Meh. Time goes by so fast if you have a lot of work to do all week and a lot of your weekdays evenings are spent online in Azeroth. October last year was the last time I posted here. Phew that’s been some time. Anyway,

I bought Call of Duty - World at War today, and played some time into the singleplayer campaign. While some loading screen was showing up after a perticular intense battle scene, I had this here thought:

“Damn. This really is intense; and horribly frightening if you imagined this would be real, this would be you on some remote japanese isle fighting for your life, (for what you believe in?), probably not really knowing why the hell you’re even here. The same was probably true for your enemy. Why did you have to go through hell, not knowing if 5 minutes later you would still be alive, all because of the doings of some fucked up dudes like Hitler and all the others…”

probably because of Hitler and a whole lot of others. One man cannot start a world war. But if he has the power you might call it charisma in a strange sense to sway the opinions of others… well if enough mindless people follow one lunatic… nah this is already too much of an aside, back to the main Gedankenexperiment -

Millions of ordinarly people had to die because some few who thought of themselves as primus inter pares basically ordered them to with no right to order them in the first place.

“There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell.”

Now this is basically the emotion… the thought… I get out of playing something like the Call of Duty series (especially the last 2) .
Now this is basically the emotion… the thought… I get out of watching something Platoon, and especially Full Metal Jacket.

Yet, especially in germany, my neighboring country, there is this whole “Killerspiele” (murderer games [sic]) discussion. Some big bosses say that they (the games) are - pardon the tactless and geeky analogy - what would basically amount to the emperor [violent video games] luring luring Luke [adolescents and/or video game players in general] to the dark side.

While at the same time anti-war movies like the ones above are hailed as what they truly are - anti-war movies. Those movies don’t show you how awesome it is to be in war. To shoot someone. To be shot at. Those movies show you that you never, under any circumstance, would want to experience those things.

So why are (certain?) anti-war movies hailed, while such games are looked down upon, when one gets the same feeling from experienceing both?