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It’s Time We Dig a Little Deeper into the FPS Genre

It’s Time We Dig a Little Deeper into the FPS Genre

Call of Duty does not make you any better at real combat. This may seem obvious, but to some it might be news. Nonetheless, this is another branch of the “video games cause violence” argument tree. As exhausting as this tree is, it continues to grow and I think it’s necessary to make it all the more clear. None of the Call of Duty series could prepare anyone for the reality of war.

First and foremost, the Call of Duty series is played from the leisure and comfort of your couch or gaming chair. The military, however, goes through rigorous fitness tests. Even then, they can only do so much to train a soldier’s instincts to react in a real combat situation. No matter how realistic Call of Duty might be, the gamer will never have to go through the physical requirements of a real soldier. In addition, soldiers are driven to the edge of their body’s capabilities quite often, like dragging your team mate’s body across a battlefield. The ability to not give up when you are physically and mentally exhausted is one of the hardest things a soldier can do in their life, even with their training. As seen in this BuzzFeed video, untrained folks have a very difficult time with this kind of conditioning even off the battlefield.

Second, Call of Duty in no way reflects actual war situations. I mean, it depicts war situations the same way The Avengers does. There are big flashy explosions and manufactured tension derived from seemingly intense “barely escape with your life” incidents. For example, in Black Ops III , the plane crashing into the Airport Traffic Control tower that the main character happens to be in is an extreme incident that did not need to occur for the sense of urgency to be felt by the player. Manufactured tension, however, is a topic for another time, especially where Call of Duty is concerned. In actual war, as Michael Prysner mentioned in a The Point panel, civilians die all too often. They are the causalities of inaccurate aiming and purposely taken down for a variety of reasons. Or it might turn out the “enemy” is in the middle of dinner with his family when soldiers come in to take him down. Indeed, the dehumanization of the enemy does not happen so easily in real war as it does in a video game.

It’s Time We Dig a Little Deeper into the FPS Genre

Third, Call of Duty will never reveal the consequences of war after the soldier is relieved from duty for whatever reason. The Call of Duty Endowment fundraiser, however, did help raise awareness and funds to help with these consequences. Specifically, the veterans who are unemployed because of cultural stigma, and a military mentality that employers don’t know how to translate into the workplace. The cultural stigma refers to the stereotype that having PTSD means you’re a walking time bomb, that you could be triggered at any moment to act in extreme ways.

I’m not saying that Call of Duty should have more realistic war situations, but that the difference is there and it’s huge. No one should ever think that Call of Duty can prepare them for the real thing, no matter how good they are at it. Call of Duty is a game and should remain so, and I don’t think it would ever be the cause of actual violence – no matter what Fox News or CNN says.

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