Returning fire : Interventions in video game culture
(eVideo)

eVideo

English

Editor, Roger Stahl ; original music, Roger Stahl, Andrew Killoy.

Narrator, Roger Stahl ; participants, Joseph Delappe, Anne-Marie Schleiner, Wafaa Bilal.

Originally produced by Media Education Foundation in 2011.

Video games like Modern Warfare, America's Army, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield are part of an exploding market of war games whose revenues now far outpace even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. The sophistication of these games is undeniable, offering users a stunningly realistic experience of ground combat and a glimpse into the increasingly virtual world of long-distance, push-button warfare. Far less clear, though, is what these games are doing to users, our political culture, and our capacity to empathize with people directly affected by the actual trauma of war. For the culture-jamming activists featured in this film, these uncertainties were a call to action. In three separate vignettes, we see how Anne-Marie Schleiner, Wafaa Bilal, and Joseph Delappe moved dissent from the streets to our screens, infiltrating war games in an attempt to break the hypnotic spell of "militainment." Their work forces all of us -- gamers and non-gamers alike -- to think critically about what it means when the clinical tools of real-world killing become forms of consumer play.

Grade 9+

Higher education.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.