Gamertell

As the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq approaches (March 20, 2008), it’s more apparent than ever that the new reality of warfare that faces America has turned combat simulation markedly more cynical.

In 2002, the year before the US entered Iraq, the only war game to crack NPD’s yearly top 10 in sales was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, a typical love letter to the brazen, open battles of WW2. In 2007, Halo 3‘s histrionics took the top spot. But something else was going on. Not only was Call of Duty 4‘s sickly familiar terrorism narrative the third best seller. But there was Assassin’s Creed at No. 9, as well.

Nancy A. Youssef writes in an article for McClatchy Newspapers, “The staples of American military doctrine that have developed since the Civil War - artillery, armor, air power, speed and overwhelming force - are of limited use against enemies who blend into civilian populations.”

The shift in game design and the design of our armed forces in those five years is stark. Five years of grueling conflict and the sepia-toned successes of six decades ago are no longer relevant. Not only are games focusing on the regions, weapons and tactics employed in warfare dominated by terrorism, they are also starting to delve deeply into its hows and whys. And they answers they’re coming up with are not always focused and not nearly as rosy as the ones found in the forebearers.

In Call of Duty 4, you play as various special forces in British and US militaries. Your job is to track a band of Russian Ultranationalist supplying arms to rebels in a Middle East country shaped like, but not officially, Saudi Arabia, a US ally. You take heavy, covered fire in an intense urban-combat invasion. You use realistic models of modern-day weapons. You snipe at long-range. And, of course, your team, if at all possible, was never there.

Unlike RTSs, FPSs and the other war games of old, you’re not heroically pushing lines and beating back the devil. You’re taking out, often covertly but always violently, a nebulous opponent with an unseen or ill-defined goal set. Imran Zakhaev seeks revenge. His shot at land, power are questionable. He merely wants destruction.

It’s the sort of righteous but unsure quest that has come to define the first-person action of this era. In Condemned 2, a man fights a force that blends in with and is sometimes mistaken for a public the player is conditioned not to trust. In BioShock, the player is taught that he is fighting detritus and moral decay and that the only answer is removing the figure head, if only he could figure out who that really is. Army of 2 explores the arrogance and absurdity of contract warfare.

These games are a product of the Iraq era. One in which uncertainty colors what was once such a foregone conclusion: ammo is the answer. But perhaps the most striking change is the success of Assassin’s Creed. No doubt its swordplay, parkhour simulation and jaw-dropping visuals propelled it to the top of the charts. But there was a Trojan horse at work. The emphasis the game put on learning the town’s surroundings, people and motivation with the express purpose of stifling an impending war was something new. It’s as if it were torn directly from our military’s new field manual.

McClatchy quotes the new counterinsurgency tome for US troops: “Winning battles and engagements is important but alone is not sufficient,” it states. “Shaping the civil situation is just as important to success.” Though in Assassin’s Creed, this is often played out in attrition or playing factions off of other factions, which proves to be a double-edge sword as it has for the US in Iraq.

The next step in gaming, as it is for the military, is turning these growing pains of a new era in combat into a successful strategy. But, maybe for now, it’s better that gamers get to deal with this anxiety, if only a blush with some of war’s actual tolls, instead of always just getting to live a fantasy.

Read [McClatchy Newspapers]