Editor's note: Juan makes a good point, although I think it's true of other genres as well. I'm far more likely to play video games that don't have real-world analogs. The magic of storming the beach of Normandy for the first time did indeed capture my attention, but I think my desire to experience World War 2 is starting to wane. -Jay
Video games are America’s pastime. We spend our summers in rooms filled with the latest computers and consoles. While we don't have an exact equivalent of playing beach volleyball in Cancun, Mexico on a summer getaway, Wii Sports Resort is just as much fun without the the risk of heat stroke, a pulled quad, or sand in your shorts (I recently suffered all three).
Competitors in the FIFA World Cup are playing in the newly built stadiums of South Africa. Not all of us can afford the $10k plus trip to watch our nations of choice compete. However, for a lesser dent on your bank account, the World Cup on television with an accompaniment of the respective video game brings a very close equivalent of the competition.
One of the core reasons for the popularity of first-person shooters is that no real equivalent exists for the average person. Most of us will likely never experience any of these encounters without serving in the military or building a time machine to travel back to 1944.
Video-game interpretations of military history and its conflicts have become a lucrative business. Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2 is a good example of why the first-person military shooter genre has reached a huge audience. It offers us historically accurate portrayals of the American and Canadian landings on French beaches of Normandy, the Russian guerrilla warfare of Stalingrad, and English desert foxes fighting northern Africa. No book or video archive could recreate these stories as well as an interactive game could. The sense of urgency of quick decision making on a battlefield and the constant death to MG 42 machine guns manned by the Germans are things that have far greater impact if they're experienced directly. Ultimately, the Call of Duty series is a greater teaching tool than some pre-collegiate level courses on the same subject! I aced a final essay exam on World War 2 using the often repeated death-quotes from Call of Duty 2.
Some argue war games are the bane of the industry, where the mantras of bigger, better, and badder are the pillars of game development. They are not. Others argue that sociopaths play these games -- male adolescents with an itch to kill -- where the violence of war pulls on the strings of our embedded "hunter and gatherer" DNA. Regardless, the militaristic games are popular across all races, sexes, and creeds.
The popularity of war and its heroes is embedded in American and to an extent, Western culture. Mexico has their stories of Los NÂiÅ„Âos Heroés of the Mexican-American War. Countless books and movies on the American Civil War outnumber the published works of all the other American wars combined.
This trend in video games has echoes in novels and films. Historian Stephen Ambrose writes nearly a book a year to meet demand of his highly reviewed books. HBO released a few war-based miniseries, with Band of Brothers in 2001 (based on a book by Ambrose), Generation Kill in 2008 and the Pacific in 2010. However, The Call of Duty and Medal of Honor series both promise what other entertainment forms can not do: to provide an accurate representation of the conflicts of war with an interactive immersed perspective. Video games offer us the chance to actually experience history and not just read about it or watch it.
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