From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games

Niall Ferguson on historical war games

 

Niall Ferguson—whose Empire I thoroughly enjoyed and never stop recommending to people—takes an historian's-eye-view of the relative merits of learning about World War II from computer games in a recent feature for New York Magazine:

There’s never been a more important time for people to play World War II games. For the last five years, politicians from the president down have been recycling the rhetoric of that conflict. September 11 was 'a day of infamy.' Saddam/Ahmadinejad/Kim Jong Il is the new Hitler. And yet few of these politicians seem to have any real understanding of the strategic risks involved in global conflict.

"The trouble" says Ferguson, is that popular FPS games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty are "profoundly unhistorical...at root, they’re just playing Space Invaders—make that Beach Invaders—with fancy graphics."

However, Ferguson sings the praises of the relatively obscure strategy game Making History: The Calm & the Storm, which he reports "is based on a quite astonishing quantity of factual information about the war." He even used the game to test the theses of a book on WWII he's currently writing:

I argue in my new history that confronting Hitler in 1938 would have paid handsome dividends. Even if it had come to war over Czechoslovakia, Germany would not have won. Germany’s defenses were not yet ready for a two-front war. So how did my preemptive strategy stand up to a computer stress test? Not as well as I had hoped, I have to confess. The Calm & the Storm made it clear that lining up an anti-German coalition in 1938 might have been harder than I’d assumed. To my horror, the French turned down the alliance I proposed to them. It also turned out that, when I did go to war with Germany, my own position was pretty weak. The nadir was a successful German invasion of England, a scenario my book rules out as militarily too risky.

Link: What World War II Video Games Could Teach Us About North Korea and Iran -- New York Magazine.

Games About Liquids and Terror

Hey there. I'm in the Bay Area this week doing some speaking dates, including this upcoming show at Other Cinema, San Francisco on Saturday Oct 21.

Check out two games from Ian Bogost of Water Cooler Games, Oil God and Airport Security. The first is a game about global petropolitics, the second a spoof of current anti-terror measures at airports.

Link: Water Cooler Games - Persuasive Games releases The Arcade Wire: Oil God.

Face/On

Talk about identifying with a character...

Link: Put Your Face in Rainbow Six Vegas - Kotaku.

Recent Book Press: Gamespot, Escapist, Alex Jones

Some recent press:

Interview on Gamespot about the book.

Reviews in The Escapist and Rochester City News.

Interview with Austin's Alex Jones. While I'm not a "9/11 Truth Seeker," Alex was kind enought to have me on his show when I was down in Texas a couple weeks ago, after seeing a feature I wrote for the Village Voice about 9/11 conspiracy films. You have to subscribe to his site to watch the video, but here's the audio.

Thanks for the MEMRI

Not video game related at all, but found thanks to the recent Washington Post article on gaming in the Islamic world. The writer mentioned MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute. The organization's site includes an archive of Middle Eastern video clips and special reports that provide a fascinating look inside Middle Eastern media -- although it's tough to say how typical the following examples are.

First, images from a website called "How to make his [sic] son terrorist," posted earlier this month. MEMRI says this site was produced by the military wing of Hamas. They show a baby watching terror videos on a computer:

Next, a couple of anti-Western video clips from Iranian television.

The first, from this past summer, analyzes Disney's Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest for its "Zionist" roots. (transcript)

The second looks into the "Zionist" underpinnings of major Western corporations like Pepsi, Coke, Marlboro, Hugo Boss, and McDonalds. Did you know that "Pepsi" actually stands for "Pay Each Penny Save Israel"? (transcript)

Islamogaming in Washington Post

Jose Antonio Vargas looks a the recent Islamogaming phenomenon, including Night of Bush Capturing, Afkar Media's work, and others. And get this:

The Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that translates Arabic language television and Web sites, says that in June, Sheik Nabil Al-Awadhi, who has a weekly show on the Kuwaiti channel Al-Rai TV called "Sa'at Saraha" ("An Hour of Sincerity"), spoke of the need for Islamic games that compete with Western games. He also suggested developing a game in which the Muslim player "slaughters the Jews and liberates the Al-Aqsa Mosque." In the West, they turn their wars against Muslims into games, he said, and Muslims should do the same.

Also includes quotes from Dennis McCauley of Gamepolitics (who writes about Vargas' article here) and yours truly.

Vargas also wrote about the effects of game training on soldiers earlier this year.

Link: Way Radical, Dude - washingtonpost.com.

8 Bit at MoMA

8 Bit, the new documentary on making art out of video games by Marcin Ramocki and Justin Strawhand, world premieres at MoMA this weekend. I'll be there along with lots of other folks who are featured in this great movie. From MoMA's desc:

A combination "rockumentary," art exposé, and culture-critical investigation, 8 BIT ties together the 1980s demo scene, chip-tune music, and artists using "machinima" and modified computer games. Produced in New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo, the documentary brings a global perspective to the new artistic approaches of the DIY generation that grew up playing Atari, Commodore 64, and other video game consoles.Co-Directed by Justin Strawhand. With artists Cory Arcangel, BIT SHIFTER, Bodenstandig 2000, Bubblyfish, Covox, Mary Flanagan, Alex Galloway, Gameboyzz Orchestra, Glomag, HUAROTRON, JODI, Paul Johnson, John Klima, Johan Kotlinski, Nullsleep, Joe McKay, Tom Moody, Akiko Sakaizumi, Eddo Stern, TEAMTENDO, Treewave, Chiaki Watanabe, and Carlo Zanni; curator Isabelle Arvers; media critic Ed Halter; and new media curator/writer Christiane Paul. 90 min. World premiere.

Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City reviews the film, Tom Moody adds comments, and says he'll be tapping out more this week. Check out the trailer on YouTube.

8 Bit: Official Site.

From Sun Tzu to XXXbox

From Sonshi.com: paris-hilton-suntzu.jpg (JPEG Image, 300x521 pixels).

Iranian anti-US Counter Strike mod

 

Andrew Wearing from the downunderblog Boymeetsgame emailed me about this news item: 27-year old Iranian Ahmadreza Nouri has created a mod of Counter Strike in which players try to blow up a US oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. Seems to be inspired by a warning from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in June that the world's oil supplies could be serious compromised should the US go to war with Iran.

In Nouri's game, sinking the oil tanker results in blocking the Straits, through which 40% of the global oil trade passes through.

The game arrives in the wake of Al Qaeda's Night of Bush Capturing, announcements of a proposed anti-US game from the Union of Islamic Student Societies in Iran, and the larger context of recent games from the Muslim world that depict war from a Middle Eastern perspective.

Reuters/NY Times: Iranian video game offers chance to blow up U.S. tanker