Virtual Warcrime?

I thought that it would be good to start this blog off by raising an issue that I'd recently encountered with playing one of my computer games. The game was Arma2; a military combat simulator. Much of Arma2's premise relies on representing as realistic as possible the experiences of a combat soldier, and providing the gamer with as much immersion as possible. Think of Arma2 like Flight Simulator X, where Call of Duty is Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.

As a side-note, Bohemia Interactive (the developers) have been commissioned by the United States and Australian army to develop their own simulators for the purposes of running virtual-reality combat scenarios for their soldiers. See 'Virtual Battlefield Simulator' (VBS).

Arma2's modding community is very vast, and a new-comer to the game can easily find a wealth of player-created addons; everything from soldiers, to vehicles, and even game-mechanic mods.

Back on topic now. The issue that I had encountered occurred a month ago while visiting the modding community's website forum, where they were discussing possible suggestions for future projects. Someone had mentioned that Arma2 - being a game which prides itself on being a realistic military simulator - should possibly consider expanding the realm of civilian characters; specifically, the inclusion of children. Arma2's original copy already contained the option of populating the world with civilians, but these were only generic middle-aged male and female models; leaving out children and the elderly. Immediately, the forum ignited with strong polar opposite arguments for and against.

It was interesting to tackle this dilemma. On the one hand, some have argued that Arma2 focuses on delivering as realistic of an experience to the player as possible. Dealing with children in war-zones are a very common part of the job for all members of the military, and the constant fear of collateral damage and civilian deaths heavily hang over all soldiers' minds. It further adds a level of realism and immersion when a player must think more carefully about entering a populated village, and be more careful with his/her trigger-finger. The absence of children would, therefore, defeat the purpose of representing a soldier's experience.

On the other hand, however, many claim that the inclusion of children only provide more virtual targets for "violent" players to shoot at. They cite two possible outcomes. Firstly, the deaths of children on a battlefield -  whether by the soldier's doing or not - can cause the player to experience a level of trauma. In my opinion, this is a very flimsy argument. Secondly, some have referenced Call of Duty's infamous "No Russian" publicity (For those who do not know of this, please Google it). Undoubtedly, it would not be hard to imagine videos popping up on YouTube of staged killings of children in the game, mainly for the purposes of "fun" and exploitation of the game's mechanics i.e. hacking. There already exists a handful of videos that show organized triggered explosions that kill animals and civilians in the game, "all for some fun" as they claim. Such bad publicity may create an international backlash on the game, and its developers.

I would leave it there for now. I haven't yet made up my mind where I sit on the spectrum of opinion. Players are already punished for killing civilians in the game by deducting their points. The game sets out to state that killing them is a big no-no in all accounts.

But what I do want to raise to attention is this; at what point does "reality simulators" become too real? When do pixels and coding become a stand-in for a representation of human-life? How much reliability can you place on a player to see that they don't exploit the game for violent purposes?

I doubt that the deaths of children in game would be any different than the death of a adult character. But what this has done is bring to light is the world a game can create for the player. A virtual world where they are not punished for their actions in real-life, where they can experiment their deepest and darkest imaginations, where they are not governed by any laws other than the mechanics and physics of the game.