Wong Sze Wai, Cecilia
Student no.: 301020569
The early invention of military games was during the cold war for military use. Yet, after the cold war, the military planners decided to transfer their research and development investment into the entertainment industry for commercial games making. As video and online games have become so popular as a form of entertainment these days, the game industry makes business by not only creating new games, but also making continuation for original games. For example, the well-known video war game Call of Duty was first released in 2003, its sequels were available through out these years; its latest one was released in 2007.Since the military games have become so popular in young gamers’ world,concerns haveraised in regards its harmfulness to the society. We understand that the initial purpose of these violent games is to train professional armies who have an understanding about the real war,therefore, games have become highly imitating.Nowadays, video games have created a rating system to avoid underage gamers being engaged in mature gaming content. However, these gamers could still get accessed to rated games by receiving them through adults, such as parents. The problem of it arises when parents do not educate their children appropriate; as a result, children who are not mature enough to understand the meaning behind the rating system will misperceive the content of the game. The misperception of the game could also be heavily worsen by how the game is advertised and package in the media. In this respect, the main theme of the three picture: young children might have a wrong perception of a real war under the encouragement of video war games in the media. Thus, the theme targets parents and young gamers.
In order to attract the targeted market, such as young children or teenagers to play video war games, video game industry keeps improving the realness and quality of the games. The realness of the game could be illustrated in one of the layers in the first picture. The realness of war games are generally incorporated by high resolution of the screen, more detailed nature of the game by providing more military information, and the involvement of additional avatars. Another tactic to attract gamers is that war game marketers advertise games by word manipulation. The marketers pick on certain key word and form a slogan to encourage participations. In the picture, the slogan “Team up today” for the Arm of Two war game has sent a strong message to the young children. For effect purposes, this layer is arranged on the top to display the main character of the picture. “Team up” has encouraged gamers to join war games together and carry out team tactics and team representation. “Today” has pushed a further step of how immediate this has to be completed and accomplished. With the advances in video games and advertisement of war games, media has successfully attracted young children to find excitement in playing war games. However, these illustrations might have neglected the truthful tragic in a real war where excitement does not exist.
The children’s excitement in playing video games is illustrated in the second picture. It shows children gamers are having fun while playing the war game where they destruct the city and the environment. While gamers are very self-absorbed into the game because of the excitement and realness, they will easily misinterpret war asjust a game where destruction seems to be a form of accomplishment. Thus, the second picture aims to bring out the contrast between the attitude of gamers’ and real children who suffocate in the war. First, the contrast is brought out by the words illustration: the excitement of gamers is demonstrated in the conversation bubble in the left of the picture while the sorrow of suffering children is demonstrated through the words in the right. Secondly, the contrast is also brought out by the intentionally zoomed in facial expression of the children. The images used to demonstrate the attitude of children are taken in real wars to show children’s intensity of sorrow and fear.
While the second picture focuses more on the contrast between the attitude of gamers and children in real war as an alert to all targeted audience, the third picture puts an emphasis on the impact of media on gamers. Again, word manipulation is illustrated in the name of the video game – “Company of heroes”. To put this name into interpretation, ‘company’ indicates the participation of a team of gamers, and thus, ‘of heroes’ could imply gamers are heroes. In a sense, it is very misleading that young gamers would think it is right to go for a war because only heroes will participate. The picture issues the problems that young gamers are not mature enough to fully understand a war game and a real war. They do not realize war games are violent, yet, they see them as a sense of heroic and brotherhood. It also portrays masculinity and that war is the right thing to do as it saves the world. Gamers gather around to discuss and comment on others’ performance during the ‘war’, they make ‘teams’ and talk about the tactics they should use. When gamers get to higher levels in the game, it helps gamers to create a sense of accomplishment.
Whilevideo war games were first designed to allow professional army forces for training purposes, it is presently treated as a form of leisure and business. As demonstrated in the three pictures, it could be seen that the media has definitely affected how video war games could easily be misinterpreted and that we have underestimated the power of video games advertisements. To a further extent, war games are not only a form of entertainment; some young children might also treat it as a form of anger management. These negative,violence addictions and misinterpretations should then be justified, and thus, the importance and the tragic truth of real wars where children do not get to push a ‘replay’ should therefore be reinforced in our community.