“Let’s face it; we live in a violent world. We can see it in many aspects
of our surroundings, and if we miss it we have a chance to see it played out
again and again in the media.”[1]
Why are villains in video games such
as Call of Duty typically represented to be of a foreign background and what
ideologies are being promoted through this?
Video
games are now one of the most predominant forms of new media in the 21st
century and “are becoming a part of the lives of young children, adolescents
and young adults”[2].
First Person Shooters are one of the leading video game genres and have reached
their pinnacle in sales over the last year. Yet with benefits such as making
huge sales come drawbacks, the video game industry has gained heavy criticism
from around the world, one of the main controversial facts that goes against
the industry and the first person shooter genre is the representations of
foreign minorities and their dominance in today’s media and in particular video
games such as the Call of Duty franchise. “Call of Duty
Modern Warfare 2, which went on sale in November last year, made an estimated
$550 million in its first five days. It has now sold around 15 million copies,
making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.”[3]
The
First Person Shooter genre has come a long way since its first officially title
First Person Shooter; Doom a landmark 1993 first-person
shooter video game by id Software set the First Person Shooter agenda
bringing a whole new virtual world to gamers. “It is widely recognized for
having popularized the first person shooter genre, pioneering immersive 3D
graphics, and networked multiplayer gaming”.[4] However as the years have
passed, technology has evolved as well as its consumers, first-person shooters
have become more advanced, there are new ways to kill ‘the other’, with new
weapons, perks and advancement in the A.I. of the opponents.
The creators of the Call
of Duty franchise, Infinity Ward, make games that suit their audience’s
preferences which show to be of a first-person genre which includes a lot of
blood, violence and action. The franchise is predominantly aimed at males and
only a minority of females who play video games aged 18 and over, yet
researchers have found that players below the age of 18 have been exposed to
the 18+ rated content and have caused an up haul of criticism to the video game
industry, on the other hand some would say that the fault should be directly
aimed at the parents of those who are able to get their hands on and play 18+
rated games. Judith van
Evra argues that “by virtue of inexperience, young viewers may depend on
television for information more than other viewers do”[5]
this can be backed up by the tragic stories of video game educed school
shootings and other violent acts.
Players of video games in the
twenty-first century have the advanced technology at their finger tips the
internet has created a new world for gamers alike, a virtual world. In Call of Duty players can connect online
via their multiplayer account and play with people from around the world, to
defeat the enemy. With advancements in technology ever increasing most players
can now communicate by word of mouth to their team mates or the OPFOR (the
OPFOR or opposing force), some players take advantage of the ease of
communication and lack of censorship by using foul language i.e. racial
comments or threats. This causes those victimised to feel cornered which can
also happen in-game as they may be targeted, although it is just a game the
effects can cause problems in the future for the games developers and more
importantly the players as most of them are under the age of the rated game and
are exposed to violent images as well as inappropriate, offensive language.
The video game genre has opened a new door into reality yet
creating it in a virtual world, this where some players become immersed into
the games being played for example Call
of Duty Modern Warfare 2 which
set the bar in next generation graphics and total realistic game play. “The advances in technology over the past few
years have been remarkable”[6]. The dramatic increase in
speed and graphic capability has allowed for more realistic violence than ever
before possible. The characters in game respond realistically to different
shots depending on where in the body they are being shot, with what weapons and
from what distance. “Of course now, in this first decade of the twenty-first
century, even more graphically violent games are available to virtually anyone
who wants to play them, regardless of age, and there is evidence that children
are spending increasingly amounts of time playing video games.”[7] With this said
“Eighty-nine per cent of the teens in Walsh’s (2000) survey reported that their
parents never put limits on how much time they are allowed to play video
games.”[8]
Within many
texts whether it is on television, film or in this case in video games,
violence and foreigners, in particular Arabs and Muslims are constantly
stereotyped in the media and are a growing concern. “In
the digital age, videogames have established themselves as a form of mainstream
media that shapes our comprehension and understanding of the world by
constructing, conveying and iterating various representations”.[9] The
hypodermic syringe model suggests that the developers of Call of Duty are the syringe and are sending information to the
passive audience via the gameplay, creating strong notions of violence and
forms of human harm.
There is a growing stereotypical representation
of Arabs and Muslims in First-person shooters mainly as villains in video games
such as Call of Duty. Vít Šisler stated that “In-game representations of Arabs
and Muslims have to be contextualized in a broader narrative structure that
covers Islam as it appears in news and popular media. The dominant mode of
representation of Arab and Muslim cultures in European and American media
generally exploits stereotypical generalizations and clichés.”[10]
With news and popular media more easily accessible, with the help of new
technology such as the Web 2.0 model where consumers now can access information
more simply with interactivity playing a big part of how consumers now access
information. Web 2.0 has its advantages however, it is now easier to create a
blog or forum which can target a certain person, group of people or religious
group, i.e. after 9/11 the Muslim community where the most talked about people
over the internet for several weeks after the attacks and are perpetuated
throughout the media and web.
Video
games are produced with the consumers in mind, in order to make sales they need
to produce games that meet their expectations to fulfil the consumer’s wants. “So,
the prevalent notion of the Middle East and Islam as it appears in popular
culture and people's imagery is extended into video games.”[11]
Hence the on-going links to Islam and the 9/11 attacks, “To be sure, they
existed before. Yet the scale and spectacle of the twin towers and pentagon
attacks, and the reaction to them, has thrust a certain type of orientalist
stereotype firmly back onto our cinema and television screens and into our new
media.” [12]
As
Bushra Karaman has noted, “the Arab world – twenty two countries, the locus of
several world religions, a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups, and
hundreds of years of history – is reduced to a few simplistic images.”[13]
These stereotypes have been perpetuated in the media for years excessively
during or following ‘terrorist’ attacks, involving the American and British
army. "Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the media are not new... These
stereotypes are not restricted to Hollywood films or news media broadcast
but also occur in video games.” [14]
The
Call of Duty franchise represents the
Muslim people to be the villains and leaders of violence; this is presented in Modern Warfare 2 where the player’s
opposition are portrayed to be of an Arab or Muslim background. This develops
the concern of a moral panic in our society, yet is absorbed by the notion of
playing first person shooters such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 where the
‘other’ can be overcome following violence and destruction. Also the theory of
“Generating a moral panic in which young Muslims of Arabic descent or hailing
from other ethnic minority groups were framed as what Cohen calls “folk devils”
or targets of the moral panic.”[15]
Moral panic is created only from
images shown in the media, portraying Muslims/ Arabs as the terrorists. Muslims
are seen to be a threat to our society, yet such threat has been overcome by
the leaders of the terror organization Al-Qaeda, being crossed of the list of
the most wanted people in the world. However this does not take away the face
that producers of videogames are still persistent in portraying the ‘other’ as
being of an Arab or Muslim background.
Violent video games have created great
speculation in the media “and among regulatory bodies about the possible link
between excessive game play and violent behaviour in real life.” “(At the time
it was the worst such massacre in American history; the events in Littleton,
Colorado, just over a year later would claim that awful distinction.) It was
March 24, 1998; a schoolyard shooting… and two boys, ages eleven and thirteen,
were convicted of murder.”[16]
The two boys had shown links to media violence in particular video games, which
also had direct links to the Paducah shooting of 1997, which lead a fourteen
year old boy to steal a gun from his neighbours house and firing at students in
his school during a morning prayer. “A new ingredient in the media violence
equation has come with the introduction of violent video games.”[17]
Such events have cause great caution toward video games and media violence
overall and enforce the concept of society becoming unstable and creating moral
panics due to the horrific details of some stories told with the guilty one
being of such young age, making it easy to point the finger at video game
developers and other media distributers alike.
In Representation and
Self-Representation: Arabs and Muslims in Digital Games, Vit Sisler argues
that “Arabs and Muslims are consistently represented either in fantastical
settings that draw from an exotic idea of the Middle East as foreign or
they are represented as the enemy.” [18]Modern
Warfare 2 and other instalments in the Call of Duty franchise portray the
player’s team as American and “the opposing human team members as enemies OPFOR
teams are portrayed as coming from one of a variety of broad ethnic backgrounds
(Latin American, Arab, and European) depending on the (anonymous) geography of
the mission scenario.”
Throughout the video game genre
especially first person shooters, as they portray historical events of future
historical events i.e. world War 3 representations of Arabs and Muslims are
predominant within the OPFOR. “Despite the game’s self-proclaimed correctness,
the concern has been raised that the Arab or Afghani enemies are predominant
and the American soldiers are only of Caucasia or Afro-American origin.”[19]
There are growing concerns about video games and how their portrayal of
violence is affecting our children. With advancement in technology increasing
rapidly, more and more games like Modern
Warfare 2 and its counterpart Modern
Warfare 3 will continue to evolve and become more graphically intense and
violent; the effects have already been acted out in reality yet have not caused
enough damage in today’s society for those against such acts to put a stop to
the violence.
However there is research to back up
the video games in positively affecting players, “scientists
are increasingly examining the potential benefits of video games. Their studies
are revealing that a wide variety of games can boost mental function, improving
everything from vision to memory. But video games, it seems, might actually be
good for the brain.” [20]As
more and more teenagers are exposed to such graphics and language, the
likelihood of another one of these horrific incidents will occur unless there
is some opposing force stopping those underage to play such games. This is
where regulatory bodies must take action and create better stronger
restrictions. “We’re told
that the game ratings and content descriptors provided by the Entertainment
Software Ratings Board (ESRB) are all that’s needed to help parents protect
their children from violent and other inappropriate content.” [21] However with everyday media whether it is in
video games, television, or in newspapers, today’s and tomorrow’s youth cannot
catch a break from the on-going scenes of violence and the portrayal of the
enemy in the media.
After the effects of
the 9/11 attacks stereotypes and false representations of Arabs and Muslims
have become the top news stories, whether it be a man holding nuclear warheads
or a group of ‘terrorists’ plotting to repeat attacks in major cities, this
leads to a label being placed on every Muslim in society no matter their
background, as Antonio Gramsci brought forth the theory of hegemony, which can
identify the old and new stereotypes in today’s society, building a foundation
for the fact that racism still goes around in today’s society making it hard
for those victimised to feel free and part of the world. The theory of hegemony
also is prevalent today as the developers, publishers of the Call of Duty franchise are certainly of
a white middle class demographic, creating a bigger picture of why the OPFOR
‘the other’ are of foreign, Muslim background.
Word count: 2,384
[2] Mike C & Flanagan C. 2009. P. 222
[3] Telegraph. (n.d.).Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily
Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph - Telegraph.
[5]
van Evra, 1990, P. 167
[8] Ibid .p. 8
[16] Grossman, D. & DeGaetano, G. (1999). p. 2
[17] Ibid. p. 3.
[19] Ibid
