Games and Culture 7(4) 305-327 ª The Author(s) 2012 Marketing Military Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1555412012454220 Realism in Call of Duty http://gac.sagepub.com 4: Modern Warfare Matthew Thomas Payne1 Abstract This essay investigates the challenges that video game marketing encounters when selling the pleasures of playing virtual war. While marketing paratexts are crucial to video games because of the vagaries of their industry, they are especially important for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, as it is the first of the franchise to be set in the 21st century and immerse players in contemporary theaters of war. These marketing paratexts not only generate hype for the game and work to drive sales, but as impor- tantly, they also suggest particular textual readings over others with the goal of insu- lating Call of Duty’s virtual war play from interpretations and criticisms that might link the violent play on-screen to the worldly violence unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan. Keywords paratext, advertising, war, realism, first-person shooter, call of duty, video game, military Introduction This essay investigates the challenges that video game marketing encounters when selling the pleasures of playing virtual war. Marketing materials are vital sites for critical media inquiry because these paratexts prime would-be player-consumers for how they should understand these games, and (more importantly for producers’ 1University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA Corresponding Author: Matthew Thomas Payne, University of Alabama, Box 870152, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA Email:
[email protected] 306 Games and Culture 7(4) purposes) why it is they should buy them.