Legal Niches

Could Games Actually Help Avert Civilian Causalities?

By pete_gallagher

In response to this week's leak of a video that appears to show U.S. troops in Iraq shooting civilians, an article on Slate examines how videogames could possibly assist in preventing such tragedies from happening in the future.

WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange said about the video, 'The behavior of the pilots is like they're playing a video game. It's like they want to get high-scores in that computer game.' And indeed, the Slate piece notes the similarities between the leaked footage and missions in both Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (pictured) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Slate offers the following interpretation of Assange's quote:

To be fair, Assange's point is more subtle than that. He's not saying American gunners mistakenly shoot innocent men because they grew up playing video games. He's suggesting they do so because the killing itself feels like a game.

The author then assesses his own assessment:

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Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on April 07, 2010 (boomark / email).