The Call of Duty Endowment and Veterans

According to a Joystiq report, The Call of Duty Endowment ran a charity drive through their Facebook page last month. For every person who “Likes” the C.O.D.E. Facebook page, they will donate $1 “to assist veterans with finding employment once they leave the service.”

First off, let me say that I’m glad that there are groups seeking to help veterans find work. And I believe that the Call of Duty games (specifically Modern Warfare 1 and 2) were well made multiplayer games (I couldn’t make through either single player campaign). However, I can only enjoy them as multiplayer games insofar as they are quite divorced from real combat. I understand that it is a game and that the actions and situations in the game are incredibly exaggerated. In my mind, the Modern Warfare games have more in common with the Halo or James Bond universe than our own. They are ridiculous, over the top adventure games that I enjoy playing with friends to hang out. But I don’t allow myself to conflate the illusion of the “modern warfare” gameplay with real warfare. And if I had a child who was old enough to play these games, I would be sure to talk with them about how the image of war presented in the CoD games is meant to be romantic, exciting and fun. And that real combat is often morally ambiguous, banal, ugly, and always tragic.

What troubles me about this charity event is that it blurs the lines between the fantasy war in these games and real warfare. It implies some relationship between the CoD games set in the Middle East and the current wars being fought over there. How does it imply this relationship? Well, for one, Activision/Blizzard did not start this endowment for any of their other games (as far as I know). There is no World of Warcraft endowment for veterans. Why? Presumably because the content of World of Warcraft has nothing to do with modern war, whereas the Call of Duty games do. And it is that assumption that deeply bothers me.

If Activision wants us to think of their games as depictions of real warfare, rather than fantasy war, then that means that the CoD games are a form of propaganda. While I do believe that we should be supportive to veterans, I don’t believe that we do them justice by supporting the advertisement of a game (what else should we call clicking “Like” on a page with CoD in the name?) which presents a vision of war that is romantic and fantastic.