Changing The Rules Of War

(Over the next few posts, I'll be discussing issues brought up in the spectacular PBS Frontline episode called "Digital Nation", which discusses current issues in the digital invasion of our societies).

The world of the soldier is a world of risk management. You shoot, you get shot at. You go to war, you may not come back. These have been the unwritten rules of war for many thousands of years, and it has shaped the civilizations of the world and the social constructs and hierarchies that we live and relate to every day. the danger of war creates heroes and villains, and it's unique ability to take a staggering amount of life and limb makes it a force worth reckoning, and a serious mover of people and history.

This is why those who play video games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor laugh at the idea that it's desensitizing them to war and violence. Gamers aren't stupid, and they realize that they are just pressing buttons in a virtual world, as much as the game designers want them to think otherwise. They understand that the actions they do in the game have no effect in the real world.

When you look inside the Air Force bunker in the desert outside of Las Vegas, NV, you could swear that that a bunch of gamers were getting together for some fun and games in a military setting. It's a bunch of guys, sitting around big screens and keyboards, talking military lingo, and controlling the action on the screen with joysticks. If it wasn't for the military attire, this would look no different than a small gaming convention. As the pilots shout commands back and forth using all kinds of military lingo and abbreviations, the action on-screen heats up. These pilots are playing some kind of simulation that very effectively simulates a precision air strike on targets they would be fighting overseas. No better training exists than this. The action looks eerily real, and the pilots are glued to the screens as if they were actually there, fully aware of their superiors standing behind them, evaluating and pondering every move and every strike.

The simulated target is a bogey on a motorcycle. He's going to meet his terrorist friends in an abondoned warehouse outside the city limits, and the pilots are tracking him to find out where this building is, and then take out the whole meeting with a well-placed bomb. The pilots cycle through all the typical reconnaissance technologies, tracking this guy so closely, you can almost make out his facial features. He takes a few detours. He stops to get a bite to eat and plays with some children in the street. The simulation wants to make this guy act like a real person would, to heighten the believability of the scenario. Finally, the target approaches the building and enters. A few moments later, the pilots are given the order to fire. The air-to-ground hellfire missile slams into the building, practically evaporating it.

Mission Accomplished. The pilots fly back to base, and land. In the real world, in Las Vegas, the pilots take off their headsets, shut off the computers, and go home to their families, safe and sound.

It may have looked like a training mission, but that that building really was destroyed. There was a real plane out there, firing real rockets, and killing real people. These pilots are piloting the newest and one of the deadliest weapons in our Army's arsenal. They are the pilots of the MQ-1B Predator Drones, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is becoming ever so popular in Iraq as the air-strike tool of choice. It's changing the entire landscape of human conflict.

These soldiers are controlling an object thousands of miles away. It may as well be a video game. When they fire a missile, they don't feel it like a real pilot does. When they fly at ridiculous speeds, they don't feel G-forces. They don't wear oxygen masks, and they don't wear seatbelts. If it wasn't for military policy, they could come to work in khaki pants and a T-shirt. If they get shot at, there is only money to lose. If they get shot down, they still go back to their family at the end of the day. And of course, when they kill someone on screen,  that person is really dead.

It's scary, really. When you're that detached from the reality of combat, and yet your actions control the battlefield, it changes the way you think. There's a reason why the military requires military garb in this bunker. If the pilots weren't reminded constantly that they are fighting a real war, this may as well be the most realistic video game ever. When you're on the battlefield, you see the consequences of your actions, up close and personal. In a video game, you can afford to be reckless; your life isn't on the line.

It isn't very good for mental health. When you're being shot at, it isn't hard to fire back. When you're on the other side of the world, and you kill dozens of people with a keystroke, it messes with your head. When you go home to your family every night after leveling city blocks and killing countless bad guys behind the veil of the computer monitor, the emotional gravity of the situation starts to get under your skin, and many of these pilots need therapy for PTSD and other war-related mental health maladies.

on a less personal level, like I mentioned before, this is changing the entire battlefield of human conflict. When wars are fought from behind a computer screen, well behind your own borders, the dynamics of combat will never be the same. War has always been fought as a desperate struggle over human life. If you make a tactical decision, there is always the risk of getting shot at. The Predator drones are taking away the risk of death, and replacing it with the risk of monetary loss.

Many find this controversial. Studies go back and forth trying to determine if the drone pilots take more risks, and endanger the lives of more civilians, than say, an F-15 pilot who is constantly risking his own life doing the same work. I can see both sides of the coin. On one side, the freedom to make tactical decisions without risking life and limb should enable pilots to make more calculated strikes, and striking in ways that will decrease collateral damage. On the other side, the detachment from the actual field of battle could make the pilots detached from the reality and the consequences of what they do, causing them to focus on the objective more than the facts of life and death on the ground. In other words, you never worried about destroying neighborhoods when playing Call of Duty, because it wasn't real, and you knew that the game put more emphasis on completing the mission than keeping collateral damage to a minimum.

The Predator Drone is something out of a Sci-Fi movie. It is, quite literally, a cyborg army. War will be changed forever when robots are dying in place of humans. The only question is, will this change be good for us, or will it usher in a new, bloodier, age of conflict; an age where battles are won by the biggest wallet, where civilians are ignored because the pilots can't see them die. Or will it actually decrease violence in the world? When fighting a war only results in monetary loss, what's the point?

War is hell, true. But is will soon be just a virtual hell. And the world won't ever be the same.

The Two Reasons We Play Video Games

I've recently become slightly addicted to a game called Geometry Wars. To all who unfamiliar with the franchise, it is an agonizingly simple game. You have a "ship" that you control that flies around and can shoot enemies (represented by various neon floating objects). The goal is to shoot enemies without physically touching them. The graphics are made up of simple 2-d shapes, all brightly colored and animated, moving frantically around the playing field. It took only a few people to program, and on an obviously minimal budget. I have probably spent more time on this game than I spend on many games that employ armies of programmers, cost millions upon millions to produce, and tell epic 30 hour long stories in lush, photorealistic, 3-d enviroments. So why bother? Why aren't publishers focusing on small yet superbly designed, highly addictive games on a much lower budget?

The answer is because each "genre" of game is targeting a different level of enjoyment in the gamer. Games like the Halo series, which focus on plot, action, and graphical prowess are trying to give a player the experience of an interactive movie. They know that the action on screen will be more personal and meaningful to the player if the context of the action is somewhat plausible. So, wrapping the action and interactive elements of a game into a cinematic package helps with what developers call Immersion. The draw for games like this is escapism. Much like reading a book or watching a movie, we enjoy the departure from reality because it makes us forget about our problems and issues, if but for a short time. Immersion is all about keeping up withe Jones'. Typically, it the modern gaming industry, Immersion is basically judged by how perfectly detailed the gaming world is relative to other games in the market. There are other factors, but a realistic looking world will always be the biggest plus. Since immersion sells product, publishers will spend inordinate amounts of money making sure everything in the game world is a real and top-notch as possible. That includes professional voice acting, virtual motion capture (think Gollum in Lord of the Rings, a digital character modeled after a real person's movements), and expensive graphics engines. The technology behind such games is only going to get better as developers try harder to get us to believe we are the video game, not playing it.

Games like Geometry Wars are aiming for a completely different pleasure center in the Brain. Human Beings like progression. We respond to success positively. It's what drives us as a species. When success is easy and clear, it's hard to control the desire to latch on to it. Games like geometry are paced very carefully. It uses mathematical formulas to pace the level at which your score goes up to convince you that you can always do a little better. It's hard enough to be a challenge, but possible enough that you'll dare to try and reach that success. That, along with the short length of games and the almost instantaneous restart time, provides a highly addictive quest for scores. Every time you lose, the simplicity of the game tempts you to come back and try and beat that high score. And a funny thing happens. The game rewards patience and practice. The more you play, the better you will get. So every time that Game Over screen beckons you to restart, you know you can do better. And it's only a few minutes right? I've got time for one more, right? Hours later, and you're still crunching the numbers, inching closer and closer to a goal that never really materializes. There is no ending. There is only the leader board. And the goal is to be on top. That addiction to success is what drives us as a species. Put in video game form in short 5 minute segments, it's almost impossible to resist.

The most successful games being made today are the one's that skillfully blend the two styles together. Enter World of Warcraft. Touted as being the most addictive game ever, there is truth behind the tout. It's an immersive world, a world where entire cultures are formed, wars are fought, and truces are signed, all by real people. The graphics are lush, the world is alive, and it's hard not to get to get caught up in your own personal story. However, there is always the grind. The grind is when you go out and perform highly repetitive, typically menial tasks for small rewards. In small increments, your character becomes slightly more powerful. In every small increment you can see the growth, and all you want is more. The grind may be repetitive, but it always concludes in some form of success or growth. The draw is even stronger when you take into account the chance that menial tasks have the small possibility of something rare and strong being dropped or added to your character. It's that same addiction to success and growth that drives the character to play for hours and hours to get that one more level, or one more item drop. What makes WoW great is that it combines the two game styles more effectively than anyone else has done in the past.

Now, let me go beat my score yet again. If I'm not back in 3 hours, send someone in to save me.

Video Game Haters

The video game Mass Effect was released as a shining example of the effect of subtle choices towards the outcome of a situation. Small choices in dialog could mean the ultimate death of a friend or the salvation of a planet. It also threw unbelievably difficult moral choices at the player. One such choice was having to decide which friend to save from an impending military invasion. It was choices like these that made the game much more personal (and thus enjoyable) than other games of its ilk. Naturally, this was a game meant for more mature audiences. Weighty political debates, hard moral choices, and epic space operas aren't really the gaming fare for your average 10 year old at home on a Sunday. So, when FOX news has this to say about the game, it makes me want to cry. You should seriously watch the whole thing. It's unbelievable.

Now, before we continue, just know that almost every fact mentioned by the anchor is utterly and totally false. Some basic research would show that:

- There is no frontal nudity in this game. It's definitely suggestive, and there's definately stuff going on off-screen, but pron it ain't.

- No, the "man" in this game cannot have his way with any woman in the world. There are actually two women with which romantic relationships are possible, and it's actually quite challenging to achieve the results portrayed in the interview. And you can be a woman in the game, anyways.

- The "offending" material is a one minute long snippet in a game experience that can take up to 30+ hours to complete.

- Notice how neither the anchor or the psychologist have actually played the game. Nuff said.

Either way, it is not the stellar investigative journalism that I want to discuss. That's a train wreck that doesn't really need any more wrecking. What I want to know is how are these questions even being asked? These people are acting as if this is the first time objectification of women has been thrust on adolescent males (which, apparently, are the only people that play video games.... What???) in our saintly Western World. Lady, have you been to the movies lately? Have you walked around outside? Have you seen the abject and total moral emptiness that the entire Western World is predicated upon?? Of all the things that you could come up with to discuss the moral desensitization of our youth, you seriously chose a 1 minute clip of questionable nudity- alien nudity- from a video game that is not only 30 hours long, and features no blood in any of its violent scenes, but chooses to actually explore the moral consequences of our choices?! In an environment where blood flows like kool-aid on the big screen, where women are glorified by the amount of skin they show, and violent, vulgar, muscular men are the heroes, you're going to choose this moral experiment of a game to prove your point? There is something very wrong about this, and naturally, I have some answers for you.

Remember, only adolescent boys play video games. This is key. This is a stereotype that has plagued the industry since the very beginning. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I think it was just a perfect storm of social movements. Video games only became widely popular with the onset of arcades. They were too expensive to mass produce for home use, so arcades became the outlet of choice for the industry. Being hangouts, arcades drew the adolescent crowd more than any other demographic. Video games being the main aspect of an arcade, adolescents became the target audience. The male part of the stereotype has to do with competition. Just like the pool shark image is that of a smooth talkin' male hanging out and dominating the competition at the local pool hall, the gamer became the male who dominated competition at the arcade. The arcade origins of the video game also gave rise to the video game as time waster. It became an immature, irresponsible diversion. "Grown-Ups" didn't hang out at arcades because they had "responsibilities" of their own. 30 years later, those arcade junkies are in their 40s and 50s, and the stereotype remains. We've come a long way, but apparently we still have a long way to go.

The reason why video games are held up to such a higher moral standard is because the media still believes that video game developers are still exclusively targeting the 13 year old boys with every title they put out. Anyone that has played a serious video game in the past 10 years knows that to be absolutely false. Games like Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto, and most other blockbuster M-rated hits are not meant to be played by children. I have a game called Ninja Gaiden. It is, naturally, an extremely violent, if over-the-top, video game. My wife saw me playing it and said, "Is this what you want your children to be watching?" The answer, quite simply, is no. That's what parenting is for. I wouldn't let my kids watch my copy of The matrix until they were old enough to understand it either. Video games should be no different than movies when it comes to monitoring, screening, and general parenting.

One more point. Video games are often argued as being different than movies because violence in movies is simply shown whereas violence in games is acted out by the player. When acted out, those acts of violence become internalized and accepted easier. This is a pointless argument on many levels. First of all, choosing to shoot a gun by pressing a button, and actually pulling a trigger at a person are two very different things. Anyone who argues that kid pressing a button on a controller will then go out with a real gun and shoot someone in the face is simply being intellectually dishonest, lazy, and trying to cheaply argue their point. The choice to shoot somebody digitally is typically very simple. Do I press the button or do I not press the button? The decision to really shoot somebody involved getting a real gun, loading the real gun with real ammunition, finding somebody to shoot, listening to that person beg, plead, pee their pants, cry, scream and break down, and finally choosing to pull the trigger anyways. If a kid can really go through those motions and blame a video game, they either have a really bad lawyer or they have a serious mental disorder. and all that is assuming that the video game is even somewhat realistic. Most of the time, you're shooting bizarre creatures that bleed green. I don't think that's going to create child psychopaths.

I think you get my point. Video games should not be treated any differently than movies, music, or any other entertainment outlet we use for distraction. The video game haters are still living in a world of arcades and leather jackets, not in a world where the video game industry is a multi-national, multi-billion dollar industry run by the best business and tech minds of our time. Grow up already.

Dropping out of school to play video games proffesionally: What we can learn

Let's get something straight before I go any further. I like video games a lot. I have been playing video games as a serious hobby since my parents bought an NES in my toddler years. I picked up that controller, made Mario jump, and never looked back. It has been, and continues to be, a serious hobby of mine, and I naturally take it pretty seriously. More on that in future posts. In the meantime, I'd like to direct you to a story that has polarized gamers around the world, started some of the most intense parenting flame wars (the best kind, btw) I have seen, and has a lot of people rethinking the nature of the video game as a hobby, an art form, and an industry.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2766/story/1155589.html

Now, the article itself is not the greatest source of information here because, let's face it, the media as a whole is in agreement that Grand Theft Auto is corrupting our children and making them violent, psychotic murderers. Infinitely more informative is what this Blake fellow has to say for himself. In a forum on scorehero.com, a website devoted to Guitar Hero and its players, a flame war has erupted amongst the members (Really????) on the subject of Blake and his career plans. Right in the middle of the pyromania, Blake steps forward using a friend's username and talks a little about his decision. Read for yourself (his comments are at the end of the page).

This kid clearly has his head on his shoulders. It's a well-written, thought out approach to his decision and his parents' support. While this raises all kinds of questions about homeschooling, parenting, the public school system, video games, and competitive gaming, I hope it causes people to step back and take a more mature, intellectually honest approach to what video games are, and especially what they aren't. I think I've written enough for you to think about for now. I have a lot more to say on the subject, but not enough time to get it all out. More later.