Mantello 2017

Referenzen

• Partner culture between the military and game developers: Lenoir and Lowood 2003; Stahl 2010; Caldwall and Lenoir 2016; Payne 2016
• Think tanks speak with game developers: Shaban 2013; Susca 2014; Parkin 2014).

Begriffe

• post 9/11 era (p. 483): events that are influenced by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001
• Ontopower (p. 487): Massumi (2015: 234) insists that ontopower is a “more processually-intense and far-reaching mode of power” that operationalizes both “hard” (military intervention) and “soft” (mass surveillance) strategies to assert control and influence over sovereign interests.
• Derivative War (p. 488): Martin (2007) calls these conflicts “derivative wars” because they employ risk-management practices and risk-calculus systems as a way of controlling the probability or impact of future threats, minimizing uncertainty in the fog of battle, and maximizing the political and economic opportunities in preemptive military action.
• Performative truth (p. 499): "What most distinguishes the “military shooter” (MS) game from all other mediated representations of war, such as literature, film, or TV, is the element of contest and agency that allows players to serve as passive witnesses but also as active performers in shaping the narrative process of truth-telling."
• Algorithmic play (p. 501): the characteristic of video games to implement a walkable 3d environment
• citizenship (varies p. 509): characteristics of an individual ruled by a government, the text tries to criticise the expectations of citezenry that go along with military intervention after 9/11
• Advergaming (p. 512): Third-party advertisers are developing new strategies to further monetize the virtual battlefield by connecting gamers to real-world consumption practice. Monetization of the virtual battlefield through “advergaming” strives to link real-world consumer practices with the imaginary worlds of virtual play. Roughly speaking, advergaming seeks to monitor the behavior of players and their relation to corporate brands by placing virtual copies of their products in the virtual battlefield.

Inhaltlich neu eingeführt

• neoliberal war (p. 486): not described, war that is governed by market theory?

Aussagen

• the military shooter has become socially accepted and virtues of military life have become incorporated in popular culture

Introduction

• "Today, political leaders, military planners, defense contractors, corporative advertising executives, and videogame designers are busy building inter-subjective relationships around the virtual battlefield in pursuit of military solutions, corporate profits, and political legitimacy." (p. 485)
• "A good example is David Anthony, the game creator of both Call of Duty: Black OpsII and Advanced Warfare, who stated in an interview for the Guardian newspaper: “My job is to advise outside-the-box thinking on the nature of future threats, and propose proactive solutions to mitigate against them” (Parkin 2014). Moreover, war planners and weapon makers are actively harnessing the immersive quality and tactical accuracy of “military shooter” (MS) video games to train soldiers in the complex and shifting realities of asymmetric warfare and in the operation of advanced remote weaponry in games (Full Spectrum Warrior, Pandemic (2002), treat post-traumatic stress disorder (Close Combat Virtual Afghanistan, Creative Industries 2010), as well as oversee the production of their own MS games for recruitment purposes in the age of unpopular wars (America’s Army, U.S. Army 2001–2016). " (p. 485)
• "Similar to its relationship with the film industry, the U.S. government understands that by developing close working ties with MS video game producers, it can ensure that the virtual representations of war are aligned to real-world strategic interests." (p. 486)
• "the post-9/11 MS video game increasingly relies on imaginary frameworks and speculative future threats that indirectly appeal to present-day concerns while at the same time referencing back to merica’s memorial past." (p. 486)
• "the post-9/11 MS video game calls into being modes of understanding and practices of authorization hardwired into an emerging imperial polity." (p. 486)
• "this imperial power is no longer concerned with civilizing the peoples of occupied territory or seizing their wealth but rather is focused on monetizing the risk and uncertainty of sectarian violence" (p. 486)
  • Das ist eine starke Meinung und Anschuldigung, die sofort mit Beispielen gestützt werden muss.
  • "For instance, while the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq succeeded at imposing selective regime change, they were arguably political and military fiascos with neither war bringing peace, prosperity, or even a modicum of security to either country. On the contrary, as a result of these U.S.-led wars, the people of both nations are far worse off than under previous authoritarian rule." (p. 486)
• "A case in point is the expenditure for private security for the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2016 cost U.S. taxpayers 3 billion dollars (Young 2013). Combined with Kabul and Yemen, the total costs amount to over $5 billion" (p. 486-487)

Ontopower and Derivative War

• "Today, however, the operative logic of preemption that defines ontopower imagines future harms as an inherent part of the present and thus responds proactively to prevent them before they emerge. In order to resolve this temporal conundrum of stopping something that has not yet occurred, ontopower operates largely through speculative and imaginative frameworks. A good example of this is Donald Rumsfeld’s famous utterance about the “unknown unknowns” as a way to describe the chaos and uncertainty of the post-9/11 era and his vague counter-terrorist strategy for the War on Terror." (p. 487)
• "law enforcement agents, and war planners now approach national security with the same risk-management logic that has driven U.S. fiscal policies since the 1970s. In other words, rather than relying on traditional post hoc lines of attack to safeguard its citizens, the United States increasingly relies on speculative, proactive, and diversified strategies to mitigate uncertainty, reduce the risk of domestic terrorist attacks, and eliminate adversarial threats before they emerge." (p. 487-488)
• "Though it follows that not all players will play these games for the same reasons or the same way, the procedural nature of game play demands that the terms and conditions of these orientations must always be negotiated through restrictive belief systems that inevitably tie agency to identity and the social compact to the call of duty" (p. 491)
  • if you play games then you don't reflect on the themes of the play, because there is subliminal layer of messages hidden in the gameplay, but what is the empirical impact?

From Aliens to al Qaeda

• Ich bin ein wenig geschockt, dass Half-Life hier nicht nachrecherchiert wurde
• Wolfenstein shows that First Person Shooter games always included wars
• GoldenEye 007 (1997), Delta Force (1998), Hidden & Dangerous (1999), Project I.G.I (2000) zeigen Militärspiele bevor 9/11
• "In the same manner, the hyperrealist MS game permitted players to leverage the chaos and unpredictability of a War on Terror by internalizing the precise and controlled logic and stable world of computer game play (Hoglund 2008). Like the emerging, but yet to be named, War on Terror, the narratives and game play of these pre-9/11 MS games gave credence to the rise of what Bacevich (2005) calls the “new American militarism” and the naturalization, acceptance, and tolerance for clandestine and illicit acts of preemption." (p. 494)
  • So gern ich der Perspektive meinen Respekt zollen möchte, so denke ich doch, dass sie vor allem USA-zentrisch aufgestellt sein könnte. In Deutschland ist der Ego-Shooter als solcher immer schon Mittel kompetativer Auseinandersetzung und weniger Verherrlichung (glorification) oder Verharmlosung (downplaying) des Militärs bzw. militaristischer Tendenzen. Siehe die deutsche Counter-Strike-Szene, Team-Fortress 2, Overwatch oder nun Battle Royale mit Player Unknowns: Battlegrounds oder Fortnite: Battle Royale.
• Diese Spiele versuchen Konflikte zu entmenschlichen, um das Gegeneinander zu entpolitisieren und damit zu ermöglichen
• "Similar to prevailing post-9/11 discourses on security, the MS video game is not concerned with whether or not any particular future comes about, but rather with the affective ways in which the anticipation of security shapes the present and, in turn, how this anxiety to mitigate uncertainty helps to formulate the justification and actions of preemption. For instance, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007) begins in 2011 with an ultra-national Russian group led by Imran Zakhaev launching a coup, throwing the Soviet Union into a full-blown civil war, which in turn ignites a war with the United States and its NATO allies. Interestingly, while most of the action takes place in fictional locations based in Central Asia and the Middle East, in a single flashback to 1996, the player assumes the character of a U.S. soldier sent on a covert operation to Pripyat, Ukraine, to assassinate a younger Zakhaev dealing nuclear arms to Islamic extremists. By placing the gamer in the only real location in the game, the player is reminded not only of the Cherynobl disaster but also of the global dangers in the chaos and uncertainty arising from a disintegrated Soviet Union. Moreover, the flashback connects America’s past existential enemy (communism) to present-day fears of future threats of nuclear terrorism by Islamic extremists. The game thus legitimates preemptive violence (targeted assassination) and the necessity of the United States acting as global policeman (Payne 2015)." (p. 498)
  • Eine der stärksten Passagen!

Performative Truth and Politics of Algorithmic Play

• "With the MS game, performance as a measurement of truth can be divided into two streams of meaning. First, a player actively participates in shaping the greater ideological truths of post-9/11 military history. Second, performance can also be considered as “a location in a journey” and, as such, transforms into both a path to and status marker of citizenship (Elger 2011)." (p. 500)
• "However, while this ability to express andcontrol the narrative line through the coherent, stable, three dimensional world of algorithmic game play may suggest a noblertruth of signification, it also threatens to imprison the player with the illusion of ultimate control." (p. 501)
• "“We don’t know what they want, but they are wreaking havoc all over the world. Rainbow is the taskforce called in to take down this threat.” This statement is an honest confession and prescriptive endorsement of the liberal agenda on the War on Terror. Like the rhetoric that drives national security policies in the real world, game play in Rainbow Six: Siege focuses on the uncertain intentions and anonymity of an enemy who needs to be vanquished in the good war against terror." (p. 502)

Lethal Appetites and the Monetization of the Virtual Battlefield

• "The superimposition of the semiotics and meritocratic philosophy of professional sports onto imaginary and actual battlefields works to manufacture a politics that is no longer moderated by the political. Rather, it constructs a state of affairs that disengages citizenry from a coherent understanding of or concern for the actual causes and consequences of war. What it is left in the wake of this evisceration of the political is a state of affairs that connects the individual to the vulnerabilities of modern life rather than to a vulnerable body politic." (p. 509-510)

Conclusion

• "As I have argued, the post-9/11 “military shooter” (MS) video game not only mirrors, but, more importantly, becomes an integral part of dominant post-9/11 security discourses that advocate the need of lethal preemptive military solutions to circumvent the emergence of future harms before they occur." (p. 516-517)
• "Advergaming illustrates how brand strategy and the U.S. foreign policy agenda have become an integral part of armament culture as it (re)configures, by reformatting, the parameters of citizenship. Like the professional soldier of the neoliberal state, a gamer’s participation in the virtual battlefield must be negotiated through cash incentives rather than civic obligation." (p. 517)

Fazit

• Der Artikel ist größtenteils USA-zentrisch, gibt aber dennoch einen guten Einblick in die Zusammenhänge zwischen amerikanischen Computerspielentwicklern und Militär. Er spricht ein sehr lokales Problem an, weil das Thema vor allem durch die Traumatiserung durch 9/11 und einen generellen Waffenfetisch der USA nicht ohne Weiteres in andere Länder übertragbar wird. Nichtsdestoweniger ist die Position wichtig, auch wenn sie die Gegenargumente vernachlässigt.
• Es gibt eine Reihe von faktischen Ungenauigkeiten, die eigentlich nur auftreten, wenn man sich nicht mit den Beispielen auseinandergesetzt hat und eher über ein politisches Ganzes schreibt. Black Ops II als Black Ops 11 geschrieben, Half-Life falsch geschrieben und 1991 anstatt 1998 veröffentlicht geschrieben. Wolfenstein anstatt Wolfenstein 3D geschrieben. Doom ist nicht 1990 erschienen, und Quake wurde auch von id Software entwickelt, etc.