Gameology 2.0

I'm having a hard time finding out much information about this story, but The Peninsula (a publication out of Qatar) is reporting that a group called the "Students Islamic Association" is producing a game in which the player-character is an Iranian commando rescuing a nuclear engineer who has been abducted by American forces.

There are a lot of hot-button issues packed into this little story, but I so far haven't been able to find out any other references to the game (which lacks a title) or to the group apparently creating it (The story comes from the AFP News Agency and it references an original report from the semi-official Fars News Agency of Iran. On a (slightly) educated guess, I might say that the group is at least partly government funded, but that probably doesn't matter. This feels like an old story for some reason, and for some reason this sounds like a Counter-Strike mod , but I'm interested in the way the game is characterized and how it fits into recent game-related events.

Even without much information, a few things jump out even from this report. First, the headline "Iranians can take on US military might" takes it for granted that "taking on" the Americans is something that Iranians want to do. More importantly (at least for this blog), the headline and general focus of the report takes it for granted that the game's allowing one to act out militaristic activities within a simulated environment fulfills militaristic desires that the player already has. For games and game studies, this is a big deal. The question of the player's relationship to the simulation of activities within the gameworld or the misunderstanding thereof is at the heart of many if not all recent game controversies.

Two obviously related recent examples: Venezualan President Hugo Chavez's response to the forthcoming Mercenaries 2: World In Flames reflects his belief that players of the game will be encouraged to carry out the invasion of Venezuala in real life, and the scandal over the alleged "Al Qaeda Recruitment Mod" (which I'm afraid I also passed on as apparent fact) probably happened because someone somewhere saw video of Arab terrorists defeating American soldiers and assumed that only a member of Al Qaeda or a potential member would want to do that.

Obviously, one could point to lots of games that have been about America vs. Whoever, and while those of us who study games can quickly say that we don't necessarily really want to do the things we play at doing in video game worlds, I'm not so sure I can be as quick to say that there isn't actually some ideological work at play within Us vs. Them games.

If this Students Islamic Association game makes us feel uncomfortable because we're Them, what should we think about being Us?

Politically speaking, I'd like to say that I favor diplomatic approaches whenever possible, but I don't often play games that revolve around the player's skill at artful negotation. Ethically, I'm appalled by murder, but I enthusiastically play games where the player character essentially carries out a mass-killing spree.

I think we have to find critical tools for addressing this issue within our own discourse communities (generally speaking), and I don't think that relying on the "research shows that games don't cause violence" argument goes far enough. That too often comes across as an excuse or a technicality.

Instead, I think that those of us in academia have a responsibility to understand the rhetorical and intellectual tools that constitute being literate about simulations. So with that in mind, how should we respond to this proposed game? What kind of concepts and approaches would go into analyzing it productively? I'm not sure, but I'd love to hear what you think.