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I confess I am on the fence about DeLappe's actions. On the one hand, as a gamer I'm not surprised to hear that other players are missing the point of his protest, since many of them probably just regard the game as a free FPS and ignore the Army's propaganda. I'd be annoyed if someone logged onto a game based on a fictional conflict and started complaining about violence in gaming. But of course, DeLappe isn't talking about a fictional conflict. I'm so disgusted by the Army's creation of the game that I heartily applaud any attempt to subvert it. (I'd love to see Salon do a more in-depth study of "America's Army" itself. Shades of Ender's Game indeed.)
I love first person shooters and other video games, but I never play games based on real military conflicts. I'm happy to engage in fantasy violence against zombies, space aliens, and fictional futuristic, totalitarian regimes. When I play Half-Life 2 or Tomb Raider, I enjoy solving puzzles, making the animations do interesting things, and blowing stuff up. I confess to enjoying the catharsis of imaginary violence, especially after a stressful day. I don't think it's any different than enjoying The Sopranos or a Stephen King novel.
Yet, as I said, I can't bring myself to play any game based on a real military conflict. For example, Call of Duty is supposed to be a terrific series, but I find it to be in poor taste to spend my afternoon playing at a war that killed 50 million people in real life. Of course by my own logic, I suppose it's not any different than the hundreds of movies set during WWII, but somehow I get squeamish imagining myself killing real people in a real war.
For the sake of demographics, I am a 40 year-old woman (really!) and a university history professor. Perhaps it's my background in history that makes it so difficult for me to enjoy those particular games.
