The video games market generated more than 38 billion euros of turnover in 2010. Analysts bank on more than 54 billion Euros in 2014. It is well known that the main customers of this lucrative industry are young people.
The press often debates the psychological impact of the violence of some games. But what generally goes unremarked is the enormous potential of this sector for pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist propaganda. This has not escaped the manufacturers. Take the example of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In only three weeks it sold 55 million copies, generating 3 billion dollars of revenue. In the game the player takes on the role of a soldier in a war against the "evil Russians", who are allied with a host of just-as-evil of Arab countries. This malevolent coalition wants to launch a nuclear bomb at the United States. Your mission is thus to stop them whilst - it goes without saying - killing the maximum possible number of Russian and Arab soldiers.
After the triumph of this instalment in the Call of Duty series, the developers released a new work; Call of Duty Black Ops. It broke all sales records; 5.6 million copies sold in its first week of release. The first mission takes place in Cuba. Your "duty" is to kill Fidel Castro, no less. Devilish Communist that he is, he also wants to ravage the United States with a host of atomic bombs. But Castro is a clever one; at the moment the player believes he has accomplished his noble mission, he discovers that he has "unfortunately" killed a look-alike of Fidel. The player is then sent to a Soviet Gulag. He succeeds in escaping and returning to the United States, where President Kennedy personally assigns him the task of stopping the Communist "terrorists" from attacking the United States and destroying the world. He leaves again, flower in his rifle, to kill Viet-Cong in Vietnam, Laotian Communists and so on and so forth.
Anti-Communist propaganda has already reached fever pitch in the films of James Bond, but in the case of this game, we are not simply passive viewers. With Call of Duty Black Ops, millions of young people press a button, as one would pull the trigger of a pistol, to cold-bloodedly kill Fidel Castro, or burn dozens of Vietnamese with flame-throwers. These are the murderous acts that allow you to progress through the game. You are rewarded with new weapons that allow you to better carry out these crimes. The Vietnam War, that in real life destroyed millions of lives, is recreated as nothing more than a diversion for innumerable young people, amusing themselves in virtually massacring enemies to defend American imperialism.
It is obvious that those who enjoy this game do not all fall under the heading of supporting imperialism, far from it. But the intention is nevertheless clear. The first objective of the capitalists in this area is to make a profit. The second – in a fun and practical way – is to spread the idea that imperialists fight wars for noble causes, to protect the world from evil terrorists, and not to conquer markets or spheres of influence. Here, fiction recreates reality: the plots of these games are based on the real lies of the imperialists.
From the French Marxist website La Riposte, translated by Sam Gilbert, Cambridge University Marxists
