Editor's note: Despite our industry's obsession with wars and the themes they imply, we can't seem to journey beyond the same, humdrum locales. Nicholas is curious why developers are fixated with Iraq, Germany, and Russia, and what prevents them from moving forward.  -Omar

Brian Crecente recently posted a fascinating interview regarding the decision by Call of Duty : Black Ops development studio Treyarch to explore a new conflict, specifically the Cold War. It’s important to remember that Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor have dedicated a sizeable chunk of their libraries to World War II, resulting in such profound market saturation that the mere mention of a new first-person shooter set in the theatre invokes the collective, exasperated sighs of the Internet.

The shift to the modern theatre of Afghanistan and Iraq, as Omar Yusuf discussed in a recent post, has already begun to overstay its welcome only a handful of years after the taboo over depictions of the conflict began to recede. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. Still, one can’t help but feel that the available alternative settings are less than appealing. Like a dish seasoned with too much fennel. Or any amount of ammonia.

Surely I’m not the only one fed up with Normandy, Russian nationalists, and “nameless” Middle Eastern locales?  Must every bad guy don a balaclava? Must every apple pie-loving defender of freedom sport a buzz cut, five o’clock shadow, and the physique of a Calvin Klein model?

We are all aware that the world is a very dangerous place. In fact, there are conflicts bubbling to the surface that have the potential to be far more visceral and frightening than anything dreamed up by a video game studio. With a careful eye on international headlines, playing the role of Tom Clancy isn’t as difficult as you might think. North and South Korea are uncomfortably close to full-blown war, and the Chinese government continues to eye the “troublesome” island of Taiwan. If either of these conflicts were to erupt, you can bet on American intervention. So why is it that video games keep revisiting the same conflicts? Why are we fed the same environments, enemies, and plot lines over and over again -- especially when there's an ample amount of fresh material to explore?

               I don’t think this needs a caption

Crossing The Line

Let me begin by saying that this medium has the potential to inform the general public about issues that could be of tremendous importance in the near future. However, the creation of a game based on circumstance and speculation implies that a group of people will suffer and that nations with amicable diplomatic relations will turn on one another. Fiction or not, these predictions carry a certain amount of heft.

If newspaper and magazine columns are to be taken as the benchmark for the melding of media and international relations, then it seems quite natural to address these situations with the sort of academic nonchalance that political theorists love to throw around. The depiction of these possible events, however, is an entirely different beast. Pushing the video game medium beyond the confines of past conflicts means becoming relevant, becoming a part of the discussion -- although this transition comes hand in hand with the burden of responsibility. Maybe, we aren’t quite ready for that yet.

Familiar Faces, Familiar Places

The beaches of Normandy, sand swept cities of Afghanistan, and the sweltering jungles of Vietnam are images ingrained in public consciousness, and not only as a result of exposure through video games. The events that transpired there are locked away in history, the outcome cut and dried. The audience knows the enemy and the stakes.

Retreading the same familiar ground carries little consequence. While video games may not have an overwhelming media presence, we have seen first-hand that they have the potential to spark controversy like film, music, or print. Producing a game that predicts a future conflict conveys the message that the issue exists within the public consciousness and acknowledges the use of force as a potential solution. While it is very unlikely that a game would launch a thousand ships like Helen of Troy, it could add to a growing tide of books, films, and television programs on the subject. The media played a large role in maintaining tensions throughout the Cold War and, to an extent, continues to pit East against West to this day (Red Alert and Freedom Fighters, for example). In the same way that waves of propaganda immerse the citizens of a nation, the reverberations of popular culture reach the ears of the people in charge. Popular support is inexorably linked to the way the issue is framed.

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of this game.

The Odd Ones Out

Developers are generally careful to create a comfortable distance between the scenarios they design and the tensions that exist in the real world. Typically this involves either setting the conflict in a future where the political order of the world has changed drastically or offloading responsibility onto terrorist cells, private military contracts, or renegade factions.

Tom Clancy’s End War was an interesting experiment in fabricating a fantasy conflict. It tip-toed around the issue of depicting actual military and political tensions by framing world powers in a manner that was fairly disconnected from reality. That is to say, it didn’t address any immediate, sensitive topics and focused on broader, more general disputes (specifically the potential for war between supra-national organizations, and the energy crisis).

Modern Warfare 2 was a bizarre hybrid of pseudo-Cold War tensions and the conflict in Iraq. While its plot was almost entirely fictional, it still stands as an example of a video game retreading familiar content. It was simply a repackaging of old wars as a new one, resting on the acceptable norms of the East/West divide and terrorism. Of course, a cursory glance at the history of Afghanistan and Iraq shows that many of the issues in the area today are in fact hold-over’s from proxy wars between the USA and USSR, but I digress.

Last Thoughts      

Could participation through video games be a deterrent for war? An honest depiction of the brutality of war in which the player actually has a hand may be the perfect anti-recruitment campaign (sorry, America’s Army). Of course, finding someone to actually endure such an ordeal would be difficult.

Is the creation of “fantasy conflicts” a form of self-censorship? Are these taboos worth breaking or is the impact of war on the individual too profound to play a round of roulette with?