Are VIDEO GAMES Propaganda or Training Simulators?

Originally posted by Cassius666
Cant they be both? Think Topgun. Guy wants to make awesome jet movie, Navy sees benefit of guys wanting to be jet pilots after seeing awesome jet movie, one hands whashes the other. Sure sometimes money is pooled in a game for recruiting sometimes its infused with a bit of propaganda (Think splinter cell), but most of the times its a vid game.

Its a bit sad there are so many milsims around with the powerfull computers we have today, developers could let their fantasy run wild.

Absolutely agree with this. The message could not succeed if the game was purely a propaganda piece which was beating you over the head every few seconds reminding you that china are evil and they want to invade America and steal our cookies.

As for Tom Clancy games (and books obviously) Splinter Cell is one of my all time favourite series, but I will readily admit that Tom Clancy is a one man propaganda machine.

I think the premise for this thread is erroneous, as it implies all games are propaganda pieces, yet this seems based solely on a handful of games in only one genre.

There are many more games out there that aren't FPS than are, you know. There are strategy games like Civ, of Hearts of Iron. There is fantasy games like Dragon Age, sim games like, er, The Sims and flight simulators. Driving games, puzzle games, platform games, adventure games, RPG's..The list goes on.

It's like saying that all Movies are propaganda that is used to condition us, because a couple of Steven Segal films show Americans fighting some random foreign nation/terrorist. An obvious fallacy.

It really grates me when this topic invariably crops up and all people can talk about is Call of friggin Duty! It isn't even that good a game, the single player sucks and the multiplayer is so arcadey and full of whiney l33t kiddies!

BF:BC2 is far better and the upcoming Battlfield 3 is so superior to CoD in so many ways...

CoD sucks. The only reason it is popular isbecause it is easy to play and available on the second rate machines that are passed off as games consoles and owned by the masses of dribbling teenage hordes..

Real gamers use a PC

reply to post by stumason


Call of Duty, Medal of honour, Battlefield series all have a common theme and outline you the current enemy is in the present political climate but most importantly it is teaching kids team work, tactics and repetetive killing. Dont get me wrong I like those games too but they do have propaganda in them and no doubt they are teaching young kids war tactics.

I wouldnt doubt if certain agencies monitor online games to learn natural human tactics to predict and implement.

BF2= World war. Middle east coalition versus USA , China, Russia
Bad Company 2= Russian, EMP attack on US. Russian invasion of U.S
COD MW2 = Islamic nuke. Inside job. U.s involved. Russian Invasion of U.S
Medal Of Honour= Take out the hajis in trashghanistan.
HomeFront= Chinese invasion of U.S

Bring it on home. The next wars will be fought in a neighbour hood near you U.S.