Playing the Victim
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Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Jorin Carpels Playing the Victim War Representation and Perpetrator Trauma in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Spec Ops: The Line Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in de taal- en letterkunde Engels - Scandinavistiek 2015 Promotor Prof. dr. Stef Craps Vakgroep Letterkunde Copromotor Prof. dr. Tobi Smethurst Vakgroep Letterkunde Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank both of my promotors for their support. I am especially grateful for their endless patience. I am also grateful for the support from my friends and family, for staying supportive even when I missed deadlines, and sticking with me until the very end. ii Preface It was only last year that I discovered the field of game studies, and that I would be able to write this thesis. Since I have played video games for as long as I can remember, I was immediately motivated to approach them in an academic fashion. Especially Spec Ops: The Line had fascinated me ever since I had played it in 2013. It had made me think about other military video games, and how those had never seemed to question any of my actions in-game. Spec Ops: The Line was a very different experience. While I was playing the game specifically because it had been praised by so many critics, I did not expect the game to make itself not fun. It was this that made me reconsider my ideas about violent and military video games. With this in mind I approached my promotors, who suggested analyzing Spec Ops: The Line in the context of trauma studies. This is when the final puzzle pieces started falling into place. By learning more about game studies and trauma theory, I started to understand how Spec Ops: The Line was more than a story about a ruined Dubai and collateral damage. It became clear to me that the game also formed a solid critique of other military video games, while still telling a compelling story. I decided to also analyze Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Both of these games are quintessential military video games, having achieved enormous popularity. By studying these games I could discover why Spec Ops: The Line was such a fundamentally different experience for me, and show at the same time how video games have matured as a storytelling medium. With all of this in mind I have tried to write a thesis that can be informative for both the field of trauma studies as well as game studies. Ultimately, my hope is that my thesis can also be informative for readers from other fields, and can help show that video games are a worthwhile subject in academia. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................. ii Preface .........................................................................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents..................................................................................................................................................... iv Introduction 5 Chapter 1 Playing War ........................................................................................................................ 7 1.1 Games and War ................................................................................................................................................ 7 1.2 Game Studies .................................................................................................................................................. 10 1.2.1 Procedures....................................................................................................................................... 10 1.2.2 Identification .................................................................................................................................. 12 1.2.3 Violence ............................................................................................................................................ 14 1.3 Trauma and Perpetrators ......................................................................................................................... 18 1.3.1 History and War ............................................................................................................................ 18 1.3.2 Literary Trauma Theory ............................................................................................................ 19 1.4 Methodology................................................................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 2 Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 25 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 25 2.2 The Workings of War .................................................................................................................................. 29 2.2.1 Technicalities ................................................................................................................................. 29 2.2.2 ‘Friendly’ Fire ................................................................................................................................. 30 2.3 The Good, the Bad, and the Civilians .................................................................................................... 32 2.3.1 The Good .......................................................................................................................................... 32 2.3.2 The Bad ............................................................................................................................................. 33 2.3.3 The Civilians.................................................................................................................................... 39 2.4 ‘Death From Above’ ..................................................................................................................................... 44 2.5 Playing the Perpetrator ............................................................................................................................. 48 2.5.1 Walking Through Dubai ............................................................................................................. 48 2.5.2 Fighting Through Dubai ............................................................................................................. 50 Conclusion 53 Bibliography 55 Word count: 22721 iv Introduction Video games have become an increasingly popular source of entertainment, and thus an important storytelling medium. With the growth of this popularity has also come a growing need for the field of game studies. Game studies research allows for better and more worthwhile academic research on video games. However, the field is still lacking in certain areas. The intention of this thesis is to start addressing one of these gaps. The particular gap I hope to deal with is the lack of research on the narratives and rhetoric within military video games. Specifically, I hope to look at how war and warfare are represented in certain video games, and how this representation makes claims about the world through the use of procedural rhetoric. Hopefully, this thesis can be the start of more research on the stories in military video games. While video games are different from literature, I believe literary analysis can provide useful tools for video game analysis, in addition to game studies theories and methodologies. It is also worthwhile to study video game narratives for traces of literary traditions and how video games use writing as part of storytelling. I will be analyzing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Spec Ops: The Line. Both Modern Warfare games are both excellent examples of the popularity of military video games. Both games have a single player campaign in which the player plays as several protagonists in a story about terrorism and international intrigue. They are good examples of military AAA1 games, but are not necessarily completely similar in their ways of storytelling or rhetoric. I hope that my thesis can stimulate further research that encompasses more games, in order to produce a more accurate analysis of current military video game narratives. I will also analyze Spec Ops: The Line, because I will argue that it deviates from the usual narrative in such a way that it can even be considered a critique of games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. As such, this thesis will be structured around this dichotomy, and will take on a somewhat comparative nature. My intention is not necessarily to dismiss any of these games for having ‘bad’ or less 1 Big budget games. 5 interesting narratives, but to be critical of the implied arguments about and representation of war and warfare. I will also look at Spec Ops: The Line from a trauma studies perspective, since its story deals with the issues of perpetrator trauma. I will attempt to place the game as part of the tradition of American trauma literature, by analyzing the characteristics of its trauma narrative. I also intend to analyze how trauma forms a part of how Spec Ops: The Line represents the experience of a soldier in a military