CptStern
suckmonkey
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excerpts from a longer article written by a military contractor on video game's depiction of war
TLDR: soldiers are sociopaths not heroes. video games shouldnt glorify war
http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/03/01/call-of-apathy-violent-young-men-and-our-place-in-war/
TLDR: soldiers are sociopaths not heroes. video games shouldnt glorify war
I am a private military contractor, and I have an issue with the depiction of war in videogames — or more specifically, the soldiers in those games.
In military videogames, you tend to get “good guy” characters that are the rough and ready types. The situation may be chaotic, but they crack on with the task in hand to the best of their ability, never let anyone down, and may or may not die in a dramatic fashion. Good, wholesome stuff.
Good enough for entertainment, but should war be sterilised and glorified in this way? Here is the crux of my beef with the military videogame genre:
None of the stereotypes exist. They are put in place by a media and a military that hates the wars we fight but loves the men fighting in them.
There’s a reason the new guy always gets put on point and nobody really cares when he gets blown up, that so many incidents of collateral damage go unreported, that failed missions are spun into something positive like gathering “valuable intel,” and why only roughly 20% of combat troops ever get PTSD – when if you think about it, it should affect everyone that ever sees combat.
It’s because the vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths.
Heroes are a myth. Every incident I can recall in war that created a hero was either an accident or ended up with said hero in a body bag.
A friend of mine came under fire inside a compound. He followed up the shooter, who disappeared into an escape tunnel. My friend followed standard procedure and threw a grenade into the tunnel entrance before following up. When entering the tunnel, he found only the bodies of a woman and a small child, whom the terrorist had used to cover his escape.
When I spoke about it to my friend years later, he recalled how pissed he was at losing the insurgent, and how bad he felt afterwards about it. He’d had his professional pride tarnished. I asked him if he ever thought about the woman and her kid and he just looked at me blankly.
He didn’t even remember they were there.
War is the most horrific, sickening thing mankind can inflict upon itself, fought by and large by uneducated maniacs that have no other place in the world. Videogames have the attention of the youth and can educate as well as entertain. The real horrors need to be made very public to keep the next generation from turning out like us.
My friends and I are not represented anywhere in mass media. People need to realise that their wars are not fought by the guy on the news that lost a leg and loves his flag — he was the FNG [ed: ****ing new guy] that got blown up because he was incompetent, who left the fight before it turned him into one of us.
The world needs to be made aware of my kind: the silent majority of fighters, those that do not care about politics, religion, ethics, or anything else other than war for war’s sake.
One last thought: My psychologist estimated that roughly 80% of infantrymen have an undiagnosed violent personality disorder. These aren’t hard stats, but’s it’s interesting when compared to the 20% that suffer from PTSD.
http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/03/01/call-of-apathy-violent-young-men-and-our-place-in-war/