Virtual War Video Games

Video highs atomic number 18 the most popular forms of cheer among children, adolescents, and unripened adults. Many television receiver jeopardizes atomic number 18 extremely rough and name the Young to abandon on a constant basis. In particular, materialization manpower be a preferred target of advertisement from venture manufacturers for state of war theme games. These games are either first person poor boys or third person play. In a first person shooter game, the impostor is holding the gun whereas in third person games, the player is represented by a citation within the game play.These games, specially first person shooters, are de planetary hou moderated to give a knock to the players by stimulating their primal re put throughs and with more than reason able games, a destiny to prove their manhood. In addition, extreme exposure to word picture game and TV violence has a tendency to desensitize sight, peculiarly adolescent minds who may non be a ble to connect to what is surely occurrent in front of them on the TV screen and, at the selfsame(prenominal) time, all the way distinguish virtual(prenominal) fable from reality.(King, Krzywinska, 124)The scope of this paper is to look for the bringing close together that tender men may join the the States for a nonher(prenominal) reasons than to go to college. In essence, they join the military with the report that they go forth quail neverthelessts, just akin in their favorite war moving-picture show games without realizing that they involve signed up to be in the middle of the nightmarish realities of war suffering and death. Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the impertinentlys media hand been television receiver display im maturates of war explosions, spends running down what used to be streets fleck escape valve sesss, showing these images to saturation.The saturation seems to come from a fascination with death and how cameras proper deal i mmortalize the image. (Sontag, 59) The audience is curious to know what it is like to be at that place, perhaps, there is a clear morbidity in the obsession of watching violence and how war works. Be views, the Iraq war is ambivalent because most soldiers who are sent do non understand why they are really there. Back during the Vietnam War, young soldiers seemed to draw been better conscious, in the sense of understanding, of the cause they were scrap for.After audition to Vietnam veterans, people may whatsoeverwhat commit how traumatic their experience was besides until people are in the nightmare of war, they pass on non in full grasp the horror because if you were in it once, you never forget for the rest of your life. Still, people get the idea that war is gruesome but they do not live it. Besides, wars are never simple still though it is portray that way by politicians whose primary interests may have nothing to do with the interests of the people and the soldier s, dying for their causeEinstein his 1932 letter to Freud states Political leadership or governments owe their power either to the use of force or to their election by the masses. They elicitnot be regarded as representative of the superior chaste or in enounceectual elements in a nation. In our time, the intellectual elect do not exercise any direct influence on the history of the world. Vietnam veterans ordain tell you the pain and the level of panic, stress, disgust, and dread there was to be there, in the middle of insanityGrossman in his book On Killing, talks about the psychological opposition of engagement and how devastating it is because the soldier is forced to be in an unnatural situation in which he or she must hide the enemy and survive at the same time. (Grossman, 36) Yet, war is unflustered portrayed as glorious and as a beautiful sacrifice of life for stars country. This picture is belike true for a well-informed mature person who can sign up with the Arm y, making a conscious decision that he or she will be severely tested and that he or she may very well kill others and be killed themselves.However, nowadays with the Iraq war pull as well as many soldiers dying, recruitment efforts have increased, particularly in poor neighborhoods. After speaking with a totality of 15 African-American young men from different areas, it is obvious that all of them they tangle especially targeted by Army recruiters. Five of them actually said that the recruiters claimed that as recruits, they could do whatever they privationed like connectedness their corps harmony band if they were inclined to play music.Two particular African-American men corroborate these statements and said that in their case, the recruiters told them how famous Black basket ball players had conjugate the Army. Another young man Mike described how two nautical recruiters tried to get him by using the fact that he was good at acting video games No problem, man. Its lik e in the video gamesHey, you played Call of Duty, SOCOM 3? How about day of reckoning? Awesome Hey, youd be right there with the rest of us. The end of the group said that they had at least one family fellow member in the Army and that they did not want to join because they knew what the Army was all about.In distinguish to enlist young men, the reality of war has been more and more surreptitious from the recruits to get them to sign up to go fighting in Iraq. Moreover, the Army has made a significant effort to blend reality with fiction to get young men to sign up using TV advertisements that are aired it is a brilliant use of the psychological impact of TV and advertising the reality is completely absent and replaced with proud sounding and competent looking young people in charge of entangled stuff coupled with computer animation worthy of Apocalypse straight off and strangely resembling the look, style, and feel of war video games.In addition, it is not a likeness tha t these ads air at the same time than popular TV action shows. For example, the Air Force has made use of the science-fiction show Stargate-SG-1 to promote joining their corps. The main characters of the series are Air Force military officers who have wonderful, fire adventures on exotic planets, far, far extraneous on the other side of the galaxy. Obviously, the basic goal is to offer young men an opportunity for 30 seconds to imagine themselves as proud competent young people playing with stuff, looking good, universe well-educated and well-paid.Little do they realize what they are in for once they sign up because they just cannot walk away and say I dont want to do this any longer whereas in a video game, they push the off button and everything goes away. So, the psychological appeal is double. The message from these televised ads says you will be successful in the Army (Be All That You Can Be in the Army) and you will if you join. Plus, the Army is about adventure and action just like the video games you like to play. Video games have a very tight time lag on young people, especially teenagers and young adults you can see that clearly when you visit video games arcades.Many video games particularly target young men, especially the violent ones. Young women who play video games may prefer unclouded adventure or funny games. Violent games are prevalent and popular. The more violent and gory, the better is the motto. King & Krzywinska mention that the extent of obstacles to which a player is confronted to save his character from dying is correlated to the extent of violence to do so. (King, Krzywinska, 162) The resulting garishness is addictive while the violence seems to be connected to the idea of prompt retaliation for actions perceived as affrightening by the character/player.Prompt retaliation is often displayed by people who have not attain an emotional maturity such as adolescents and young males. The action intensity of some games is so high that the players surrender to frenetic paroxysm elements. (King, Krzywinska, 162) Interestingly, assaults in the real world tend to result in a total state of primitive adrenaline-driven fight or flight in the violent offenders, bypassing the cerebral rationality area of the brain. Grossman specifies that in a combat situation, the soldier will display tunnel vision meaning that the enemy soldier looks closer and more dangerous.(Grossman, 97) In addition, cleanup position may cause an lordly effect on the combatant. The reason is that killing in war is the foundation garment of the power of sparing lives and killing others weaker than him. In fact, certain veterans confided that holding a gun or a machine gun was a head game sword or even Excalibur. (Bourke, 4) Bourke quotes the part of a letter from a soldier telling his family how he enjoys fighting exercises (Bourke, 58) Today we had our first stab class it is quite a weapon we all left the reach thirstier than hell al l of us had the same idea, likea child with a new toy, to try it. That is the way we were all growing to feel about combat in general we want a taste of it. It is disturbing to realize after reading these words that the man in question is so excited by the idea of using a weapon, like a new toy. In a strange way, it parallels what war video games have become for adolescents and young men today. They can play war safely at home, enjoying the fire that seems to exist in combat. In addition, video games can transform the player into a real ace just like on TV or in a film.One real hoagy of the Vietnam War was Sgt. Benavidez who had distinguished himself jumping from a helicopter running quickly, escape cock bullets until he got flash in his right leg, face, and head. Despite his injuries, he move his mission, which was to rescue a few other comrades of arms. He carried of the police squad on his back to the aircraft while again dodging bullets. Since the team was involved in a secret mission, the documents had to be retrieved. Benavidez rushed back, still gravely injured, to gazump up the dead body of the team leader and retrieve the sort out documents.As he reached the body, he got hit again, this time by a bullet in his abdomen and shrapnel from a grenade in the back. Unfortunately, the pilot of the helicopter had been hit and died on the spot as the helicopter crashed to the ground. Benavidez took the documents, went crawling back to the aircraft, processed the wound out of the wreckage, and organized them into a defense moulding. Then, he proceeded to distribute rations and water, still under enemy fire while injured As if that was not enough, he discovered and directed air strikes to dampen enemy fire and call for some other rescue.Incredibly, he received another bullet in the thigh while he was administering first aid to a wounded member of his team. A second helicopter landed and Sgt. Benavidez again transported his wounded team members t o the aircraft. During a second trip, an enemy soldier ran after him and clubbed him on the head. overhaul to hand combat ensued with Benavidez killing the enemy after having received more wounds to the head and arms. That was not the end. Two enemy soldiers ran, approaching the aircraft from an angle that the cannoneer could not reach.Benavidez killed these two men as well, subsequently government issueing to the perimeter to drop sure all the documents had been taken and to get the last wounded men out. After the war, Sgt. Benavidez received numerous medals for his bravery, which was qualified as world of the highest traditions of the military service. (Leonard, 67-69) This account is truly extraordinary and is worthy of the greatest war legends passed down in many cultures, including our own. This is the story of all the heroes in Hollywood movies that make young men dream that they could be like that, not totally admired for their bravery but famous and legendary as well.In effect, Sgt. Benavidez is a bona fide model of courage and selflessness. Still, are these concepts familiar to these young men involved in their video game world? Bernard et al. mentions the idea of homophile motivation the motivation of sacrifice for an ideal. (Bernard, Mills, Swenson, Walsh, 40) Sacrifice for an ideal belongs to the real world, not video games many of these young players would never be able to do what Benavidez did in the real world because of their lack of understanding of what sacrifice and altruism are.Still, they can pretend to be sacrificing and altruistic in any war video game not only do they get a high score for their bravery in the virtual world that looks so real but they get to live another day without badgering about their wellness or the effects of these virtual bullets on their body. At the end of the challenge, they just swallow a few magic pills and they are good as new They can either continue the massacre or round of drinks the game off and watch TV some more. Did they really experiment the reality of war?The video game only gives the player the enjoyment and excitement that soldiers may feel, the proverbial rush that soldiers tell about when going to combat. Yet, war is more than that. For example, can they really kill another man if they were fighting as soldiers? Can they empathize with the mesh of the victims, innocent men, women, and children? Could these young men stand killing innocent women and children or sustain their looks of misery? How about peer pressure about s instruction and killing prisoners?How about hand-to-hand combat with someone they do not know, realizing that this is the part when the enemy is killed right there by their own hands, not by a machine gun far away? Where is the video game for that part of the war? Young men are being enlisted not knowing what is in store for them. All they know is that it will be awesome, exciting and fun to go to war and kill people. These tendencies have been especially exemplified by the Iraq war. This war comes at a time when virtual reality is so prevalent among adolescents and young men and women.The Washington authority published a story back in February 2006 about video games and how they are used by the military to train soldiers. The military uses these training techniques all the time according to the article. It even has helped design video games enough Spectrum Warrior is one of them. The weapons used in video games are exact replicas of live weapons. One of the interviewed soldiers in the article relates that when he had to kill a tender enemy for the first time, it did not even faze me he said. It entangle like I was in a big video game he added. Playstations and Xboxes were found everywhere in the soldiers barracks.The comments of the Pentagon computer simulation officer in charge were that video games have revolutionized the way soldiers are trained. Adding on the experience of the soldier who was mentioned above, he stated that when it came time to fire his weapon, he was ready for it, he did not hesitate in fact because he had done it so many times before in the video games. In addition, a high ranking officer confirmed that the soldiers are not as inhibited to kill as previous generations who did not have video games. The officer asserted that video games provide a better foundation to work with in order to teach killing other human beings.In fact, the U. S. Army set up a game online Americas Army that is used as a recruiting tool. (Vargas, 1) The young men who were interviewed in the Washington put forward did not seem psychologically affected by what they did. In fact, they gave the impression that they are completely stray from the situations they encountered when they had to kill. Still, some soldiers cannot live with the fact that they killed a human being. The realization or the enormity of the act may come quickly or later, depending on the person. In previous wars, it had a tendency to come quickly.Siegried Sasson in cast Barkers Regeneration, was a well-known decorated war hero in Britain. In 1917, he decided to refuse returning to the line of business because he felt strongly that the war was a useless slaughter. His scruples was strongly affected by the war and the cruelty displayed while reason the trenches. As a result, he was so misunderstood that he was mentation to be psychicly ill. His diagnosis was determined to be shell shock. The cogitate was that everyone should want to go to war and kill enemies. So, if someone did not want to, there had to be something wrong with them.Consequently, he was sent to a mental hospital where he was taken care of by Dr. Rivers whose goal was to communicate him back to combat. Siegfried was a poet, not a soldier. He was not furnished emotionally to deal with killing human beings. Yet, there was so a good deal peer pressure to conform that it took strength and resolve to stand up and refuse to go back to the f ield. Tragically, he was looked upon as a threat to the morale of the troops. (Barker, 4) In fact, this is what happens to conscientious objectors who are jailed for refusing to fight.Shell shock was a very serious psychological problem for soldiers coming back from the trenches during WWI. The psychological traumatic experiences gave these men hallucinations and nightmares while causing several physical symptoms vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, and headaches. separate symptoms were materialized as muteness, inability to walk, and other strange effects. Trauma in war is also seen today and it is as shocking as before. The situation, however, is different. Before the age of the video games, soldiers had to acclimate without having ever been in the situation of killing another man.Ironically, today this is no longer the case. As admitted in the Washington Post article, the games teach to kill. Curiously, there are still young men who cannot kill, even after having done it hundreds of time in the virtual world. This was particularly clear when the young soldiers in Iraq commented on the horror they saw people dead, children dead, and melodic phrase everywhere. These men realized that they were forced to kill innocent men, women, children that were not spotless characters of videogames. Grossman commented in his book On Killing that the Army teaches killing but does not teach their soldiers to deal with killing a man.(Grossman, 97) Killing is real and the trauma resulting from this act will haunt many soldiers after they return to their homes. Shell shock is equivalent to what is called PTSD today (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). In July 2004, it was reported that the number of suicides had clearly gone up among soldiers in Iraq as well as severe psychiatric disorders. The Army had not communicate this problem early enough and discovered it then. Back in 2004, cardinal percent of soldiers were assessed to be suffering traumatic stress, depression or fear and we re deemed to be functionally impaired. Of that group, about three-quarters said they had received no help at any time in Iraq from a mental health professional, a doctor or a chaplain. (Holloway, 36) Iraq has been the latest examples of prisoner abuses and indiscriminate attacks during bombardments. Unfortunately, soldiers assaulted men and women while their houses were searched for traces of insurgents. These events clearly violated the Geneva Conventions on mankind Rights during conflicts. ( protocol I, Art. 77, sec. 1 Protocol I, Art. 75 Protocol I, Art. 51, sec. 5a & 5 b Protocol I, Art.48) It is foolish to think that soldiers in combat, with their brain stuck in primal soul modes and having no rationality capacities left, can reflect on the fact that they should travel along the Geneva Protocols of Human Rights. Only after they are done with fighting can they reflect on what they have done there is no video game in the world that will be able to erase the committed deeds of the soldier who is ordered to kill. In the end, one can ponder over the U. S. Army and the morality of its commanders that allows the comfortable idea to use video games and entertainment as ways to teach killing.The disenchant of the soldiers after combat is that they must kill others, they must see suffering, and they cannot turn it off. The virtual reality used to portray war is false the only grounds of these games are the weapons, uniforms, and environments as replicas of reality. However, this is just superficial whereas pain is real. end point The reality of war is death and suffering. The role of video games has been hijacked to promote war, violence, and flaccid killing skills promoted by the U. S. Armys use of these games and clever ad campaigns to get recruits.Even though there may always be the concentrated guys who are not bothered by killing, it is still disturbing to see that many young men are not bothered by killing based on the fact that they seem unable to mak e the difference between the real world and virtual reality. However, the sensitive types will always exist too. They are the ones who suffer the most since their world of prank created by the video games is destroyed when they realize the reality of war, which is killing and destroying while causing pain and misery to innocent people. Their illusions of patriotic glory and excitement are shattered forever.