"He had been exposed to Call of Duty through church friends of his," says Mark. "We gave into that because he was always playing at a friend's house. I've talked to Aidin about what's real and what's not. Plus, I took him to a gun range and showed him what the real thing can do. I told him never to point a gun at a real person and that no one gets an extra life if you shoot them."
But Aidin's enthusiasm for firearms has not been dulled by the experience. "The M16 has been in several Call of Duties," he says. "I got more interested in these guns from playing Call of Duty, it's fun to play them in a game... It's a lot easier to shoot in a game than in real life. My favourite gun is the MSR. It's a modified sniper rifle made by Remington firearms and it shoots a 338 Lapua round. It's a really nice, accurate, sniper rifle. It rarely misses a shot.
"I think once I get old enough, I'd like to own the real things."
"We definitely see sales of particular [BB] guns increase when they are featured in popular video games, such as Call of Duty," he says. "For example, sales of the FAMAS [used by the French army] exploded in the US when Call of Duty decided to use it as one of the best weapons in their game.
"Before then children in America [didn't] want to buy the FAMAS airsoft gun, simply because they don't know this brand. But when they play every day with a new brand in a video game, finally they want to buy it in reality. The sales increase can be enormously significant."
There are, of course, perennial favourites. "It's like in a bar where you always need to have Coca-Cola or Pepsi available," says Toutain. "In video game shooters the Colt M4 and Kalashnikov AK-47 are the must-haves." According to Toutain, the video game and the gun are inseparable.
It's understandable that video game publishers are unwilling to discuss the question of gun licensing against this volatile backdrop. In 2012, EA created a website promoting the manufacturers of the guns, knives and combat gear depicted in the game Medal of Honor Warfighter. The move attracted widespread criticism. After decades of unsubstantiated claims that media affects behaviour, the industry is sensitive to implied links between real-world violence and game violence.
But today we know that a portion of every dollar spent on triple-A military-themed video games flows into the pockets of small arms manufacturers, either directly through licence payments, or indirectly through advertising. These beneficiaries include Barrett in the US and FN in France. They may include other controversial arms dealers, such as Israel Weapon Industries, creator of the TAR-21, which appears in Call of Duty. Such deals politicise video games in tangible yet hidden ways. Consumers have, for the past few years, unwittingly funded arms companies that often have their own military agendas.
Many of those working on games featuring real-life weapons continue to wrestle with the issue. Only one member of a team working on a blockbuster American war game series agreed to comment, and even then only under condition of anonymity. "I don't have an issue with licensed weapons specifically," he said. "I think there is a bigger problem, which is just that shooting enemies is the core element of a large portion of games. Whether or not the guns are made up or real changes very little about that fact.
"To harp on about gun manufacturers making money off these licences is inconsequential when it comes to the influence that games have on people's purchasing behaviors. There are plenty of games with realistic but not licensed guns that still glamourise the usage of that gun. I'm sure the revenue generated from a culture that glamourises violence in general in all forms of media, including games, out-earns the actual monetary gains from the licensing of the products directly."
For Martin Hollis, who turned his back on developing violent video games following his departure from Rare in 1998, it's more straightforward. "My moral position is that you are partially complicit with violence as soon as you have a violent narrative," he says.
"The stories we tell and the games we play have an effect, otherwise people would not bother with the whole undertaking. Licensing gun names is a darker point on a spectrum that begins with the act of playing Cops and Robbers. But putting money in the palm of arms dealers can only help them make tools to kill."
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