As gamers we have a certain opinion about how gaming influences the greater society.  Many of us believe that we can separate the gaming from the violence.  Many of us believe we can commit mass murder in a virtual world and not even consider walking the real streets armed and homicidal.  Most of all; many of us believe that gaming is free speech and protected from censorship.  However, is there a game so universally wretched that it should be banned?

We will avoid the long and labored discussion of free speech in gaming and whether its very nature injures other parties.  Instead, let us look at how gamers would react when confronted by speech that challenges Western culture.  Will free speech still reign?  Or will it then be okay to restrict some speech when some institutions are threatened?

Free speech seems like such an absolutist concept that tries to exist in this world of relativity.  Even worse, we try to apply the hard and fast definition of free speech to complex issues.  The classic example is the right to scream at the top of your lungs on the street about how tyrannical the reign of the capitalistic system is on the working poor without the fear of governmental interference.  At the same time, under U. S. law you cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater if there is no fire without consequences.

In gaming, the protection from censorship or prosecution is a tenuous one since artistic expression is an abstract concept just as campaign finance reform is seen as “speech”.  As supporters of the many different aspects of free speech strenuously defend their rights it makes for strange bedfellows as both the ACLU and conservative culture groups have advocated on the same side of free speech cases before the Supreme Court.

We currently are mired in a protracted military conflict in the Middle East.  The region has for decades gone kicking and screaming into the modern world.  Like the evolution of Christianity influenced Europe in the Middle Ages; the Muslim world is still trying to understand what role Islam is to play in government and society.  Groups like Al-Qaeda exploit this debate by fear mongering through words and actions.  Similar fear mongering has been used effectively by the current US administration to forward a sometimes perverted world view.

 Using war-based games as an example, gamers in the western world have many games where western values triumph over perceived evil empires and movements.  Medal of Honor (one of my favorite games) fights the good fight of the second world war.  Battlefield: Vietnam is about fighting the communists.  In the Gulf War era, such games as America’s Army: Rise of A Soldier, Conflict: Desert Storm II – Back to Baghdad, and Full Spectrum Warrior (which was developed for the Army but eventually saw commercial release) clearly use the enemies of the day (terrorists and by extension Arabs or anyone that looks like an Arab) in their scenario of making the world safe for western values.

I don’t blame developers for making games that appeal to their audience.  The vast majority of game developers hail from western countries where there is the freedom to play these games with very little government or cultural restriction.  Even the Army has used gaming to recruit.  Currently the Army uses the game America’s Army in a traveling show.  Recently, one of the Army’s combat simulation game displays at a public event  has caused controversy because of its sometimes graphic violence.

The Department of Defense spends $1.1 billion a year on advertising. (Source: GAO)  Its ads have always been fast-paced, with cutting edge graphics to attract the youth to service.  (I still believe the Armed Forces is still a good career choice)  With its savvy strategy to use video games to connect with today’s electric youth; (sorry Debbie Gibson) it is sometimes hard to distinguish these days between DoD pitches and pure gaming offerings.

Take a trip to Iraq.  You are a militia leader, part of a movement that is pushing back against an occupying force (Yes I am referring to America) whose policies over the decades have been confusing and frustrating for your people.  While their intentions may be honorable it’s hard not to remember the long line of foreign powers that have tried to remake your country only to profit and leave the government politically neutered.  Like in Christian countries, the Muslim religion has been the rock of the culture for centuries.  Its tenants help shape the values that drive society.  Splinter groups take the more harsher interpretations of the faith and use them as instruments of their own power ambition.  For most of the population, they love their god and want self-determination.

The foreign power is well-equipped, but you have learned from that foreign power’s beginnings and employ ingenious guerilla tactics and weapons to resist.  The price is high as your fighters are not as skilled, and are easily killed.  New recruits are constantly needed.  Like the American DoD, you need to appeal to the young to fight the good fight.  In war, the perception of victory is just as powerful as the actual vanquishing of a foe.  One of the most effective tactics in use by your force is the Improvised Explosive Device (IED).  On this front-less war in your own neighborhood, the advantage goes to the locals and the IEDs are vexing the occupying force.  Videos of the IEDs destroying the convoys of the occupying force are popular on the internet.  Why not create a video game where players place IEDs and conduct suicide car bomb missions with the goal of killing as many Americans as possible?

Besides the actual death toll, the propaganda metric is much higher as the populace perceives an actual path to victory however pyrrhic it may be.  This type of game doesn’t really exist, however I did find a small flash game where you can walk the street as a Palestinian suicide bomber.  You wait until you are around a lot of people and then blow yourself up.  Blood and guts fly everywhere and then a tally posts the number of men, women, and children you maim and kill.  The game was on a site full of flash games that had racist themes, which I surmise was more about shock value than actual recruitment to a cause.

Gamers are already used to the uproar over games like Grand Theft Auto where indiscriminate thuggery and killing are part of the entertainment experience.  But what if a game that had the goal of killing U.S. soldiers was given wide release in America?  Expect the typical reactions from the usual camps like Jack Thopmson, religious conservatives (thinking the Iraq war is a crusade), and crusading politicians.  But would this type of game, due to the targets, actually make game defenders sing a different tune?  Would gamers refine their position on what games should be marketed?  Should a game like this be banned?

It’s easy to make any game.  It’s easy to sell a game about vanquishing villains and their movements that are universally evil like Hitler and his political organization, the Nazi party.  Killing under these auspices seems right, even cool.  Does killing American soldiers as part of winning a game seem right or even cool?  To many people around the world killing Americans is perfectly fine.  Is that wrong or just a difference of opinion? 

The arguments against the Jack Thompsons of the world is that gaming is really entry into an altered state, and does not represent real life despite an entire industry that works hard every day to make virtual reality that much closer to the infinity line on the reality graph.  The violence depicted in games is seen as freedom of expression in America.  To that militia leader, violence is a “magic missile” to fight a foe when the level is set on “hard” and he only has a limited number of frags. 

Freedom of expression doesn’t seem so much fun anymore.

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