Disclosure: I don’t play CoD anymore (I also think the series is overrated) and would like to see Activision/Blizzard burn.
You are, unfortunately, partially misperceiving and/or mischaracterizing the game and genre. Most are not murder simulators. Some certainly are (ex. Hitman and the skippable single player bits of one of the CoD games is) but those are the minority - the plots are generally revolving around military conflicts (whether military conflicts are by definition murder or not is another thing altogether though I would personally say that they are in the same ethical place) and the multiplayer is basically technological sports. Since the early-2000s at least, they have been propaganda supporting imperialism and normalizing military conflict, though GenZ seems to have wised up on that.
For the “real world guns” thing, they aren’t anymore with limited exceptions where a firearms company explicitly partners with them.
Additionally, the correlation between individuals playing violent video games and taking part on violence just does not exist in any research that has been conducted. Violent video games, in fact, allow people to work out aggression and frustration in healthy, non-destructive ways. Your anger is pointed in the wrong direction. If you want to target something that will have an actual impact, dedicate some energy to pushing fixes for wealth inequality and poverty. Yes, that’s harder to pin down but most things worth doing aren’t easy.
In a civilized society, the cure for radicalizing speech is more speech, particularly discourse. Besides which we already have plenty of evidence that violent video games don’t radicalize. (Though, to be fair, terrorist operatives find pre-radicalized people and point them towards targets via social engineering.)
Someone who is already dangerous may play violent video games to help cope. But withholding them doesn’t address the problem, just as withholding porn doesn’t make people less sexually frustrated.
Then there’s the matter that drone operators recognize and feel the effects of having killed, and get PTSD and burnout in ways that video game players killing shadows do not. The high turnover and mentalmhealth crisis of drone operators demonstrates to us simulations don’t cross that critical line.
COD is modeled (more or less) on war settings, but so are the Tom Clancy games, So is Six Days in Fallujah and Spec Ops: The Line which are distinctly anti war. And as Penn and Teller brutally demonstrated, there is a huge visceral and emotional difference between shooting guns in games, and engaging with the real thing.
We know how to address amuck killers. We know reducing rampage killers is not just in addressing gun culture, but also addressing precarity. But neither of are political parties is willing to take that step. One is, indeed, banking on War Boys voting them into power, sight unseen, but then signing up as brownshirt goons by the legion.
Turning your ire on video games is quaint and misguided and plays right into their hands.
deleted by creator
Disclosure: I don’t play CoD anymore (I also think the series is overrated) and would like to see Activision/Blizzard burn.
You are, unfortunately, partially misperceiving and/or mischaracterizing the game and genre. Most are not murder simulators. Some certainly are (ex. Hitman and the skippable single player bits of one of the CoD games is) but those are the minority - the plots are generally revolving around military conflicts (whether military conflicts are by definition murder or not is another thing altogether though I would personally say that they are in the same ethical place) and the multiplayer is basically technological sports. Since the early-2000s at least, they have been propaganda supporting imperialism and normalizing military conflict, though GenZ seems to have wised up on that.
For the “real world guns” thing, they aren’t anymore with limited exceptions where a firearms company explicitly partners with them.
Additionally, the correlation between individuals playing violent video games and taking part on violence just does not exist in any research that has been conducted. Violent video games, in fact, allow people to work out aggression and frustration in healthy, non-destructive ways. Your anger is pointed in the wrong direction. If you want to target something that will have an actual impact, dedicate some energy to pushing fixes for wealth inequality and poverty. Yes, that’s harder to pin down but most things worth doing aren’t easy.
Jack Thompson has entered the chat?
In a civilized society, the cure for radicalizing speech is more speech, particularly discourse. Besides which we already have plenty of evidence that violent video games don’t radicalize. (Though, to be fair, terrorist operatives find pre-radicalized people and point them towards targets via social engineering.)
Someone who is already dangerous may play violent video games to help cope. But withholding them doesn’t address the problem, just as withholding porn doesn’t make people less sexually frustrated.
Then there’s the matter that drone operators recognize and feel the effects of having killed, and get PTSD and burnout in ways that video game players killing shadows do not. The high turnover and mentalmhealth crisis of drone operators demonstrates to us simulations don’t cross that critical line.
COD is modeled (more or less) on war settings, but so are the Tom Clancy games, So is Six Days in Fallujah and Spec Ops: The Line which are distinctly anti war. And as Penn and Teller brutally demonstrated, there is a huge visceral and emotional difference between shooting guns in games, and engaging with the real thing.
We know how to address amuck killers. We know reducing rampage killers is not just in addressing gun culture, but also addressing precarity. But neither of are political parties is willing to take that step. One is, indeed, banking on War Boys voting them into power, sight unseen, but then signing up as brownshirt goons by the legion.
Turning your ire on video games is quaint and misguided and plays right into their hands.