Hey,
Second blog post for a school assignment, the all mighty call of duty
Call Of
Duty: Modern Warfare is a series filled with controversy yet uses the words
immersion as a marketing tool. Being immersed within a game is being able to
suspend disbelief and feel a part of the world you are engaging in. First
person shooters have an edge in this department due to the camera angle giving
you the illusion of being in that world and looking through it with your own
eyes. Call of Duty is able to capture this in a nut shell and the first outing
of the game had such a great story which helped you stay immersed and involved.
The question is how far does immersion actually go in this game and why is it
important?. What makes the game immersive to me is the modern setting of the
game, it makes it easier to not have to make things up or try to understand
what certain things are doing in the environment. As Madigan states "Dealing
in a familiar environment also allows the player to comfortably make
assumptions about those blank spaces without being pulled out of the world to
think about it." (Madigan, 2010).
This means the player can focus more on
playing the game. The aim of call of duty is to kill the enemies that are in
your path to the objective and then to complete said objective. However what
truly helps with the immersion is that this game was made with the help of the
army in America or people whom have had military service to solidify the
experience and to give it a more solid grounding in reality. Doing this can
only bring the sort of attention to detail that is seen in the real thing,
allowing the game through immersion to de sensitize the player against killing
or firing a gun. The narrative of the story mode shows a great notion in
keeping the players brains occupied to deter the player from seeing any faults
in the world that is made in the game. As Madigan says " Cognitively
demanding environments where players have to focus on what’s going on and
getting by in the game will tie up mental resources. This is good for immersion
" (Madigan, 2010). The story in the game does it well by using many
explosions or high speed chases keeping the players focus on the action and
going fast. A great example of the above is in the final mission of the game
where the player has just averted a nuke from firing and is now escaping the
bunker he was in via hummer, in a flash the car you are in is flipped over by a
helicopter missile explosion. The game pushes the immersion by giving the
player blurry vision to try and simulate the groggy state a person would be in
under such circumstances.
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I generally
felt dread as the villain in the game slowly approaches your view shooting your
comrades in the head as you lie there without the ability to fire back or
anything like that until Captain Price throws you a gun to shoot the villain
with. I was stuck in that moment when my character had picked up the gun and I
shot at the Villain with glee, I couldn't help feeling heroic at this moment
knowing that it is only a story.
However the
game itself has some reflection on the world and what has recently happened in
regards to terrorism and how its changed people's perception of the middle
east. In regards to Call Of Duty's view of war it is not one that correctly
immerses and mirrors that of the real world. The army do use video games for
training in some instances however they use games specially made for them like
Virtual Battlespace 2. This make sense as Peck says " First, the military
doesn't play games. It uses training tools that happen to be games.(Peck,
2012)". These games are not meant to be played with the intent of having
fun they are made with the intent of immersing the soldier into a realistic
simulation to teach them how to operate in certain situations. Games like Call
of Duty teach people to shoot whatever is in your path without a second thought
as to why, as Peck notes " Army needs a game to teach soldiers
how to butter up the natives not to shoot at them."(Peck, 2012). If the
world were to be filled with soldier like that in Call Of Duty's story mode we
may not have a world to live in, the game shows no empathy for the opposition
and acts as though everything the player does is the right of the player. It
gives you only one path to walk and that path is forward, could it be training
a generation of players to become natural killers?. I highly doubt this as it
does not give the player that type of immersion that gives someone the
confidence to be able to move and do as they do.
References
Peck,
M. (2012). Forget Call of Duty and Battlefield.
Real Military Training Needs a Different Kind of Game. Retrieved From: http://kotaku.com/5883105/forget-call-of-duty-and-battlefield-real-military-training-needs-a-different-kind-of-game
Madigan, J.
(2010). The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games. Retrieved from: http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/07/the-psychology-of-immersion-in-video-games/
Andersen, R, Kurti, M. (2012). From America’s Army to Call
of Duty: Doing Battle with the Military Entertainment Complex. Retrieved from: http://www.lib.sfu.ca/sites/default/files/10730/cmns130_enda_scholarlyarticle.pdf
Grimshaw,
M, Jagger, R, Charlton, J, P. (2011). First-Person Shooters: Immersion and
Attention. Journal for computer game culture, 5(1), 29-44 .Retrieved from: http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/vol5no1-3/html3
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