“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.”
Why are villains in video games such as Call of Duty represented to be of a foreign background?
Video games are now one of the most predominant forms of new media is the 21st century. 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 cultures and their dominance in today’s media and in particular video games.
The First Person Shooter has come a long way since its first officially title First Person Shooter, a landmark 1993 first-person shooter video game by id Software, Doom. It is widely recognized for having popularized the first person shooter genre, pioneering immersive 3D graphics, and networked multiplayer gaming. Typically, in first-person shooters the players move through mazelike corridors and rooms filled with adversaries controlled by other players or the computer and through stealth or more accurate shooting try to outlive their opponents. 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 Call of Duty franchise series has come a long way since its first release in 2003. With the growing demand of video games worldwide, especially first-person-shooters, with ninety four percent of game players under the age of 18 report that their parents are present when they purchase or rent games. This has resulted in an uprising of parents and professors arguing against the fact that video games are having positive effects on their children, statistics show that sixty-three percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives.
Within many texts whether it is on television, film or in this case in video games, violence and foreign minorities in particular Islam and Muslims are constantly stereotyped in the media and are a growing concern. “One could argue that as humans we are intrigued by violence, and it is possible that this fascination satisfies some basic human needs. The adrenalin rush, the satisfactions of imagination, fantasy, and vicarious adventure, probably explain why millions of nonviolent people enjoy violent entertainment.”
“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.”
“Games are produced with their consumers in mind and tend to reflect their expectations and tastes. 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.” Hence the ongoing 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, into our new media, and into the mouths of politicians who either lack the historical sense to understand where they have come from, or whose agendas are best served by ignoring their provenance.”
"Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the media are not new. They have been a persistent part of discussing the Middle East, terrorism, and Islam. These stereotypes are not restricted to Hollywood films or news media broadcast but also occur in video games."The Call of Duty franchise represents the Muslim people to be the villains and leaders of violence, this develops the concern thus creating a moral panic in our society. The purposes of videogames are to make money, and to entertain. “But that's not all videogames do - games can also teach us how to think about "other" peoples, how to hate "bad guys," and, once in a rare while, how to take a second, and more critical look at the Us vs. The dichotomy that we've been handed by other parts of our culture.”
“Stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the media are not new. They have been a persistent part of discussing the Middle East, terrorism, and Islam. These stereotypes are not restricted to Hollywood films or news media broadcast but also occur in video games.” In many countries post 9/11, have come to 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.”
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.
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