Parent Asks Son to Play Call of Duty According to Geneva Conventions:
Evan would get to play the game, but before that, Hugh had him look up the Geneva Conventions online, read their provisions, and then the two discussed its history and what they mean. “So the deal is that Evan has to fight according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. If his team-mates violate the Convention [assuming Hugh means online human players] then play stops and Call of Duty goes away for a while.”
As nearly unenforceable as that sounds, a point is made. And it makes a point in a way that seeing a film or reading a book about war can’t. You can discuss why characters in those two media would make the choices they did, but it’s a different thing to explain the choices you would make – and then act accordingly.
via Call Of Duty: World At War: Parent Asks Son to Play COD According to Geneva Conventions.
Richard Clark (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief) has spent his entire life writing, reading, listening, and playing. He has a Bachelors in Theology from the Baptist College of Florida and has a Master of Arts in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY where he is the classroom technology manager at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to writing at Christ and Pop Culture, he is also a staff writer for 
That is pretty cool. I like the idea of forcing the child to think about the history of and the reasons behind the war. It takes an edge off of the ubiquitous killing for killing’s sake found in so many video games. Thanks for the post!
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Something in Steven’s comment made me think of something else. When he says, “Killing for killing’s sake.” We obviously know what he means, but when I considered this, I was struck by why violence in videogames so easily gets a pass.
There really isn’t any killing going on.
So in the most realistic sense, those engaged in Call of Duty V (or IV or whichever FPS) aren’t killing for killing’s sake, but doing something more akin to… I dunno… targeting for targeting’s sake. Or performing competitive targeting and preservative action for competitive targeting and preservative action’s sake.
Because when one plays these games, there’s no real sense that one is actually killing. When I “kill” an opponent in a game (either PvP or PvE), the killing aspect of what I’ve done is no different than when I “kill” a file I was working on. I’ve closed down a digital expression of a program in either case—and there’s really no definitive moral rule for that sort of thing. Of course it’s more exciting than closing a file for work, but that’s not because of the quote-unquote killing but more just a natural aspect of games (whether in competing against other players or against the game environment and mechanic).
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Good to see the dad involved with the son’s consumption of pop culture. He doesn’t separate him from it, nor ban him from it, but he engages him in it.
Richard, I tried to leave a comment here with a different website url, and it didn’t show up. Can you see if it turned up in CaPC spam?
Thanks!
Sam
Not sure why that happened, Sam. It should work now.
Thanks!