Gamertell

There I am, driving around town,  listening to my local NPR station, soaking up disturbing international news like a good American, when I hear this troubling comment spoken by Brian Jenkins, security analyst with the RAND Corporation, regarding the recent attacks in Mumbai, India:

“You know there has has been some criticism, even within the Jihadist circles, about some of these bombing attacks as being unmanly. That sounds odd to us but we’re talking about a warrior subculture here. And I suspect that those who actually carried out the attack certainly were convinced that going down shooting was better than secretly planting bombs in public places. Even a more attractive ending than blowing themselves up and suicide bombings, even though suicide bombings might have caused even more casualties. This in a sense for them was an opportunity to demonstrate their conviction, courage, although it doesn’t require a lot of courage to gun down unarmed people, but it becomes a kind of a real-life video game killing fantasy for the actual attackers themselves.”

This segment can be heard beginning at 34:38 in the Talk of the Nation episode titled “Select Sites Targeted In The Mumbai Attacks,” hosted by Neal Conan.

Taken out of context, that sure sounds like Jenkins is a gamer hater. Really, he’s just trying to give a visual way of describing the attacks for an aural media. It’s more trying to describe the psychological state of the terrorists rather than specifically likening games to terrorist acts.

Even so, describing bombings as “unmanly” (inferring that gunning down innocent people is manly), indicating these terrorists are part of a “warrior subculture” and that “going down shooting” is a “a more attractive ending” and then summarizing it all as a “real-life, video game killing fantasy” should not sit well with many gamers.

After all, how many people has Cooking Mama, er, Mario killed?

Listen [NPR] Site [RAND]

NOTE: Image from Jenkins’ site about his book titled Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?