One could argue that as humans we are intrigued by violence, and it is probable 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.”
Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Review of Self-Regulation and Industry Practices in the Motion Picture, Music Recording & Electronic Game Industries, Appendix A - "A Review of Research on the Impact of Violence in Entertainment Media" (Sept. 2000)
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1XNSfF06GjbHS7YohCcOP3V69sqm0-svpjg6zZB0tUZA&pli=1
whether images (or language) are a faithful, mimetic mirror of reality thereby offering some unmediated truth about the world, or conversely whether images are a separate, constructed medium thereby standing apart from the world in a separate semantic zone. (Galloway, 2004: 1)
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 (Karim, 2006; Pintak, 2006; Poole, 2006; Said, 1997; Shaheen, 2000; Wingfield and Karaman, 2002). The dominant mode of representation of Arab and Muslim cultures in European and American media generally exploits stereotypical generalizations and clichés.
On the screen, the Muslim Arab continues to surface as the threatening cultural Other ... He/She lacks a human face and lives in a mythical kingdom of endless desert dotted with oil wells, tents, run-down mosques, palaces, goats, and camels. (Shaheen, 2000: 2, 4)
Video games, as 'cultural artifacts', presumably do not stand outside of these broader tendencies.
Representation of enemy
In the majority of action games (especially first-person shooters), the point of the game is to kill 'others', who typically are 'one of them' (Dahlberg, 2005). The key question, then, is how the 'Others' are constructed by the game.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/publications/16+/pdf/censorship.pdf
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
http://insideislam.wisc.edu/index.php/archives/10980
Religion and technology: video games in the Arab world and beyond - Interview with Vit Sisler
12 Feb 2009
Several successful games have laid-down patterns that reproduce themselves for ages - for example Doom defined the first-person shooter genre as early as 1993, Dune 2 did the same for real-time strategy genre in 1992, and so on. Each genre implies its own rules of game play, which extend to its representational politics. Secondly, 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. Finally, the economic factor could play a role. Western video games have not been marketed to Middle Eastern countries because of a lack of copyright enforcement there. In Damascus or Cairo you can buy whichever game you want, but it is mostly a copy. So, the producers were generally not concerned with Arab and Muslim audiences' perceptions of their games. Actually, though, it seems that this is going to change...
But, since there is no or limited academic interest and media critique of these games, the stereotypes and clichés are more overt and prevalent in video games. Also, the technological limitations of the medium have to be taken into account.
...but the only interaction possible with the Arab/Muslim characters is to fight them. Moreover, these characters' behavior is governed by artificial intelligence, which follows rules set by the designers - so in many games they fight in an undisciplined way, laugh mockingly after they kill someone or wave AK-47s above their heads. In short, they exemplify 'unlawful combatants' whose activities are considered to be criminal acts. Thus, the misrepresentation is embedded even on the level of a simulation and the rules of the game itself could convey an ideological message to the player. This form of persuasion is unique to video games.
http://religion.info/english/interviews/article_413.shtml
Broadcasters fail to fully represent the range of Muslim voices in Britain, the head of Channel 4 news and current affairs, Dorothy Byrne
"making sweeping generalisations about Islam"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/20/raceandreligion-channel4
'Muslim Massacre' video game condemned for glamorising slaughter of Arabs
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2776951/Muslim-Massacre-video-game-condemned-for-glamorising-slaughter-of-Arabs.html
Demonizing Muslims on screens large and small.
The Arab Other through the eyes of gamersA new medium, a creation of the digital era, exerts a powerful hold on the minds of the young.
The computer game employs today’s fast processors coupled with the digital imaging technology that have erased the differences between the real and the virtual on the screens before our eyes.
And because boys have always been fascinated by war and things martial, the hottest and largest segments of the gaming market enable the participant to join in virtual combat, slaying enemies in gruesome, flash-rending ways.
Teyon may choose to call Heavy Fire an “Explosive Arcade Experience on WiiWare!”, but a more apt description would be “Arab shooting gallery.” Whatever narrative or thematic values we may find in games like Call of Duty 4, however meager, are jettisoned in Heavy Fire. This game puts a gun in your hands and a collar around your neck; then it locomotes you from one terrorist-infested location to the next, always directing your attention to the next target. Your job is simple: kill or blow up as many Arabs as you can.
'The portrayal of muslims in video games'
An article on the way Muslims have been portrayed in videogames since the 80s.
Videogames have, often enough, contributed to this rhetoric, but games also complicate and even undermine such universal hatred. Like TV and Hollywood movies, 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, more critical look at the Us vs. Them dichotomy that we've been handed by other parts of our culture.
http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2010/08/portrayal-of-muslims-in-videogames.html
http://grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13
