Every so often, I've heard stories in the news stating that games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto is encouraging kids to commit acts of terrorism. The claim seems absolutely ridiculous, but I just brush it off as complete nonsense. There was one claim by I forget who (maybe it was Glen Beck) saying that these games teach kids how to effectively become trained killers. These games might as well be military training programs.
Those claims bother me because of all the reasons I can think of why using video games would be a horrible way to train our armed forces. Obviously these claims come from people who most likely don't shoot guns or play first person shooters.
We all know that games like Call of Duty try to simulate realistic combat (actually they try to simulate Michael Bay movies), but they can not accurately portray real combat. I make the following observations not as a man who actually shoots real guns. I make the following observations as a man that has played a lot of first person shooters and noticed several things that just break my suspension of disbelief.
The most obvious thing is that you only get one life. If you get killed, you don't get to respawn at the closest checkpoint. None of my following observations even matter when explaining why kids don't go on shooting sprees after playing Grand Theft Auto.
When it comes to actually firing weapons, a video game doesn't teach you how to fire a gun. In the game, you are just sitting on your couch while moving some thumb sticks and pressing some buttons to shoot. You look at the tv screen and usually you have a nice cross hair to use to know exactly where your shots go. When using a real gun, you have to load the gun, turn off the safety, line up the sights, keep your hands steady, and squeeze the trigger without throwing off your aim. Video games make everything so easy in the fact that you never have to worry about imperfect use or aiming of your weapon and you don't worry about malfunctions. In a video game, you just have to worry about reloading.
Speaking of reloading, in the game you just have to push a button. Reloading takes just a few seconds. In real life, reloading can take just a few seconds but it is much harder than just pushing a button. You have to remove the empty magazine, find your full magazine, load it into your gun, and ready the weapon. It the video game, the magazine is always available and within reach. In real life, you have to make sure the magazine is easy to reach and you have to make sure to be careful not to drop it while reloading. You could slip or insert it improperly. Becoming skilled in reloading takes time. A beginner most likely would not be able to reload a handgun in 2 seconds.
Another game mechanic that breaks my suspension of belief is hammer space. In a lot of games, you can hold dozens of guns and press a button to cycle through your weapons. Your character is only holding the weapon that he is currently using. In real life, it would be absurd for a man to carry a handgun, a sub machine gun, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, a shotgun, several grenades, a rocket launcher, a general purpose machine gun, and the ammo for all of this all at the same time. Some modern games have fixed this issue by limiting the amount of weapons the character can carry to about 4.
Even the movement and abilities of the characters in FPS games breaks reality. A lot of shooters give the player the ability to run. Most of the games don't have a way to account for stamina. In the game, you can keep dashing for as long as you hold the button down. In real life, it would be difficult to sprint for more than a few minutes while carrying weapons and equipment.
In videogames, the character usually has regenerating health and can take several bullets before dying. In reality, taking just one bullet can be devastating even if you don't get shot in the head or center of mass. Even when wearing body armor, a soldier can get injured by the impact of multiple bullet shots to the chest.
Related to how bullet wounds affect the human body, video games doesn't portray it realistically. In most FPS games, your character performs the exact same at 100% health and one inch away from death. In real life, getting shot in the arms would make it very difficult to fire a gun. Getting shot it the legs would make it very difficult to move. In Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, enemy soldiers do get disabled if you shot them in the arms or legs. However Snake doesn't get disabled if he is shot in the arms or legs.
The last unrealistic thing I can think of when it comes to the character is using cover. Since shooters came out on the PlayStation 3, ducking behind cover and shooting enemies has become standard. There is just one thing that bothers me every time I see this game play mechanic. If you are completely behind cover, you won't be able to see your enemies. You would have expose your head from cover and take a look around.
The last big thing that breaks my suspension of disbelief is the AI of enemies. In a lot of FPS games, enemy guards just kind of stay in the same place and duck behind cover every now and then. In order to make the game difficult, you usually have about 20 of these guys to take out. Only in a few games, the enemies will move around and try to flank you.
There are more things that are unrealistic but I think these are the biggest things. Most FPS games are not a good depiction of reality and it is silly to think that games turn kids into violent killers.
I have heard that there are some games that try to focus on realism. As far as I know, the first three Tom Clancy Rainbow Six games are the most accurate FPS games. People die in only a few shots. Deaths are permanent. Movement is slow. The games focus more on planning and tactics than intense firefights. If anyone in the media was claiming that games like Rainbow Six was teaching kids how to carry out operations, I could see some plausibility. However I really don't think that is the case. I'm pretty sure people are referring to GTA and COD.
In his book "On Killing" Lt. Col. Dave Grossman outlines how video games use the same type of psycholigical training the military utilizes. With one key difference. The military has designed "stops" into its training, wheras video games do not. How this translates is that when a unit engages an enemy, the "stops" limit the psychological propensity for a soldier to murder an entire innocent village. With the sort of psychological conditioning without "stops", unstable individuals are at a higher risk of mental failure resulting in a catastrophe. The book also outlines that most people have an aversion to killing humans, it is this aversion that militaries are primarily concerned with. Teaching someone how to use a gun is easy. Teaching someone to kill is not. I feel that media sources are ultimately incorrect when they brand video games as training sources. Video games DO desensitize individuals to human death, which can be a concern. But the more important issue is to realize that FPS are designed for a target audience of middle aged men, with fully developed brains who are better equipped to handle the kind of desensitizing images and themes. Which then comes down to a matter of parenting rather than government censorship of video games
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