Moral Kombat
A case for why even the most innocent video games are propagandistic
By J.P. Lawrence
You can watch an ISIS fantasy on YouTube. The terror group has repurposed American video game Grand Theft Auto V so that the gangster plot now shows a target framing a man on screen, followed by a roadside bomb ripping apart a convoy. The intent of the 2014 video becomes clear with the sound of cackling and hooting off-screen. What was once a game about the violent interweaving paths of three criminals is now jihadist propaganda.
At the time, the media coverage of this ISIS game seemed like an old argument recycled: Can who we are at play have consequences in real life?
But before rolling your eyes, know that the tricky thing is terror groups and governments around the world are hoping the answer is: Yes! The United States, Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, neo-Nazis, and Hezbollah have already released, or are planning to release, video games depicting their official viewpoints. Corporations, marketing agencies, and brands have also explored using the logic of games to promote their messages.
In a 66-page report leaked by Edward Snowden, the security contractor SAIC concluded that the value of Special Force, a game created by Hezbollah in 2003, rests in its ability to “disseminate the group’s values, concepts, and ideas among supporters and sympathizers, while giving passive supporters the opportunity to experience the viscera of the front lines.” The game quickly sold out. In its sequel, Special Force 2, the player is a soldier who, through snarling lips, cries out the name of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert while shooting Israelis.
Sounds bad, but it echoes what critics have said for years about jingoistic American shooting games. Look at any given American shooting game and observe how the U.S. military, the most powerful fighting force in the world, is constantly depicted as the underdog — outnumbered, besieged by a horde of faceless enemies, but destined to prevail. Isn’t it only fair that the North Koreans have a game where they blow up their enemies too?
Every game recreates a small aspect of the universe, and the rules created by the developer reflect decisions about the way this universe should work. Because games blur the line between player and character, lessons from games may be stickier than lessons from movies. “When you have one activity associated with another, such as killing leading to victory, that, as a propaganda device is transfer,” Tom Palmer, a digital media professor at the University of Albany, said. “That is very very powerful.”
Think of Super Mario, for example.
Online, one can watch a rookie learning to control the mustachioed video game star, Mario. At first, the player is bad. But soon, the player learns the morality system by which some actions are punished and others are rewarded. Coins win the player points and are good, but the real currency of the game is progress, left to right. Running into enemies or falling into pits bankrupts the player’s supply of progress and is bad.
Every game recreates a small aspect of the universe, and the rules created by the developer reflect decisions about the way this universe should work
“People tend to follow what games tell them to do as a default,” David McClure, a game developer for a studio working on a major first-person shooter title, said. “If you wanted to, you could make the argument that the underlying message that almost all games give is one of obedience — to not obey is often to not progress or succeed.”
Like a rat in a Skinner Box, humans respond readily to instant reward and gratification. Promise people a reward, even if it’s imaginary points or badges, and people will keep playing. Dangle the carrot of progress in front of a gamer, and one can drive them to do tasks they don’t even find fun, such as toil in repetitive moves in order to pass a level and move on.
But a corporation or a government using fun as bait is scarier. Consider the way people give billions of dollars worth of free content to Facebook and Reddit in exchange for likes, upvotes, or community approval. Or consider the way workplaces are hoping to turn daily drudgery into a game as a way of increasing employee productivity.
Paolo Pedercini, a media production professor at Carnegie Mellon University, believes what’s needed is an increased understanding of how all video games inherently have viewpoints. This would free games to tackle more serious topics head on, instead of pretending they’re merely recreational.
Pedercini founded the radical project Molleindustria, which makes overtly propagandistic video games in order to show that no game is nonpolitical. In the game Oiligarchy, for example, the player controls a massive petroleum corporation. The rules of the game practically demand players to be cartoonishly evil in order to continue playing. Throughout the game, the player can bulldoze rainforests and bribe politicians into pushing for war, all for the sake of profits.
Not very subtle, but that’s the point.
“All the messages [in our games] are quite clear,” Pedercini said in an interview on the website Culture Jamming, “because we want to show a product that is clearly political in order to demystify the idea that the normal, not political-related games, are innocent.”
J.P. Lawrence is a reporter at the Times Union in Albany, New York. Life has taken him from the Philippines to Minnesota to Iraq. His work has been published in Salon, The Guardian, and VICE, among others.
