Call of Duty 3 - a post by Andrew

So the other day I was both watching and playing the new Xbox 360 game Call of Duty 3. This game is a first person shooter which you are placed in the middle of World War 2. I, myself am not a big time “gamer” however I do enjoy the odd gun battle with some friend with of course the use of a game system. But as I was playing this game, I noticed not only that it was in High Definition ( that comes with the Xbox 360, and the TV my family has), but just how detailed the graphics were. The graphics seem to be getting better with these games year after year. This game was unbelievably real, which I guess is a weird statement. I just couldn’t get over how real the experience was. As I sat back and watched a few rounds, there was only 3 controllers and usually the person in last place had to hand it over, which ended up being me more often then not, I noticed something very interesting. I think as the games keep getting more and more real, the people playing start romanticizing the game situation. So in this case, World War 2 became cool, and exciting, and real. I think this especially hit a chord with me as my Grandpa was in WWII. Although he came back safely and is in fact still alive at age 88, I couldn’t imagine this is what he would have wanted the War to be remembered by. I mean people lost their lives, mothers lost children, wives husbands, husbands wives, children lost parents, and families lost their homes and freedom, in the fight for freedom. Yet this war game on Xbox 360, this crystal clear picture of you as a soldier, seems so shallow, so trivial. When one plays it they see war as levels to get through, as something fun. Yet this isn’t what war did to people. War is real, so real people’s lives were changed forever, and the creators of this game seemed to have forgot this. After thinking about this I wondered about all video games, the fact that they place you in this fantasy world that is so far from reality. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I am going to give playing as myself as the top defensemen in the NHL in the NHL 06 video game. But I wonder if video games are so popular because they are away from reality. I wonder if there was no “respawn” button, which lets you regain life after dieing, and all the real life stuff was included, whether video games would sell. The more real video games get, the further away from reality.