How Does the Israeli-Gaza Conflict Affect Video Games?

[Mike Hoffman]

How Does the Israeli-Gaza Conflict Affect Video Games?

How does the Israeli-Gaza conflict intersect with gaming?

The video game industry is largely propped up by first-person shooters, and some of the most popular games in this genre are set in the Middle East. At the same time, players online fling racial and religious epithets at one another with a vulgarity one rarely sees in direct interpersonal communication. It would seem obvious that a major conflict in the Middle East would interact in some way with the games we play and how we play them. Similarly, it would stand to reason that the media we consume should affect how we view real world events.

Our sister site, [a href="http://www.everyjoe.com/"]Every Joe[/a], has two opinion pieces on the intersection of gaming and the current Israeli-Gaza conflict. Daniel Epstein, contributor to Escapist series [a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/no-right-answer"]No Right Answer[/a], explored his history with antisemitism in online gaming in the piece "[a href="http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/08/01/lifestyle/israeli-gaza-conflict-anti-semitism-online-gaming/"]How the Israeli-Gaza Conflict is Ruining Online Gaming[/a]". Epstein questions how gamers can be so comfortable using antisemitic remarks and how video games make player feel removed from conflict. Ultimately, he ask gamers to "not let a land dispute/terrorist war in one part of the world lead to widespread hatred for the peoples involved - especially in gaming, something that's supposed to be fun and bring us together."

An alternate view was posted by Ma'idah Lashani, former Escapist community manager, called "[a href="http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/08/04/politics/israeli-gaza-conflict-exacerbated-by-online-gaming/"]How Online Gaming is Exacerbating the Israeli-Gaza Conflict[/a]". Lashani reflects on her past with gaming, recognizing the similarities between the home of her ancestors and the battlefields of modern military shooters. She explores how gaming frames our perception of real world events and states "we need to think more as a society about the lessons that we're learning from the games that we play, and the effect that they can have on our perception of the real world."

The Israeli-Gaza conflict is already frequently discussed across the internet, including in the Escapist forums, and Epstein and Lashani's articles bring interesting perspectives to how this conflict intersects with gaming.

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[DerangedHobo]

I don't see how the israel/gaza conflict (which from my limtied understanding has effectively been going on for decades) will affect online shooters, just how the Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi freedom really didn't prevent games from being set in the middle east and "insurgents" effectively became the next Russians when it came to generic evil bad guys in the years that followed. So apart from the next Call of Duty having a "Double XP for ever Palestinian school child you gun down" or drone strike missions over Gaza I doubt it will change anything.

That being said I also don't see how people are shocked by the use of racist, anti-semetic, sexist, homophobic or transphobic language being used in online gaming. Give anyone a microphone and a sense of free speech without repercussions and they'll spew the most hateful shit they can fathom. Online gaming, aside from games like MMOs and other games that focus on long term teamwork and community really never seemed like a place that was suppose to be civil.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I don't see how the israel/gaza conflict (which from my limtied understanding has effectively been going on for decades) will affect online shooters, just how the Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi freedom really didn't prevent games from being set in the middle east and "insurgents" effectively became the next Russians when it came to generic evil bad guys in the years that followed. So apart from the next Call of Duty having a "Double XP for ever Palestinian school child you gun down" or drone strike missions over Gaza I doubt it will change anything.

That being said I also don't see how people are shocked by the use of racist, anti-semetic, sexist, homophobic or transphobic language being used in online gaming. Give anyone a microphone and a sense of free speech without repercussions and they'll spew the most hateful shit they can fathom. Online gaming, aside from games like MMOs and other games that focus on long term teamwork and community really never seemed like a place that was suppose to be civil.

^Pretty much this. I remember Yahtzee making a remark in his Call of Duty 4 review about how the setting for the conflict went unnamed because the area fluctuates so much it could've been a waterpark by the time his video came out. Some things never change, there's violence in the middle east and people are dicks with microphones, those two things have been true forever and will no doubt continue to be true forever.

 

[DerangedHobo]

Well to give you a hint, you'll probably be able to guess what the theme of the next MW, Arma, COD, BF, Ghost, etc games are gonna be.

I really doubt that, not because it would be bad taste or wouldn't sell well (I mean you played one civillian murder simulator you played them all) but because Israel vs Gaza is A. a smaller scale conflict and B. They'd have to have serious balls to paint Israel as the big bad guy. A muslim with a shemagh on his head is an easy target after 9/11 but a game with any social commentary or "we might actually be the monsters here"? Nah, that doesn't really sell well (with the exception being The Line).

Seriously? People are actually shocked by this? I mean what the people who first join online gaming?. You said it right, give people a means of communication where they do not have to worry about being smacked upside the head and you'd be surprised what comes out of them.

I should of really prefaced that by saying I'm no different and that's really a blanket statement for all people. Some are just happier than others to throw civility out the window.

 

[RA92]

Yeah, I've seen certain people using protests against Israel as an excuse to post anti-Jewish sentiments. There are plenty of Jewish people both within Israel (mostly leftists) and without (for e.g. Jewish Voice for Peace) who are against how the war is being conducted.

Also pertinent is the <url=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/28/israeli-military-most-moral-no-more-outrage-indifference>systematic <url=http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/as-an-exsoldier-in-the-israeli-defense-forces-ive-seen-how-shockingly-we-treat-palestinians-9607267.html>dehumanization and <url=http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/israeli-racism-gaza-kleinfeld-511>institutionalised racism being spearheaded by the Israeli government itself. The height of (sad, sad) irony was reached when right wing Jewish Israelis started wearing Neo-Nazi insignias [http://jewishphilosophyplace.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/black-shirt-jewish-neo-nazis-israel-2014-good-night-left-side/].

 

[JET1971]

I think it would be a bad choice of conflicts, both sides are at fault for the conflict by doing all the wrong things. Israel going over the 1949 border and all the settlements and Hamas pulling terrorist bullshit because of it and both sides just hate each other because of racism or whatever it is between middle east tribes. Both sides are wrong in the conflict and both share equal blame for every life lost. That's completely different than taking out a dictator who pulls an attempt at genocide whenever he feels like it. The conflict just isn't a good one to model a game off of, and just because games have been set in a desert with modern camo, weapons, and clearly middle eastern enemies does not mean it had anything to do with Israel, that is just projecting.

 

[Racecarlock]

That's like asking "How does cancer affect movies?". I don't really care how it's affecting games, because I tend not to mix my discussions of video games with my discussions of complicated international conflicts. For very good reasons.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Honestly gaming is the last thing I care about in regards to the Israel-Hamas war.

 

[Barbas]

...And in response to Dan's article, two people had this to say:

Spoiler: (NSFW) These were the two highest-rated comments.

I remember a time when I was playing games in social circles among people who thought that sort of thing was funny. I don't want those years back.

Another war, another steady trickle of slurs. "Zipper-head", "Haji", "Sand ******"...it makes me feel ill. Hopefully, with every disgusting utterance, more and more of us will turn our backs to this behaviour and those people who revel in it.

 

[Cranyx]

This is a disgustingly click-bait article trying to get some extra views out of the horrors happening in the Levant, even for the escapist.

 

[KaZuYa]

Honestly gaming is the last thing I care about in regards to the Israel-Hamas war.

It's not war it's a military superpower mass murdering innocent women and children because they just can and who can't run away because they have their backs to the sea and are walled in every other direction regardless of what Hamas are doing it pure unforgivable evil.

Deaths before Israel attacked in the previous 12 months = 4

Deaths after Israel attacked = 1900+

 

[Baresark]

I'm honestly disappointed about how poorly this subject is broached in this article. It's a very deep and complicated conflict and yet we are treated to how it either exacerbating the very conflict itself (which is complete and utter bullshit, and I have zero love for the modern warfare style FPS and if they disappeared tomorrow I would not shed a tear) or ruining online gaming (which is ruined constantly by children who fling racial slurs instead of cooperate in an effective manner, though if it's not about Jews it's about any number of other hot button slurs that have to do with race, sexual preference, gender, body weight, etc).

I would dare say that just because someone uses a slur for Jews in the anonymity of their own home and online session, many are not actual antisemites. People say things to other people to be hurtful in many situation, which may include racial slurs, slurs against sexual orientation or any such thing. Nor would it stop bigots from existing if that were to disappear online altogether. And I don't care for the argument of, "it's a good start", because it's not a start at all.

I do appreciate some of the things presented in the individual views though. Especially Epstein's rather enlightened view on the whole conflict. I mean this part:

Not all Palestinians are Hamas
Not all Hamas are Palestinian
Not all Israelis are Jewish
Not all Jews are Israeli
Not all Israelis are happy with the attacks, or are even participating in them

It shows a level of critical thinking that is rare when the conflict is talked about. Judging by that he may understand that Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism, though many scholarly people have fought to make the reverse true.

The other article has some interesting points, but they writer assumes that Modern Shooters are an attempt to "indoctrinate" people in small steps, or at least the way it's presented in the writing. I find that my heartfelt opinion mostly falls on the side of the Palestinians since they are suffering so greatly at the hands of a government who can only do what they do because my government has armed Israel so well and even still persists on giving them billions of dollars annually. But I have little enthusiasm for conspiracy theories.

 

[shintakie10]

Well to give you a hint, you'll probably be able to guess what the theme of the next MW, Arma, COD, BF, Ghost, etc games are gonna be.

I really doubt that, not because it would be bad taste or wouldn't sell well (I mean you played one civillian murder simulator you played them all) but because Israel vs Gaza is A. a smaller scale conflict and B. They'd have to have serious balls to paint Israel as the big bad guy. A muslim with a shemagh on his head is an easy target after 9/11 but a game with any social commentary or "we might actually be the monsters here"? Nah, that doesn't really sell well (with the exception being The Line).

Its sad that you need serious balls to paint the side that is perfectly fine with the mass murder of civilians as the bad guys. Any other country we'd be condemning them as the newest Hitler, but nope. Israelis kill 1900 men, women, and children, bomb U.N. controlled buildings that are housing people who have already lost their homes to Israeli bombs, and consider the capture of a single soldier to be crossing a line all while continually bombing and killing children and they're just defending themselves.

Bull. Shit.

Is Hamas blameless? God no. They do awful things to. Their rockets absolutely are a problem, but they're a problem that Israel will never solve by bombing children. All they're doing is making the people in Gaza who hate Hamas for prolonging the conflict hate Israel even more for escalating the conflict and killing their sons and daughters.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

"Israel is killing innocent people." Hamas isn't?
"Hamas is launching rockets into Israel." The Israelis aren't launching them back?

Both sides are wrong. Both are fighting for stupid reasons. One is fighting for land their God promised them and the other is fighting because their God tells them to kill everyone who doesn't believe in the same things they do. I'll pick my side here. Which is the lesser of two evils?

 

[JET1971]

"Israel is killing innocent people." Hamas isn't?
"Hamas is launching rockets into Israel." The Israelis aren't launching them back?

Both sides are wrong. Both are fighting for stupid reasons. One is fighting for land their God promised them and the other is fighting because their God tells them to kill everyone who doesn't believe in the same things they do. I'll pick my side here. Which is the lesser of two evils?

I refuse to pick a side. Israel and Hamas are doing it to each other and both are equally guilty. There are no heroes in the conflict between them, never was and never will be as long as Israel keeps encroaching on them and planting "settlements" and locking borders from trade which makes the Palestinian people allow Hamas to stay in power. This will keep happening year after year until Gaza and West Bank are no more.

Pick a side? No Hamas is a terrorist organization pretending to be a government and Israel is trying to wipe Palestinians off the map. Piss on both sides.

 

[chadachada123]

"Israel is killing innocent people." Hamas isn't?
"Hamas is launching rockets into Israel." The Israelis aren't launching them back?

Both sides are wrong. Both are fighting for stupid reasons. One is fighting for land their God promised them and the other is fighting because their God tells them to kill everyone who doesn't believe in the same things they do. I'll pick my side here. Which is the lesser of two evils?

Both are fighting for land their God promised them. The difference is that Hamas (back in the 2009 invasion, at least) was perfectly fine with a ceasefire if Israel would just give back the land stolen since 1967. Which is a lot of land. Sure, they hate Israel and wish it didn't exist, but to say that they think that its a good idea to kill everyone that disagrees is quite dishonest for the a significant portion of them.

Between the Israeli invasion in 2009 and this one, Israel's escalation looks like a giant excuse to kill Palestinians, Hamas or civilian, frankly. And it will only full anti-Israel (and, unfortunately, antisemitic) rage. Not that Israel cares. Remember how much many Americans hated Muslims because of 9/11? That's how the Gaza situation looks to those being slaughtered.

Yeah, both Hamas and the Israeli government/military are evil, but Israel's government/military is far more evil for purposely escalating a very minor conflict.

 

[Nieroshai]

I think the biggest problem is how everyone acts like the conflict is new, or that it has somehow escalated. I don't think it has in any meaningful manner.