise a 'Rising Sun flag' in a Great Tang government office is obviously a challenge and an insult!" said local game player Mr. Zeng angrily. Another game player Ms. Lu could not conceal her disappointment: "Even although everything in the game is virtual, our feelings are still genuine. This incident has seriously hurt our feelings. We find this unacceptable." According to game player Mr. Gu, many game players contacted the customer service line after the incident broke upon, but the other side only repeated: "No comment." Mr. Guo said that the word among the game players is that the "Rising Sun flag" is present in a Tang dynasty government office because some of the stock shares in this online game have been purchased by a foreign company.

Netease, however, claims the offending image was based not on the Japanese flag, but a Chinese painting called "Green Mountain Ocean Water Morning Sunrise," found historically in government offices, which was meant to remind officials to "always maintain a clear mind, never mistreat the people, never betray the nation."

Says Andrew Leonard at Salon on the whole matter: "Ponder how there is no escape from the crimes of history, no matter how immersive the virtual medium."

Japanese war atrocities in China during WWII have left a lasting impression, and in recent times have served as a rallying point for Chinese nationalism. In 2005, for example, China saw a wave of real-world anti-Japanese demonstrations in response to news that Japanese textbooks were whitewashing Japan's military history.

This isn't the first meeting of Chinese games and anti-Japanese patriotism. The China Communist Youth League developed a WWII-themed game called Anti-Japan War Online, which, according to a spokesperson, "will allow players, especially younger players, to learn from history. They will get a patriotic feeling when fighting invaders to safeguard their motherland."

(thanks to Jem Cohen for the Salon tip-off)

elsewhere: coverage from TerraNova. Their source Billsdue notes that

Anti-Japanese sentiment is never far from erupting here. And it may be good for business. According to this article on 17173.com, a server group that normally sees 20,000 concurrent users was almost overwhelmed with 80,000 users during the protest.

BookCourt talk with Tom Moody

Save the date for this special summer event!

Wednesday, July 19th at 8:00 pm

Author Ed Halter discusses his book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games with digital artist and art-blogger Tom Moody

At
BookCourt
163 Court Street
Brooklyn NY 11201

* map and directions

About Tom Moody
Tom Moody is an artist based in New York. His most recent shows were a solo exhibition at artMovingProjects in Brooklyn, and "The GIF Show" at Rx Gallery in San Francisco. His blog was recommended in the 2005 Art in America article "Art in the Blogosphere," and his writing on art and music has appeared in Artforum, Sculpture, Art Papers, and other publications.