Digital Landscapes of Imperialism

Digital Landscapes of Imperialism

US Intervention in Video Games

A Master’s Thesis for the Degree of Arts (Two Years) in Visual Culture

Mikko Jokela Måsbäck

Division of Art History and Visual Studies Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences Lund University KOVM12, Master’s Thesis, 30 credits Supervisor: Joacim Sprung Spring semester 2018

ii

ABSTRACT

Within the cultural imaginary of video games, armed conflicts have always occupied a central

space. Their subject material, as well as technologies and visual techniques, are often based on

historical and present-day conflicts, often involving US Armed Forces, subcontractors or

intelligence agents. US actors and interests disproportionally occupy the privileged position of

protagonist, which has contributed to creating militarised, US-centric, global interventionist

narratives across genres and titles. The dearth of US criticism within video games in turn

implicates the corporate and cultural close connections of ‘mainstream’ video game developers

and publishers to both US mass media and the actual US Armed Forces.

This thesis classifies the occurrences of US intervention-portrayals across video

games released between 2005 and 2014, through a quantitative analysis of technological, visual

and rhetorical representation. These ten years of representation come during the time of major

US military campaigns in (primarily) Afghanistan and Iraq, and loosely correspond to a

technological era, known as the 7th video game console generation. Moreover, two case studies

closely inspect the role of landscape in first-person shooters, examining the relationship between

military-industrial visualisation (e.g. crosshairs, vehicular vision, drone footage), traces of the

colonial imaginary, and the presentation of terrain as fundamentally conquerable and exploitable.

Untangling ideologies of military intervention, heroic protagonist (re-)enactments

and imperialist ideas of landscape will help pinpoint how video games (re-)create worlds, but also

how real-world political and cultural practices are upheld, subverted or redefined within the logic

of the game-world. The motives of exceptionalism and colonial morality are not just overtly

visible, but implicit in the very logic of the presentation. Landscapes are presented as accessible

and exploitable, traversable by those with the ‘right’ to intervene anywhere, anytime; a visual

rhetoric that transcends video games.

Keywords

Intervention

Video Games

Discourse

Landscape

Imperialism

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT II

TABLE OF CONTENTS III

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS V

GLOSSARY VI

INTRODUCTION 1 PURPOSE .................................................................................................................................................................... 4 EMPIRICAL MATERIAL ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Delimitation issues ................................................................................................................................................... 6 THEORY ..................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Discourse Analysis .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Visual Culture Studies ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Space, Place and Landscape .................................................................................................................................. 10

METHOD ................................................................................................................................................................ 13 Methodological framework ..................................................................................................................................... 14 Quantitative Analysis ........................................................................................................................................... 16 Qualitative analysis .............................................................................................................................................. 17 Comparative Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 18

PREVIOUS RESEARCH .......................................................................................................................................... 19 DEFINITIONS ......................................................................................................................................................... 23 DISPOSITION ......................................................................................................................................................... 24

CHAPTER 1: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS 25 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 25

Delimitation Revisited .......................................................................................................................................... 25 Categorisation ....................................................................................................................................................... 26 Coding .................................................................................................................................................................. 27

CODING RESULTS ................................................................................................................................................. 29 Interventions ......................................................................................................................................................... 29 Places ................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Spaces ................................................................................................................................................................... 33

SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................... 34

CHAPTER 2: CASE STUDY – BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 37 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 37 PLACES .................................................................................................................................................................... 38

The Locations ....................................................................................................................................................... 39

iv

SPACES .................................................................................................................................................................... 43 The Maps ............................................................................................................................................................. 44

SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................... 46

CHAPTER 3: CASE STUDY – ARMA 3 47 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 47 PLACES .................................................................................................................................................................... 48

The Campaign ...................................................................................................................................................... 49 SPACES .................................................................................................................................................................... 52

A Closer Look ..................................................................................................................................................... 53 Mods .................................................................................................................................................................... 54

SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................... 55

CHAPTER 4: COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 57 PATTERNS .............................................................................................................................................................. 57

Place ..................................................................................................................................................................... 58 Space .................................................................................................................................................................... 59 Landscapes ........................................................................................................................................................... 60

CONTEXT ............................................................................................................................................................... 61 Intertextuality ....................................................................................................................................................... 62

CONCLUSION 65 MEANING OF PLACE ............................................................................................................................................ 65 MEANING OF SPACE ............................................................................................................................................ 66 LANDSCAPES OF US INTERVENTION ................................................................................................................ 67

Further research .................................................................................................................................................... 69

APPENDICES 71 APPENDIX 1. CONTENT ANALYSIS: FULL TABLE OF RESULTS ..................................................................... 71

REFERENCES 80 LUDOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................................................... 80 INTERNETOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................................ 80 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................................................... 81

v

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Table i.1 – (p. 14) Table of sites and modalities, adapted from Rose (2016).

CHAPTER 1: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

Table 1.1 – (p. 29) Table showing results of quantitative analysis.

Diagram 1.2 – (p. 30) Diagram showing results of quantitative analysis.










CHAPTER 2: CASE STUDY – BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2

Figure 2.1 – (p. 38) Screenshot from Battlefield: Bad Company 2, captured by author.

Figure 2.2 – (p. 45) Screenshot from Battlefield: Bad Company 2, captured by author.

CHAPTER 3: CASE STUDY – ARMA 3

Figure 3.1 – (p. 50) Screenshot from Arma 3, captured by author.


CHAPTER 4: COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS


CONCLUSION

Table 5.1 – (p. 67) Table of condensed response-space in subgenres.

vi

GLOSSARY

AAA (triple-A) games – Mainstream, big budget video game.

FPS (first-person shooter) – First-person perspective games focusing on shooting.

RPG (Role-playing game) – Adventure/Action games focusing on character progression.

RTS (real-time strategy) – Strategy games occurring in real time (possibly pausable).

TBS (turn-based strategy) – Strategy games divided into clearly delineated turns for players.

TPS (third-person shooter) – Third person perspective games focusing on shooting.

1

INTRODUCTION

From abstract rules to complex physical activity, games of all forms have the potential to shape

perception, action and reasoning, as well as positing world-views that include both representation

and causality. When a player acts within a game, they are making informed decisions within the

space and context of the game’s rules and presentation, and narratives and meaning arise

simultaneously from the game’s audio-visual presentation and these rule-bound interactions. With

the increased visual fidelity and cinematic techniques evidenced in video games, this results in

situations where a player takes decisions within an environment that is often modelled to be as

indistinguishable as possible from supposedly reliable representations of the actual ‘real’ world.

It is far from easy to trace the effects of these simulations and the acts of play

within them causally to real world behaviours, but while actions taken in video games do not

necessarily, or even probably or plausibly, provoke similar actions outside the game, the

ideologies, postures and perspectives expressed remain with us, unable to be contained within the

game’s sacred space. Rather, the comparatively large amount of time spent playing individual

video games, coupled with the interactive nature of engaging with its ideas, suggests an

engagement as deep as, if not deeper, than many carefully studied and critiqued media.

It is in this context that I find it important to study the representation of the

United States of America’s (hereafter the US) intervention by force or otherwise in other

sovereign countries’ affairs within video games. The cultural imaginary of video games, its sets, its

plots and its actors, are quintessentially and inextricably suffused with US popular culture.1 While

the settings, the names, and even the places of production have diversified immensely over the

past two decades, the cultural norms, the presentation and the ideological logic has followed a US

template, appropriating outside themes to fit an established formula. It is hardly a surprise that,

when the subject matter turns to real world political and military affairs, a US centric perspective

continues to dominate.

Lack of surprise should not give way to complacency however, as these

representations are far from innocent, and could effectively be argued to be one of the largest

indirect propaganda campaigns for the normalisation of armed conflict as a solution to world

problems, and for identification with Western armed forces as arbiters of peace, justice and

stability. The affective and associative strengths of the medium have not gone unnoticed by

1 If there is, or ever was, such a thing as a video game culture, its home is the US. That is not to say there are no other nuclei of cultural production and imaginaries within the medium, but they are subsumed within the US paradigm in an increasingly global and online marketplace. The largest uniform counterpoint is Japan, but, although distinctly different from US video game culture, it has also been inexorably drawn into the orbit of US popular culture ever since their occupation after the second world war.

2

military forces, with video game developers often engaged in simulation exercises designed to

prepare actual military personnel for operations. Most prominently, America’s Army is a free-to-

play game designed and released by the US Armed Forces as a propaganda and recruitment tool,

deployed with considerable levels of success.2

Games have become an integral part of mass medial and visual culture, and often

employ a repetitiveness that can strongly normalize certain ideological logics and narratives. The

normalisation of hegemonic discourse is far from unique to the medium and the current

historical situation; rather, I argue that it is a continuation of Western political and art movements

from at least the 19th century and onwards, and that it displays both traditional modes of

persuasion, as well as new forms of engagement.3 If games allow players to make decisions within

a framework, the intentions embedded in the creation of that framework guide their actions, and

if the deliberation and emotional engagement inherent in these actions cannot be considered

hermetically sealed within the boundaries of the game, we cannot afford to leave these ideological

constructs unanalysed and uncriticised.

As I am writing this, the United States Armed Forces (US Armed Forces) have

announced the reactivation of the US Second Fleet, in a bid to control the Atlantic Ocean in

response to perceived Russian aggression, following calls from Nato’s secretary general for

increased deterrence, highlighting the need to ‘do more’ in the face of Russian hybrid tactics and

destabilisation.4 Simultaneously a highly unpredictable US administration has switched stances,

calling for military withdrawal from conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, after having only last year

dropped the ‘mother of all bombs’ in the latter.5 Meanwhile, in the somewhat left-leaning British

newspaper the Guardian, a title to an opinion piece recently proclaimed that ‘[t]he ruins I saw in

Syria stand as a rebuke to western inaction.’6 It showcases how, in certain discourses, military

2 Explored in Allen, R., ‘The unreal enemy of America’s Army’, Games and culture, vol. 6, no. 1, 2011, pp. 38-60. 3 Purely in terms of militaristic pro-US hegemonic fare, action movies (e.g. Black Hawk Down, Flags of our Fathers, Top Gun, more recently the series begun by Olympus has Fallen), TV series (Band of Brothers, NCIS) and books (Tom Clancy’s everything) abound, but more generally, the narrative perspective has been fixed with those in power, with the oppressor, a historically strong tradition as noted, among others, by Nicholas Mirzoeff (The right to look: a counterhistory of visuality, Durham, NA, Duke University Press, 2011). 4 Associated Press, ‘“Great power competition”: Nato announces Atlantic command to counter Russia’, 5 May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/05/great-power-competition-nato-announces-atlantic-command-to-counter-russia, (accessed 6 September 2018). 5 With considerable pride, according to reports in the New Yorker (Wright, R., ‘Trump drops the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan’, The New Yorker, 14 April 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-drops-the-mother-of-all-bombs-on-afghanistan, (accessed 6 September 2018), and the Independent (Sampathkumar, M., ’Donald Trump ”very proud” after dropping ”mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan’, The Independent, 13 April 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/donald-trump-moab-us-bomb-afghanistan-mother-of-all-response-statement-a7683221.html, (accessed 6 September 2018)). 6 Darke, D., ‘The ruins I saw in Syria stand as a rebuke to western inaction’, The Guardian, 1 May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/01/syria-rebuke-western-inaction-military-intervention-assad, (accessed 6 September 2018).

3

intervention is now the expected response to international crises, which stands out as a clear,

natural consequence of the role US has created for itself as ‘world police.’

There hasn’t been a single year since the end of the second world war (WWII)

without more than 10 countries hosting more than 1000 billets (equivalent to one US Armed

Forces soldier per year), across the world.7 Only four years in that period (1947, 1957, 1961,

1979) were without a direct US ‘Military Intervention’ as defined by the Congressional Research

Centre in the United States.8 While most deployments have been made with consent from the

host nation (or at least one of its regimes), and in a deterrent-specified purpose,9 the fact of the

matter remains that the US Armed Forces is the largest, most technologically advanced, and

(above all) globally distributed, and mobilized military in the history of human civilisation.10 This

military might, but even more often its mere presence, has been used as deterrent, as threat, as

coercion and as leverage in political, economic and military brokering across the globe for at least

the past 73 years.11

This is the ‘real world’ background to US (military) interventions, and these do not

include the more than 50 major covert operations conducted by intelligence agents from the US

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other US agencies.12 The same period has seen the

establishment of international communities, and an increase in international law and transnational

judicial ambition, all of which has regularly been bypassed, disregarded and completely ignored by

the US Armed Forces and administration, engaging in armed conflict as well as covert

intervention within sovereign nations at their own leisure.13

So, how are these reflected in the representative material of video games? Why is it

important? And what does it tell us? These are questions that this study aims to begin to answer,

through looking both at a broad perspective of different titles released in the near past, as well as

closer looks at a few examples, to discern the types of intervention and discourse at play.

7 According to data released by the US Department of Defence, collated in Kane, T., Global U.S. troop deployment, 1950-2005, Washington, D.C., The Heritage Center for Data Analysis, 2006. 8 Salazar Torreon, B., Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2017, Washington, D.C., Congressional Research Center, 2017. 9 Keane, 2006, pp. 10-11. 10 This spread of power has been summarised and criticised by Chomsky, N., (Deterring democracy, London, Verso, 1991), and the extraordinary extent of US deployment and bases are well presented in Vine, D., (Base nation: how U.S. military bases abroad harm America and the world, New York, Metropolitan books, 2015). 11 The period may be argued to stretch further backwards, beyond the end of WWII (as done in Chomsky, 1991, pp. 33-37), but that is beyond the scope of this paper. 12 Thoroughly examined in Blum, W., Killing Hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II, London, Zed Books, 2003. The effectiveness and competence of these operations are also criticised from a more internal point of view in Weiner, T., Legacy of ashes: the history of the CIA, New York, Anchor Books, 2008. 13 Congressional as well as internal documents of the US administration and CIA are shown in both Chomsky (1991) and Weiner (2008) to depict a decision-making process far removed from humanitarian or peaceful concerns.

4

Purpose

Video games as a medium, though wholly artificial and highly technological, is very adept at

masking that very artificiality, and through its proffered utopia of player choice makes certain

consequences ‘natural’ or inevitable and posits certain responses or readings as universal or ‘true.’

It achieves this through a combination of audio-visual spectacle and rule-bound simulation,

borrowing and remedializing heavily from several older media. However, its main domain is that

of the visual, its main interface is the screen, and its meaning-creation and interaction are dictated

by images, with only very few examples premiering sound or touch over picture and gaze.14 That

is not to say these are not important, merely that they are not dominant.

Much scholarly attention has come from self-proclaimed ‘ludologists,’ focusing on

the distinctive features of games, such as their natures as rule-bound systems, or their aesthetic

appeal to play and form.15 These were in part positioning themselves in relation to film and

literary scholars, who through narrative or world-building lenses tried to conceive of the game as

a text.16 Although the first simplified academic camps have been gradually broken up and new

perspectives allowed in, there is still a lack of approaches that treat what is at heart a visual

phenomenon as an image, however interactive. For this reason, it appears that the academic study

of games requires a deeper look at the social construction of its visuality,17 the relation between

seeing, knowing and power,18 and how information, meaning or pleasure is derived when

interacting with visual technology.19 In short, it requires visual culture studies.

In order to analyse the ideological use of representations of US foreign

interventions, I have chosen to focus on two of its primary facets: the discursive and the visio-

spatial. The aim is to highlight power relations embedded in representations of intervention, and

how these are played out within the rules of the game, and to further comprehend the way ‘land’

or ‘terrain’ is mapped in virtual space, as well as its ideological content. Accordingly, my research

questions have been formulated as follows:

14 This history is succinctly summarised in Collins, K., Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2008. 15 Juul, J. (Half-real: video games between real rules and fictional worlds, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2011), and Kirkpatrick, G. (Aesthetic theory and the video game, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011, p.21), respectively. 16 Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J.H., and Tosca, S.P., (Understanding video games: the essential introduction, 2nd edn., New York, Routledge, 2013, pp. 214-216) explore the straw man nature of this argument. 17 As well as the visual construction of the social (Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture’, Journal of visual culture, vol. 1, no. 2, 2002c, pp. 170). 18 Foucault, M., History of sexuality: volume 1, an introduction, trans. R. Hurley, New York, Vintage Books, 1978, p. 11. 19 Mirzoeff, N., ‘What is visual culture?’, in Nicholas Mirzoeff (ed.), The visual culture reader, 3rd ed., London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 3-13.

5

-! How are US foreign interventions portrayed and deployed within video games?

-! What roles does the concept of ‘landscape’ fill in video games featuring U.S. intervention?

-! How are a sense of place and representations of space deployed ideologically?

To answer these questions, it will be necessary to interrogate what a foreign intervention is, and

both how it has been made to look in video games, and which values and norms that are

furthered by these depictions. This interplay of power and image bears a relation to the Western

practice of depicting landscapes, and the colonial power relation contained within that logic.

Therefore, the landscapes of video games must be carefully analysed, to see how the specific

cultural connotations of places and the interactive possibilities of spaces combine to provide an

experience of landscape, and how that experience is linked to the discourse of US intervention.

Empirical Material

In order to fruitfully discuss a wider sample of games, and thus pass comment not only on

specific instances but also on prevalent visual discourses, I chose to study a ten-year period

(2005-2014) of releases, supplemented by a close reading of two selected examples (Battlefield: Bad

Company 2 and Arma 3).

The first study, conducted by means of a content analysis, has been conducted on

video games released for personal computers or home consoles between 2005 and 2014,

featuring US Armed Forces or intelligence agents engaged in foreign countries post-WWII. The

release period has been chosen as it loosely corresponds to a technological ‘generation’ of

consoles, and covers a period of intensive US military intervention, while offering a reasonable

critical distance, with neither concurrent hype for newly released titles, nor too great a difference

in technological development skewing the reading. 20 Ten years also appeared a sufficient time to

be able to trace certain possible trajectories of change. Furthermore, the focus on specific

instances where the US Armed Forces and/or the CIA, or similar, have verifiably intervened in a

foreign country narrowed the examples to a manageable size (the total number of games included

20 ‘Console generation’ is a term that includes concurrent releases of hardware from multiple companies, and although this period corresponds loosely to the 7th, there is overlap (e.g. the Xbox 360 was released by Microsoft in late 2005, with its successor the Xbox One appearing in late 2013, with games for both appearing in the material).

6

nevertheless reached a daunting 165). Lastly, the decision of only including represented time

periods after WWII further narrows the scope of both the material, as well as the type of conflict

being depicted. It also asks the question of how righteous US intervention is imagined after its

(arguably) last successful and uncomplicatedly heroic military escapade.

For the qualitative case studies, two games were chosen once the bulk of the

coding had been completed for the content analysis. The choice fell on Battlefield: Bad Company 2

and Arma 3, both being similar, yet contrasting, shooter-games, the undoubtedly predominant

type in the sample. This offered a possibility of more nuanced commentary regarding how

specific design choices impact the experience of landscape and intervention, beyond mere genre

definitions. The larger differences between genres, and some of what that entails for US

intervention depictions is covered in the discussion of the results of the content analysis.

Delimitation issues

In large numbers of video game releases, the nationalities of protagonists are not explicitly

named, and these titles have thus not been included in the sample, even though many such

protagonists merely act as fictional proxies of the US. Due to the latter point, these titles play an

important part in shaping the manifold discourses carried on through video games, and while this

discrepancy will be reflected in the final analysis, it bears noting that a wider criterion would have

enabled more comprehensive results (but would also have taken considerable more time and

resources).

The specific ten-year period is also notably arbitrary; even though it encompasses

the main period of the so-called seventh console generation, it includes releases for all of their

respective predecessors and successors, as well as for personal computers who have had no such

clearly defined technological periods. Rather, the period is one of change, from one fluctuating

state to another, in both US real-world interventionism and video game representations, and the

study aims to capture and interrogate the way that intervention discourse developed, and where it

might be going. The period does, however, complement existing research, as an Australian study

on FPS-adversaries covers a period that runs up to and including 2009.21 The categories and

results of this earlier study have been included as a minor part of the content analysis discussion

and, since the studies share a five-year span, may be of limited comparative use.

21 Hitchens, M., Patrickson, B. & Young, S., ‘Reality and terror, the first-person shooter in current day settings’, Games and culture, vol. 9, no. 1, 2014, pp. 3-29.

7

Theory

‘Visuality sutures authority to power and renders this association “natural.”’22

The concepts of place, space, and landscape form a cornerstone of the themes analysed by this

thesis. Place, indicating a culturally and geographically specific place in time and terrain, contrasts

with space as an embodiment of area or volume, and the specific sensations of borders and

movement. Landscape, in turn, is deployed in its sense as a category of representation, a type of

image produced for very specific aesthetic and economic purposes, and encompasses a

combination of both specific place and experiential space. Fundamentally, these are all tools in

defining a certain way to view and depict the world, visualities that produce a certain knowledge,

which in turn is inextricably tied to military, economic and historical power. After exploring this

discursive relation, this section will consider the specific tools and terms of Visual Culture

Studies, as they apply to video games and the central concepts of place, space, and landscape.

Discourse Analysis

‘Every game requires us to learn things.’23

These representations are not the real world, nor should they be judged as if they were. It is

important to distinguish between the real, or that which has a reasonably strong claim to be real,

and that which is depicted. However, between the real and the depicted, there is a constant

exchange, of different kinds of knowledges. Knowledge of myths, knowledge of worldviews,

knowledge of values. Video games are representations of something that has not necessarily ever

existed. The subject matter of video games can often never be presented, but merely represented.

But what is presented is the very presentation itself, the framework, subjects displayed and the

angle chosen to display them from. All of this forms a discourse, a chain of events and logical

connections that in themselves create a worldview, one that is both visual, textual and structural.

Whatever the intention, these constructs are ideological and political in nature, and guide the way

a player thinks and knows about the world, both inside and outside of the game.

22 Mirzoeff, 2011, p. 6. 23 Straightforwardly expressed in an online analysis video (The digital museum – Assassin’s Creed Origins discovery tour – Extra Credits, [online video], 9 May 2018, Extra Credits, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp1DgRCEBDA, (accessed 6 September 2018)). I do not agree with the praise for developer-publishers Ubisoft and their Assassin’s Creed-franchise, nor the trust in having ‘AAA’ video game companies as cornerstones of education, but the enthusiasm for what is possible is an important counterpoint to my own misanthropic leanings.

8

Needless to say, this knowledge, much like any knowledge, confers immense power, and this

power in turn shapes, and has already shaped, the types of knowledge expressed. It has needed to

be said however, and it was said in a Western context with most clarity by French philosopher

Michel Foucault.

Foucault posits that knowledge and power are intertwined and inseparable, as the

one needs and defines the other.24 Power has its origin in knowledge, knowledge that one party

has over another, while Knowledge, its acquisition and dissolution, is always an exercise of

power. Once you understand something, you can control it, meaning the mere (f)act of knowing

is power.25 When it comes to video games, their visual and textual presentations are shaped by

power, economic and political, but also by assumed and acquired knowledges, both cultural and

technological. Games do require its players to learn, learn rules to be able to act in the system,

understand visual techniques in order to appreciate the aesthetic experience and interpret social

dynamics to be able to actually play the game. Every one of these is an act of and in relation to

power, but beyond this the presentation of games, and especially video games, make use of

combined complexes of meaning, from cinematic emphasis to rhetorical tropes, that in

themselves are complexes of knowledge and power.

Lastly, games are also at their hearts systems and rules of interaction, and these

systems sometimes function as micro-cosmoses of societal structure, where externally defined

rules are followed by the majority of participants, and layers of informal policies of conduct are

navigated, while actors push against the limits and definitions of both rules and policies,

tempered by the level and type of discipline that transgression provokes.26 Video games are thus

highly discursive objects, with both overt representational discourse and structural instituted

forms of discourse guiding the actions and consequences within their representation, and this

thesis investigates that cluster of discourses, and their relation to the historical, political and

postcolonial discourses that surround them.

Visual Culture Studies

Visual culture is at its heart about looking and seeing, about gazes and perspectives, and these

form the core of the questions that will be asked of the material in this thesis. Who is (presumed

to be) looking, and how does their position (in the broadest sense), experience and intention

24 Foucault, 1978, pp. 92-98. 25 Foucault, 1978, pp. 98-102. 26 Cf. the role of Discipline as envisioned as a governmental form of control by Foucault, M., Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans. A. Sheridan, London, Penguin, 1977, pp. 192-194.

9

inform what they see? What gazes are permitted, encouraged or enforced through the games, and

what choices of perspective are we as players given? For there are many ways to approach an

interactive medium, but all of the ways of seeing, be it through disinterested glancing, engaged

scouring or terrified peeking, are defined and conditioned by the structure and presentation of

the game. Video games are engaged in the construction of certain visualities, but only part of that

construction takes place inside the computer. Using visual culture studies, I will engage the role

of perspective, symbolism and ‘scopic regimes,’ as it could be applied to video games.

‘Scopic regime,’ in the sense of a visual model, or series of techniques and norms

forming a visual practice, was a term originally used by film scholar Christian Metz to distinguish,

by means of psychoanalysis, film as a medium opposed to theatre.27 Historian Martin Jay has

since employed it in defining dominant forms of visual discourse within art historical periods,

while discussing the fractured and parallel existence of scopic regimes in modern visuality.28 I will

use the term as a way of defining specific ways of seeing, given by the presentation and rules of

specific video games. Thereby, I will also somewhat follow in the footsteps of both Metz and Jay,

in highlighting some of the unique qualities evident in video games vis-à-vis e.g. film, while also

charting some of the many different ‘subcultures’ present in modern video games.29 The

dominant forms of visual representations within video games are descendants and proponents of

linear Cartesian (and Albertian) perspective, showing that the ideals of rationalism and

‘scientism,’ despite some of Jay’s fears, reign supreme in at least one modern visual medium.30 As

video games employ their scopic regimes to guide expectations as to what it is possible to see,

envision, know and ultimately enact within the game itself, I shall seek to highlight what

ideological positions and power relations are expressed through this practice.

Inside the framing of perspective and scopic regimes, video games also engage

different visual discourses that are used as symbolical logics that are simply taken for granted.

The French linguist and philosopher Roland Barthes terms these kinds of efforts to present a

depoliticised, naturalised picture of the world as ‘myths.’ Myths are conceptualised as a ‘second-

order semiological system,’ which encompasses several signs to create a self-evident, and thus

27 Metz, C., ‘From the Imaginary Signifier’, in L. Braudy & M. Cohen (eds.), Film theory and criticism: introductory readings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 703-705. 28 Jay, M., ‘Scopic regimes of modernity’, in H. Foster (ed.), Vision and Visuality, Seattle, Bay Press, 1988, pp. 3-23. 29 Similar to Jay’s (1988) subcultures present in modern visuality, subcultures have also started to increasingly be heard and seen in writing, such as in Anthropy, A., Rise of the videogame zinesters: how freaks, normals, amateurs, artists, dreamers, dropouts, queers, housewives, and people like you are taking back an art form, New York, Seven Stories Press, 2012. 30 Although Jay finishes the article in a fairly pluralist and anti-hierarchical fashion, his lament for the ‘dethroning of Cartesian perspectivalism’ manages to include some distressing observations tying the lack of such regimes to the ‘lack’ of indigenous scientific revolutions in ‘Eastern cultures.’ (1988, pp. 19-20) This is not only spuriously speculative, but also incredibly dismissive of the rich culture of invention and discovery outside of the ‘West.’ This lamentable attitude sadly remains unaddressed, even when Jay revisits his text two decades later (‘Scopic regimes of modernity revisited’, in I. Heywood & B. Sandwell (eds.), The handbook of visual culture, London, Bloomsbury, 2011, pp. 103-114).

10

unexplained, symbolic world, a collection of assumptions regarding meaning that tries to make a

certain power relation so obvious that it in effect becomes invisible.31 These myths are prevalent

in all forms of media, but in video games texts, audio-visuals and rule systems can work together

to further enforce the assumed actions and perspectives of any given myth.

Video games include the aspect of acting within a representation, defining not just

who can look, but who can act and how, which introduces a crucial element of agency and

control. Foucault’s ideas of control through discipline in turn emphasizes the importance of seeing

in defining and dominating discourse, but also how being seen directly and indirectly controls a

subject’s freedom of movement and action.32 Video games’ different forms of control can be

seen as a furthering of the all-seeing eye of the ‘panopticon’ extending its grasp beyond

surveillance into the realm of puppetry.33 But power is also expressed in restrictions on looking,

and restrictions on what is looked at critically. Perspectives imply direction and interest, and the

shadowland where the eye does not focus its attention remains uninspected, and ultimately

accepted as unproblematic, or natural.

Visual scholar Nicholas Mirzoeff has highlighted how colonial power constantly

seeks to control perspectives and gazes.34 Video games, as didactic tools that exert immense

effort in grabbing the player’s attention and directing their gaze are prime examples of presenting

hegemonic ways of looking at the world and its landscapes, and they have many layers of

signification, only some of which I will be able to unravel here. The hope is to hereby, at least in

part, follow visual scholar Mieke Bal’s call for visual culture studies to critically analyse ‘the

master narratives, that are presented as natural, universal, true and inevitable, and dislodge them

so that alternate narratives can become visible.’35 This naturalisation of specific discourses and

power relations is endemic of cultural objects, and seldom is the colonial heritage of Western

culture more evident than in landscapes and their depictions.

Space, Place and Landscape

There are multiple power relations embedded within the practice of looking, from perspective

and signifiers employed, to the choice of what is represented to begin with. Visual scholar W.J.T.

Mitchell emphasises how certain visualities are a necessary complement to the use of force 31 Barthes, R., Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers, London, Vintage Classics, 2009 (1957), pp. 114-115. 32 Foucault, M., 1977, pp 195-200. 33 The Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham’s prison based on constant threat of surveillance through architecture, was theorized by Foucault (1977, pp. 200-228) as a model for governmental behavioural control through surveillance. 34 Mirzoeff, 2011, pp. 10-13. 35 Bal, M., ‘Visual essentialism and the object of visual culture’, Journal of visual culture, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003, pp. 5-23.

11

employed by coloniality. In the genre of landscape, as visual representation of terrain, space and

nature are combined to form a discourse of hegemony. As a medium, landscape is concerned

with the exchange between the human and the natural, the self and the other, and has been since

the inception of its current tradition.36 Mitchell continues: [Landscape] is an instrument of cultural power, perhaps even an agent of power that is (or

frequently represents itself as) independent of human intentions. Landscape as a cultural

medium thus has a double role with respect to something like ideology: it naturalizes a cultural

social construction, representing an artificial world as if it were simply given and inevitable, and

it also makes that representation operational by interpellating its beholder in some more or less

determinate relation to its givenness as sight and site.37

It is this tendency to present something as given, as the natural order of things that is both

insidious, and important to highlight, as it serves to normalize a certain worldview, a certain

relation of power. A related visuality is present most clearly in video games, especially within

certain genres, and it is just as implicitly and explicitly tied to cultural and military dominance as

any of the media preceding it.

Landscape painting can, according to Mitchell, be understood ‘as a representation

of something that is already a representation in its own right;’ but also a ‘marketable commodity’

that adds tangible value (the view from an apartment, the tourism of a region). Video games trade

in these representations, whether or not their inspirational representations are based on physical

terrain or people, or on some variation of specific or cultural myths (in Barthes’ sense).

Simultaneously, landscape can (following Marx) represent itself as of invaluable, ‘inexhaustible

spiritual value.’ Landscape becomes the antithesis of Land, the ideal estate versus the real estate

(that is the mineral, vegetative, water and habitation resources; i.e. finite, exhaustible assets).38

Video games offer a multiple viewing of landscape as both, extracting its ‘real’ value of

exploitable resources, and engaging in almost sublime spectatorship of the ideal estate.

Landscape’s position is therefore crucial in mediating the natural to the cultural, in making a

‘natural’ representation of ‘nature’ seem fundamentally ‘natural,’ as it has always played on the

idea of the Real and the Imaginary, making claims of representing a reality that is ‘natural.’

But landscape can also frequently tell us about the presumed spectator. British

geographer Jay Appleton compares ways of looking at a landscape to animal behaviours,

36 Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Imperial Landscape’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and power, 2nd ed., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002a, p. 7, meaning landscape as the ‘pure,’ modern, western European phenomenon that emerged in the 17th century, peaked in the late 19th, and can be said to have a certain resurgence in the current era. It originated as an aspect of the medium of painting, but has arguably defined new ways of seeing, and since travelled to many other media. 37 Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Introduction’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and power, 2nd ed., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002b, p. 2. 38 Mitchell, 2002a, pp. 14-16.

12

comparing the dominant gaze to the eye of a predator, seeking to identify dangers, shelters and

potential targets.39 Appleton’s spectator, placed in a privileged protected space, is made safe by

the frame of the picture, but also becomes removed, and assumed as universal. They are made

complicit in the creation of a universality that accepts the hegemonic, imperial discourse.

The semiological features of a landscape are often implicated in the discourse of

imperialism, painting the space where an empire, in the words of Mitchell, can move ‘outward in

space as a way of moving forward in time.’40 This expansionist practice is modelled in video

games to a very practical extent, as evidenced in several explicitly colonial games that form part

of the material. Game scholar Soraya Murray has further observed how video game landscapes

can lay the ground, both physically and metaphorically, for colonial fantasies and power

structures to be played out through both time and space.41

The Chinese-American human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan puts it perhaps most

concisely when he states that landscape simultaneously combines the concepts of ‘domain’ and

‘scenery.’ It combines the politico-economic discourse with that of aesthetics, fusing perspectives

and enriching and confusing the imagination by combining the objective and the subjective.42 As

Murray points out, much video game activity revolves around controlling a domain, and the way

in which that domain is presented, the details of the scenery, creates a visual space of power

relations.43

These power relations define what activities and interactivities are possible in these

spaces, the formal aspects of which have been theorised thoroughly by game and architecture

scholar Michael Nitsche. He points out that, in virtual worlds, there is no ‘natural’ or ‘given’

perspective, instead conventions have been borrowed from art history, architecture and cinema,

and often necessarily introduce the body as a grounding element.44 These spaces are thus

consciously constructed using familiar tools and techniques, and this mediated space becomes the

playground for the discursive pull between text, image and action.

Nitsche further points to how myth and symbolism are engaged to create a sense

of specific, and oftentimes sacred, place, within the larger representation of video games. This

definition of place focuses on both the idea of virtual presence and virtual signification, and in

this thesis, I will primarily focus on the latter type, exemplified in Nitsche’s text by efforts to 39 The Experience of Landscape by Jay Appleton (p. 31), as summarised by Mitchell (2002a, p. 16). 40 Mitchell, 2002a, p. 17. 41 Murray, S., On video games: the visual politics of race, gender and space, London, I.B. Tauris, 2018, pp. 141-182. 42 Tuan, Y.-F., ‘Sign and Metaphor’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 68, no. 3, 1978, p. 366: ‘Take the word “landscape.” It is a diaphor in the sense that it derives its tensive meaning through combining to similar entities, “domain” and “scenery.” Domain belongs to the vocabulary of political and economic discourse. A domain or an estate can be surveyed and mapped; it can be viewed objectively from a theoretical point high above. Scenery, on the other hand, is an aesthetic term.’ 43 Murray, 2018, pp. 180-181. 44 Nitsche, M., Video game spaces: image, play, and structure in 3D worlds, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2008, pp. 77-78.

13

create specific sacred spaces, or recreations of highly symbolic monuments, such as the third

temple in Jerusalem.45

To conclude, I’d like to both agree and disagree with literary and games scholar

Clara Fernández-Vara when she points out that games’ ‘nature as performative, interactive,

participatory media makes them different from a film or a novel,’ as they define and affect the

way we play or act more directly than their peers.46 While broadly true, and at the core of what

makes games interesting, their heavy borrowing from both cinematic and literary tropes also

places them in a continuum together with films and novels, making it necessary to reflect

carefully on their interrelations. In the context of this thesis, this means that once we have looked

at how specific places are connoted, how spaces define the visual and interactive possibilities, and

how the experience of these landscapes is framed within particular scopic regimes, we will have to

carefully consider how these relate to other examples both within and outside the medium.

Method

To properly get an overview of the different visual, spatial and political discourses present in

video games during the period, it is necessary to employ several methods. First, a broader

understanding of the games of the chosen period is sought through quantifying formal and

aesthetic elements through quantitative analysis. As game scholar Miguel Sicart points out, this

allows us to speculate about the potentialities of the games, but to get deeper, into the actuality of

the games’ discourse, the games have to be experienced first-hand.47 After such a close reading,

both quantitative and qualitative analyses can be combined to gain a richer picture of the whole

material. The research has thus been separated into three segments; a quantitative content

analysis categorising and analysing US foreign intervention-representations in video games, two

qualitative compositional close-readings of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and ARMA 3 respectively,

and a tripartite comparative evaluation of the three preceding analyses.

Before digging into the meat of the methodology proper, there is a final framework

that needs exploring. As an approach to analysing a visual phenomenon, I have enjoyed great

assistance from the simple model of ‘four sites of an image’ coined by British feminist geographer

and visual scholar Gillian Rose; these four sites offer a prism through which one can examine the

different facets of an image, and how they contribute to defining its meaning.

45 Nitsche, 2008, pp. 191-195. 46 Fernández-Vara, C., Introduction to game analysis, New York, Routledge, 2015, p.201. 47 Sicart, M., The ethics of computer games, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2009, pp. 54-56.

14

Methodological framework

The conceptual ‘sites’ of the image are the production (1) of the image, the image (2) itself, its

distribution (3) and the context of its audiencing (4). These sites can then be further subdivided

into three different modalities; technological, compositional and social. All in all, the schema

suggested by Rose can be summarised as seen in table i.1.48 While the analysis will primarily focus

on the site of the image itself, it is important to note what constitutes the sites of production,

distribution and audiencing for video games, and their role (however small) in the quantitative

and qualitative studies respectively.

Sites and Modalities Modalities

Technological Compositional Social

Sites

Production Technologies used,

Limits/Possibilities

Medial context,

Genre

Why? By who, when,

where, for whom?

Image Visual effects Formal properties Visual meanings,

signification

Distribution Requirements,

Availability Format Marketing, Publicity

Audiencing Limitations

Forms of

audiencing,

Intertextuality

Reception,

Interpretation

Table i.1. Summary of the sites and modalities presented by Rose (2016, p. 20).

Games’ Site of Production quite often has a relatively high emphasis on the technological modality

compared to many other media,.49 When playing, it is easy to become aware of the programming,

processing and graphical limitations of both the hardware (the actual machines, computers or

consoles) and the software (the ‘game engine’ and different tools available to the developers),

dictating what level of detail and scope of visual fidelity and interactive possibility can be

offered.50 But the solutions to problems are often borrowed or copied between different

developers at both a theoretical and more direct level, leading to threads and currents running

through development, where innovations often build on existing models and quickly get

incorporated into their mesh. The formulas and models used are tied tightly to the genre the 48 Rose, G., Visual methodologies: an introduction to researching with visual materials, 4th ed., London, SAGE, 2016, p. 20. 49 Fernández-Vara compares how fans have a vocabulary to discuss the text of a novel, but mostly the techniques when discussing video games (2015, pp. 1-2). 50 These elements form a key part in the definition of the medium put forth in Skaff Elias, G., Garfield, R. & Gutschera, K. R., Characteristics of games, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2012.

15

game aims to emulate, meaning that while there are doubtless myriads of interesting design

decisions taken on a technological, mechanical level, much of the framework and thus final

formal elements of the game get dictated in the compositional modality of the production.51 The

highly economically driven video game industry also emphasises trends with comparison and

competition in a time-sensitive and crowded market central to many studios.52 The result, at least

within the mainstream, are products with specified target demographics, trying to capture both a

zeitgeist and a moderate level of innovation. It is not hard to see how this social modality of the

production can hold the key to understanding ideology, context and intention behind a given

game. In my study, I will include a thorough examination of genre as a defining element of the

quantitative analysis, while the case studies will not go into detail about the production, other

than to give a basic context, and some tentative hypotheses regarding influences.

The Site of the Image is the game itself, and is the core of the analyses carried out in

the thesis. From the technological, visual spectacle, through the formal elements of both

representation and rules, through the wider context of signification and discourse, the object

itself takes centre stage. The quantitative study takes into account a superficial level, looking at

the most common formal (visual) elements, as well as how US symbolism is employed and

encoded. Conversely, the case studies will focus closely on the composition of the game space

and landscape, theorizing about signification both as a playing field and as ideological spectacle.

The Site of Distribution of games has seen important change within the period studied

in the increased viability of mobile and online gaming. The advent of smartphones, and services

like the Steam client, as well as dedicated online stores for consoles have shifted the focus away

from the distribution of physical discs markedly. Additionally, these developments, being both

technological and compositional in nature, have sparked social change both within and outside

the act of gaming itself, and also begin to intersect increasingly with the site of production

through open beta testing, user-created content and the rise of video game live-streaming. In the

quantitative part of this study, distribution will not be covered other than for which system any

given game was made available, while the case studies will discuss some of the repercussions of

different strategies of distribution, while not going into great detail.

Which brings us to the Site of Audiencing. In definitions of the medium, above all

those which try to emphasize its inherent uniqueness, interactivity recurs noticeably. The player is

seen as fundamentally different to the viewer, listener or reader, as they need to exert non-trivial

51 Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. provide deep discussion of game design, and how this process is played out through production (Rule of play: game design fundamentals, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2004). 52 The intrinsic relation to capitalism and commercial interests is interestingly explored in Dyer-Witheford, N. & de Peuter, G., Games of empire: global capitalism and video games, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

16

effort to be able to traverse the experience.53 Any review of the audiencing of video games needs

to take into account the often parallel activities of learning, applying and mastering of rules that

take place, in addition to the interpretative and affective exchange present in books and other

audio-visual media. Further understanding of a game through its audiencing includes studies of

the technological limitations for any given user, the composition of different ways a player may

engage with the game (including as ‘merely’ a spectator), and the wider social discussion and

reception of the game. The latter, social, modality is increasingly intertwined with the experience

of playing the game itself, with both external and internal communication channels being

available in many games to rate, discuss and share game experiences. The compositional modality

of audiencing is the only one that will be discussed in the case studies, with a focus on the

different game modes and associated (presumed) audience positions, as well as the intertextual

properties of each game, the latter also being noted in the comparative analysis.

While the analyses will touch upon several of Rose’s sites and modalities, the

central focus will rest on the image (or game) itself, with contextual references to the site of

production, and considerable reflections on audiencing as a player, especially in the second and

third chapters. There is unfortunately not enough time to thoroughly explore the site of

distribution; although its impact on the other three sites is significant, especially as the

technologies and customs of distribution have evolved over the time period; it will have to be

covered in some future research project.

Quantitative Analysis

The survey of games released between 2005 and 2014 has been undertaken using content

analysis, following media and communications scholar Philip Bell’s model of visual content

analysis through categorising and coding examples. This entails clearly defining the material that

will form part of the study, as well as declaring the motivation behind the selection. Furthermore,

it includes clearly defining categories (‘variables’) to be used when categorising (or coding) the

material, as well as the specific subcategories (‘values) identified, as well as precise criteria and

distinctions. Finally, it entails carefully discussing the statistical methods used to collate the data,

and discussing the possible bias, corruption and obstruction achieved thereby, all of which will be

done in detail in the chapter on the quantitative analysis.54

53 Aarseth, E. J., Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. 1. 54 Bell, P., ‘Content analysis of visual images’, in T. van Leeuwen, & C. Jewitt (eds.), Handbook of visual analysis, London, SAGE, 2001, pp. 92-118.

17

The aim is to get an overview of the large sample of games, 165 in total, and to as part of the

exercise, help define, refine and redefine the ideas behind the original categories, such as types of

intervention, game genres and the prevalence of certain geopolitical regions. The process of

gathering the material, defining the variables and coding the values has been repeated three times,

each time refining the definitions of the categories, in order to get as precise and dependable

values as possible.

That said, the statistical material that results from this content analysis is still prone

to significant margins of error, primarily since the main method of identifying a game’s values has

been through watching video footage and reading professional, enthusiast and commercial

descriptions of the games, rather than playing the games themselves. All in all, the material was

coded according to ten variables, with most including four to seven discreet values, with

additional publication information (year of release, developer company) added for context.

Qualitative analysis

‘Video games that render land make claims about space, place and landscape. As the many forms of landscape that came before them, games are tools of power, and particularly

in relation to lived spaces, may be thought of as connected to imperialist expansion.’ 55

The qualitative aspect of this research will consist of close readings of two games with a focus on

game spaces and landscape. It will examine the central claim of the above quote from Murray, i.e.

the relation of power and imperialism to the rendering of place, space and landscape within the

games.

Place is the experience of everything that connotes and denotes a certain ideological

cluster, or myth. It includes everything that symbolizes specific locations, or explicit cultural or

geographic experiences or situations, but also common everyday details, such as bushes, trees,

rocks and off-road space buggies.56 Space, in turn, posits the position of the player and player

character within the terrain, and interrogates the experience of spatiality itself, as well as how the

player can act and interact within the space. Murray’s ‘predatory vision,’ surveying the landscape,

is here potentially put into practice, as the ‘activated’ seeing of the player guides them as to what

55 Murray, 2018, p. 180. 56 Place includes both connotation, as cultural associations, and denotation, as the first layer of ‘obvious’ signification of the image (as explained in Barthes, R., Image Music Text, trans. S. Heath, London, Fontana Press, 1977, pp. 33-46). It thus summarises most of that which contributes to the sense of the ‘real,’ but by including denotation and connotation as equal levels of signification, I also question Erwin Panofsky’s separation of the two, and the concept of universal signs contained therein (Meaning in the Visual Arts, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982).

18

they can actually ‘do’ in this place.57 Finally, landscape forms the frame, the dominant visual

perspective that harks back to earlier forms of representation. Central questions to be answered

here of the visual perspective of the player, as well as the compositional connotations of mise en

scene, line of sight and aesthetic presentation.58

Close readings, as the considered study, description and analysis of visual

phenomena, are premiered within visual culture studies due to the high level of interpretation and

deeper understanding of the object that it entails.59 This departs from an understanding that the

individual experience of visual phenomena subjectively affects the understanding and meaning

creation taking place through audiencing. It is therefore important to be open about how the

phenomena was experienced, and to describe both the visual details perceived, as well as the

subjective experience itself. Within game studies however, there are some very real structural

differences to how you choose to go about a close reading, or playing, of a game, and following

the example of Fernández-Vara, this approach should be clearly outlined.60 So, Arma 3 and

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have been played approximately 20 hours each by me, the researcher,

playing through the respective single-player campaigns at regular difficulty, with the last act, Win,

of Arma 3 played on ‘Recruit’ difficulty. In both games, I have tested most multiplayer modes

included in the base game, but have not played them more than three hours in total. Lastly, when

confirming details of the description and dialogue I have made liberal use of video footage

available online, as well as walkthroughs and fan-maintained wiki-pages, of which the main ones

are summarised in the references as part of the internetography.

Comparative Analysis

To really bring out the potential underlying themes and contrasts found in the preceding

chapters, the results will be cross-compared through discourse analysis. Beginning with

Foucault’s observations regarding the relationship between Knowledge and Power, and how

these result in structures and institutions of both, I will focus on identifying patterns in the

material, discussing exceptions, and finally exploring some of the context regarding these

examples. This approach follows that outlined by psychology professors Linda A. Wood and Rolf

57 Murray, 2018, pp. 169-172, like Mitchell, referring to Appleton’s eye of the predator. 58 According to Nitsche, the experience of space in video games can be seen to work in five analytical planes: rule-based, mediated, fictional, play and social (2008, pp. 15-17). 59 As presented, discussed and critiqued in Elkins, J., Visual studies: a sceptical introduction, New York, Routledge, 2003, pp. 37-42. 60 Fernández-Vara, 2015, pp. 27-40.

19

O. Kroger, but necessarily adapted to primarily visual material.61 As such, the patterns discussed

will be both of visual perceptions, narrative themes and rules structures in the games themselves.

The visual elements will be interrogated through compositional analysis, borrowing

terms from both film scholar James Monaco regarding framing, editing and mise-en-scène, and

Nitsche when it comes to the specifics of video game spaces and visual structures.62 Meanwhile,

the narrative themes will mostly be using straightforward discourse analysis, focusing on what

concepts are employed to strengthen or undermine ideas of Power in the narrative. Lastly,

reflections on the rule structures primarily depart from the understanding of games as moral

objects, imbued with implicit ethical stances offered to players, both through strict rules and

through the presentation itself, as posited by Sicart.63 Through these multiple perspectives, we can

hopefully see the interconnectedness of the different elements of play experience, and how they

combine with external context to engage in more or less explicit discourses through word, action

and image.

Previous Research

Video game scholarship has been concerned with its nature as an interdisciplinary field of study

since its inception, from the definition of ‘ludology’ and its constituting opposition to

‘narratology,’ perceived as an appropriation of an independent medium by more established

cultural sciences.64 However, since its fractious first years, the field has diversified and grown in

depth, both from within and from ‘without,’ albeit with limited input from a visual culture studies

perspective. Most recently, Murray has argued for video games as a complex form of visual

culture, and consequently for the need for interdisciplinary expertise in untangling the meanings

and power dynamics contained therein, which is what this thesis is aiming to do.65

The ongoing debate on defining the distinguishing features of games, and the

meaning and impact of them, has been conducted simultaneously from an academic, design and

61 Wood, L. A., Kroger, R. O., Doing discourse analysis: methods for studying action in talk and text, London, SAGE, 2000, pp. 117-142. 62 Monaco, J., (How to read a film: movies, media, multimedia, 3rd ed., Oxford, Oxford university press, 2000) and Nitsche (2008) respectively. 63 Sicart, 2009. 64 Some key perceived fractures laid out in Frasca, G., ‘Lugology meets narratology: similitudes and differences between (video)games and narrative’, originally published in Finnish in Parnasso, vol. 3, 1999, pp. 365-371, http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm, (accessed 6 September 2018), and somewhat debunked in Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2013, pp. 214-216. 65 Murray, 2018, pp. 42-46.

20

journalistic point of view, providing many contradictory models.66 One succinct model was put

forward by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek when they proposed their MDA

(Mechanics-Dynamic-Aesthetics) model for formal game design. It primarily separates games’

formal elements between mechanics (hard-wired rules), dynamics (the resulting interaction

between players and the rules system) and aesthetics (emotional and synesthetic experience and

response of players). Media scholar Henry Jenkins further discusses narrative typologies as

presented in video games, summarising them as either evoked, enacted, embedded or emergent.

He focuses primarily on the player relation to the narrative, i.e. whether it relies on external

references, the player participating in acting it out, through exploration of the simulation or as an

unscripted interaction between the rules of the game itself.67 Whilst this is a useful distinction, it

doesn’t delve deeper into the affective interaction possible between player and game, as well as

the game and its wider cultural context.

The aesthetics and the visual design of video games may be different to other

media, but they still borrow heavily from established conventions, especially visual ones. Study

into the ideological dimensions of (primarily) conflict-based video games has gone in several

directions, concerning itself with many facets of both the experiential and theoretical. Research

has ranged from the politicized debate on the effects of viscerally violent games, through

investigations into ties between propagandistic narratives and economic, political and military

interests, and more recently an increased focus on postcolonial readings of a hitherto ‘West’-

centric discourse. As pertains to this thesis, the following concepts have been broached in

previous research.

The recurring debate in mass media coverage regards violence; with much discussion

focusing on measurable increases in aggression, while ignoring the larger ideological and affective

consequences. Media and communication scholars Ruth Festl, Michael Scharkow and Thorsten

Quandt conducted a study in Germany, suggesting a lack of correlation between gaming (or even

war gaming) and militaristic attitudes.68 Meanwhile, political scientist Marcus Schulzke questions

the empirical foundation for criticizing military games, meaning that simple statements regarding

structural and institutional links between video games and military are not enough, but that the

66 These models depend a lot on what is considered part of the games studies, from board-game centric cultural historical summaries (Parlett, D., The oxford history of board games, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999 and Woods, S., Eurogames: the design, culture and play of modern European board games, Jefferson, McFarland & Company, 2012), to technologically minded histories of video game development, to theoretical frameworks for designing games (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004) or understanding the cultural and social stances and processes taking place within. 67 Jenkins uses the improvised repetition of known archetypes and narratives seen in commedia dell’arte as an external example of the structured playfulness of enacted narratives. (Jenkins, H., ‘Game design as narrative architecture’, in N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (eds.), First person: new media as story, performance and game, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2004, pp. 123-129). 68 Festl, R., Scharkow, M. & Quandt, T., ‘Militaristic attitudes and the use of digital games’, Games and culture, vol. 8, no. 6, 2013, pp. 392-407.

21

ideological content should be examined.69 While I disagree with the perceived limitations with

stating biases, both ideological and economical, the ideological content, or perhaps more fittingly,

the discourse (visual or otherwise) of video games merits great attention. In studying representations

of Arabs in video games before 2005, media scholar Vít Šisler emphasises the three facets that

contribute to a flattening of people into stereotypes: game mechanics, narrative and visual

signifiers.70 Furthermore, it has been shown that stereotypical depictions, in admittedly simplistic

tests, can prime negative attitudes, and that there’s a link between terrorists and Arabs, even

though Arabs need not necessarily be depicted in the actual game.71 While these kind of

immediate impact studies have their limits in terms of measuring long term effects, not to

mention levels of exposure on a daily basis,72 it illustrates some of the inherent complexities of

charting causes and effects.

Film scholar Matthew Thomas Payne points to the multifaceted rhetoric employed

in video game marketing, having to take on the problems of selling a war game based on its

‘realism,’ yet simultaneously safeguarding its non-political status. These games try to be

considered innocent, time-wasting, ultimately meaningless forms of fun, in order to repel serious

questions about their ideological content. At the same time much of their jockeying for attention

in an oversaturated, competitive market often centres on the visceral nature of its experiences,

and their realistic renditions of both their settings and these acts of violence (this primarily

applies to the ‘AAA’ FPS-market). This is done partially by some levels of anonymity, and cries

of ‘it’s just a game,’ but also through tongue-in-cheek pre-emptive mocking of moralising

standpoints.73 This inherent contradiction is touched upon by an Australian study, asking how

simultaneous claims of ‘innocence’ or harmlessness of games rhyme with ideologies of

gamification and training (including military).74

Communication scholars David Machin and Theo van Leeuwen’s description of

the predominance of a special forces discourse, shared between military movies and games, highlights

how conventions of genre can have a defining effect. Focusing on a small unit of highly 69 Schulzke, M., ‘Rethinking military gaming: America’s Army and its critics’, Games and culture, vol. 8, no. 2, 2013, p. 72. 70 Šisler, V., ‘Digital Arabs: representation in video games’, European journal of cultural studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 2008, pp. 215-216. 71More specifically, a study has traced an increase in hostility towards Arabs when playing games with ‘terrorist’ characters, regardless if the representation itself uses signifiers for Arabic or other cultural heritages (Saleem, M. & Anderson, C. A., ‘Arabs as terrorists: effects of stereotypes within vioent contexts on attitudes, perceptions, and affect’, Psychology of violence, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 84-99). 72 Festl et al. (2013) tried to take both of these into account, but the self-selectiveness of their test group, as well as the fairly straightforward nature of the questionnaire used introduces high levels of conscious subjective variability on the parts of the test subjects. 73 Payne, M. T., ‘Marketing military realism in Call of Duty 4: modern warfare’, Games and culture, vol. 7, no. 4, 2012, pp. 305-327. 74 Sparrow, R., Harrison, R., Oakley, J. & Keogh, B., ‘Playing for fun, training for war: can popular claims about recreational video gaming and military simulations be reconciled?’, Games and culture, vol. 13, no. 2, 2018, pp. 174-192.

22

specialised operatives ‘doing what is necessary’ to protect an innocent civilian population,75 this

discourse forms part of military-themed and -sponsored uses of media, such as America’s Army,

which expresses and perpetuates a pervasive militarization of popular culture in the US cultural

sphere. Anthropologist Robertson Allen notes the way that the multimedial nature of modern

video games blur the lines between war’s fighting, war’s imagining, and war’s mobilization.76

In this anxious discursive dreamwork, the perceived adversary often takes centre

stage. According to a study conducted by Australian games and media scholars Michael Hitchens,

Bronwin Patrickson and Sherman Young, the favoured opponent of first-person shooters shifts

from supernatural, alien or criminal organisations towards political and terrorist enemies between

1992 and 2009. They also note that less than a week after the assassination of Osama bin Laden

in 2011, a mission recreating the mission was released for the first-person shooter game

Kuma/War, illustrating the interests from (some) players to engage with the enemy du jour

through their favoured ‘escapist’ medium.77 This engagement can be seen as a new militarising

form of postcolonial scholar Edward Said’s orientalism, and it is rife in these depictions.78

However, not all games have a culturally specific antagonist; perhaps most notably

the US Armed Forces’ own recruitment tool, the aforementioned America’s Army, has traditionally

employed indistinct or generic enemies in their simulations. Allen notes how the ‘unreal’ enemy

used is an enemy with minimal cultural, linguistic, or ethnic indicators and therefore one which is

simultaneously anonymous yet potentially anyone. Engagement, empathy and ultimately

enrolment with the US Armed Forces is encouraged by anecdotes where the virtual training (such

as basic medical training) provided by the game helped players enact life-saving assistance in the

real world.79 The arsenal of this neo-colonial imaginary is seemingly two-pronged, it engages both

culturally and geographically situated situations, playing out specific fears in the public arena,

while also stereotyping and universalising the enemy, strengthening the idea that the enemy might

come from anywhere, and hence anywhere and everywhere is precisely where the US Armed

Forces are allowed to penetrate.

Discussion and research on intervention has thus mainly been focused either on the violence

itself, evaluations of direct ties to industrial-military complexes, and the conception of the

75 Machin, D. & van Leeuwen, T., ‘Computer games as political discourse: the case of Black hawk down’, Journal of language and politics, vol. 4, no. 1, 2005, pp. 119-141, pp. 123-125. 76 Allen, R., 2011. 77 Hitchens et al., 2014, p. 13 and p. 4, respectively. Their analysis turns surprisingly toothless when referencing the military connections; they posit (in comparison with sports games), that in comparison to ideas of conspiracy, it seems more likely to be ‘an effective commercial arrangement between the parties involved,’ as if this would somehow make it harmless (p.7). 78 From Höglund, J., ‘Electronic empire: orientalism revisited in the military shooter’, Game studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, http://gamestudies.org/0801/articles/hoeglund, (accessed 6 September 2018), and Said, E. W., Culture and imperialism, London, Chatto & Windus, 1993, respectively. 79 Allen, 2011, pp. 53-56.

23

adversaries presented. This has been supplemented by new postcolonial readings of both the

overtly colonial aspects of many games set previous to the world wars, but also the hegemonic

discourses of the West, whiteness and masculinity that pervades the medium emphasized by

Murray.80 My aim is to add to these perspectives, following Murray’s example, especially her

chapter on the depiction of Afghanistan in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, while hopefully

adding some new readings of landscape that can also assist in the postcolonial reading of video

games conducted by literature scholar Souvik Mukherjee.81 Recent years has seen an expansion of

perspectives, from both academics, creators, writers, and any kind of game player, immensely

enriching the discussion,82 and my aim is to contribute a Foucaultian visual analysis of the role of

US power and authority abroad.

Definitions

The terms below have mostly been further elaborated on throughout this introduction, but I

present here the definitions that will be used of the most central terms in this thesis. They are

presented here in alphabetical order, for easier perusal.

Diegetic is a term borrowed from film and game music studies to designate those

parts of an aesthetic experience that are meant to be experienced as taking place within the

(diegesis) of the story being told (i.e. music being played on a saxophone by a character within a

film, vis-à-vis a soundtrack apparently emanating from a disembodied orchestra). Used in

conjunction with its counterpart, non-diegetic, i.e. outside of the fiction.

Discourse is employed here to encompass any form of communication in text or

through signs imbued with meaning, and is primarily used to define larger ideological power as

expressed and seen at play in utterings, works, genres and media.

Landscape encompasses both the wider impression of represented terrain as

experienced by a more detached spectator, and the symbolism implied therein, as well as the

translation of that experience to the traversal through that same representation.

Narrative is used in a very wide sense to include any series of events, presented

visually, aurally or haptically, that are, or can be, imbued with meaning by the game or the player.

Any collection of such events, be they sequential or not, that are experienced to have some level

of connection may be described as a narrative. Further, a meta-narrative is used to refer to

80 Murray (2018, pp. 96-109). 81 Mukherjee, S., Videogames and postcolonialism: empire plays back, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 82 Anthropy, 2012, being a diverse and engaging example publication.

24

recurring themes and causal logics that can be observed throughout an entire work, including

parts of the experience that are not strictly part of the diegesis.

Place, when used outside occasional colloquial phrasing, is deployed as the cultural

or geographic denotation of a represented location or region, i.e., how a representation creates a

sense of a specific place through associated visual symbols and myths.

Space is used, in the analysis, to designate a visual configuration which implies or

dictates the boundaries (or lack thereof) to movement, action and sight within the representation.

Space is taken to mean both the delimitation itself, as well as the embodied experience of the

inside as well as the outside of that delimitation.

Disposition

Following this introduction, the research will be presented in four chapters. The first will go into

greater detail about the delimitation, categorisation and results of the quantitative study. It will

begin with a run-through of the different coding categories, followed by a presentation of the

results according to the main groupings; interventions, places and spaces. Its final segment will

focus on synthesizing the results of the different groups, and analysing some of the trends and

themes thus uncovered.

The second and third chapters look into the qualitative case studies of Battlefield:

Bad Company 2 and Arma 3 respectively. They follow a parallel pattern, where the games are first

introduced within their general context, including their genres and type of intervention displayed.

The next section focuses on the sense of place given by (primarily) the games’ main story and

single-player campaign, followed by a summary of the different spaces envisioned by both terrain

depictions and game modes. Lastly, a detailed look at one mission from Arma 3, and the variety

of the maps in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will highlight both sense of place and space, and how

these interact with the experience of the visual landscape. Both chapters conclude, much as the

first one, with a summarising discussion of how the concepts of place, space and landscape are

mobilised and experienced through the different elements of the game.

The fourth and concluding chapter consists of a comparative analysis of the uses of

place, space and landscape respectively within the three different studies, before a broader

discussion closes things off with an analysis of the visual discourses and patterns discerned

through looking at intervention representations from both a contextual and a compositional

perspective.

25

CHAPTER 1: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

Introduction

To begin discussion of how US interventions have been depicted and played through in video

games, it is useful to have a basic overview to give context and grounding. Hence the choice to

conduct this content analysis, trying to capture a few of the salient features of US intervention

representations from 2005 to 2014. There have been many questions to answer to make the

analysis feasible, yet useful or enlightening, and these will be reviewed here.

Delimitation Revisited

The first question regards the delimitation of empirical material, which has been done through

three criteria, encompassing release date, technological modus and explicit representation. This

has been defined as follows:

The game must have had its first major release in North American or European

markets between 1st January 2005 and 31st December 2014. A game released earlier in, e.g., Japan

would still be included if its original release date in North European or European markets falls

within the specified time period. Similarly, a game released in, e.g., 2015 in North America, but

which had been released in 2014 in Europe, is also included. These release dates have been

compiled from publisher websites, review and review aggregate websites, as well as specialist

official console magazines (e.g. the Official Playstation Magazine).

The game must have been released for a non-mobile video game console, including

computer games, but not browser-based games. ‘Mobile consoles’ here refers to handheld gaming

platforms, such as the Playstation Portable, Nintendo DS, or Nokia NGage, as well as games for

mobile phones (smart or otherwise). The technological limitation of browser-based games

includes flash-games, as well as games hosted on social media sites; the game must require an

installation and/or download to qualify (this to further limit the sample size).

The game must contain an unequivocal representation of US military, diplomatic or

intelligence personnel engaged in a foreign country, after the conclusion of WWII. There are a

few grey areas to this approach, as many, many games contain metaphorical or proxy

representations of US agencies, agents and interests. Within the visual representation, as well as

through voicing of characters and rhetoric presentation, most fictional or vaguely defined

26

modern characters (be they military or civilian) can be assumed to be of US origin, if not

expressly defined otherwise, but unless they have been explicitly identified as of the US

government, any games containing these types of representations are not included in the study.

Following these limitations, the material was gathered, indexed and then

categorised through coding using content analysis; a process that was repeated three times.

Categorisation

Adapting Philip Bell’s model for visual content analysis, the next step is to define the categories

and variables used to interrogate the material (i.e. the 165 games studied).83 The variables were

continually updated during the collection of the material, as the scope and nature of it was

gradually revealed. Whilst many aspects, both contextual, technical and peripheral, were collected,

for coding this study limits itself to three main categories: types of intervention, the use of place,

and the visual representation of space. These in turn include a number of variables, summarised

as follows:

Interventions are coded following three variables: type of US intervention, US role

within the game, and the perceived type of adversary opposing the US. Intervention types are

divided into six values, mostly based on the perceived motivation or desired outcome for the US

in any given intervention: Counterterrorism, Covert Ops, Stabilization, Regime Change, and

outright state-on-state Warfare. The US roles vary between Protagonist, Ally, Optional Side,

Employer, Superpower and Antagonist,84 while the types of adversary follow those used by

Hitchens et al.: Terrorist, Supernatural, Extra-terrestrial, Political Enemy, Criminal group,

Scientific Abomination and Rogue Government Activity. Intervention types remain the variable

that has necessitated the most revision throughout the coding of the material, with the ‘Covert

Ops’-value a symptom of the overlap between motivation and operation. In some ways, the very

definition of these ‘types’ of intervention discourse is the heart of the study, and this process will

be revisited in more detail in the comparative analysis.

Places are primarily explored as specified locations in time and geographical space.

Hence, two clear variables were chosen; time period and geographical location represented. The

first follows conventionalised (though not unchallenged) divisions into the post-WWII periods of

the Cold War (1945-1991), Modern post-Cold War Era (1991-2020), the Near Future (2020-) and

83 Bell, 2001, p. 17. 84 ‘Antagonist’ was only found in three examples, but was more prevalent in adjacent material (e.g. games published outside Europe or North America, or games featuring the US in other time periods, or within its own borders).

27

a supplementary ‘Multiple’ value, for those games taking place across several periods.85

Geographical location is the only variable that allows for multiple values per game, as many

games represent multiple real world countries and regions. The main value coded is the country

where an intervention is set; countries are then grouped according to the United Nations

Statistics Division’s M49-standard for geographical regions to give an idea of the representation

of different parts of the world.86 Fictional locations are included within their imagined region,

although clearly marked as not actually based on an existing country.

Spaces are divided into five variables; perspective, dimension, stylisation, genre and

subgenre. Perspective includes first-person, third-person, and overhead (isometric or top-down)

views as values, while dimension notes whether the visual presentation uses two- or three-

dimensional graphical models. Stylisation is a three-step scale of the level of photorealism the

game is (aiming at) presenting, from filmic photorealism, through deliberate stylisation into

conscious abstraction or symbolism. These aspects are primarily defined by the games’ respective

genres; a difficult typology to use and define. I have chosen to employ broad motivational genres

(henceforth ‘meta-genre’) suggested by Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. (i.e. Action, Adventure, Process,

and Strategy) as a framework. These have been supplemented by two levels of subdivision, the

first trying to sum up the primary interaction (e.g. Action-Fighting, Action-Racing, Action-

Competing), still following Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., the second applying conventionalised genre

typologies to further specify the type of game (e.g. FPS, TPS, Vehicle Simulator).87

This is the basic setup of variables and values used for coding, with the full

definitions of all variables, and where necessary their respective values, available in Appendix 1.

Coding

The coding was carried out by me alone over the period of several months, and included making

use of several sources, both for defining and gathering the material, and analysing it. This

immediately raises concerns of subjective valorisation, and heightens the risks for mistakes or

misinterpretation. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, it was not feasible to conduct a more

controlled, devolved study, although this would be an excellent avenue for further research. In

order to ensure reliability, once the categories (values and variables) were clearly and finally 85 The idea of a continuous US policy, from before WWI into modern times, is further elaborated in the first chapters of Chomsky, 1991. 86 UNSD, ‘Methodology: standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49)’, United Nations Statistics Division, 2018, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/, (accessed 6 September 2018). These categorisations follow primarily geological and large-scale political guidelines, and are familiar to a Western worldview, with few exceptions. 87 Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2013, pp. 45-50.

28

defined, a reclassification of 50 examples was made after a one month hiatus, and the results were

compared with a >98% correlation.88

Primarily, where possible, first-hand experience of play or directly captured imagery

from the games were used (including YouTube-playthroughs and in the worst case promotional

material). Furthermore reviews, previews and summaries, as well as guides and walkthroughs

were consulted to assess primarily the third category (intervention), i.e. if and how US actors were

depicted. The mass of the material meant that this was the only viable way to collect all the

necessary data, but it does rely on third party descriptions, and as such introduces an unwanted

element of unreliability. For every game, at least two corroborating descriptions have been found,

and walkthroughs and detailed guides have been given preference, as their objective is generally

to give as detailed and correct information as possible. For the visual categories, every game has

been inspected through video footage, with the exception of two titles, where descriptions and at

least two separate still images of the game have been used.89 With only ≈10% of the games (18

out of 165, full list in the ludography) having been played to any significant extent by myself,

coding remains superficial, primarily noting the genre and general perspectives used.

This methodology shares similarities with the study conducted by Hitchens et al.,

focusing on the signifiers of FPS adversaries. They similarly used supplementary material to

account for games they were unable to personally play, with a comparable rate of approximately

10% of games played. I took the same steps as they did in comparing the secondary sources’

descriptions of games I had played with my own first-hand experience, and contented myself

with using only sources where no significant discrepancies or errors were found, to establish a

dependable level of accuracy in their content.90

Furthermore, the supplementary coding of adversaries has borrowed its

terminology from their study, to enable possible cross-referencing, especially since the time

periods overlap (as noted, their study covered the period from 1992 to 2009). Their definitions of

enemies are somewhat intersecting, which also highlights the difficulties inherent in creating these

kinds of categories, some problems with which will be gone over in the analysis.

In conclusion, the directed nature of the delimitation, coupled with the simplistic,

surface level method of coding, means that the results of this quantitative study can only strive

for broad indications of trends and practices. It is not possible to draw deep conclusions about 88 It is hardly stunning that I, as a researcher, agree with myself, but it is important to thus qualify the values and variables as clearly enough defined to be able to be repeated after some potential forgetfulness. However, for a continuation of this kind of study, I would strongly suggest something along Bell’s suggested line of three independent, trained coders, evaluated through test trial and subsequent observed agreement percentages tested against expected percentages (Bell, 2001, pp. 23-24.) 89 These titles are Air Assault Task Force (2006) and Special Operations Forces: Operation Eagle’s Talon (2006); having niche audience appeal and low budget respectively, both games have seen fairly low circulation. 90 Hitchens et al., 2014, p. 12.

29

what type of meaningful play is taking place within individual games or genres, nor to make

generalisations about genres or the medium as a whole, but it is possible to identify common

tropes and techniques employed when US agents are portrayed as acting abroad. The patterns

and usages of these symbolic markers, as well as the context and landscape where these are

portrayed as taking place, can give a useful outline of the major thrusts of discourse visible in the

material, as well as the associations and implications most often encountered when playing with,

against or as the fictional representations of US international power.

Coding Results

To get an overview of the results of the content analysis, the results have been condensed to a

handful of tables and charts, presented on the following pages. Tables exhibiting development

over time have been calculated with averages across two years at a time (i.e. 2004-2005, 2006-

2007, and so on), to concisely present data, and reduce large swings from year to year. The full

table of results is supplied in Appendix 1, but for now, let’s go through a few first impressions.

Interventions

One of the striking features when reviewing the result of the types of

intervention (see table 1.1) is the aggressive nature of the motivations

depicted. The explicit, sometimes implicit, goal ranges from

elimination of a designated enemy (Counterterrorism), the toppling

of a certain government (Regime Change) to outright total war

between nations (the key distinction of a full-scale war being

sovereign military forces clashing with large-scale deployments). The so-called Covert

Op(eration)s are also mostly offensive in nature, where the US frequently violently interferes in

other governments sovereignty, although its specifics and inclusion warrant further examination.

Following Machin and van Leeuwen’s special forces discourse present within certain

video game genres, I deemed it necessary to create the category of ‘Covert Ops’ as a complement

to the more clearly defined motivational types of intervention. This is because of the

overwhelming number of games that portray a small squad of elite soldiers performing a variety

of missions (mostly involving assassination or spying) behind sovereign borders. While some are

clearly tied to existing motivations (such as counterterrorism, stabilization and regime change),

Intervention % Counterterrorism 21% Covert Ops 16% Regime Change 13% Stabilization 9% Warfare 39% Other 2%

Table 1.1. Relative frequency of types of intervention

30

some are less clearly defined, aligned to less clearly defined goals, or simply combine some or all

of the above. Thus, the covert nature of these interventions has been judged to take precedence

over the others, and this is how the

category has been employed.

As seen in diagram 1.2,

the major change has been a steady

decline of all types of overt

depictions of US interventions. The

small changes that can be seen is an

early decline of Counterterrorism

examples, separate peaks for

Stabilization (2007-08) and Regime

changes (2010-2012), and a late surge

of less specific Covert Operations.

Out of these, only ‘Stabilization’ can be construed as somewhat ‘less aggressive,’ although it is

important to stress once again that these categories of intervention are primarily based on the

stated motivation from the US side, and their ultimate goal in the events depicted. Stabilization

thus implies a US aim of maintaining a current status quo, of entering into a region in order to

primarily defend an existing institution or government.

The few examples of intervention types that are not overtly aggressive in nature

include either intelligence personnel or peace-keeping forces. The latter, despite their name, are

not as passive as they may seem, as will be further explored in Chapter 3’s examination of one

such example, Arma 3.

Lastly, the perceived adversaries of the US presented are significantly skewed

towards two types; political enemies and terrorists (see table 1.3). These are clearly tied to the

‘warfare’ and ‘counterterrorism’ intervention types, but the major

difference as regards Hitchens et al’s results is probably due to the

focus on overt representations of the US abroad, which may have

skewed the results towards more ‘realistic’ conflicts, such as those

against the most often recurring identifiable adversary in the

material: Russia. These political conflicts thus seem to follow certain

Cold War logics, quite often repeated in a more modern context.

0

10

20

30

40

50

2005-06 2007-08 2009-2010 2011-2012 2013-2014

Intervention types over time(number of depictions)

Counterterrorism Covert Ops Other

Regime Change Stabilization Warfare

Diagram 1.2. Examples of different types of intervention from 2005 to 2014.

Adversaries % Aliens 1% Criminals 4% Political Enemies 64% Rogue Govt. Activity 2% Science 1% Supernatural 1% Terrorists 26%

Table 1.3. Relative frequency of adversary depictions

31

Places

The significance of representations of specific places becomes interesting in illuminating what

conflicts and what regions are considered interesting or commercially viable to depict. The places

chosen for the different interventions are potentially telling, especially when cross-referenced

with the different types of intervention.

Time periods are easy enough to categorise, but the locations depicted can vary

immensely between games, with some taking place entirely within one town, while others zip

between continents, visiting dozens of countries on the way. No weighting has been applied to

the results, but rather each instance of a depiction is counted, regardless of the time or space it

occupies within the actual game. This results in some games getting multiple data points, while

others barely gain one. The statistics for most charts are based on how many individual games a

specific region is represented in, e.g. if a game has parts set in both Bolivia and Argentina, it still

only gets counted as one representation of the South American (AM[S]) region.

Diagram 1.4 summarises all representations, including the complementary

categories of ‘worldwide’ (more than 15 regions represented) and ‘undefined’ (usually action

games set in exotic locations without clear cultural or geographical markers). We can immediately

notice the prevalence of Asia and Europe, with honourable mentions to North Africa (AF[N])

and South America. However, these different high scorers are part of very different discourse.

West Asia (AS[W], Eurocentrically known as the Middle East), North Africa, South America and

‘undefined’ regions are rife with counterterrorism, while Europe, Russia (AS[N]) and East Asia

(AS[E]) are most often locked in open warfare, when not being the target for a myriad of covert

operations, which in turn is the most usual intervention in the Carribbean (AM[E]).

177 2 4 4 4 11

2115 2

3224

1624

40

17 16 16 1317

819

10

AF[

N]

AF[

E]

AF[

S]

AF[

C]

AF[

W]

AM

[N]

AM

[E]

AM

[S]

AM

[C]

AN

T

AS[

N]

AS[

E]

AS[

S]

AS[

SE]

AS[

W]

AS[

C]

EU

[N]

EU

[E]

EU

[S]

EU

[W]

OCE

WO

RLD

UN

DE

F.

AFRICA AMERICA ANT ASIA EUROPE OCE OTHER

Representations per region

Diagram 1.4. Number of depictions of each geographic region,* including the complementary categories of ‘Worldwide’ and ‘Undefined. *There are a few idiosyncrasies of naming, namely AM[E] as the Carribbean, AS[N] as Asian Russia, AF[C] as Middle Africa.

32

If we cross-reference regional representation with types of intervention, we can get a top-three of

most represented regions for each type of intervention, seen in table 1.5.

Beyond our usual suspects of WANA (Western Asia and Northern Africa) and Russia, we also

see Southeast Asia appearing often in warfare, and this has a very simple contextual explanation;

the Vietnam War. Regarding real world conflicts, the Vietnam War enjoys the lion share of

representations encountered, with the Korean War only getting a few mentions. The Cuban

Missile Crisis is thematically present, but seldom fully played out, while the Gulf War and the

numerous interventions in former Yugoslavian and Latin American territories are not revisited

even once in the material, except in fictionalised form.91

Whether fictional or not, the interventions of the US are

predominantly represented as military in nature, and aggressive at that.

The locations chosen as setting vary between countries to protect,

defeat or coerce, and the most recurring individual countries are

summarised in table 1.6. The spectre of the Cold War, whether

reminisced or re-enacted, is joined with the phantasm of terrorism and

the protection of traditional Western European allies (for only a

fraction of the games imagines any of Germany, France or the UK as

enemies, or even neutral to the US).

The distribution across different

time periods has been heavily favouring modern

era (here meaning post-1990) conflicts, a trend

that just started losing prominence at the end

of the period. If we look at the relative

prevalence of the different time periods as a

percentage of all released titles, as in diagram

1.7, we can see a gradual increase in Cold War

era games, as well as those involving multiple

eras, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II switching

between a near future conflict and flashbacks

to the Cold War. 91 Arma 2 (2009) takes place in a fictional Caucasus region, while the Tropico-series (Tropico 3, 4, and 5 released 2009, 2011, and 2014, respectively) takes a satirical view of superpower intervention on a fictional Caribbean island.

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

2005-06 2007-08 2009-10 2011-12 2013-14

Relative frequency of period depictions over time

Cold War Modern Near future Multiple

Diagram 1.7. Percentage of time periods represented among intervention depictions, between 2005 and 2014.

Counterterr. Covert Ops Reg. Change Stabilization Warfare Other AS[W] 15% AS[N] 13% AS[W] 23% AS[W] 11% AS[SE] 11% WW 67% AF[N] 13% AS[W] 9% AS[N] 12% AS[E] 11% WW 11% AM[E] 33% AM[S] 9% AM[S] 8% AS[C] 12% AM[C] 11% AS[N] 10% AS[SE] 0%

Table 1.5. Three highest percentages of examples of regions per genre.

Country No. Reg. Russia 29 AS[N]

UK 14 EU[N]

Vietnam 14 AS[S]

Afghanistan 12 AS[W]

Mexico 11 AM[C]

France 10 EU[W]

Iraq 10 AS[W]

Germany 8 EU[W]

N. Korea 8 AS[E]

Table 1.6. Nine most recurring individual countries.

33

Spaces

The different types of spaces represented depends a lot on the genre

chosen for the game. With each genre comes a great deal of convention,

and one of the most easily defined and identified one is that of

perspective. As table 1.8 shows, the material consists primarily of games

presented in a first- or close third-person perspective (i.e. presented as though seen through a

camera placed at head height, or slightly behind and above, relative to the protagonist). This

comes down almost entirely to genre, especially as some genres actively allows players to change

between these. Games have been categorised according to the mode

that is preferred by the games default setting, but the issue highlights

some of the interpretative difficulties faced by a visual culture

perspective analysis. There is not always one fixed perspective to take

into account, but often multiple, and the degree to which there is

player agency and power in moving the virtual camera can sometimes

become the very essence of the game itself.92

Due to the comparatively homogenous nature of the material, the types of genres

found in the material include examples from a total of four ‘meta-genres,’ six ‘genres,’ and 13

different conventional ‘sub-genres’ (table 1.10). Table 1.9 shows the domination of fighting

games, taking more than two thirds of the share of

total games, although these fights can offer very

different experiences. Adventure games are very

focused on exploration of the environment, but

the only subgenre encountered is that of the

action-adventure, a hybrid genre shared with

Action games, who in turn are primarily divided

into different types of shooters. The outlier is the

vehicle simulations, which are shared with

simulation games, focused on the detailed

replication of real life processes, or most usually

specific military vehicles, from helicopters to

submarines.

92 Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2013, 124-131.

Perspective % 1st Person 35% 3P-Close 39% Isometric 17% Top-Down 9% Table 1.8. Relative frequency of perspectives.

Genre % Adventure - RPG 1% Action - Fighting 68% Process - Simulation 4% Process - Management 5%

Strategy - RTS 16% Strategy - TBS 7%

Table 1.9. Relative frequency of genres.

Meta-Genre Genre Subgenre %

Adventure Role-playing Action-Adv. 1%

Action Fighting

Action-Adv. 3% Shooter(Arcade) 6% Shooter(FPS) 34% Shooter(TPS) 13% Shooter(Stealth) 4% Vehicle Sim. 8%

Process Management Vehicle Sim. 4% Simulation Gvnmt. Sim. 5%

Strategy Colonisation

4X 3% Classic RTS 1%

Wargame Strategical 4% Tactical 15%

Table 1.10. Relative frequency of subgenres, with their genre and meta-genre categorisation.

34

Management or government simulations are the true

standout, merely because shooting enemies is not the

only or main activity that propels the game, while the

strategy category is almost exclusively about military

conflict and conquest, zoomed in or out to different

levels of detail. I have separated these into ‘pure’

wargames, mostly concerned with the military logistics

and combat itself, and the broader ‘colonisation’ games,

that have an element of occupation and exploitation of resources. Still, the three most common

genres in the material, FPS, TPS and Tactical Wargames, are all basically focused on small groups

of soldiers shooting moving and shooting their way through different terrains. Lastly,

photorealism dominates representations (see table 1.11), with stylization and abstraction mostly

present in zoomed-out strategical ‘god-like’ perspectives.

Summary

The means and perspective of presentation chosen for intervention representations present a

clear, if not surprising, picture. The vast majority are portrayed not only from a US perspective,

but from the viewpoint of the individual soldier or special forces member, heavily emphasising

the heroic, individual and romantic view of warfare and the role of US military in international

politics. Only 18 games restricts the player from playing as the US, and with very few dissenting

or opposing views, the visual presentation conveys the excitement, danger, of boots-on-ground

and behind-the-lines heroics, where the technologically benign US presence views a landscape it

can change while looking at it over the barrel of a gun.

There are a few questions that can be answered once the material is collated and

compared, and the first is very clear; out of the hundreds of US interventions enacted between

1945 and 2014,93 a very limited selection merited inclusion among the themes chosen to be

represented in video games from the last ten years of that period (Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan).

The locations chosen correspond both to real world conflicts, but also propaganda

narratives regarding possible future enemies, with direct conflicts with Russia and China the most

recurring tropes. The spaces reflected mostly follow the conventions of the different genres.

93 According to my (fairly generous) reinterpretation and consolidation of the data points provided by Salazar Torreon (2017), about 200 separate instances (unedited numbers reach >300, but that includes multiple mentions of effectively ongoing operations).

Genre Photor. Styliz. Abstr. Adventure - RPG 1 0 0 Action - Fighting 109 2 0 Process - Management 3 4 1

Process - Simulation 7 0 0 Strategy - RTS 14 11 2 Strategy - TBS 3 7 1

Totals: 137 24 4

Table 1.11. Examples of photorealism, stylization and abstraction per genre.

35

With action-games, and more specifically shooters, an intervention narrative often allows for the

presentation of varied and exotic locales while exploring cultural anxieties about foreign

interventions. The closer to the proverbial action we get, the more ‘photo-realistic’ the aesthetic

style gets. It is only when slightly removed that the presentations switches towards the more

openly stylized, sometimes cartoonish simplifications, and it is also here that we find the lonely

16 games presented in two dimensions. The close perspectives, first- or third-person, go hand-in-

hand with being ‘authentic,’ ‘realistic,’ and ‘visceral.’ This can be linked to a wish to reproduce as

closely as possible the convention of realistic televisual presentation, up to and including

replicating effects and defects.94

Once again, this quantitative study is nothing if not superficial. It has merely been

able to catalogue, imperfectly, certain narrative markers (US intervention, chosen location), game

genres and goals, and rudimentary framings of the visual perspective. It does not tell us much,

but it gives us an indication, a hunch, a sense of the context of different games, narratives and

styles used in portraying US intervention over the period. The changes seen over time are not

conclusive, and the very premise of focusing only on explicit portrayals of US action skews the

results into becoming somewhat predictable.

What we can see however are the broad strokes, the recurring themes and the

dominant forms. Of an issue that is logistically multifaceted, diplomatically complex and often

carried out with great secrecy, neither organisation, politics or espionage has taken the front seat.

Instead interpersonal violence dominates, predictably considering the overall thrust of the

medium over the period, together with its slightly removed ally, military strategy. Be it through

FPS:es, TPS:es, RTS:es or ‘Tactical Shooters,’ the clear majority of the games focus on killing

enemies. Furthermore, in keeping with Hollywood dramaturgy, and the traditions of the arcade,

the enemies are almost always numerically superior and dehumanised, while effort is expended to

make a small group of (often special forces) US military personnel recognisable and heroic. While

many of these things may seem inherent in the medium itself, the medium itself and its genres

and narrative conventions do not come out of nowhere. In terms of subtlety, the propagandist

message is far from unclear; US good – interchangeable ‘othered’ cultures,95 if not bad, then at

least deserving to die.

But in what way do these themes impact the games’ visuality, and how is this

visuality constructed by the games, as well as the culture around them? To look closer into this,

94 Murray (2018, pp. 154-157) discusses, through referencing Nitsche (2008), several different camera techniques emulated in certain genres, including the ‘aesthetics of lens-flare.’ 95 The ‘other,’ that which is dehumanised and placed as opposite to hegemonic discourses is comprehensively discussed, in terms of its importance for representation in Hall, S., ‘The spectacle of the “other”’, in S. Hall (ed.), Representation, 2nd ed., London, SAGE, 2013, pp. 215-287.

36

the examples of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Arma 3 have been chosen as they represent the

most prevalent genre, the shooter. But they have also been chosen because they highlight some

of the differences possible within the presentation of what is essentially the same activity;

controlling a digital avatar of a US soldier who kills foreign soldiers. The ironically

straightforward patriotism and jingoism of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 revels in the juvenile joy of

watching things explode, while the po-faced, earnest ‘war is hell’-quotes that frame Arma’s

military simulation sets the player’s mind to something more serious, more ‘real,’ something that

leads to quite distinctive experiences of fundamentally similar activities.

37

CHAPTER 2: CASE STUDY – BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2

‘Narration (Marlowe): Wars are fought for any number of reasons. Sometimes, if the ones they give you aren’t good enough, you have to find your own, and, maybe, if you’re lucky, you get out in one piece.

But in the end, I guess it’s really about the guys next to you.’96

Introduction

Developed by Swedish studio Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and released in early 2010 by US

electronics giant Electronic Arts for a worldwide market, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the sequel to

the series’ first attempt to emulate the success of Activision’s success with Call of Duty 4: Modern

Warfare. Crucially, the Bad Company-series also introduce an ironic distance and distinct (attempts

at) humour, through the insubordinate, immature and independent actions and motivations of

the members of its titular unit (the above quote is said over a video sequence in the original

game, where the protagonist steal a truck full of gold from their employers, the US Armed

Forces, effectively deserting for the second time).

The appeal of the ‘modern-era’ shooter experience is centred around the idea of

transposing the excitement of the first-person shooter game into contemporary fictional

conflicts, permitting an imaginary play within current catastrophes and fears, as well as playing

around with top of the line military hardware. Marketing material, as well as mission design

emphasize the idea of another kind of warfare than that employed in simulations of WWII, the

most recurring military theme of the period. First-person shooters’ norms and expectations, not

least the concept of near-endless hordes of enemies (in single-player) and large detachments

(multiplayer) facing off in set-piece battles, may appear at first blush to clash with the increasingly

irregular and hybrid nature of modern conflicts. However, if one ignores the vagueness of

politics, and the vagaries of civilians in warzones, the idea of Special Operations’ squads sent into

the middle of enemy territory perfectly fits the above-mentioned genres, and highlights the

outnumbered, heroic US soldiers facing off against the untold, but ultimately undeserving, other.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 as a game experience is centred around offering an

engaging, arcade-like playground, where it is easy to shoot, easy to change roles, and easy to drive

any vehicle encountered. This is evident in the approach to design, as well as in the mainstream

appeal hoped for in the writing and presentation. The mainstream, AAA, FPS is a genre entirely

of its own, and it is important to note that this game, as with many of its peers, was primarily

designed with online multiplayer in mind, with the goal of providing an engaging, easy to grasp,

exciting action spectacle. 96 Battlefield: Bad Company (2008), final mission.

38

Keep this in mind when we launch into a brief description of the narrative framing of the game,

primarily provided by the single-player campaign. Because, despite the prevalence and importance

of the multiplayer dimension, the single-player, together with the marketing materials (not

examined here), are crucial to understanding the framing of the play experience, and in mentally

preparing the player for the play activity, as well as contextualising the action on screen.

Places ‘Archangel: Bravo Two Actual, hold your fire, hold your fire.

Marlowe: I had him! We let that piece of shit go? Redford: You ain’t got shit on no one unless I say you do! Simmer the fuck down,

your time will come. Archangel, subject is gone, vehicle is still present. Archangel: Bravo Two Actual, the town has been declared hostile, secure the vehicle.’97

The game takes place during a fictional ‘Second Russo-American War,’ and the geographical

location for each individual mission of the game is indicated through a succession of zoom-ins

on a depiction of the globe, very

reminiscent of satellite imagery. It

serves both to give a geographical

context (although without borders

or infrastructure clearly indicated, it

mostly indicates an approximate

area in South America) but also to

ground the subsequent action in a

world surrounded by technological

surveillance and tracking

techniques, a world where military

uses of technology define how we

see the world. Once the missions

begin the player is often treated to a

panoramic shot, either via helicopter or other military vehicle, to take in the striking landscape,

before descending into the generally vastly restricted space of play.

Through the cinematic story presented in the single-player campaign, the player

follows the titular ‘Bad Company’ through Russia and various locales in South America, in

addition to a short prologue set in Japan during WWII. This prologue introduces the main focus

97 Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010), first mission after the prologue, ‘Cold War.’

Figure 2.1. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 uses technological satellite vision to enhance the sense of place, through a perspective of near-divine authority.

39

of the narrative, a weapon of mass destruction developed by the Japanese military, chased by the

two competing forces in the present day. The discussion quoted above takes place when the

player character (Preston Marlowe) is ordered to let an unknown enemy (or ‘piece of shit’) go,

establishing several relevant themes. Firstly, it introduces the main villain; this scene bookends

the narrative, as the game will end with Marlowe (finally) killing this unknown enemy, revealed to

be Russian agent Andrei Kirilenko). Secondly, it goes some way towards establishing the

personality of the main characters; irreverent jargon, near-insubordination, and a certain

disassociation with central command (represented by Archangel) portray the cohesion of the

squad. Lastly, on both a diegetic and non-diegetic level, it exemplifies the moral outlook and

approach of both protagonists and player; the last line sets the scene not just for this mission, but

for the whole game: the player can proceed to eliminate everyone that moves, they have after all

been declared ‘hostile.’ Before analysing the depictions of landscape in more detail, what follows

is a small summary, or travelogue if you will, of the places of this story.

The Locations

The prologue (‘Operation Aurora’) starts things off in the Sea of Japan. The choice of location

helps situate the game within the dominant narrative of WWII FPS-games, also tying the

machinations of the player characters into the righteous cause of US as Liberator.98 On the 6th

October 1944, the only given date in the entire game, a group of US soldiers are trying to find

and destroy a suspected Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD), a so-called ‘Scalar Weapon.’99

When one of these prologue characters notes that ‘we got atomic bombs, Krauts got V-2s, the

Japs have gotta have something,’ it both places an expectation and a confirmation of the US

paranoia towards any perceived adversaries secretly creating WMDs of their own. It

simultaneously highlights motivations for modern interventions such as the invasion of Iraq, and

retroactively justifies one of the largest instant losses of human life (i.e. the first use of an atomic

bomb offensively) as a necessity since the enemy (designated by disparaging, if historically

appropriate, slurs) also had that capability, and undoubtedly would have used it given the chance.

The mission itself goes through night to day, letting the player learn the ropes, while exploring 98 As previously noted, the earlier predominance of WWII settings, as well as the corresponding dearth of real world Cold War conflicts (with Vietnam the possible exception) suggests the relative ease of portraying US Armed Forces as the Good Guys; WWII may have been the last undeniably, uncritically, ‘just’ war, at least in video game world. 99 Within the narrated story, it is presented as an electro-magnetic pulse device (EMP), ostensibly capable of disabling electronics in a large radius, while leaving other infrastructure intact. The visual (and mechanical) effects of its detonation, as well as its testing blast, suggest a far more physically devastating weapon. This, together with the implications and urgency of the protagonists’ chase for it, motivates me to refer to it as a WMD, as that is the role it primarily fills in the game.

40

rope-bridged, exotically jungle-clad rocky islands, to finally make a failed escape in a stolen

submarine.

This is followed by an expository news-segment collage, focusing primarily on a

‘red disease’ spreading across the Eurasian continent, and most significantly into South America;

a perfect modern illustration of the worst paranoid ramblings of the cold war domino theory

ideologues. It follows this reductionist cold war logic by clearly identifying fully sovereign nations

as merely the playground for two superpowers, where they can either be free (i.e. subjugated to

US power and capital control) or subsumed under the red wave of Russia (in the post-1991 world

Russia somehow remains a credible military threat in and of itself, communism doesn’t even have

to be mentioned).

The global perspective then proceeds to zoom in on the Chukchi Peninsula, the

section of Russia closest to the Bering strait. The connotations of satellite imagery help to embed

the player in a military-technological mind-set, establishing a view of the world defined by

dominion of orbital space, as well as assisting in situating the approximate place of the

subsequent action. The mission (‘Cold War’) introduces the protagonists (as noted above), and

shift to a mountainous snowy vista, for a clear differentiation from the previous mission,

establishing a theme of shifting between ecologically and meteorologically spectacular locales, as

well as doubling down on stereotypes of the Russian homeland.

The second mission (‘Heart of Darkness’), is centred on Río Beni in the Amazon

Rainforest parts of Bolivia, with stone terraces and logging camps showing both cultural and civil

traces of inhabitation. Here the player is tasked with killing indigenous forces, who are termed

Guerrillas or Paramilitaries, with the search for a potential WMD (and the suggestive ‘red tide’ of

the introductory montage) the only rationale given for why the US soldiers are in this country

killing its presumed inhabitants. The title, Heart of Darkness, clearly references Joseph Conrad’s

1899 novella set in the Congo.100 This highlights parallels between the novel and the main thrust

of this, and the following (‘Upriver’), mission, as the protagonist (Preston Marlowe, whose name

references the novel’s Charles Marlow) and his comrades proceed deeper into the ‘wilderness’

along a jungle river.

Once out of the jungle, the action returns to its previous snowy peaks in the fourth

mission (‘Crack the Sky’), this time somewhere in the Mendoza province in Argentina (the game

merely specifies the place as ‘Las Montanas,’ a misspelled version of ‘the mountains’ in Spanish).

Through vertiginous action sequences the player is now facing off directly with Russian forces,101

100 Conrad, J., Heart of darkness, New York, Broadview Press, 1995 (1889). Although it is possibly more likely that they refer to its modern film adaptation Apocalypse Now, which despite attempts by its director, Francis Ford Coppola, hasn’t yet been made into a video game. 101 Argentinian guerrillas apparently don’t come as naturally to mind as Bolivian ones.

41

and once the WMD has been secured, they are faced with a battle with the elements

(‘Snowblind’), as Marlowe tries to navigate through a snowstorm on his own, without freezing to

death (or being shot) in the process.

The sixth (‘Heavy Metal’) and seventh (‘High Value Target’) missions sees the Bad

Company close to the border with Chile, joined by an armoured division of the regular US

Armed Forces, traversing ‘Aconcagua Village’ by tank. This segment takes place in a hilly,

autumn-coloured rural area, culminating in a short siege and subsequent assault of an uphill city.

The specific sense of place is becoming gradually less obvious; this sequence is (possibly) set in

either Parque Eólico de Talinay in Chile (a famous wind park), or the Puente del Inca in

Argentina (or possibly in both, neatly sidestepping the 400+ km distance between the two).

The adventures of Bad Company lead them on to the Atacama Desert (‘Sangre del

Toro’), as the WMD (or a part thereof) is tracked to the titular beached cargo ship. This mission

is more open than the previous ones, opting not to direct the player through a predetermined

advance through a narrow corridor. Instead, the map is opened up, and the protagonist proceeds

to navigate desert dunes and dissonantly large stone castles to neutralize three camps, in any

order, to finally triangulate the location of the WMD. Occasional sand storms, as well as heat

wave effects, bring home the threat of this third elemental extreme visited throughout the

campaign.

An interrupted helicopter ride with the squad’s ally, a heavily stereotyped hippie,

brings them to the location for the story's twist and finale. After parachuting into the Colombian

jungle (probably somewhere in the Valle del Cauca department), they meet up with their CIA

contact, codenamed Maguire, for the second time (‘No One Gets Left Behind’). The protagonists

hand over the WMD, only to find out that Maguire has turned turncoat after learning about his

father’s death as part of Operation Aurora (the prologue). He gets stabbed in the back (read: shot

fatally in the side) by his new confidant, the villain from the first mission, Kirilenko. Escaping the

subsequent ambush, Bad Company make a third and final jungle journey to an unnamed city,

where they arrive just in time to see the test detonation of the WMD (‘Zero Dark Thirty’). This

location is among the least specified, as no country is mentioned (the satellite zoom-in strongly

suggest Colombia), and the absolutely devastated city is not dignified with a name (a fan-created

wiki-webpage tentatively identifies it as Medellín, with no explanation as to why).102

The eponymous Bad Company then proceed through the wrecked cityscape

(‘Force Multiplier’) to catch Kirilenko’s plane, that carries the WMD towards it final detonation

destination, the USA. Once on the plane, the team detonates the weapon prematurely, and

102 ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, Battlefield Wiki, [website], 2018, http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Zero_Dark_Thirty, (accessed 6 September 2018).

42

Marlowe (and the player presumably) gets the satisfaction of jumping out of the airplane, shoot

Kirilenko in free fall, grabbing his parachute in the process (‘Airborne’). The final scene, set in

gloriously sun-kissed Texan fields, reveals that the Russian Federation has launched an invasion

across the Bering strait into Alaska, setting up a potential sequel.

Throughout, the sense of specific place, as both a cultural identity and a mapping

of a real-world terrain, is quite absent throughout this game. In the single-player campaign

locations are never defined by anything smaller than a region, and once settlements are

encountered, they bear no resemblance to any real-world city. The concept of South America is

employed not to engage with it in any invested sense, but merely to conjure the spectres of Cold

War fears of Russian subversion in the US’s ‘backyard,’ and as an exciting backdrop with varied

natural phenomena to spice up the game’s action. Similarly, the multiplayer maps hint at a

narrative of superpower struggle across Chile, Argentina and Panama, while never remotely

representing these countries, their peoples nor even their national military forces. The places thus

become non-specific (except for the iconic Panama Canal), tied to a conception of the continent

of South America and its meaning specifically to US Armed Forces, and their struggles against

their current enemy (in this case a post-Soviet Russian Federation).

All in all, the campaign offers a grand tour of exotic climates and unspecified

locations across South America (with cameos from Russia and Japan), where nature is spectacular

and dangerous, cultural clues are non-specifically ‘South American,’ and adversaries are either

unnamed guerrillas or Russian aggressors. While the tone and style of presentation of the

campaign aims for humour and includes a dose of satire, it is never biting, and only furthers the

stereotypes it is (maybe?) aiming at sending up. Indeed, the increasingly anonymous locales,

together with the game’s mechanical emphasis on destructible environments, lends itself to the

suggestion that any real-world location could have served as the excuse, the real aim is the

exoticism and variation of the environment and climate. The effect becomes one of tourism, of

travelling to supposedly faraway places, not to learn anything of the specific sites, but to take part

in a ritual of the spectacle, which in this case just happens to include shooting nameless South

American and Russian men to death. Thus, the spectacle and the sublime, as that which engages

and enthrals, and that which fascinates and unsettles, can be seen as motivations for the choices

of represented locations, as well as the way that players are invited to traverse them.

43

Spaces

The actual simulated spaces available to the player differ significantly between single-player and

multiplayer, not necessarily because of the details of their simulated terrains (indeed a couple of

maps are shared between the two game modes), but because of the difference in movement and

looking that is employed. This is quite usual within the genre of FPS:es, and Battlefield: Bad

Company 2 can be seen as a fairly typical example of the genre. The directionality of the single-

player experience is exclusively forward, the player progressing in an orderly fashion through the

narrative and the spatial corridors provided. Only in a few cases are the walls of the corridor

taken away, and the player forced to actually navigate the landscape, although even in these cases

the mini-map in the bottom left corner still provides a GPS-like clarification of position, so that

there is no chance of actually getting lost. The mini-map acts similarly in the multiplayer modes,

but the introduction of other human actors injects an element of added unpredictability, and the

different game modes enforce a significant difference in directionality. The game was released

with four multiplayer game modes (Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush, and Squad Death Match), and a fifth

(Onslaught) was added later as a downloadable addition, although the latter was not made available

for PC, and is thus not covered in detail here.

Conquest is a staple of the Battlefield franchise of games, where players are tasked to

capture and hold certain points, marked with flags, while killing the opposing team’s soldiers and

preventing them from doing the same. Killing enemy soldiers and holding a majority of flags

depletes the other team’s pool of reinforcement tickets; the first team to lose all of their tickets

loses the match. This mode creates a cyclical sequence, whereby players’ avatars are killed and

‘respawn’ (return to a fixed starting point after a short delay), and flags are captured, lost and

recaptured. The map is traversed and retraced as players run between capture points, and try to

outsmart the movement of their enemies, enforcing a sense of repetition, but also of fighting and

dying ‘for’ certain pieces of terrain.

In Rush one team is tasked with destroying a set number of military communication

crates (‘M-Coms’), while the other tries to prevent them. In a slight variation of the core game

mode of the genre-dominating FPS Counterstrike, the attackers have to either plant a timed charge

on the crate, or collapse the entire building housing it, while the defenders have to kill enough

attackers so that their reinforcement tickets (typically 75) run out. The maps consist of three to

five bases, with two M-Coms in each, and once all M-Coms are destroyed in one, the defenders

can retreat to the next, and the attackers’ ticket count is reset. This gradual unlocking of the game

space creates a fundamentally different feel for the maps, while giving each match a sense of

progression and sequential heightening of tension.

44

Squad Rush works similarly to Rush, except on smaller variant maps (two bases with one M-Com

each) and with limited teams, each ‘squad’ consisting of a maximum of four players. Without

vehicles, and on a smaller area, this creates a much more condensed experience, though still with

the progressive invasion from one base to another.

Squad Deathmatch similarly focuses on teams of up to four players, but without

bases, flags or M-Coms. Four teams compete, and the first team to kill 50 opposing soldiers (in

any combination of the other three’s) wins; the most straightforward, kill-‘em-all, mode of the

game. Both this and the Squad Rush modes are new additions to the Battlefield-series, and this is

similarly a condensed version of the Deathmatch-mode available in later instalments of the

franchise. Fixed respawn points lend the terrain some solidity and direction, but the triple threat

of enemy factions and the necessity to find enemies makes it a paranoid and deadly space.

Finally, Onslaught is the final mode, added after the others, which most resembles

parts of the single-player experience. Once again in a ‘squad’ of up to four players, players face an

unlimited number of computer controlled adversaries (‘bots’), and work together to capture

points along a map to unlock the next section. Similarly to much of the single-player campaign,

but also the Rush game mode, this gives clear directionality and a form of narrative evolution of

the experience of the landscape.

These are the modes available to traverse the maps, lending a fundamentally

different experience of the spaces and places represented. Going forward, then, we have to take

into account both the simulated terrain, as well as the different approaches, interactions and

movements that are to be expected through and throughout its spaces.

The Maps

At the end of its update cycle, including all map expansions, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 had a total

of 25 different maps, divided between single-and multiplayer game modes.103 At launch, the game

had the single-player campaign’s 13 missions together with 8 multiplayer maps variably available

to play in four different game modes. Over the course of seven ‘Map Packs’ and one Game

Mode expansion, four new multiplayer maps were added, two single-player maps were adapted

for multiplayer, individual maps were made available in other game modes, and a new game

mode was added.

103 Not included in this count, nor this analysis, is the Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam-expansion, which presents a different conflict, and 5 multiplayer only maps set in unspecified locations in 1960’s Vietnam.

45

Figure 2.2. An example of a destructive approach to the environment. Note the mini-map in the bottom left-hand corner, and the glowing colour of texts and symbols.

I mention this, not for the sake of exhaustive lists, but to lend some context to how the game was

experienced by many of its players. When analysing a game after its heyday, it is easy to look at

the finished, patched and expanded product and make certain conclusions, when a large part of

online gaming is the social network, and the implicit social attachment of following the

development of a game’s additions and community. However, these kind of gradual content

releases also serve as a marketing tool, to keep players interested in a fast-moving market, and to

ensure physical sales and combat piracy and second hand markets.104

Within this vast array of maps and modes, there are some recurring themes and

uses of space that is worth noting. First of all, the multiplayer maps follow the design philosophy

of focusing on the spectacular and explosive (see figure 2.2), as established in the single-player

campaign. Extreme climate and weather returns (from the sandstorms of Atacama Desert to the

snowy oilfields of Port Valdez), as do spectacular views, such as the great dam of Laguna Presa.

104 Map packs were made available for free for PC users, and through a one-use activation code in console copies; second hand, or pirated, console copies thus had no working code. This is one of several practices employed by games publishers to make sure sales of new physical, or verifiable digital copies, are sold, as publishers and developers do not receive revenues on resales. These tactics have not always been appreciated, and this incentive-based system was employed by Electronic Arts after some less popular punitive measures in previous titles.

46

Secondly, each map requires different specially acquired knowledge of how to approach it

depending on game mode. Different vehicles, topographies and vegetation mean that a trained

eye on one map may focus on the bushes, in another on the skies, and on a third one identifying

a specific cliff outcropping as a potential hiding place. With my limited time and skill, as well as

the relatively low level of activity on this fairly old game’s online battlefields, I have not been able

to provide a detailed analysis of the majority of primarily multiplayer maps.

Summary

‘Haggard: Maybe one day we’ll visit places like this and not shoot the natives’105

Full of superfluous, facile and surface-level shout-outs, any reflections on real world events or

politics present in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are clearly not meant to be taken at face value. Indeed,

most reviews at the time, as well as later retrospectives, primarily remember the humour (for

good or for bad) and enjoyment of blowing up parts of the spectacular environment.106

The game shows a glimmer of self-awareness, irony and distance, but it ultimately

remains far too little to subvert the joined forces of the main plot, the action as described by the

player’s traversing of the landscape, and the ideological iconography deployed to hail the

technological superiority of the US and the West. The combined effect of the audio-visual is one

of transient, if exciting, places where US uniforms move through the extremes of weather and

climate to kill Russians and crack some jokes.

If the jungles, deserts and tundra of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at first glance are

presented as exotic, foreign and threatening, throughout the experience they are revealed to have

been sanitized, neutered and pre-prepared for the player. In multiplayer, confusion gradually

gives way to mastery of the map and its representations, and the landscape fades away into points

of interests, objectives and props and set dressing to be destroyed at leisure. In single-player,

avenues have been cut out through these far-flung landscapes, and the player follows their

predefined route much as a group of charter tourists on an ‘exotic’ vacation, or, perhaps more

fittingly, a 19th century wealthy dilettante who has paid to experience ‘exploration’ while sailing up

the Congo.107

105 Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010), ‘Heart of darkness’-mission. 106 This has, among other places, been expressed in a retrospective by Smith, G., ‘Have you played… Battlefield: Bad Company 2’, Rock Paper Shotgun, 20 October 2016, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/10/20/have-you-played-battlefield-bad-company-2/, (accessed 6 September 2018). 107 Mirzoeff, 2011, pp. 13-18.

47

CHAPTER 3: CASE STUDY – ARMA 3

‘This Is War Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox.

Authentic, diverse, open - Arma 3 sends you to war.’ Promotional copy on Arma 3’s website.108

Introduction

The view from a helicopter traversing the island landscape frames expectations and gives a first

view of the expansiveness of Arma 3’s two meticulously rendered islands. The player is able to

look around from the vantage point of a soldier seated on the side of the helicopter, getting a

mobile, aerial introduction to Stratis, a (politically) fictional Mediterranean island. The vastness of

the simulated terrain is in many respects its main attraction; allegedly close to 300 square

kilometres of virtual space, and hundreds of sites, are represented on the screen.109 This landscape

promises boundless exploration, not least in the sense that most players will probably voluntarily

quit before having traversed its entirety. It is also the scenery, background and stage for conflict,

exploration and creation. The Arma-series, developed by Czech game studio Bohemia Interactive,

have been exceptional in their accommodation of modifications (mods) to their games, created

by amateur designers and coders. The sandbox presented in Arma 3 (released in 2013) is not just

the setting for its three-part single-player narrative, or the playground for its multiple modes of

multiplayer conflict, it is also a toolbox and canvas for the creativity of its playing community.

This first flyover gives a sensation of persistent landscape, of a world lived in, but it

is gradually transformed into a stylized playground due to an absence of movement (other than

soldiers), and the transience of episodes occurring in the same place with no consequences

transferred. The centrality of the player character’s body, the definer of the player’s perspective

and movement ability, is also clearly demonstrated and problematized by that first moment in the

helicopter, a body apparent when the player turns the camera around; a body without a head.110

The Operation Flashpoint/Arma-series have placed a great deal of focus on 'realism,'

mainly focused on giving a more tangible embodied experience within the world, more detailed

physical simulation, but also an authentic-sounding presentation of conflicts and military

108 Bohemia Interactive, Arma 3, [website], 2018, https://arma3.com/, (accessed 6 September 2018). 109 270km2 on Altis, and 20 km2 on Stratis according to Bohemia Interactive, ‘Terrain’, Arma 3, [website], 2018, https://arma3.com/features/terrain, (accessed 6 September 2018). 110 If one turns the camera around thoroughly enough, one only encounters a cavity between the shoulders. Rather than the God-like disembodied cameras mentioned in the quantitative chapter, we are here experiencing a more manifestly embodied camera; a body with a camera for a head.

48

hierarchies and procedures.111 But the theme, the backdrop or pretext for conflict, also has certain

‘realistic’ ambitions, with Arma 3 aiming to portray a NATO peacekeeping operation getting

caught up in the middle of a civil war; a war that appears entirely devoid of anything remotely

civilian. No, the realism here is altogether that of the military experience, but this ‘tactical

shooter’ delivers an experience that is not only more tactical, but also more tactile in its rendition

of digital terrain and landscape, as we shall see.

Places ‘Kerry: Yeah? They can respectfully go fuck themselves, sir. We didn’t butcher

half our own population and I sure as hell didn’t ask to be on their pissant [sic] island.’ Adams: Well ain’t that just half the problem.

Kerry: I thought the roads were closed? Adams: They are.’112

Arma 3’s approach to the specifics of place provide a telling contrast to that described in the

previous chapter. The game’s two fictional islands, Altis and Stratis, are in fact an impressively

detailed reimagining of two Greek islands in the North-East Aegean Sea, Lemnos and Agios

Efstratios (the latter colloquially referred to as ‘Ai Stratis’). These digital models are made at

roughly two-thirds scale, and were so well researched that Greek authorities detained two of the

game studio’s employees for more than 100 days on charges of espionage.113

The deliberate choice of painstakingly recreating real world terrain in a supposedly

fictional republic poses a very specific type of authenticity. It presents a form of cut-and-paste

world-building; the prosaic details are borrowed from the real world, lending the narrative fiction

a quotidian realism, while the lack of a link to an actual real world conflict allows freedom to

explore and create without hitting too close to anyone’s real home. Notably, the larger adversarial

force in Arma 3 is a coalition led by China and Iran, rather than e.g. Turkey, avoiding direct

parallels to the situation on Cyprus, while reclaiming a sense of Cold War proxy wars in its near

future setting (the events of the diegesis are set in 2035). The specifics of place are thus borrowed

111 In the time period studied the series has had three major releases, Arma: Armed Assault (2006), Arma 2 (2009) and Arma 3 (2013), as well as a re-release of one of its predecessors, Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Assault (2001) as Arma: Cold War Assault (2011), neither of which have been included in the selection. 112 Arma 3 (2013), 1st mission of The East Wind-campaign. 113 The employees had been on vacation at the time, but had apparently not been able to refrain from taking pictures of what, in hindsight, turned out to be fiercely protected military installations, as per: Polygon Staff, ‘Jail time: how two Arma 3 developers were arrested in Greece’, Polygon, 2013, https://www.polygon.com/2013/2/8/ 3968814/arma-3-developers-arrested-for-spying-on-military-in-greece, (accessed 6 September 2018). After the incident, the developers declared that they would fictionalise their place names to avoid real-world associations, as per: Bohemia Interactive, ‘New name for main island in Arma 3’, Bohemia Interactive Developer’s Blog, [website], 1 February 2013, https://www.bohemia.net/blog/new-name-for-main-island-in-arma-3, (accessed 6 September 2018).

49

to lend credibility to the use of mythologies from certain types of conflicts, the type of ‘authentic’

war that the game intends to ‘send’ the player to.

The Campaign ‘War seems sweet until one tastes it;

known, it takes the heart and wastes it. -PINDAR

“For the Thebans (Fragment 110)”’114

Every mission in Arma 3’s single-player campaign The East Wind is prefaced with a quote from

authors and philosophers, such as the one above, emphasizing the complexities and hardships of

war. The game’s attempt to immerse a new player are most immediately apparent in their Prologue

chapter, which takes place on the smaller island of Stratis. The segment opens with the player

learning to move around in an unadorned Virtual Reality environment. After a couple of minutes’

instruction in the basics of the game’s systems, it is revealed that this VR-exercise is taking place

in the diegesis of the game, as the player’s character is asked to remove his VR-headset and the

visuals cuts to a first-person view of an open laptop in the middle of a green field. This is a clever

section that blurs the distinctions between different levels of reality both inside and outside of the

game, while simultaneously showcasing the game’s VR-compatibility.115

The Prologue continues its conscious playfulness with boundaries as it invites the

player to continue their training in combat basics by taking the role of an instructor’s assistant as

NATO-forces provide combat training for the Altis Armed Forces (AAF), the local

government’s military branch. The player learns to use a compass and map to navigate with

coordinates (no mini-map in the bottom corner provided), the effects of different stances the

character can take (21 in total), and how to aim (and control their breathing) and adjust for

distance and wind when shooting. From the get-go, Arma 3 drives home the realistic way that the

physical world has been modelled, all the while making the player feel in control and competent,

while ostensibly teaching al soldier that which they themselves are currently learning.

Next, the player has to put these new skills to test when they and their local charges

are called out to investigate a suspected terrorist hideout. Beyond giving a first taste of the quite

difficult task of driving a military truck, this sequence introduces the very important narrative

concept of irregular combatants. When the player arrives, local forces have already killed every

person in sight, and the superior officer reacts in disgust at this excessive force against apparent

114 Arma 3 (2013), after The East Wind’s 2nd mission, when the player is introduced to ‘camp Maxwell.’ 115 I have no doubt that this section has an even greater blurring effect when experienced through a VR-interface, which I sadly have not had the opportunity to try yet.

50

civilians. This serves to associate the AAF forces with atrocious behaviour, and the rest of the

prologue goes on to further emphasize the suspiciously oppressive nature of the government,

even while the player is embroiled in fights with the local guerrilla resistance (FIA, or Freedom

and Independence Army). But the scene with the dead civilians also highlights another interesting

stance; the dialogue emphasises how careless and brutal the AAF soldiers have been, but the

Prologue is the only time that these rules of engagement are given any weight. For the rest of the

campaign, there are only enemies and fellow allied soldiers, and the complexities of a landscape

filled with non-combatant life is conveniently hand-waved away.

The presentation of Arma 3’s main single-player campaign, The East Wind, begins

with a montage of news footage from their imagined world in 2035 (see Figure 3.1). After this

grounding in mass medial depictions of strife, shortages and political turmoil, the camera zooms

in from a satellite position towards Stratis, which appears to be placed close to Malta. With

effective collage and familiar GPS-inspired localisation the player is situated both politically and

geographically, and their expectations are set for near-future, politically complex military conflict.

The story starts one year after the events of the prologue, and the first act of three, Survive,

focuses on a multinational NATO squad that try desperately to regroup after a sudden betrayal

by the AAF. A returning feature of Arma 3’s mission design is that the objectives given at the

start of the mission often change due to unforeseen circumstances in the field. This first act

hammers home that point repeatedly, as Kerry, the main character, treks through hilly

Figure 3.1. Example of a news clip from the opening montage of The East Wind, headlining a humanitarian crisis that leaves no trace in the landscape that is ultimately portrayed.

51

countryside and deciduous forest from point to point, losing his original squad, his command

base and ultimately his commander, who perishes after stepping on a landmine.

Kerry finally regroups with British special operations captain Miller, who guides the

remaining survivors (including Conway, the protagonist of the prologue) to a new camp. From

this camp, NATO forces conduct several missions, with limited success, to establish

communications and request reinforcements, while helping allies in need, and denying strategical

resources to their enemies. The struggle for control of the barren landscape of Stratis takes place

in alternatingly open and forested hilly terrain, small villages and, at the climax, during the

invasion of a small town. After having lost their second camp to an air raid, survivors join forces

with the FIA guerrilla, succeeding in inflicting some damage and gaining significant ground until

a sudden near-total defeat, as reinforcements thought to be from NATO turn out to from the al

Canton Protocol Strategic Alliance Treaty (CSAT), a coalition headed by China and Iran.116

Kerry washes up on the shore of the bigger island of Altis in the beginning of the

second act, Adapt, with all of his comrades, including Conway, apparently dead. He is gradually

reunited with the British special operations team, and captain Miller, and they proceed with their

cooperation with the FIA. Through numerous guerrilla operations, the groups work towards

destabilising the AAF, and their CSAT allies, conducting ambushes, stealing supplies and rescuing

prisoners. Altis is here introduced fully, with its varied terrain offering both tactical and touristic

highlights for players, from the dense city of Kavala with its peninsular castle ruins, a vast

international airport with accompanying facilities, and winding roads crisscrossing through ruins,

villages, military bases and striking natural beauty with equal ease.

The player is also increasingly tasked with commanding an entire squad throughout

this act, forcing them to further take in the entirety of the terrain available, for both strategic

significance and positioning, but also, imperatively, the way it does or does not impair lines of

sight. The tug of war over the island is concluded with the arrival of a bona fide invasion by

NATO forces, who unfortunately manage to shoot down the FIA leader, much to Kerry’s

horror. When asking central command why captain Miller, who had been in contact with NATO,

had not informed them of the FIA operations, a bewildered Kerry is told there are no records of

a captain Miller, before being whisked off the island for debriefing.

Kerry returns to action for the final chapter, Win, and as the skirmishes get

progressively larger, NATO manage to push back a CSAT counterattack, before pushing the

AAF forces to the brink of defeat. The major narrative fork in the road arrives after a few

116 A move that was not appreciated by the government of Iran, who promptly banned the game, as per: Sarkar, S., ‘“Arma 3” banned in Iran’, Polygon, https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/9/19/3357600/arma-3-banned-in-iran, (accessed 6 September 2018).

52

successful missions, when Kerry is contacted by the hitherto disappeared Brits. The player can

here choose to either join NATO’s final offensive, or disobey orders to disregard Miller’s team,

and seek them out. The latter choice brings the story of this civil war to a conclusion, as Miller is

revealed to be part of NATO’s special forces, struggling with their CSAT counterparts to secure

an experimental weapon. Miller is revealed to have masterminded the events at the beginning of

the campaign in order to secure the device, the breaking out of civil war a less important

consequence of the larger struggle of NATO against the encroaching winds from the east.

Spaces

In theory, the entirety of the islands rendered in Arma 3 are available to explore, and it is only

individual missions and game modes that selectively restrict their traversal. The spaces available

have been accurately modelled on their real-world counterparts, with the major differences being

wider roads (for use of the games military vehicles), smaller scale (including the size and scope of

towns, one suspects for computational speed), and higher density of ‘interesting’ elements dotted

throughout the landscape (read: military bases, secret hideouts, etc.).

When I use the word traversal, it is not lightly; much of the experience of Arma 3’s

single-player campaign consists of lightly jogging through fields, creeping through high grass and

darting between bushes. This is space that needs to be crossed at great peril, and the campaign

missions ensure that there is ‘realistic’ amounts of transport before reaching any given objective.

It does not employ a mini-map, but does use highlighted markers placed in the terrain, which

makes it easy to follow the general direction of a mission. However, frustration and death will

await the unwary player who just makes a beeline for the objective, as they will undoubtedly be

shot in the head while unheedingly crossing some invitingly open fields.

Movement in this vast landscape is very much restricted not by physical obstacles

(most slopes have been made less steep than in reality to accommodate easy passage), but by the

threat of immediate incapacitation by enemy bullets. This movement is additionally modified

when using vehicles, and the game includes a vast variety of these to try out through several

showcases, as well as a myriad of multiplayer modes, the scope of which I am unfortunately

unable to do justice here.

53

A Closer Look

Supply Network, the fourth mission in the second act, puts the player in charge of planning an

ambush on an enemy convoy. This mission represents a turning point in the increasing

complexity of the campaign, as the player is invited to command others, and expected to take

individual responsibility in planning strategically, and, crucially, mastering the militarisation of the

terrain. Having to take into account other bodies than their own, and effectively widening and

raising their perspective, changes the gaze from one of identification and survival to control and

mastery. This is a conscious design decision, as the campaign essentially acts as a prolonged

learning exercise, introducing the player to the various strategical elements in the game, before

launching into one of its many multiplayer modes.

The player’s movement through space has so far been guided and hemmed in by

the movement of their group (led by a superior officer) and the movement, violence and

perceived gaze of the enemy. Now the player’s gaze must change; they are now in control of their

group, and are able to predict and possibly counteract the enemy’s direction and viewpoint.

Elements in the terrain take on new significance, as their distribution not only determines their

usefulness to the player and their allies (in terms of vantage, cover or concealment as in figure

3.2), but also of enemies and this ultimately puts the player in a position of increased power.

Power is not granted without a certain requisite mastery, however. Full disclosure, I am not very

good at Arma 3. It took me three full restarts to best this mission (not counting dozens of quickly

reloaded deaths), and the very first attempt resulted in frustrated, impotent orders given to my

Figure 3.2. The protagonist (Kerry) oversees the site of an ambush, with splendorous visual presentation merging with utilitarian triangles and symbolism (bottom left corner). This staging was not scripted by the game.

54

computer controlled squad, which I had somehow led into a firefight where we were hopelessly

outnumbered and outplanned, despite being the supposed ambushers. Gradually, with different

approaches tested, I learned more about squad commands, and I learned more about how to use

the terrain to my advantage, and the terrain was changing together with my perception of it. My

new-found outlook did not save me from spending 20 minutes, and more than 15 attempts, to

run a measly 100 in-game metres without being shot in the back in the mission’s scripted

ignominious retreat. It ended when I finally started scurrying, heart in my throat, from shrub to

shrub, switching between lying flat against the ground, catching my breath, and rushing between

trees in a panicked crouch.

This is why this mission holds a key significance, at least in my experience with

Arma 3. It forced me to widen my perspective, to try to take a more holistic approach to

understanding both my missions as well as the environment they took place in. It also hammered

home the importance of the stance of my digital avatar, forcing me to take into account their

projected body in the virtual world, with a level of detail that I hadn’t before. But, as I more fully

took in and assessed the features of this digital landscape, the shallowness of the simulation was

also gradually laid bare.

Mods

Arma 3 is above all a sandbox and a toy box, a playing space with tools for players interested in a

particular kind of military fantasy. It puts in considerable effort to present an array of military

tactics, technical hardware and jargon that all work to put the player in an imagined world of

military command and action. The versatility of the world and the interactive possibilities thus

given have also notably given rise to a rich flora of external modifications, or ‘mods.’ These are

additions to a game that are distributed via online platforms, that include everything and anything

between new models of weapons or clothing, to entirely new types of maps and games within the

parameters of the original game, and deserve some deeper discussion.

User-created modifications have existed for a very long time, and can usefully be

described as forming part of a symbiotic relationship with its ‘official,’ ‘commercial’ counterpart.

This has been highlighted by US Media Studies scholar Hector Postigo, who posits a few of the

mutual benefits exhibited, including extended (cost-free) testing and community engagement for

the producers, with ‘modders’ (creative users) getting a chance to develop technical and aesthetic

55

skills, as well as building an artistic portfolio.117 Developers and publishers can be more or less

accommodating to this kind of intervention, and Bohemia Interactive (the developers of Arma 3)

have been very welcoming in the way they have made tools for development available, and the

code easily modifiable.

This approach has paid dividends, with a lasting legacy of mods that far surpasses

most games in the same genre. Most notably, two recent major sensations, DayZ and

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), have grown from modifications to Arma. The DayZ-mod,

based on Arma 2 and released in 2013, led a surge of ‘survivalist’ games, where players had to

navigate the game’s harsh landscape with resources significantly scarcer than what is usual within

these genres, while threatened by any other players online. Battle Royale was subsequently created

by the modder ‘PlayerUnknown,’ based on the DayZ-mod, and later moved to Arma 3. Players

are here dropped into a steadily shrinking map, where they battle it out until only one person or

team remains, and this type of competition has grown into a bona fide genre of its own. Released

in 2017 as a standalone game separated from its Arma origins, it has broken several records for

popularity, including largest number of simultaneous players active online, and has defined much

of the mainstream landscape of video games in the beginning of 2018 with a rivalry with the

similar game Fortnite.

What both DayZ and PUBG share is a new perspective on the simulated landscape,

as survival starts encompassing food, shelter and fire, and not just weapons-focused strategy.

These explorations comfortably exceed the palette of interactions offered in the base games of

Arma 2 and 3, yet the basic structure provided is at the very foundation, and the main creators of

both modifications have highlighted the inspiration they got from the original games and their

communities, as well as the relative ease they had in changing the game to their visions. The

change of perspective does highlight what was not quite there before however, by giving meaning

to parts of the terrain that previously only had value for stopping bullets, or gazes.

Summary

It is naturally impossible to include everything in a simulation, and any model of the world relies

on healthy (and quite often unhealthy) doses of generalisation, simplification and condensation.

The choices made in generalising, simplifying and condensing the experience that is represented

117 Postigo, H., ‘Of mods and modders: chasing down the value of fan-based digital game modifications’, Games and culture, vol. 2, no. 4, 2007, p. 311.

56

are revealing as to what is deemed important, what is deemed meaningful, by the creator, but also

by extension the audience, of a piece.

Arma 3, with its simulationist ambitions, has inspired a desire to further populate

their spaces with detail and meaning; potential symptoms of the experience offered in the base

game. As a simulation, it is undoubtedly engaging, but it also promises more than it is ultimately

able to deliver, and the impressive craftsmanship belies the simplicity of the interactions possible;

above all this is a space where enmities are settled by erasing the opposing party.

The visual fidelity of the landscape, and the sheer work and artistry that has gone

into it is undeniably impressive.118 However, the prioritisation shines through again, where the

placement of hills, towers, villages and blades of grass has received meticulous attention to detail,

while the game remains devoid of a single character model of a woman or a child. It is truly a

military sandbox, where players and modders can live out military fantasies, with a photorealistic

world conveniently devoid of everyday obstacles to mass-slaughter.

In single-player, despite a setting and plot that tries to bring in nuances of NATO-

and UN-led peacekeeping, the map, empty of civilians, life and any of the actual complexities of

war, lays bare the limited focus and empathy of the military shooters genre. This landscape is

created for the player’s concern and perspective only; it is tougher, more granular, and less of a

free playing field than e.g. Battlefield: Bad Company 2, but it is nevertheless made simply for the

amusement of the colonizer, the controller, the intervener.

118 For some comparative pictures of the real Lemnos island, you can do worse than vacation pictures posted on a forum discussion board for the game (kostaatanasov [username], ‘A vacation on Altis - or - to Limnos and back again’, Bohemia Interactive Forums, [website], 8 November 2014, https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/175155-a-vacation-on-altis-or-to-limnos-and-back-again/, (accessed 6 September 2018).

57

CHAPTER 4: COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

‘…memory and its representations touch very significantly upon questions of identity, of nationalism, of power and authority.’119

The central power relation, as portrayed in the quantitative material, is that of competition and

conquest in a colonial mode. Be it through two-dimensional, top-down grand strategy games,

three-dimensional isometric tactical war games, or tactical shooters switching between first- and

third-person perspectives, players are invited to either claim, cleanse or destroy the represented

terrain. Nearly all examples fall squarely within Jay’s linear perspective-based scopic regime, but

arguably in two variations. The landscapes all follow enlightenment-inspired logics of control and

exploitation, but this control can either be from an expanded god-like point-of-view, or from the

individual hunter, the aforementioned eye of the predator, sweeping the landscape for undue

infringement. Switching between historical and fictional conflicts, the selection of subject

materials results in a very specific use of history and memory, as well as fantasy, which

emphasizes the military power and discursive authority of the US on the global stage. But,

although the quantitative results suggest a certain lack of diversity of approaches, they are unable

to tell the full story of how these environments feel when you actively play in them.

Patterns

‘Play scenarios or build your own on any place on earth – from classics like the Middle East, South Atlantic,

North Cape and Europe to new and rising hotspots like the Arctic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.’120

The recurring themes, recurring settings and recurring narratives observed in the quantitative

material are perhaps most succinctly summarised by the quote above, from the website of Matrix

Games, developer of numerous military simulations, outlining ‘classic’ confrontations as well as

those new potential conflicts that the military imagination could extrapolate. The two case studies

put forth in this thesis are different takes on the perceived types of US intervention. They share a

scopic regime, that of the predator and its gun-aligned central perspective. They are both action-

games focused on fighting, they are both primarily presented as played in first-person perspective

119 Said, E. W., ‘Invention, memory, and place’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and power, 2nd ed., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 241-242. 120 Marketing spiel for the Command Modern Air/Naval Operations game, as described on Matrix Games Ltd., ‘Command: modern air naval operations wargame of the year edition’, Matrix Games, [website], 2014, www.matrixgames.com/products/483/details/Command:.Modern.Air.Naval.Operations.Wargame.of.the.Year.Edition, (accessed 6 September 2018).

58

in a photorealistically modelled three-dimensional virtual world. At the same time, they diverge in

the aesthetic choices made in visio-graphical terms within the regime, and they also qualify as

different intervention types. Arma 3 can be considered an example of ‘stabilization,’ where the

main aim, and original intention of US presence on foreign soil is to aid the governing forces, and

maintain peace. Battlefield: Bad Company 2, meanwhile, is set in the full swing of a ‘second Russo-

American war,’ one which primarily takes place in Central and South America, with both

countries’ special forces struggling for control over a fictional, seismic weapon of mass

destruction. As it turns out, however, the conflict in Arma 3 also revolves around a fictional,

seismic weapon of mass destruction. This time the larger geopolitical conflict is between China

and Iran versus NATO, but the main narrative difference is that Arma 3’s story is told from the

perspective of a soldier not inducted into the special forces. While the stories of the two games

may have seemed quite distinct at the outset, they tell an essentially identical story, but the way

they present it makes for a very different experience.

Place

Arma 3’s military and tactical simulation differs significantly from Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s

brand of easy-going ‘Special Ops-tourism,’ and this is further highlighted by its approach to the

specifics of place, space and landscape. In Arma, the terrain is a meticulous scale model of two

real islands, presented as a fictional state. Contrast this to Battlefield’s satellite-image localised real

world locations, whose simulated terrain has been invented whole cloth to create spectacular

environments inspired by US myths of Latin American countries and landscapes. Simply put, in

one real islands are made fictional, and in the other fictional environments are presented as real.

Both act as examples of appropriation of virtual land, but in almost opposite ways.

Arma utilises the geography of the Greek islands to lend credibility and authenticity

to their playground for war between a new East-West duopoly. The landscape is stripped of its

original political significance, so that it can become scenery for an invented conglomeration of

Cold War-themed elements, including superpower proxy struggles, WMD arms races, and

military coups with political militias. This allows a certain element of freedom in designing the

conflict to reflect and include those elements that the developers are interested in exploring. They

have been at liberty to invent whatever they wish, and have chosen to mould their imagined

world very closely on certain specific elements of ours. The game admits the existence and

relevance of local forces (AAF and FIA) as factions in the conflict, but still takes a very simplified

militarised approach to describing those factions’ motivations and objectives.

59

Battlefield’s romp through Latin America is similarly interested in evoking real world strife, but to

a much greater extent takes its inspiration from cinematic representations of these conflicts. In

the narrative, the dialogues and the fictional camerawork, the game shows great awareness of and

homage to war films, especially those concerning modern conflicts including the Vietnam war, so

much so that its one major expansion takes place during the latter. The terrain modelled is

instead designed to accommodate functionality and spectacle. When the game evokes Bolivia, it is

to be able to show jungle – the mythological nemesis of colonial power from the ‘darkness’ of

the Belgian Congo to the failure in Vietnam – but no Bolivians, or even clear traces of specific

cultural artefacts. Similarly, when Chile is mentioned, it is to employ the myth of the Atacama

desert, the driest desert in the world, but the terrain depicted holds very little similarity beyond

the sand itself, with ruins of what appear to be late medieval European castles sharing the dunes

with stranded tanker ships.

When Arma tries to be liberatingly unspecific about the political reality, Battlefield

reduces the political reality to spectacular scenery and the basic assumption that South America is

the US’ backyard, theirs to control and defend, but never to understand or value. This is

addressed in dialogue, ironically, when making fun of the ‘ignorant’ character of Haggard

confusing South America for ‘Africa,’ but this criticism rings hollow when the whole premise of

the game, and the systemic nature of its representations blurs the lines between countries and

regions to the extent of reducing it to backdrop.

Space

The experience of playing the two case study games is strikingly different, mostly tied to their

approaches to space and embodiment. Battlefield’s striking panoramas of jungles and snowy

mountaintops makes for spectacular yet superficial viewing, as much of the experience becomes

centred on recognising enemy soldiers in the field, and observing the mini-map in the bottom left

corner. Movement and concealment play a larger part in multiplayer, but the focus on explosive

environments together with the lack of a persistent ability to crouch, means a quick, volatile play-

style reaps considerable benefits. At the same time, especially in the single-player game, weather

effects are used to severely restrict both vision and mobility at several crucial points, heightening

tension, and further bringing home the extremes of climate chosen as staging.

Conversely, Arma 3 is known for its long draw distance (how far away from the

viewer objects in a three-dimensional space are rendered), and the player is often treated to

stunning overview perspectives, making it possible to take in and analyse the landscape from a

60

vantage. At the same time, the player is given little aid in identifying targets or objectives,

meaning the player does have to inspect their environments more carefully. The differentiated

stances available to a player also means that the sense of controlling their avatar’s body is more

detailed, if not always intuitive. When the going gets rough, this means the player has to take into

account very small details of the terrain when positioning themselves, and when trying to hit

others. One consequence of these differences, at least in my subjective play experience, is that

firefights in Arma often take place at a considerably larger distance, and the accompanying skill of

identifying enemy combatants prone behind high grass is one of attention to detail and scrutiny.

The spaces in Arma are also generally much larger, and more open. This does lead

to infuriatingly and monotonous sequences of running through an apparently empty landscape,

until hopefully spotting an enemy before they spot, and shoot, you. Battlefield’s maps are smaller,

denser in content, and consequently more action filled. The sensation of progression is made

clear in single-player by more traditional mission design, guiding the player’s perception and

direction through visual design, lighting and camerawork through sometimes quite narrow

corridors. Contextual details, such as resupply points, also provide easy clues as to when and

where enemies are expected to appear. In multiplayer, most modes focus on controlling certain

chokepoints, creating a certain predictability in the movement of squads, with an enhanced sense

of progression added in the two- and three-tiered sections of the Rush and Squad Rush modes.

Landscapes

So, as ideological formations, the places and spaces of the two games work somewhat differently.

Battlefield entices with its spectacular vistas, destructive interactivity with its environment, and

metaphorical representations of real world locations, everything presented with cinematic

techniques steeped in Hollywood conventions of action and light-hearted war movies. Arma

presents the player with a huge terrain, the navigation of which requires considerable investment

to master, as does its movement and control scheme. The avatar body’s physical incarnation is

modelled in more detail, while simultaneously the player is given less information of where other

bodies are in this space. The feeling often becomes one of exposure rather than Appleton’s

detached observation, and though the predator’s gaze is present in both games, experience of

other predators’ gazes throughout the landscape is much stronger in the latter.

The combined experience is still following Yi-Tuan’s concept of ‘scenery’ and

‘domain.’ The former is experienced in Battlefield and Arma as sublime spectacle and impressively

detailed simulation, respectively. The impetus to control and dominate the respective domains is

61

strong in both, even though it is sometimes thwarted by natural forces or personal vulnerability.

However, the differences in difficulty and mastery do not undermine the sense that complete

dominion is still the agenda in both cases. Even though Arma’s representation elaborates on the

motives and agency of local guerrillas, the civilian ‘Greek’ populace is still missing, and

indigenous life is thus still erased. Arma’s narrative framing is considerably more nuanced, and

also leaves the player with a significantly less clear sense of victory and conquest, but the visual

logics of the landscape as empty of everything but enemies, and with little inherent value of its

own other than for visual pleasure, follows the imperial logic of landscape representation

presenting terrain as naturally subservient to the eye of the coloniser.

Context ‘Any military simulation attempts to draw an objective model of the world and its potential situations. But

because it involves peering into the void of the future and the blurry shapes of the present, it must also be mythic: It has to draw on culturally tutored imagination, fears, and wishes. To look at . . . war games, then, is to see

certain American anxieties played out as if to tame them.’121

Both games attempt to model US military invention in a manner that fairly resembles actual

events in recent history, or at least visions of how they could conceivably play out. In Battlefield

the military are inserted on the pretext of defending against Russian aggression, although the

121 US anthropologist Catherine Lutz, as quoted in Allen, 2011, p. 51.

Figure 4.1. Pre-mission breefing in Arma 3; gruff military men meet and make decision of the shape of the world while pouring over terrain maps, without either input or thought for others.

62

sovereign wishes of the respective nations does not even merit a footnote of consideration. In

Arma the contact with local forces is more nuanced, but becomes gradually less so as the

presence of Chinese/Iranian forces devolves the whole logic to the same Cold War polarisation.

With a landscape that admitted civilian life and existence, the narrative might have truly been

compelling in its portrayal of minor states caught up in the machinations of the larger ones, but

in the end the heightened ambitions still end up with a similar spatial logic; important spots must

be controlled, and the environment must be cleansed of dissenting bodies.

In their presentations, both games clearly reference representations of war from

other media, and this intertextuality becomes a good starting point for discussing the broader

discursive forces at work, and how they compare to some of the referenced material.

Intertextuality

The different approaches of the games are clearly visible in their choice of outside references,

that comment or contrast the content of the game itself. Arma anchors it’s ‘mature’ approach to

depictions of war with a myriad of quotes, from Sun Tzu to general Patton, illustrating

presumably sound tactical advice and highlighting more humanitarian reflections on the costs of

war. Battlefield borrows more heavily from cinematic conventions, and there are numerous action

sequences that play out as if directed by Steven Spielberg or Stanley Kubrick, but they are equally

often injected with humour and physical comedy closer to a Richard Donner buddy cop movie

(the most recurring reference to Lethal Weapon being Sergeant Redford’s indefinitely postponed

retirement). While Arma’s quotations are presented very seriously, with white text on a black

background, slightly distorted as if received from an unreliable connection, most of Battlefield’s

references are presented as tongue-in-cheek, which follows the generally satirical slant of its

narrative. These represent, once again, fairly different stances to established discourses regarding

war and intervention, but this difference is not necessarily reflected in the visio-spatial framing.

In Arma 3’s case, the more overtly military quotes work in tandem with the high

degree of granularity in military jargon and tactical decisions to enhance the ‘authenticity’ of the

experience. The design of missions, with constantly changing circumstances and objectives is the

epitome of this, yet in that very design of missions the more reflective quotes are repeatedly

ignored. While cynicism and distrust of the command chain form a central part of the main story,

psychological trauma, human suffering and oppressive injustice, mentioned as intrinsic effects of

the wars that Arma purports to realistically simulate, are not present in the visual presentation,

except partially in the prologue. In the end, the prologue and the contextualising quotes used

63

work against any aspersions to realism, beyond military or photographic minutiae, and serves to

put a stark spotlight on the absence of the human cost of warfare in this simulation. When they

claim to send the player to war, it is war from the perspective of power, propaganda and

domination. The knowledge imparted is that of military command chains and call-signs, the

names of weapons, vehicles and tactics, but it is not of the human interactions in a war zone.

Thus, it promotes the discourse of war as spectacle, war as entertainment, and war as justified, if

regrettable.

A deeper analysis of the references and shout-outs in Battlefield: Bad Company 2

would undoubtedly yield many more examples, but, bonding dialogue aside, the most recurring

structural allusions I found are evident in the naming of missions in the single-player campaign.

From overt association (‘Cold War’), through literal description (‘Upriver’), to military jargon

(‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and ‘Force Multiplier’), names seem to have been chosen with a mind to

recognisability, giving a sense of both the mission’s content and a fitting allusion. The most direct

reference comes in the third mission, the first set in South America, titled ‘Heart of Darkness.’

While the mention of Conrad’s novella here seems to be fairly gratuitous, it serves to highlight

how much the game fails to address the central issue of the novella in its presentation.

The novella’s tale of a European explorer entering deep into colonial jungles, while

slowly going insane and reflecting upon the cruelty and untenable contradictions of the colonial

worldview, has served as inspirations for adaptations many times, perhaps most famously in the

film adaptation Apocalypse Now, restaging the journey within the Vietnam conflict. It has similarly

been restaged within a number of video games, most prominently in Far Cry 2 and Spec Ops: The

Line. The former is a loose adaptation set in an undefined Central African nation, with the latter

being a more direct reworking setting it in an imagined conflict in Dubai, identifying the Arabic

world as a modern era colonial phantasm.

Both have been analysed more thoroughly than Battlefield: Bad Company 2, as their

approach is more developed, and Mukherjee comments about Far Cry 2 that despite more than a

century of difference, and the ‘other’ being central to themes and debates of the novella, the

game still manages to fall into the same pitfalls when it comes to othering, generalising and

conflating cultures and colonial experiences in Africa.122 His critique of Spec Ops: The Line is more

direct, and is also contextualised within the modern power relation between the US and West

Asia, also tracing the psychological obsession and deterioration of the protagonist.123 Murray,

meanwhile, notes that, while the tension between the player and the game creates a potentially

fruitful site for intervention in the medium as a whole, unchallenged assumptions about why

122 Mukherjee, 2017, pp. 13-19. 123 Mukherjee, 2017, pp. 45-46.

64

Dubai would represent a new ‘heart of darkness’ presents continued issues. The resistance and

critique are all placed within the personal crisis of the white, male character, and not extended to

include the cultural specificity of its setting, nor its inhabitants.124 Mukherjee belabours this point

further, by pointing out the lack of agency for indigenous characters in the game, being reduced

to victims without agency, or mobs without capacity for anything but violence.125

Both examples, while problematic, at least offer a somewhat considered take on

themes of intervention, human rights and the suffering of war, while Battlefield: Bad Company 2

merely deploys it as a nod to a staple of popular culture. The structure of the game, its narrative,

and its unspecified sensationalised approach to landscapes works arguably more effectively than

any of the incarnations of this tale to strip the scenery of its culture, the countries of their people

and the intervener of their responsibility to care about anyone but themselves, and the enemy

they must conquer.

Edward Said notes at one point that Conrad’s imagination was limited by the

experience available, and that was to see the world as unavoidably carved up into different

spheres of Western control. This, to him, somewhat redeems Conrad’s simultaneously anti-

imperial, and deeply imperial narrative.126 I do not believe that the same limitations of world-view

apply quite as generously to these more recent explorations of the theme, and I would have

hoped that unthinking, dehumanising depictions of colonial landscapes, as that which has

garnered Conrad substantial critique over the past 130 or so years, would have decreased

considerably in that same time frame. However, when seeking to provide entertainment,

spectacle and ‘authenticity,’ mainstream video games still do not shirk from employing the point-

of-view, discourse and world-view of the unrepentant conqueror, inviting players to recreate

injustices both real and imagined.

124 Murray, 2018, pp. 122-124. 125 Mukherjee, 2017, pp. 77-79. 126 Said, 1993, pp. 114-115.

65

CONCLUSION

‘I suggested […] that there were other massacres, forgotten or dimly remembered, that deserved to be recalled. These ignored episodes could tell us much about racial hysteria and class struggle, about shameful moments in our

continental and overseas expansion, so that we can see ourselves more clearly, more honestly.’127

Games about political events come in many shapes. There are examples of testing grounds for

political and military systems, propagandistic tools for upholding heroism of individuals or states,

and safe spaces to play out utopias and worst nightmares, as well as a new form of

historiography. Games offer the possibility to act out different versions of important sequences

in a cultural imaginary, and by giving that interactivity they also give a sense of agency, and of

deeper understanding of the presumed agency of the actors depicted. Through this, they present

an image of the world, a model that in its visuality describes how the world could or should be

interpreted, in terms of values, ideology and possible actions. In the commercial environment of

developing and publishing games, the selection of worldviews also highlights which narratives

and power relations that are deemed lucrative to pursue.

On the whole, those are the histories of the conquerors, the European perspective

of colonial, mostly righteous, dominance, portrayed through controlled landscapes, appropriated

places and spaces that only admit the duality of fight or flight, of conquer or be conquered. In

games these discourses are acted out, again and again, hammering home the material,

technological and moral superiority of the West, and while this is sometimes even more overt in

games set in the colonial era, post-WWII intervention representations are rife with depictions of

the right of US agents to dominate places, spaces and landscapes. And although there are a few

cases of resistance, none really highlights alternative episodes from history or attempt to clearly

and honestly examine the power relations that drive this drive for dominion.

Meaning of Place

Across the different examples visited and revisited, there have been several usages of the

connotation and association of specific places. In terms of countries and cultures, you can see

their inclusion as parts of discourses that legitimise or delegitimise certain courses of (often

violent) action. Furthermore, specific locations are employed most often in conjunction with

either their cultural and economic significance in imagined conflict, their mythological currency

as sites of symbolic value, or real events that mirror, foreshadow or in other ways resemble those 127 US historian Howard Zinn, quoted by Said (2002, p. 243).

66

of the game. In the first instance, games are often engaged in playful counterfactuality and

fantasy, posing ‘what if?’-scenarios that are meant to excite, terrify or intrigue players, making the

game and its virtual stakes more interesting. They are consequently often more ‘close to home,’

introducing the spectacular or scary into the well-known. Even more well-known are the

examples of mythological sites; these range over a broader area of the Earth’s surface, and

includes the common symbols of outstanding human or natural landmarks, from the Eiffel

Tower, through the Chinese Wall, to the Cristo Redentor, subsumed into a shared library of

‘worthy’ landmarks.

The specifics of place are engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the mythologies of

connotation that surrounds video games. It is also clear that many cases include an urge to be

taken as seriously as other media, and intermedial borrowing, adapting and sparring serves to

present a situation of medial parity. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 chose to namecheck half a

continent, without half an attempt at representing it or its inhabitants, while Arma 3 claimed

fiction as alibi, as it engaged in ‘authentic’ military simulations on meticulously modelled real-

world terrain. This is not to say that detailed modelling of real world places always occur with an

alibi. As an example, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (2006) allows a player to spend

three days in virtual Mexico City, living out US dreams of intervening directly and violently in

both criminal and political crises of its southern neighbour.

Place, both mythological and physical, is simultaneously evocative and grounding

as new virtual worlds are created, tethering the player to known landscapes and phenomena as

they explore alternate realities. It is only somewhat disheartening to note, then, that the places

where the US is envisioned as entering are entered with a violence and disregard for other

perspectives that is all too familiar from more than a century of real-world interventions.

Meaning of Space

Video games’ potential scopic regimes are intricately tied together with conceptions of genre, and

the immediate styles of play that accompany these. A visual framework comes with certain

explicit and implicit directions as to what is possible, what is encouraged and what is demanded

to be done. Looking is often followed by acting, and the spaces of different genres define what

each glance’s accompanying act is likely to be. That is not to say there isn’t space for resistance, it

is just that the space and variety of resistance is highly restricted by the rule-bound nature of

many games. Beyond the act of ceasing to play, or the often provoked standstill where a game

67

cannot progress longer, there is the possibility to bend and break rules, both from within the

player experience, but also through ‘external’ modifications.

Regardless, resistance, or ‘playing back’ serves often only to highlight the rigidness

of certain customs, the omnipresence of certain assumptions. While the 165 games analysed in

this material carry within them a myriad of choices, each style and genre

emphasising different aspects of complex conflicts, the truth is that the

fundamental core of the play-act, that which allows a player to engage, and

further their engagement with the game within the given parameters can all

too often be boiled down to two types of response to a situation; ‘Shoot!’ or ‘Shoot?’ (the

statistical distribution of which can be seen in table 5.1).

The first includes all of the different types of shooter games we have seen, naturally

including both Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Arma 3. But it also includes the majority of strategy

and tactical games, as well as most simulations of vehicles seen, no matter how technically astute.

The main mechanic of interaction is to shoot other (human) beings. Rarely are you asked to

distinguish between which human beings to shoot. The second category earns its question mark

merely on the qualification that other potential ways to interact with your environment exist,

even though violent aggression may still be the heavily favoured or preferred one. As Murray put

it, the concept of mastery and domination is everywhere, as the observation of the simulated

space invites, urges, and in many cases demands dominion.128

The results are naturally in no small part due to the questions asked of the material,

and those used to select it. Still, the question was asked in terms of economic, cultural, political,

or military intervention, and the fact that the found samples nearly exclusively allowed only the

latter tells a clear story. Together with the large majority of games being explicitly pro-USA, with

only a handful consistently critical in their depiction, the visual worlds represented present a clear

picture; spaces serve either functionality or aesthetic, tool or spectacle, and any life that differs

from that of the (US) protagonist found therein must either be colonised or exterminated.

Landscapes of US intervention

This study has shown, in agreement with observations by Murray, that within depictions of US

intervention, the construction and utilisation of landscape within mainstream videogames, and

particularly the wide genre of ‘shooter’ games combine to further a couple of foundational myths

128 Murray, (2018, pp. 175-176) when analysing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Response: % Shoot! 92% Shoot? 8%

Table 5.1. Condensed response of subgenres.

68

of US historiography, but also contemporary political ideology.129 The central tenet, which I have

not belaboured, is the primacy of the gun as an object of liberation, of power, of identity and

emancipation. It shapes and defines the visuality presented and the possible positions of the

spectator as centrally that of looking through the visor or down the barrel of the gun at the

world. This ‘world’ is there for your (the privileged spectator/player) consumption, domination

and annexation.

US interventionism is deployed mostly uncritically, and as a ‘wholesome’ excuse for

violent killing of the ‘other.' The multimedial nature of games offers possibilities for perspective

shift, embodiment and limited agency; but fundamentally, the perspective of a game’s framework

guides all possible interactions. The US-centric perspective (both visual and rhetorical) has

penetrated many cultural spheres, through mass-market capitalism and an urge to cater to

imagined demographics. The narratives employed form part of a broader world-view, inextricably

tied to centuries of oppression, and ongoing social, economic and technological inequality. It is

not necessarily tied directly to tangible behaviours, but it is nevertheless pervasive, and formative

for discourse, and subsequently policy.130 This is a form of historiography, much as film is, and it

is visceral, it is repeated until forming almost instinctive knowledge, and it is incredibly pervasive.

The landscape fills an expanded role, compared to that observed of its art historical

predecessor, not only expressing the colonial assertion of power, but encouraging players to

partake in and repeat that assertion. Although this thesis’ case studies departed from games that

the quantitative study categorised as different types of intervention, their discursive frameworks,

especially as expressed through their virtual landscapes, are strikingly familiar. Their main

difference consists in the experience of space, which does highlight different elements of a shared

discourse, and considerably affects the moment-to-moment experience of the game. An opposite

approach to fictional and specific places has served to further drive home the overarching

dominance of the central thesis; terrain is represented as depoliticised places, whose specificity is

only valued in engaging special mythologies or authenticities, creating spaces for interaction that

are entirely based on destruction and dominance. The landscapes of US intervention follow

established imperialist discourse where they are rendered as scenery, however detailed or

spectacular, complicit in an ongoing process of becoming subsumed into an imperial domain.

129 As engaged by Murray (2018, p. 163) in her description of US societal identity construed against the ‘primitive’ landscape surrounding its earliest member states. 130 As evidenced in Sparrow et al. (2018).

69

Further research

As is so often the case, this study has raised more questions than it could possibly answer. The

material examined in the quantitative study was so extensive that the study inevitably only

scratches the outermost crust of its surface. Further, the exhaustive nature of games, and the

different ways available to experience and examine them also means that even the case studies

serve only to illuminate one, very specific, perspective on their presentation and interaction. This

thesis is at its core a juxtaposition of two games out of hundreds, and the briefest sampling of the

other hundred and a half. What this study didn’t have time to cover is in a very real sense much

larger than any conclusions it can claim to draw.

To begin with the site of production, the ties between the US military-industrial

complex and the invention, development and industry of video games merits thorough

investigation. Comparing games produced within the US and outside, and outside the West, can

explore possible differences arising from diverse corporate structures and cultural backgrounds.131

A US centric narrative does not have to originate from within the US, as the case studies of one

Swedish and one Czech game shows, but the specific discourses nevertheless share clear US-

positive traits, and a framework that has been adopted from US popular culture.

Focusing on the site of the image (or game) itself, similar, expanded studies

detailing video games backward (e.g. comparing depictions before and after the World Trade

Center attack), but also delving deeper into the material, further categorising and unpicking the

specificities and logics of these categories, has rich potential. While Spec Ops: The Line has already

been thoroughly examined as a site for resistance and for creating complicity in the acts

depicted,132 further studies of examples of resistance in video games, but also their comparative

scarcity, can only enrich the medium.

The thesis touches upon the inherent inhumanity present in simplistic game

experiences, where wars become games and human life and dignity become nothing, as well as

the oppressive historical and political structures that underlie these power relations.

Unfortunately, it was not able to incorporate wider theoretical perspectives, above all

postcolonial theory, and studies inspired by those of Mukherjee and Murray of the same time

period would undoubtedly yield even more interesting conclusions.

131 Once again, one possible such avenue has been explored by Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009), although one could easily imagine other theoretical foundations than the version of ‘Empire’ that they use. 132 Kristine Jørgensen explores the idea of the constructive uses of discomfort in ‘The positive discomfort of Spec Ops: the line’, Game studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 2016.

70

Today, astride the world, the US has spread its military, economic and cultural influence to every

corner, with military bases putting old Roman Imperial Limes-systems133 to shame, and

domination of public broadcasts worldwide dwarfing the dreams of many a diligent autocrat. The

influence of the US is everywhere, culturally and politically dominant in the Global North, with

military presence and logistical exploitation still checking the Global South. The naturalisation of

US domination owes a tremendous amount to its cultural machinery, actors who are not

necessarily consciously complicit in the transgressions of their government, but who nevertheless

facilitate the transmission of its ideologies, economic models and political logic across the globe.

Video games, as a medium of the age, with an indelible US heritage, are merely more overt (in

their indirect interactivity) than some other media in its abeyance to US narratives. This is one

reason why it is important to continue to question games, to critique and analyse them and the

worldviews contained within, and in order to do this, multiple perspectives are crucial. From

ludology to literary, postcolonial and visual culture studies, every new perspective can bring

greater understanding, and hopefully lead to discourses, power relations and landscapes in games

that are far more diverse than those found in this study.

133 A network of forts and defences that stretched across Western and Central Europe, marking the Empire’s boundaries against ‘barbarian’ lands, as well as providing a system of military bases and invasion response.

71

Appendix(1.(Content(Analysis:(Full(table(of(resultsYear

PlatformIntervention)Type

US-RoleUS-Adversary

PeriodLocation

SpecialPerspective

DStylisation

GenreSubgenre

1AC@130:-O

peration-Devastation

2009C

Warfare

ProtagonistPolitical)Enem

iesMultiple

Vietnam,)Iraq,)Afghanistan

1st)Person3D

PhotorealisticAction)A)Fighting

Arcade)Shooter

2Act-of-W

ar:-Direct-Action

2005C

CounterterrorismProtagonist

TerroristsNear)future

Egypt,)RussiaIsom

etric3D

PhotorealisticStrategy)A)RTS

Tactical)Wargam

e

3After-Burner-Clim

ax2010

P|XWarfare)(Air)


iesModern

UndefinedGlobal

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

4Air-Assault-Task-Force

2006C

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

,)Somalia,)Afghanistan

TopADown

2DPhotorealistic

Strategy)A)RTSTactical)W

argame

5Air-Conflicts:-Vietnam

2013C|P|X

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

6Alpha-Protocol

2010C|P|X

Covert)OpsProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

S.)Arabia,)Italy,)Russia,)Taiwan

3PAClose3D

PhotorealisticAdventure)A)RPG

ActionAAdventure

7Am

erica's-Army-3

2009C

StabilizationProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

EU[E]Fictional

1st)Person3D


FPS

8Am

erica's-Army:-

Rise-of-a-Soldier2005

XCounterterrorism

ProtagonistTerrorists

Modern

AS[W]

Fictional1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingFPS

9Am

erica's-Army:-

True-Soldiers2007

XWarfare


iesModern

Undefined1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


10Apache:-Air-Assault

2010C|P|X


TerroristsModern

AS[W],)AM

[S],)AFRFictional

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

11ARM

A-22009

CStabilization


iesModern

AS[C])"Chernarus"Fictional

1st)Person3D


FPS

12ARM

A-2:-Operation-

Arrowhead

2010C

Regime)Change


iesModern

AS[C])"Takistan"Fictional

1st)Person3D


FPS

13ARM

A-32013

CStabilization


iesNear)future

EU[S]"Stratis/Altis",)OCE"Tanoa"

Fictional1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


14ARM

A-Tactics2013

CCounterterrorism


Modern

AS[W],)AF[N]

1st)Person3D

PhotorealisticStrategy)A)TBS

Tactical)Wargam

e

15ARM

A:-Armed-

Assault2006

CStabilization


iesModern

AF[N])"Atlantic)isl."Fictional

1st)Person3D


FPS

16Arm

ored-Brigade2008

CWorld)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Germany

TopADown

2DAbstract


argame

17Arm

y-of-Two

2008P|X

CounterterrorismEm

ployerTerrorists

Modern

Somalia,)Afghanistan,)Iraq,)

Philippines)(Sea),)S.)Korea3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingTPS

18Battlefield-2

2005C

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

China,)S.)Arabia,)Afghanistan,)Qatar,)Kuw

ait,)Wake)isl.,)

Lebanon)coast,)Caspian)Sea,)Russia,)Syria,)Kazakhstan,)Iraq

1st)Person3D


FPS

19Battlefield-2:-Modern-Com

bat2005

P|XWarfare

Optional)sidePolitical)Enem

iesModern

Kazakhstan1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


Game-Nam

e

Appendices

72

YearPlatform

Intervention)TypeUS-Role

US-Adversary

PeriodLocation

SpecialPerspective

DStylisation

Genre

SubgenreGam

e-Nam

e

20Battlefield-3

2011C|P|X

Regime)Change

Protagonist)(sev.)Political)Enem

iesModern

Iran,)Iraq,)France1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


21Battlefield-4

2013C|P|X

Regime)Change


iesModern

Azerbaijan,)China,)Singapore,)Tibet,)Egypt,)Hong)Kong,)Ukraine,)Turkm

enistan,)Iran,)France,)Thailand,)N.)Korea,)Russia

1st)Person3D


FPS

22Battlefield-Play4Free

2011C

Warfare


iesModern

AS[W],)AS[SE]

1st)Person3D


FPS

23Battlefield:-Bad-Com

pany2008

P|XWorld)W

ar)IIIProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

AS[C])"Serdaristan",)"Sadiz"Fictional

1st)Person3D


FPS

24Battlefield:-Bad-Com

pany-22010

C|P|XWorld)W

ar)IIIProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

Japan,)Argentina,)Bolivia,)Chile,)Colom

bia,)Panama,)Russia

1st)Person3D


FPS

25Battleship

2012P|X|N

Warfare

ProtagonistAliens

Modern

Pacific)OceanIsom

etric3D

PhotorealisticStrategy)A)TBS

Tactical)Wargam

e

26Black

2006P|X


TerroristsModern

Russia)(Chechnya/Ingushetia)1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


27Breach

2011C|X


TerroristsModern

AS[C]3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


28Call-of-Duty-4:-Modern-W

arfare2007

C|P|X|NRegim

e)ChangeProtagonist)(sev.)

Political)Enemies

Modern

Kuwait,)S.)Arabia,)Russia,)Iraq,)

Ukraine,)Azerbaijan1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


29Call-of-Duty:-Advanced-W

arfare2014

C|P|XWorld)W

ar)IIIProtagonist

TerroristsNear)future

Greece,)Bulgaria,)Nigeria,)S.)Korea,)Thailand,)Antarctica,)Iraq

1st)Person3D


FPS

30Call-of-Duty:-Black-Ops

2010C|P|X|N


Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Russia,)Kazakhstan,)Cuba,)Hong)Kong,)Laos,)Vietnam

,)Canada

1st)Person3D


FPS

31Call-of-Duty:-Black-Ops-II

2012C|P|X|N


Criminals

Multiple

Angola,)Myanm

ar,)Afghanistan,)Nicaragua,)Pakistan,)Caym

an)Isls.,)Panam

a,)Yemen,)Haiti

1st)Person3D


FPS

32Call-of-Duty:-Ghosts

2013C|P|X|N


Criminals

Modern

Space,)Venezuela,)Mexico,)

Argentina,)Antarctica,)Atlantic,)Brazil,)Chile,)UK,)Uruguay,)Egypt,)AM

[E],)Australia,)Canada

1st)Person3D


FPS

33Call-of-Duty:-Modern-W

arfare-22009

C|P|XWorld)W

ar)IIIProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

Afghanistan,)Kazakhstan,)Russia,)Brazil,)Georgia,)Pakistan,)Ukraine,)Iraq

1st)Person3D


FPS

34Call-of-Duty:-Modern-W

arfare-32011

C|P|X|NWorld)W

ar)IIIProtagonist)(sev.)

Political)Enemies

Modern

AS[W],)India,)Sierra)Leone,)

Germany,)Som

alia,)France,)Czech)R,)Russia,)UAE,)Ukraine,)S.)Korea,)Brazil,)Afghanistan

1st)Person3D


FPS

73

YearPlatform

Intervention)TypeUS-R

oleUS-A

dversaryPeriod

LocationSpecial

PerspectiveD

StylisationGenre

SubgenreGam

e-Nam

e

35Cannon-Fodder-3

2012C


TerroristsModern

Undefined

GlobalIsom

etric3D

StylizedStrategy)A)RTS

Tactical)Wargam

e

36Civilization-IV

2005C

Warfare,)Covert)O

psOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Multiple

Worldw

ideIsom

etric3D

StylizedStrategy)A)TBS

4X

37Civilization-Revolution

2008P|X

Warfare,)Covert)O

psOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Multiple

Worldw

ideIsom

etric3D


4X

38Civilization-V

2010C

Warfare,)Covert)O

psOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Multiple

Worldw

ideIsom

etric3D


4X

39Classified:-The-Sentinel-Crisis

2006X

Covert)Ops


Modern

EU[E]

1st)Person3D


FPS

40Close-Com

bat:-First-to-Fight

2005C|X


Political)Enemies

Modern

Lebanon1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


41Close-Com

bat:-Modern-Tactics

2007C

Regime)Change


iesModern

IraqTopADow

n2D


Tactical)Wargam

e

42Codenam

e:-Panzers-–-Cold-War

2009C

World)W

ar)IIIProtagonist)(sev.)

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Germany

Isometric

3DPhotorealistic


argame

43Cold-Fear

2005C|P|X

Covert)Ops

Employer

SupernaturalModern

Bering)Strait)(Pacific)Ocean)

3PAClose3D


TPS

44Com

bat-Mission:-

Shock-Force2007

CRegim

e)ChangeProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

SyriaIsom

etric3D


Tactical)Wargam

e

45Com

mand-&

-Conquer:-R

ed-Alert-3

2008C|P|X

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Near)future

UK,)France,)Germ

any,)Japan,)Cuba,)Russia,)Sw

itzerland,)Greece,)Iceland,)Chile,)Netherlands

Isometric

3DStylized

Strategy)A)RTSClassic)RTS

46Com

mand-&

-Conquer:-R

ed-Alert-3-–-U

prising2009

C|P|XWorld)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Near)future

Japan,)Romania,)Russia,)

Mexico,)Guam

Isometric

3DStylized

Strategy)A)RTSClassic)RTS

47Com

mand:-

Modern-A

ir-/-Naval-O

perations2014

CWarfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Multiple

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D

AbstractStrategy)A)RTS

Tactical)Wargam

e

48Com

mander-in-

Chief2008

CWarfare,)Covert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D

StylizedProcess)A)Managem

entGovernm

ent)Sim

49Conflict:-D

enied-Ops

2008C|P|X

Covert)Ops


Modern

Venezuela3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


50Conflict:-G

lobal-Terror

2005C|P|X


TerroristsModern

Colombia,)S.)Korea,)U

kraine,)Russia,)Egypt,)Philippines,)Pakistan

3PAClose3D


TPS

51Crysis

2007C|P|X


Political)Enemies

Near)future

N.)Korea

1st)Person3D


FPS

52Crysis-W

arhead2008

CStabilization

AlliedPolitical)Enem

iesNear)future

N.)Korea

1st)Person3D


FPS

53Cuban-M

issile-Crisis:-The-Afterm

ath2005

CWorld)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Worldw

ideIsom

etric3D


Tactical)Wargam

e

74

YearPlatfo

rmIntervention)Type

US-Role

US-Adversary

Perio

dLocatio

nSpecial

Perspectiv

eD

Stylisatio

nGenre

Subgenre

Game-Name

54

Dangerous-W

aters

2005

CWarfare)(Naval)


iesModern

Worldw

ide3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Process)A)Sim

ulationNaval)Sim

55

Dark-Sector

2008

C|P|X

StabilizationEm

ployerScience

Cold)War

AS[C])"Lasria")(Soviet)satellite)Fictional

3PAClose3D


TPS

56

DCS-world

2013

CWarfare)(Air)


iesModern

AS[W],)Georgia

1st)Person3D

PhotorealisticProcess)A)Sim

ulationFlight)Sim

57

DCS:-A

@10C-

Warth

og

2011

CWarfare)(Air)


iesModern

Russia,)Georgia3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Process)A)Sim

ulationFlight)Sim

58

DCS:-B

lack-Shark

2009

CWarfare)(Air)


iesModern

Russia,)Georgia3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Process)A)Sim

ulationFlight)Sim

59

DEFCON:-

Everybody-Dies

2006

CWorld)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Worldw

ideTopADow

n3D


Strategical)Wargam

e

60

Delta

-Force:-

Xtre

me

2005

CCounterterrorism


Modern

Peru,)Chad,)Russia1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


61

Delta

-Force:-

Xtre

me-2

2009

CCounterterrorism


Modern

Russia1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


62

Elite

-Warrio

rs:-

Vietnam

2005

CWarfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


TPS

63

Empire

-Earth

-II2005

CWarfare,)Covert)Ops


iesMultiple

Worldw

ideIsom

etric3D


4X

64

Empire

-Earth

-III2007

CWarfare,)Covert)Ops


iesMultiple

Worldw

ideIsom

etric3D


4X

65

Falcon-4.0:-A

llied-

Force

2005

CWarfare)(Air)


iesModern

N.)Korea1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic

Process)A)Sim

ulationFlight)Sim

66

Far-C

ry-4

2014

C|P|X

Covert)OpsAntagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

AS[S])"Kyrat")(Nepal)Fictional

1st)Person3D


FPS

67

Far-C

ry-In

stin

cts

2005

X|N

Covert)OpsAllied

Criminals

Modern

OCE)"Jacutan")(Micronesia)

Fictional1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


68

Fate-of-th

e-W

orld

2011

COther

Superpower

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


entGovernm

ent)Sim

69

Flash-Point-

Germ

any

2005

CWorld)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Germany

TopADown

2DAbstract

Strategy)A)TBSTactical)W

argame

70

Frontlin

es:-Fuel-of-

War

2008

C|X

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Near)futureAS[C],)EU[E]

3PAClose3D


FPS

71

Full-S

pectru

m-

Warrio

r:-Ten-

Hammers

2006

C|P|X

Regime)Change

Protagonist)(sev.)Terrorists

Modern

AS[W])"Zekistan"

Fictional3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


argame

72

Ghost-S

quad

2007

NCounterterrorism


Cold)War

Undefined3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingArcade)Shooter

73

Hammer-&

-Sickle

2005

CStabilization

AntagonistPolitical)Enem

iesCold)W

arGerm

any)(West)

Isometric

3DPhotorealistic


argame

74

Heavy-Fire

:-

Afghanistan

2011

C|P|N


TerroristsModern

Afghanistan3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


75

Heavy-Fire

:-Black-

Arm

s2011

NCovert)Ops

ProtagonistCrim

inalsModern

AM[S]

Fictional1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


75

YearPlatform


US-Adversary

PeriodLocation

SpecialPerspective

DStylisation

GenreSubgenre

Game-N

ame

76Heavy-Fire:-Shattered-Spear

2013C|P|X


TerroristsModern

Iran3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


77Heavy-Fire:-Special-Operations

2010N


TerroristsModern

AS[W]

Fictional3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


78Iron-M

an2008

C|P|X|NRegim

e)ChangeEm

ployerTerrorists

Modern

Afghanistan3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingActionAAdventure

79Joint-Task-Force

2006C

Regime)Change


iesModern

Somalia,)Bosnia,)Afghanistan,)

Colombia,)Iraq

Isometric

3DPhotorealistic


argame

80Just-Cause

2006C|P|X

Regime)Change


iesModern

AM[E])"San)Esperito"

Fictional3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


81Just-Cause-2

2010C|P|X

Regime)Change


iesModern

AM[E])"Panau"

Fictional3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


82Made-M

an:-Confessions-of-the-Blood

2006C|P

Warfare

ProtagonistCrim

inalsCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


ActionAAdventure

83Masters-of-the-

World

2013C

Warfare,)Covert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


entGovernm

ent)Sim

84Medal-of-Honor

2010C|P|X

Regime)Change


Modern

Afghanistan1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


85Medal-of-Honor:-

Warfighter

2012C|P|X


TerroristsModern

Pakistan,)Yemen,)Som

alia,)Philippines,)Dubai,)Spain,)UAE

1st)Person3D


FPS

86Men-of-W

ar:-Vietnam

2011C

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

Isometric

3DPhotorealistic


argame

87Mercenaries-2:-

World-in-Flam

es2008

C|P|XWarfare

Possible)employer

Political)Enemies

Modern

Venezuela3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


88Mercenaries:-

Playground-of-Destruction

2005P|X

Regime)Change

Possible)employer

Political)Enemies

Modern

N.)Korea3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


89Metal-Gear-Solid-

4:-Guns-of-the-Patriots

2008P

Covert)Ops

AlliedPolitical)Enem

iesModern

EU[E],)AS[W],)AF[N],)AM

[S]1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingStealth)Gam

e

90Metal-Gear-Solid-

V:-Ground-Zeroes2014

C|P|XCovert)O

psAntagonist

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Cuba1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


91Naval-W

ar:-Arctic-Circle

2012C

Warfare)(Naval)


iesNear)future

N)Atlantic)Ocean,)Arctic)O

cean,)Baltic)Sea

3PAClose2D


Tactical)Wargam

e

92Neocolonialism

2013C

Other

Superpower

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D

AbstractProcess)A)Managem

entGovernm

ent)Sim

93Operation-

Flashpoint:-Dragon-Rising

2009C|P|X

Regime)Change


iesModern

AS[N])"Skira")(Kiska)Fictional

3PAClose3D


FPS

94Operation-

Flashpoint:-Red-River

2011C|P|X


Political)enemies

Modern

Tajikistan3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


76

YearPlatform

Intervention)TypeUS-R

oleUS-A

dversaryPeriod

LocationSpecial

PerspectiveD

StylisationGenre

SubgenreGam

e-Nam

e

95Over-G

-Fighters2006

XCounterterrorism


iesNear)future

Worldw

ide3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic

Process)A)Sim

ulationFlight)Sim

96Ram

bo:-The-Video-

Gam

e2014

C|P|XCovert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Vietnam,)Thailand,)Pakistan,)

Afghanistan3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


97Red-O

cean2007

CCounterterrorism


Modern

Undefined)Ocean

1st)Person3D


FPS

98Resistance:-Fall-of-

Man

2006P

Covert)Ops

ProtagonistSupernatural

Modern

UK3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


99Robert-Ludlum

's-The-B

ourne-Conspiracy

2008P|X

Covert)Ops

Employer

TerroristsModern

AFR,)Switzerland,)France,)

Greece3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


100Rogue-W

arrior2009

C|P|XCovert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

N.)Korea,)Russia

3PAClose3D


FPS

101Rulers-of-N

ations2010

CWarfare,)Covert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


entGovernm

ent)Sim

102Shellshock-2:-Blood-Trails

2009C|P|X

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


FPS

103Singularity

2010C|P|X

Covert)Ops

ProtagonistScience

Cold)War

AS[N],)KatorgaA12)(Russia)

3PAClose3D


FPS

104Sky-G

amblers:-A

ir-Suprem

acy2012

CWarfare)(Air)

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

Undefined1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingFlight)Sim

105SO

COM-3-U

.S.-Navy-SEA

Ls2005

PCounterterrorism


Modern

Algeria,)Morocco)(?),)

Bangladesh,)Poland3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


106SO

COM-4-U

.S.-Navy-SEA

Ls2011

PStabilization


Modern

Malaysia

3PAClose3D


TPS

107SO

COM-U.S.-N

avy-SEA

Ls:-Confrontation

2008P

Warfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

Algeria,)Turkmenistan,)Alaska

3PAClose3D


TPS

108SO

COM:-U

.S.-Navy-

SEALs-Com

bined-Assault

2006P

Covert)Ops


iesModern

AS[C])"Adjikistan"Fictional

3PAClose3D


TPS

109Spec-O

ps:-The-Line2012

C|P|XCovert)O

psProtagonist

Rog.)Gvt.)ActivityModern

UAE3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


110Special-O

perations-Forces:-O

peration-Eagle's-Talon

2006C


TerroristsModern

AS[W],)AF[N

]3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


111Storm

:-Frontline-Nation

2011C

Warfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

EUR,)AF[N]

Isometric

2DStylized

Strategy)A)TBSStrategical)Wargam

e

112Strike-Fighters-2

2008C


Political)Enemies

Cold)War

AS[W])"Dhim

ar",)"Paran"Fictional

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

113Strike-Fighters-2:-Vietnam

2009C

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

77

YearPlatfo

rmIntervention)Type

US-Role

US-Adversary

Perio

dLocatio

nSpecial

Perspectiv

eD

Stylisatio

nGenre

Subgenre

Game-Name

114Supreme-Ruler-

2010

2005

CWarfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


Strategical)Wargam

e

115Supreme-Ruler-

2020

2008

CWarfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


Strategical)Wargam

e

116Supreme-Ruler-

Ultim

ate

2014

CWarfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Multiple

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


Strategical)Wargam

e

117Supreme-Ruler:-

Cold-W

ar

2011

CWarfare

Optional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

Worldw

ideTopADow

n2D


Strategical)Wargam

e

118Syphon-Filte

r:-

Dark-M

irror

2007

PCovert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Alaska,)Peru,)Bosnia,)Russia,)Poland,)Thailand

3PAClose3D


TPS

119Syphon-Filte

r:-

Logan's-Shadow

2010

PCounterterrorism


Cold)War

Indian)Ocean,)Azerbaijan,)Syria

3PAClose3D


TPS

120Take-On-

Helicopters

2011

CRegim

e)ChangeProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Modern

AS[C])"Takistan"Fictional

1st)Person3D

PhotorealisticProcess)A)Sim

ulationFlight)Sim

121

Terro

rist-

Takedown-2:-U

S-

Navy-Seals

2008

CCounterterrorism


Modern

AS[W],)AF[N

]3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


122Terro

rist-

Takedown-3

2010

CCounterterrorism


Modern

Somalia

3PAClose3D


FPS

123

Terro

rist-

Takedown:-C

overt-

Operatio

ns

2006

CCounterterrorism


Modern

Colombia

3PAClose3D


FPS

124

Terro

rist-

Takedown:-

Payback

2005

CCounterterrorism


Modern

AS[W],)AF[N

]1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


125

Terro

rist-

Takedown:-W

ar-in

-

Colombia

2006

CCounterterrorism


Modern

Colombia

3PAClose3D


FPS

126The-Hell-in

-

Vietnam

2007

CWarfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


FPS

127The-M

ark

2007

CCounterterrorism


Modern

UK3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


128Theatre

-of-W

ar-3

:-

Korea

2011

CRegim

e)ChangeOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

S.)Korea,)N.)Korea

Isometric

3DPhotorealistic


argame

129Tim

e-Crisis:-R

azing-

Storm

2010

PCounterterrorism


Near)future

AM[S]

Fictional3PAClose

3DStylized


130Tom-Clancy's-

EndWar

2008

C|P|X

World)W

ar)IIIProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Near)future

Denmark,)EUR,)Russia

Isometric

3DPhotorealistic


argame

131Tom-Clancy's-

Ghost-R

econ-(W

ii)2010

NRegim

e)ChangeProtagonist

TerroristsModern

Norw

ay,)Russia1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


132

Tom-Clancy's-

Ghost-R

econ-2:-

Summit-S

trike

2005

XRegim

e)ChangeProtagonist

TerroristsModern

Kazakhstan1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


78

YearPlatform


US-Adversary

PeriodLocation

SpecialPerspective

DStylisation

GenreSubgenre

Game-N

ame

133

Tom-Clancy's-

Ghost-Recon-Advanced-Warfighter

2006C|P|X


Criminals

Modern

Mexico

1st)Person3D


TPS

134

Tom-Clancy's-

Ghost-Recon-Advanced-Warfighter-2

2007C|P|X


Political)Enemies

Modern

Mexico

1st)Person3D


TPS

135Tom

-Clancy's-Ghost-Recon-Phantom

s2014

CCovert)O

psProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Near)future

Undefined

3PAClose3D


TPS

136Tom

-Clancy's-Ghost-Recon:-Future-Soldier

2012C|P|X

Regime)Change


iesNear)future

Nicaragua,)Bolivia,)Zam

bia,)Nigeria,)Pakistan,)Russia,)

Barent's)Sea,)Kazakhstan1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


137Tom

-Clancy's-H.A.W

.X2009

C|P|XWarfare)(Air)


iesNear)future

Mexico,)Brazil

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

138Tom

-Clancy's-H.A.W

.X-22010

C|P|X|NWarfare


iesNear)future

Russia3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


139Tom

-Clancy's-Rainbow

-Six:-Critical-Hour

2006X


TerroristsModern

S.)Africa,)Algeria,)Netherlands,)

UK,)France,)Spain

1st)Person3D


FPS

140Tom

-Clancy's-Rainbow

-Six:-Lockdow

n2005

C|P|X|NCounterterrorism


Modern

Italy,)UK,)M

exico,)Brazil,)Ukraine

1st)Person3D


FPS

141Tom

-Clancy's-Rainbow

-Six:-Vegas

2006C|P|X


TerroristsModern

Mexico

1st)Person3D


FPS

142Tom

-Clancy's-Rainbow

-Six:-Vegas-2

2008C|P|X


TerroristsModern

France,)Costa)Rica1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


143Tom

-Clancy's-Splinter-Cell:-Blacklist

2013C|P|X|N


TerroristsModern

Libya,)UK,)Iran,)Cuba,)M

exico,)India,)Russia,)Guam

1st)Person3D


Stealth)Game

144Tom

-Clancy's-Splinter-Cell:-Chaos-Theory

2005C|P|X|N

Covert)Ops

ProtagonistRog.)Gvt.)Activity

Modern

Peru,)Japan,)N.)Korea,)S.)Korea,)

1st)Person3D


Stealth)Game

145Tom

-Clancy's-Splinter-Cell:-Conviction

2010C|X

Covert)Ops


iesModern

Malta,)Iraq,)Russia,)Azerbaijan

1st)Person3D


Stealth)Game

146Tom

-Clancy's-Splinter-Cell:-Double-Agent

2006C|P|X|N

Covert)Ops

ProtagonistRog.)Gvt.)Activity

Modern

Iceland,)Russia,)China,)Mexico,)

DR)Congo,)1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic

Action)A)FightingStealth)Gam

e

79

YearPlatform


US-AdversaryPeriod

LocationSpecial

PerspectiveD

StylisationGenre

SubgenreGam

e-Name

147Top-Gun-(2010)

2010C|P

Warfare)(Air)


iesModern

Indian)Ocean3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


148Top-Gun:-Hard-Lock

2012C|P|X

Regime)Change


iesCold)W

arAS[W

],)Persian)Gulf)(Sea)3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


149Total-O

verdose:-A-Gunslinger's-Tale-in-M

exico2005

C|P|XCovert)Ops

ProtagonistCrim

inalsModern

Mexico

3PAClose3D

StylizedAction)A)Fighting

TPS

150Toy-Soldiers:-Cold-War

2011X

Warfare


iesCold)W

arUK,)Egypt,)France,)Vietnam

,)Cuba,)Korea

Isometric

3DStylized


argame

151Tropico-3

2009C|X

Regime)Change

Superpower

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

AM[E])"Tropico"

FictionalIsom

etric3D

PhotorealisticProcess)A)Managem

entGovernm

ent)Sim

152Tropico-4

2011C|X

Regime)Change

Superpower

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

AM[E])"Tropico"

FictionalIsom

etric3D


entGovernm

ent)Sim

153Tropico-5

2014C|P|X

OtherSuperpow

erPolitical)Enem

iesMultiple

AM[E])"Tropico"

FictionalIsom

etric3D


entGovernm

ent)Sim

154Tunnel-Rats:-1968

2009C

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


FPS

155Vietcong-2

2005C

Warfare


iesCold)W

arVietnam

3PAClose3D


FPS

156Warfare

2008C

StabilizationOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Modern

S.)ArabiaIsom

etric3D


Tactical)Wargam

e

157Wargam

e:-AirLand-Battle

2013C

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

EU[N]Isom

etric3D


Tactical)Wargam

e

158Wargam

e:-European-Escalation

2012C

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

EU[N]Isom

etric3D


Tactical)Wargam

e

159Wargam

e:-Red-Dragon

2014C

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

AS[E]Isom

etric3D


Tactical)Wargam

e

160WinBack-2:-Project-

Poseidon2006

P|XCounterterrorism


Modern

Undefined)isl.3PAClose

3DPhotorealistic


161Wings-O

ver-Europe:-Cold-W

ar-Gone-Hot

2006C

World)W

ar)IIIOptional)side

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

Germany

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

162World-in-Conflict

2007C

World)W

ar)IIIProtagonist

Political)Enemies

Cold)War

France,)Russia1st)Person

3DPhotorealistic


163World-of-Tanks

2011C|P|X

Warfare


iesCold)W

arUndefined

3PAClose3D


Vehicle)Sim

164World-of-

Warplanes

2013C

Warfare)(Air)


iesCold)W

arUndefined

3PAClose3D


Flight)Sim

165XCO

M:-Enem

y-Unknow

n2012

C|P|XStabilization

Protagonist)(sev.)Aliens

Near)future

Egypt,)S.)Africa,)Nigeria,)Australia,)China,)India,)Japan,)France,)Germ

any,)Russia,)UK,)Canada,)M

exico,)Argentina,)Brazil

Isometric

3DStylized


argame

80

REFERENCES Ludography

Alina Digital, Arms Race – the Cold War era, [PC game], Montreal, Alina Digital, 2017. BattleGoat Studios, Supreme Ruler Ultimate, [PC game], Ancaster, ON, BattleGoat Studios, 2014. Bohemia Interactive, Arma 2, [PC game], Prague, Bohemia Interactive a.s., 2009. Bohemia Interactive, Arma 3, [PC game], Prague, Bohemia Interactive a.s., 2013. EA DICE, Battlefield: bad company 2, [PC game], Redwood City, CA, Electronic Arts Inc., 2010. EA Los Angeles, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, [PC game], Redwood City, CA, Electronic

Arts Inc., 2008. EA Montreal, Army of Two, [Xbox 360 game], Redwood City, CA, Electronic Arts Inc., 2008. Eugen Systems, Act of War: Direct Action, [PC game], Paris, Atari SA, 2005. Firaxis Games, Civilization IV, [PC game], Novato, CA, 2K Games, Inc., 2005. Firaxis Games, Civilization V, [PC game], Novato, CA, 2K Games, Inc., 2010. Firaxis Games, Civilization Revolution, [Playstation 3 game], Novato, CA, 2K Games, Inc., 2008. Firaxis Games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, [PC game], Novato, CA, 2K Games, Inc., 2012. Infinity Ward, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, [PC game], Santa Monica, CA, Activision Publishing,

Inc., 2009. Mad Doc Software, Empire Earth II, [PC game], Oakhurst, CA, Sierra Entertainment, In., 2005. Massive Entertainment, World in Conflict, [PC game], Oakhurst, CA, Sierra Entertainment, In.,

2007. U.S. Army, America's Army 3, [PC game], The Pentagon, VI, U.S. Army, 2009. Ubisoft Montreal, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, [Xbox 360 game], Montreuil, Ubisoft

Entertainment SA, 2008. Ubisoft Montreal, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, [PC game], Montreuil, Ubisoft

Entertainment SA, 2005. Yager, Spec Ops: The Line, [PC game], Novato, CA, 2K Games, Inc., 2012. Internetography

AP, ‘“Great power competition”: Nato announces Atlantic command to counter Russia’, 5 May

2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/05/great-power-competition-nato-announces-atlantic-command-to-counter-russia, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Armed Assault Wiki, [website], 2018, http://armedassault.wikia.com/wiki/Armed_Assault_Wiki, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Battlefield Wiki, [website], 2018, http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_Wiki, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Bohemia Interactive, Arma 3, [website], 2018, https://arma3.com/, (accessed 6 September 2018). Bohemia Interactive, ‘New name for main island in Arma 3’, Bohemia Interactive Developer’s Blog,

[website], 1 February 2013, https://www.bohemia.net/blog/new-name-for-main-island-in-arma-3, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Darke, D., ‘The ruins I saw in Syria stand as a rebuke to western inaction’, The Guardian, 1 May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/01/syria-rebuke-western-inaction-military-intervention-assad, (accessed 6 September 2018).

The digital museum – Assassin’s Creed Origins discovery tour – Extra Credits, [online video], 9 May 2018, Extra Credits, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp1DgRCEBDA, (accessed 6 September 2018).

81

kostaatanasov [username], ‘A vacation on Altis - or - to Limnos and back again’, Bohemia Interactive Forums, [website], 8 November 2014, https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/175155-a-vacation-on-altis-or-to-limnos-and-back-again/, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Matrix Games Ltd., ‘Command: modern air naval operations wargame of the year edition’, Matrix Games, [website], 2014, http://www.matrixgames.com/products/483/details/Command:. Modern.Air.Naval.Operations.Wargame.of.the.Year.Edition, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Polygon Staff, ‘Jail time: how two Arma 3 developers were arrested in Greece’, Polygon, 2013, https://www.polygon.com/2013/2/8/3968814/arma-3-developers-arrested-for-spying-on-military-in-greece, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Sampathkumar, M., ’Donald Trump ”very proud” after dropping ”mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan’, The Independent, 13 April 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ donald-trump-moab-us-bomb-afghanistan-mother-of-all-response-statement-a7683221.html, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Sarkar, S., ‘“Arma 3” banned in Iran’, Polygon, https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/9/19/ 3357600/arma-3-banned-in-iran, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Smith, G., ‘Have you played… Battlefield: Bad Company 2’, Rock Paper Shotgun, 20 October 2016, https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/10/20/have-you-played-battlefield-bad-company-2/, (accessed 6 September 2018).

UNSD, ‘Methodology: standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49)’, United Nations Statistics Division, 2018, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Wright, R., ‘Trump drops the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan’, The New Yorker, 14 April 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-drops-the-mother-of-all-bombs-on-afghanistan, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Bibliography

Aarseth, E. J., Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press,

1997. Allen, R., ‘The unreal enemy of America’s Army’, Games and culture, vol. 6, no. 1, 2011, pp. 38-60. Anthropy, A., Rise of the videogame zinesters: how freaks, normals, amateurs, artists, dreamers, dropouts,

queers, housewives, and people like you are taking back an art form, New York, Seven Stories Press, 2012.

Bal, M., ‘Visual essentialism and the object of visual culture’, Journal of visual culture, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003, pp. 5-23.

Barthes, R., Image text music, trans. S. Heath, London, Fontana Press, 1977. Barthes, R., Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers, London, Vintage Classics, 2009 (1957). Bell, P., ‘Content analysis of visual images’, in T. van Leeuwen, & C. Jewitt (eds.), Handbook of

visual analysis, London, SAGE, 2001, pp. 92-118. Blum, W., Killing Hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II, London, Zed Books,

2003. Chomsky, N., Deterring democracy, London, Verso, 1991. Collins, K., Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Video Game Music and

Sound, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2008. Conrad, J., Heart of darkness, New York, Broadview Press, 1995 (1889). Dyer-Witheford, N. & de Peuter, G., Games of empire: global capitalism and video games, Minneapolis,

University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J.H., and Tosca, S.P., Understanding video games: the essential introduction,

2nd edn., New York, Routledge, 2013. Elkins, J., Visual studies: a sceptical introduction, New York, Routledge, 2003. Fernández-Vara, C., Introduction to game analysis, New York, Routledge, 2015.

82

Festl, R., Scharkow, M. & Quandt, T., ‘Militaristic attitudes and the use of digital games’, Games and culture, vol. 8, no. 6, 2013, pp. 392-407.

Foucault, M., Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans. A. Sheridan, London, Penguin, 1977 (1975).

Foucault, M., History of sexuality: volume 1, an introduction, trans. R. Hurley, New York, Vintage Books, 1978 (1976).

Frasca, G., ‘Lugology meets narratology: similitudes and differences between (video)games and narrative’, originally published in Finnish in Parnasso, vol. 3, 1999, pp. 365-371, http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Hall, S., ‘The spectacle of the “other”’, in S. Hall (ed.), Representation, 2nd ed., London, SAGE, 2013, pp. 215-287.

Hitchens, M., Patrickson, B. & Young, S., ‘Reality and terror, the first-person shooter in current day settings’, Games and culture, vol. 9, no. 1, 2014, pp. 3-29.

Höglund, J., ‘Electronic empire: orientalism revisited in the military shooter’, Game studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, http://gamestudies.org/0801/articles/hoeglund, (accessed 6 September 2018).

Jay, M., ‘Scopic regimes of modernity’, in H. Foster (ed.), Vision and Visuality, Seattle, Bay Press, 1988, pp. 3-23.

Jay, M., ‘Scopic regimes of modernity revisited’, in I. Heywood & B. Sandwell (eds.), The handbook of visual culture, London, Bloomsbury, 2011, pp. 103-114.

Jenkins, H., ‘Game design as narrative architecture’, in N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (eds.), First person: new media as story, performance and game, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2004.

Juul, J., Half-real: video games between real rules and fictional worlds, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2011. Jørgensen, K., ‘The positive discomfort of Spec Ops: the line’, Game studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 2016. Kane, T., Global U.S. troop deployment, 1950-2005, Washington, D.C., The Heritage Center for Data

Analysis, 2006. Kirkpatrick, G., Aesthetic theory and the video game, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011. Machin, D. & van Leeuwen, T., ‘Computer games as political discourse: the case of Black hawk

down’, Journal of language and politics, vol. 4, no. 1, 2005, pp. 119-141. Metz, C., ‘From the Imaginary Signifier’, in L. Braudy & M. Cohen (eds.), Film theory and criticism:

introductory readings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 694-710. Mirzoeff, N., The right to look: a counterhistory of visuality, Durham, NA, Duke University Press, 2011. Mirzoeff, N., ‘What is visual culture?’, in Nicholas Mirzoeff (ed.), The visual culture reader, 3rd ed.,

London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 3-13. Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Imperial Landscape’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and power, 2nd ed.,

Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002a, pp. 5-34. Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Introduction’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and power, 2nd ed., Chicago,

University of Chicago Press, 2002b, pp. 1-4. Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture’, Journal of visual culture, vol. 1, no. 2,

2002c, pp. 165-181. Monaco, J., How to read a film: movies, media, multimedia, 3rd ed., Oxford, Oxford university press,

2000. Mukherjee, S., Videogames and postcolonialism: empire plays back, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Murray, S., On video games: the visual politics of race, gender and space, London, I.B. Tauris, 2018. Nitsche, M., Video game spaces: image, play, and structure in 3D worlds, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press,

2008. Panofsky, E., Meaning in the Visual Arts, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982. Parlett, D., The oxford history of board games, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999. Payne, M. T., ‘Marketing military realism in Call of Duty 4: modern warfare’, Games and culture,

vol. 7, no. 4, 2012, pp. 305-327. Postigo, H., ‘Of mods and modders: chasing down the value of fan-based digital game

modifications’, Games and culture, vol. 2, no. 4, 2007, pp. 300-313.

83

Rose, G., Visual methodologies: an introduction to researching with visual materials, 4th ed., London, SAGE, 2016.

Said, E. W., Culture and imperialism, London, Chatto & Windus, 1993. Said, E. W., ‘Invention, memory, and place’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and power, 2nd ed.,

Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 241-259. Salazar Torreon, B., Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2017, Washington,

D.C., Congressional Research Center, 2017. Saleem, M. & Anderson, C. A., ‘Arabs as terrorists: effects of stereotypes within vioent contexts

on attitudes, perceptions, and affect’, Psychology of violence, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 84-99. Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E., Rule of play: game design fundamentals, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press,

2004. Schulzke, M., ‘Rethinking military gaming: America’s Army and its critics’, Games and culture, vol.

8, no. 2, 2013, pp. 59-76. Sicart, M., The ethics of computer games, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2009. Šisler, V., ‘Digital Arabs: representation in video games’, European journal of cultural studies, vol. 11,

no. 2, 2008, pp. 203-219. Skaff Elias, G., Garfield, R. & Gutschera, K. R., Characteristics of games, Cambridge, MA, MIT

Press, 2012. Sparrow, R., Harrison, R., Oakley, J. & Keogh, B., ‘Playing for fun, training for war: can popular

claims about recreational video gaming and military simulations be reconciled?’, Games and culture, vol. 13, no. 2, 2018, pp. 174-192.

Tuan, Y.-F., ‘Sign and Metaphor’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 68, no. 3, 1978, pp. 363-372.

Vine, D., Base nation: how U.S. military bases abroad harm America and the world, New York, Metropolitan books, 2015.

Weiner, T., Legacy of ashes: the history of the CIA, New York, Anchor Books, 2008. Wood, L. A., Kroger, R. O., Doing discourse analysis: methods for studying action in talk and text,

London, SAGE, 2000. Woods, S., Eurogames: the design, culture and play of modern European board games, Jefferson, McFarland

& Company, 2012.

Documents

Digital Landscapes of Imperialism