One video game away from war crimes

Can video games turn you into a war criminal? This is the question asked, quite seriously, by two Swiss human rights groups.  And, unsurprisingly, they find the answer to be "yes, kinda":

According to a new study by two Swiss human rights groups, TRIAL and Pro Juventute, many combat-heavy games actively encourage players to kill injured soldiers, attack civilians and destroy churches and mosques. As satisfying as these actions might be for players, they flagrantly violate real-life criminal and humanitarian law.

It's pretty obvious content-analysis stuff.  What's interesting is the angle the NGOs take on this.  Instead of following up on the usual path of assuming media content shapes individual perception, they are more concerns about public opinion:

the report's backers worry these games could damage public perceptions of what is and isn't acceptable in combat, leading people to think that nothing is off limits in modern warfare.

So the problem isn't that one soldier might, say, flip out and destroy a car full of civilians, or a civilian do the same, but that a nation might decide that it's a good thing to violate Geneva Convention articles. ...say, is there an argument being made about the US under Bush?

Note that the article never explains how such a public opinion changing mechanism works, or any evidence that it ever has.  Note, too, the tension between gamers as geeks (opening para) and gamers as somehow hugely influential.

Curiously, the article doesn't target children or teenagers, typical battlefields for this kind of argument.  Pro Juventute is all about children, so perhaps they have pursued this argument elsewhere.  Maybe it's because those populations don't play much of a role in shaping public opinion.  Or, optimistically, perhaps the article recognizes that adults are gamers.  (Call it holiday optimism)

On a clearly positive note, the Sphere article actually gives voice to criticism of this report, unlike most fearsome media coverage.  For instance,

"The fact that we have a healthy turtle population, that plumbers aren't going around jumping on people's heads and kids aren't murdering each other with flamethrowers, all tells me that video games don't influence the way we behave."

Heh.

Unfortunately, this other counterargument is a bit disingenuous:

"Nobody would dare suggest that a classic war novel or movie should be organized around a moral principle," says Tanya Krzywinska, professor in screen studies at Britain's Brunel University and president of the Digital Games Research Association. "Can you imagine what would have happened if Francis Ford Coppola had been asked to make 'Apocalypse Now' according to the Geneva Convention?"

Actually, the history of war literature consistently includes this kind of debate. 

(via Zenpundit)

Comments

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I think it is really truth.The violence video games make people less sensitive to others feelings and changes the perspective of killing someone in real life.