Skip to main content

Politics and war in video games

CNN has an article on the popularity of war-themed games in the light of the war in Iraq. Best-selling PC game in the US: Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Number two: Command & Conquer: Generals. Battlefield 1942 and its expansion pack Road to Rome are also in there.

Wired has an article about the same topic, and about war and politics in video games. It mentions America's Army and Hezbollah-designed Special Force (the link did not work when I tried it).

You may already have heard of Underash, the FPS developed in Syria, where you play a young Palestinian stone-thrower, Ahmed, fighting Israeli soldiers and settlers. Here's what the developers of Underash say about the political message of the game.

The subject of ideology and political messages in computer games gets a fair amount of interest from the academic community, judging from the DiGRA mailing list.