War games: Interactive discourses of war in videogames

Taking key themes from literature and cinema, in a discursive exploration of expression through media forms old and new, This chapter discusses the way video games attempt to approximate the experience of war. A continuation of forthcoming research into cinematic discourses of war, this chapter offers that videogames present a perspective on war that no other media form can. In doing so, games bring a new audience to the horrors of war and, rather than desensitise against violence, open gamers' eyes to its realities. Does the nature of interactivity change the ways stories are told? What ties can be established between literature and cinema of warfare past and present, and the depiction of those conflicts in videogames? Two key titles will be examined - Call of Duty 2 (2005) and Spec Ops: The Line (2012). The former game concerns World War II, the latter a fictional incident in the Middle East. Drawing on the work of Manovich and Basinger, among others, this chapter provides a justification of videogame as both art form and media form. For if, as Foucault states, '[a]ny discourse, whatever it be, is constituted by a set of utterances which are produced each in its place and time,' then videogames are as much as expression of popular discourse as any other form of media.