Has anyone thought of what Infinity Ward actually wants to say? The well known and widespread Call of Duty series is shaded with American propaganda around each and every corner! Since the newer entries of the Call of Duty serious focus on online multiplayer systems, the storylines of the campaign are often forgotten or blazed through. But if we take a breather and think, the campaign storyline is where it’s at. Infinity Ward is like McDonalds, packaging french fires as tasty good stuff, but harming your health from behind.
The first three Call of Duty (CoD) games and World at War all base their storylines during the World War II (WWII) period. Which is reasonable, the best commonly known war with lots of guns and planes fighting would be WWII. In these story lines, they all seem to be taking a view point from the alliance side. Players would either be playing a character from the US army, British Army, French Army, Canadian Army, Russian Army, or Polish Army. They were all armies against the Nazis. Given what the Nazis did in WWII it is common for games to base their view points from the sides of the allies. They are pretty much common WWII games, with less propaganda value to it, but we could say they promote western view points.
Moving on to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4MW). This is a quick jump from WWII to modern time. It now focuses onto two particular man Khaled Al-Asad, the commander of the revolutionary forces in an unnamed Middle East region, and Imran Zakhaev, the leader of the Russian ultranationalist party. This was basically pulling the focus from Germany to Russia and the Middle East. At the same time of the release of the game, the US government was sending troops into Afghanistan and Iraq for wars against Al-Qaeda. Names like Al-Asad are probably a common name or a recognisable name in Middle East, but to Western countries, they easily relate to Al-Qaeda terrorist groups and their leaders like Osama bin Laden. If we take a look at Al Asad in more detail, there is something very interesting to his background. The president of Syria is also named Al Asad, people with an international mind would be able to instantly relate the two; at the same time associating the bad guys with Middle Eastern people. If we look into some actual game play, in CoDMW3 there is this particular scene where the player shortly assumes the character of a mother. This particular mother was with her family in paris right before the Russian’s gas attack. Taking the perspective of this family, it would spark rage in the hearts of the player, as they see this innocent family is being killed by the terrorist attack. This could be seen as the soft propaganda promoting the Middle East people and Russians as evil, unfriendly, and demon like. In CoDMW2, Al Asad detonates a nuclear bomb in his own country, killing millions of people. As a president of a country, he should be protecting his country and his people; instead, he kills millions of his own. This action presents Syrian people as demonised evil people, brain washing the players. Throughout the whole series of Morden Warfare, player would assume character that are associated with Captain Price, or people from the same side. Taking Captain Price as an example, we often see his “heroic actions” kill and capturing bad guys, running around saving the world. But when we think of it where does all his intel come from? The defected bad guys of course! Now how do they get their info? Either by beating them up, putting a gun at their head, capturing their family, or detonating a neurotoxin gas bomb right next to them. Ain’t all these called torturing? Sure they are!!! And Are they morally correct? OF COURSE NO!!! Now, we see that these American special forces are torturing people just like terrorist would do. Then doesn't it make them the same kind of people, why don't they get caught? Well… they are acting for a “morally right” cause - finding and capturing the bad guy…. The continuous influence by the computer games only further harden the impression of Middle Eastern people or Russians being the bad guys of the world. These interactions thought out Modern Warfare trilogy are all based on the same bad guys, same types of enemies, and same storylines. These games have been around since 2007, which is a legitimately long amount of time for a single game series!! This could have a large effect on teenagers who were playing these games during this time.
In between the CoD series and the CoD4MW is the CoD Black Ops. The story has multiple storyline endings. The player assumes the character of Alex Manson, this character is a CIA operative, working during cold war. In the story, the two enemy forces fight for a chemical weapon made and invented by the nazis, called Nova 6. The two sides are the Russians and the Americans. Again, the Americans are the heroes and “good guys”; the Russians are the people with evil minds, trying to get their hands on the super chemical weapon. The matter of fact that the Russians are looking for a Nazi chemical weapon puts them on the same line as the Nazi, demonising the Russians. Using Russians as the bad guys is already the best point to prove that Activision is demonising countries opposing America.
So what is Activision, and other FPS game companies doing? Are they really purely building a platform for people to shoot around, or are they slaving for the american government, implementing brainwashing contents into the games? I think there is certainly a possibility of this happening, but we would never be able to prove this. We just have to be careful and remember these are only games, and to isolate them from reality.
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