Adam Weinstein looks at the Afghanistan-based edition of Medal of Honor, a First Person Shooter in which you have the option of playing as a member of the Taliban:
Part of me wonders why that isn't a huge offense to the same crowd that opposes an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. Sure, it's gotten some play on Fox News, along with the usual mainstream media handwringing. And even a few (foreign) politicians have weighed in against little Johnny getting his cyber-jihad on. But some conservatives love the game's concept. "If millions of Americans are exposed to a platform that accurately defines our enemy as the dregs of the modern world (while allowing a small percentage of sick individuals to actually enjoy the option to become them), conservatives should move on," writes right-leaning pop-culture blogger Douglas Ernst. (He adds: "Any video game company that allows me to put a few 5.56mm rounds into facsimiles of Taliban cavemen is ahead of the power curve in my book.")
Realistic war simulations have always bothered me. It's not that I'm offended by killing in video games; it's more that I'm opposed to realistic killing. I've been known to indulge in the the glee of quietly sticking a plasma grenade onto a friend's back in Halo or the satisfaction of swiftly mowing down a hapless fool who dares challenge me to a duel in Red Dead Redemption. I don't mind sending a few hundred space marines to their death at the sharp ends of poison-tipped Zerg spines in Starcraft or telekinetically tossing a flaming corpse at a deranged splicer in BioShock. These are a few of my favorite things. Living vicariously as a genetically engineered super soldier or Spaghetti Western cowboy, though, are scenarios distant enough from my moral universe that the link between video game violence and actual violence is hard to make.
I'm not making an argument for more video-game regulation or anything, mind you, and I don't think any of this stuff should be forbidden. I just have no desire to be a Nazi foot soldier in World War II or a G.I. in a trench in 1917. For that matter, I don't even want to to be a drug dealer in some fictionalized Grand Theft Auto version of 1990s South Central Los Angeles. There are living people I know who have the real experiences those scenarios are drawn from. I'm playing video games to escape from the frustrations of the real world, I don't want to be thrust into another, realistic existence far more bleak than the one I'm currently living.
