The Problem With Call of Duty Isn’t That It Makes Us Violent — It’s That It Makes Us Numb
Everyone’s talking about the horrible political message of the new Call of Duty. Fair enough. But there’s no proof that video games generate real-world violence. There is proof, however, that gaming is sedating, addicting, and isolating.
Americans are increasingly sedentary, isolated, and alienated. Video games too often function as a salve. (Fabio Principe / EyeEm via Getty Images)
Breaking: for the nineteenth consecutive year, the new Call of Duty video game does not offer a thoughtful pacificist critique of human affairs. Per usual, the newest in Activision’s annual first-person shooter series is not exactly War and Peace. Try War and More War.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II opens with a ripped-from-the-headlines war crime set in the recent past. The player must pilot a missile through a remote desert valley to assassinate an Iranian general named Ghorbrani — clearly a thinly veiled reference to the real-life 2020 drone-strike killing of Qasem Soleimani ordered by Donald Trump.
Simulating Soleimani’s extrajudicial murder to kick-start a Tom Clancy–like “What If?” story about a special ops unit preventing World War III is far from the game’s only politically questionable narrative choice. The seventeen-mission globetrotting campaign also sends players to hunt Mexican drug cartel members along the US-Mexico border wall, which involves pointing a loaded assault rifle at civilians in a Texas town to “de-escalate” the situation. The game also turns a tourist neighborhood in Amsterdam into a war zone in order to nab some terrorists.
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