Killing in the Name of...

Wanna be freaked out? Read this. Then come back here.

I play video games religously. I love them. I believe in video games - even violent ones - as a legitimate form of entertainment. I don't believe that video games make people violent and I don't believe that video games are inherently corrupting or brain-dead.

In point of fact, I assert that video games are like anything else. Used as a form of entertainment, they are no better or worse than any other sort of entertainment.

Even before games developed the level of verisimilitude they have now, people opposed them for being violent and simulationist. The Army even has a shooter they use to indoctrinate or evoke interest, depending on your political and social stance, lending credence to the ideas that video games can be used to train and/or indoctrinate.

Lt. Col. David Gross wrote an engaging book called On Killing that dealt in some part with what it takes to produce killers. While I disagree with a number of his assertions, the data he provides is stunning. I recommend it.

So when I found this article (sent to me by a friend), I tried to step back and look at it simply as a video game. But as I sifted the details and read the statements by the creators, it all got much darker.

When you read interviews with mainstream video game designers and publishers, they expound on the story, the characters, the options and the fantasy. They discuss their creations in ways not unlike authors or directors with stories to tell. Even when the production is laden with meaning, they first and foremost want to entertain.

It's fairly clear that this is little more than hate-propaganda wrapped inside a video game. Certainly some will say that all video games including violence peddle an agenda of one sort or other, but this is an order of magnitude more...dangerous. The express purpose of this game is indoctrination. The offensive content and gameplay (murdering anyone who disagrees with your God-given mandate) are designed to reinforce dogmatic intolerance and through the endorsement of the clergy plant the seed of violence as acceptable and desirable.

Certainly I'm treading dangerously close to the idiots who make decisions about how I should parent and what forms of entertainment are acceptable. I recognize this. There is, I believe, a stark difference.

This game and others like it, as peddled by the Aryan Nations supporters and their ilk (search on White Law and Ethnic Cleansing), spread a very real message of hate and intolerance. Most games have enemies like mercenaries, fascist state security, monsters and animals and when they include moral grey areas they do just that, showing you that the decision you make in the context of the game is a difficult one or at least one that is driven by motivations that can be seen as good or bad. Most games do not make absolutist moral statements concerning the belief systems of others and most games certainly do not pretend to be anything more than entertainment.

I suppose we should be glad we can see these people for the violent misanthropes they apparently are. I, for one, am disturbed by the implications of the game's potential success.