Returning Fire Interventions in Video Game Culture (2011)

The sophistication of video games like Modern Warfare Americas Army Medal of Honor and Battlefield is undeniable offering users a stunningly realistic experience of ground combat and a glimpse into the increasingly virtual world of longdistance pushbutton warfare Far less clear though is what these games are doing to users our political culture and our capacity to empathize with people directly affected by the actual trauma of war For the culturejamming activists featured in this film these uncertainties were a call to action In three separate vignettes we see how AnneMarie Schleiner Wafaa Bilal and Joseph Delappe moved dissent from the streets to our screens infiltrating war games in an attempt to break the hypnotic spell of militainment Their work forces all of us gamers and nongamers alike to think critically about what it means when the clinical tools of realworld killing become forms of consumer play