I realize that this is a sensitive subject, and perhaps one that's going to stir up some uncomfortable feelings, considering that most or all of us here are gamers, and also due to certain events that have happened as of late. I was considering making this a post in the recent thread about the Sandy Hook tragedy, so moderators, please feel free to move it there if you deem it appropriate.
Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms ManufacturersIt's essay-length but very well written. Some parts of it that caught my attention in particular:
While the benefits of using licensed weaponry are clear for the game maker, the benefits to the gun maker - aside from the licence fee - are less obvious. However, just as cigarette companies used confectionery to market their products to children, so gun makers can use video games to increase awareness of their products amongst those too young to buy them. As Vaughn puts it: "Video games expose our brand to a young audience who are considered possible future owners."
But does it work?
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"I have six pellet and BB guns," says Aidin Smith, a 13 year-old resident of Springfield, Illinois. "These include two BB guns, modelled on the M14 rifle and M1911 pistol, and two pellet guns, modelled on the AK-47 and M16. I also own an M14 BB rifle M1911 BB pistol. And I got an AK-47 rifle, M16 rifle.
"My favorite is the M1911. I shot a real M1911 when I lived in the country. I shot with my Grandpa. I love the action on it, it is like a real M1911, it recoils and springs back like a real gun. All of them are ones that are in Call of Duty. I like guns more because of Call of Duty. The M1911 is a pistol in almost in every Call of Duty."
Last year Smith took one of his BB guns to school. A teacher discovered it in his rucksack, along with a bag of ammunition and a folding knife.
"It was a Monday and I was coming [to school] from my grandpa's," Smith says. "We had gone to the target range. I accidentally left a gun in my book bag. I forgot about it and took it to school. I don't know how they found it."
His family doesn't buy the story. They believe he took the weapon in to show off to another classmate, who alerted a teacher. "It was peer pressure," says his grandfather, Mark Smith. Aidin was suspended from school for 30 days and transferred elsewhere after the summer.
"He had been exposed to Call of Duty through church friends of his," says Mark. "We gave into that because he was always playing at a friend's house. I've talked to Aidin about what's real and what's not. Plus, I took him to a gun range and showed him what the real thing can do. I told him never to point a gun at a real person and that no one gets an extra life if you shoot them."
But Aidin's enthusiasm for firearms has not been dulled by the experience. "The M16 has been in several Call of Duties," he says. "I got more interested in these guns from playing Call of Duty, it's fun to play them in a game... It's a lot easier to shoot in a game than in real life. My favourite gun is the MSR. It's a modified sniper rifle made by Remington firearms and it shoots a 338 Lapua round. It's a really nice, accurate, sniper rifle. It rarely misses a shot.
"I think once I get old enough, I'd like to own the real things."
From the last section of the article:
Many of those working on games featuring real-life weapons continue to wrestle with the issue. Only one member of a team working on a blockbuster American war game series agreed to comment, and even then only under condition of anonymity. "I don't have an issue with licensed weapons specifically," he said. "I think there is a bigger problem, which is just that shooting enemies is the core element of a large portion of games. Whether or not the guns are made up or real changes very little about that fact.
"To harp on about gun manufacturers making money off these licences is inconsequential when it comes to the influence that games have on people's purchasing behaviors. There are plenty of games with realistic but not licensed guns that still glamourise the usage of that gun. I'm sure the revenue generated from a culture that glamourises violence in general in all forms of media, including games, out-earns the actual monetary gains from the licensing of the products directly."
Likewise, for this designer, the fact that gun companies use video games to market their products to young people isn't the primary issue. "This is what marketing does and this is a function of our current culture," he says. "This is a problem with how we make products appeal to people, including products that can lead to death.
"Gun companies marketing to young players is a symptom, not the problem. It's more systemically ingrained in our culture. I think to only worry about guns' effects on people is to ignore the real problems, because these are just far more difficult to solve. They involve more than just getting rid of the gun culture in America."
For Martin Hollis, who turned his back on developing violent video games following his departure from Rare in 1998, it's more straightforward. "My moral position is that you are partially complicit with violence as soon as you have a violent narrative," he says.
That last paragraph in particular strikes a chord with me. There are very few games in my collection that don't feature a violent narrative. Most of those that do aren't FPS-based, but still, be they an FPS or a vehicular combat sim (with either a real-world fictional/historic or fantasy setting) they all have a certain common element - on-screen simulated death/destruction. Yet I consider myself to be non-violent, at least going by my everyday interactions (in my life so far, I fortunately haven't been put into a crisis situation where I've had to use lethal force (if I were even capable of doing so) for self-preservation or to preserve others' lives, so... I don't know exactly what I'd do under such circumstances). But to say that merely playing such games makes you complicit with violence... I guess that, on some level, it is hypocritical of me to play them. It's a thought that has come to mind before, but I tend to counter it with the "I can tell apart reality and fantasy, therefore I'm harmless" justification.
That said, beyond the developer and publisher, I haven't given much thought to where my money goes when I buy games. As for third parties such as arms makers, even if they only had a consultant role in the development - it makes me feel somewhat uneasy.
I'm not that used to posting about controversial issues, and I'm sure that certain parts of the article I linked to have been discussed before here many times, so if I'm opening a sore wound I apologize in advance. If anything, I think it's quite an informative and thought-provoking read.
