Games and Othering: Why we can't really play the terrorist

Basically, we don't like people or groups who differ too much from us (or our central viewpoints), and we don't want to acknowledge them as people by getting to know them.

In video games with narratives, designers often draw on the archetypical "hero-ogre" story, which in its essence puts the narrator, viewer and listener in the role (or adjacent to the role) of the hero, the "good" and the self. Conversely, the ogre is the typified "Other", something half-human but strange and frightening enough to hinder comprehension and identification. In Ian Jobling's "The Psychological Foundations of the Hero-Ogre Story: A Cross-Cultural Study," it is argued that this proto-story actually depicts the general conflict between social in-groups and out-groups, the "us" and the "them". In this cross-cultural narrative, the ogre, the other, typically commits crimes against the in-group, either by not complying with social norms or through outright violence, and the hero, the self, provides justice by slaying or banishing the ogre. The result is enhancement of cultural (and even biologically grounded), adaptive biases in person and group perception (Jobling, 248), also known as ethnocentrism or demonization of "others", which is a universal human phenomenon (Jobling, 252).

Irony. 

This conflict is recognizable in the antagonization of opposing sports teams and fans, in the plots on epic novels and folktales, in popular cinema and naturally also in different genres of video games, all of which typically feature archetypical "bad guys" and "good guys".

Take for instance some of the most popular genres; the first person shooter. America's Army, Counter Strike, Modern Warfare 2 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter all center around the fundamental conflict between the western, often white, male, hero-self and the demonized enemy-other terrorist. Playing against these others serves to elevate the perception of self (makes you feel good), while playing a side-mission, chapter or multiplayer feature as the enemy terrorist provides the illusion of emotional/narrative depth and tension in the game. It's like playing cops and robbers; sometimes it's more interesting playing as the robbers, even though you "know" the cops are in the right from a moral standpoint.

According to Marcus Schulzke, these games have the potential to give players insights into the complexities of war, particularly the "War on Terror," but they mostly fail spectacularly to provide any real change of perspective. The popular games listed above therefore confirm the discourse of othering by demonizing an enemy as an oversimplified representation of real-world organizations and groups:

     "(…) [these games] deliver experiences of terrorist subjectivities that have virtually no content and that leave terrorists almost indistinguishable from the games' heroes. The terrorists whose viewpoints are shown are portrayed as people who engage in senseless acts of violence that are disconnected from motives or grievances. This leads the games to confirm the overarching War on Terror narrative that terrorists are irrational and evil enemies who are unworthy of respect," (Schulzke, 207).

In this sense, terrorists make perfect video game enemies, since they can be easily characterized as intrinsically evil and threatening targets of justified violence (Schulzke, 207-208).

First person shooters are all about perspective.
But does it ever change?

So how come many shooters featuring terrorists as the enemy provide the opportunity to play from the terrorist's perspective?

After all, portraying an inherently evil "other" as "self" would humanize the enemy, which would be a radical gesture. And true enough, when Modern Warfare 2 was published, critics and mainstream media were in uproar over one mission called "No Russian" which takes place in a (civilian) airport, where the player, disguised as the terrorist enemy, is drawn into a massacre of friendly NPC's. During this part, players can choose to take part in the massacre or not, but if they somehow try to stop it from happening the mission will always conclude with a fail-state; a game over.

This simulation of terrorism was doubtlessly conceived as an attempt to provide an alternate perspective, resulting in more tension and a better play experience (we can play as the robbers!), yet the mission is always played out from the perspective of the western soldier infiltrating terrorists, and no attempt is ever made to explain why they carry out a massacre, beyond the simple explanation that they are evil and cannot be understood or reasoned with. The mission is therefore an ethical failure, since players are never encouraged to reflect on the actions of the enemy, or, indeed, their label as others. However, critics argued that the terrorist side was portrayed "too vividly" (Schulzke, 215), which goes to show that game designers are right to tread carefully when they incorporate perspectives bordering on the normative.

Shooting down people in a shooter. Suddenly it's a bad thing.

On a side-note, the graphic violence and despair depicted in the massacre of innocent civilians could be compared to the second part of the mission, which features a more typical battle with an opposing group of soldiers (Russians). Here, far less blood, screams and pointless violence is displayed, even though actual battle between trained armies entails just as much grotesque violence and screaming as regular murder, this fundamental difference only shows how the game narrative refrains from engaging the player in how easily blurred the line between soldier, freedom fighter and terrorist actually is, and instead the game simply reflects a "deep uncertainty" about what distinguishes the terrorist's branch of violence with any other violence, and what kind of people actually engage in terrorism.

This is not to say that games should not be games, and that oversimplification is necessarily horrible in videogame narratives. The point made here is simply that these games have potential to inform and evolve the discourse of violence and war, yet in failing to provide the perspective of the demonized "other", they cannot do so.

Similarly, in Medal of Honor: Warfighter, the player goes through a mission (Through the Eyes of Evil) as a western soldier who is a covert operative  sent to infiltrate a terrorist cell (even though it is suggested that he has defected). Here, you have to save a hostage (unarmed civilian) and kill armed enemy offensives, which is the exact same thing you do in the main part of the game as the "good guy". So the game suggests that the soldiers and the terrorists are actually quite similar, only fighting for different causes, and the game rewards the player for completing the mission with the achievement "Know Your Enemy," but the player never learns why the terrorists fight or who they are. So this would either be ironic or bad narrative structure. And since the experience lacks structural difference, the "terrorists perspective" offered by the game remains hollow (Schulzke, 218).

Again, in America's Army, which is actually commissioned by the American military, a perceptual trick resting on false-consciousness is deployed to provide the illusion of depth. The player's team is always displayed in the game as the American army, while the opposing team is displayed as terrorists. The designers therefore assume (possibly quite rightly) that players will ignore the fact that they are perceived as terrorists by the other players. Thus, the status of terrorist is actually meaningless in the game; neither team engages in "terrorist associated activities" (Schulzke, 214). The difference is purely perspective, or thematic framing. And even though the game is constructed as an overt pro-army message, it simulates the cliché that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, which, of course, is unintentional and contrary to the main discourse of the "War against Terror".

Play as an abled white guy killing the poor, brown people
 and other oppressors of freedom.

Videogame terrorists here are inherently homo sacer, meaning beyond the limits of conventional morality, a legitimate target, a monster. And as monsters, there is no need to understand their motives, because they have none aside from mindless destruction and evil. And the only real perspective shown in any of these games is the perspective of the western soldier, which, of course, is problematic as an endorsement kill-first-ask-question-later policies, which consequently enhance prevalent power structures, hide the real sources of conflict and prevents legitimate investigation into the dynamics of terrorism.

These games are not bad as such, but their narrative structures and oversimplification of real-world issues support the discourse of othering, and in failing to challenge said discourse, they keep the myth of western supremacy alive, along with the myth of a black and white world where good is easily distinguishable from evil. Such narratives can only be sustained when based on ignorance of what terrorists are really like (Schulzke, 212).

So are ALL games featuring terrorists doing this? Well, no.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG has received massive criticism for its offensive nature and supposedly light take on the events that led to a school shooting at Columbine High, USA,  in the 90's. However, the designer of the game, which is quite crudely programmed, actually created it to discuss the motives of the two young men who shot down their classmates and teachers. The game features flashbacks of being bullied, of groups in the society they lived in rejecting them, and the game is arguably a quite lever attempt to bring out the perspective of those we struggle to understand. It boldly poses the possibility that the murderers were perhaps not inherently evil and unfathomable (as we would like to think), but actually people, who were struggling with life and provoked by the peers and elders that made the struggle harder. This is an ethical game in every respect, as the (mature) player cannot go through it without pausing to reflect on the complexity it portrays.

Gun control, bullying, and de-humanization are just some
of the important themes dealt with in this game. 

Sadly, the game has gone down in gaming history, not as an attempt to challenge perceptions, but as an appalling abomination of a game, turning a miserable and unfortunate happening into light entertainment.

Most people will never know the game beyond its name.

Just like the social outcasts it depicts.

We can't really play as terrorists before we're ready to see their point, or at least the context leading to it. But should we?

____________________________________________________________________________
References:

Jobling, Ian (2001): "The Psychological Foundations of the Hero-Ogre Story: A Cross-Cultural Study"

in Human Nature, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 247-272.

Schulzke, Marcus (2013): "Being a terrorist: Video game simulations of the other side of the War on Terror"

Media, War and Conflict, 6(3), 2013, pp. 207-220.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Note: I later used this text for a series of articles on Playception.com, a Danish videogame news site that is almost functional - Link here: http://www.playception.com/da/articles/view/19-artikelserie-med-onde-jne-1 
Just a disclaimer, in case anyone thinks I plagiarized it.