The new ‘Call of Duty’ demonstrates what makes video games art - The Washington Post

I’m someone who would be classified as a casual gamer, at best, so it takes a lot to get me to carve out the time to play a video game all the way through. But when the Verge reported “Ronald Reagan sends [us] to do war crimes in the latest ‘Call of Duty,’” I knew it was time to dust off the ol’ DualShock controller and dive back in. After all, playing a video game for a column so I could write it off on my taxes is just what the Gipper would have wanted.

There has long been a debate about whether video games count as art. At the core of that argument is the definition of art itself. Traditionally, viewers don’t get to control what the work is. Instead, they’re supposed to submit to the artist’s fundamentally dictatorial vision. Consumers get to interpret, but not to create. The increasingly immersive nature of video games can cut both ways in that argument. The open-ended nature of the “Fallout” games has always made them feel more “game” and less “art” to me: The worldscapes are endless and explorable, and as a result, provide too much freedom from the vision of a creator. But when a game is immersive in the sense that it allows — or requires — you to become someone else, something different happens. Whether that someone is trying to fight his or her way through a zombie apocalypse or win a Super Bowl or rescue a princess or escape from an underwater Randian hellscape, stepping into someone else’s skin while being directed by the authorial hand through a series of events renders games almost definitionally artistic.

That immersive quality can be hard to shake; while alternating between “Call of Duty” and the latest season of “The Crown,” which tracks the rise of Margaret Thatcher, I found myself wishing the game offered a side mission to the Falkland Islands that would allow players to “do war crimes” for Maggie. And immersion can sometimes make people feel uncomfortable. Consider the fights over sex and sexuality in the “Mass Effect” series, where some gamers took offense at even the idea of being able to participate in same-sex relationships. That might also explain why so many progressives are unnerved by the idea of being tasked with saving the free world by the man who did more to crush communism than anyone else: Ronald Reagan.

”Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” begins with a quick little mission to track down the leaders of an Iranian hostage-taking cell in order to glean information about the location of Perseus, a legendary Soviet spy who nearly started World War III during the 1960s.

After your little opening rendezvous with the Iranians — including one of the said “war crimes,” though one might question whether chucking a terrorist off a roof during a stylized confrontation is a “war crime” or “justice” — you settle into a smoky briefing room, and the Great Communicator himself fills you in on the stakes. After Al Haig equivocates, getting weak-kneed at the thought of the liberal media learning of Reagan’s decision to send forces in overseas and undercover, Dutch just brushes him aside.

“Al, we’re talking about preventing an attack on the free men and women of the world,” Reagan says. “Gentlemen, you’ve been given an important task: protecting our very way of life from a great evil. There is no higher duty. There is no higher honor. And while few people will know of your struggles, rest assured the entire free world will benefit.”

These are the stakes in “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War,” and it’s nice of the good folks at Activision to remind players of the ultimate Cold Warrior’s take on them. The gameplay’s intensity — including some time-hopping “memory recall” missions that involve assaulting a Vietnamese village in 1968 and calling in napalm strikes and stealth missions that force you to consider whether or not you should murder a potential Stasi informant in cold blood — matches both the nature of the conflict this fictionalized Reagan lays out and the “Call of Duty” franchise itself. That said, nothing in the game jumps out as particularly excessive for anyone who has spent hours gouging the eyes out of Greek myths in the “God of War” series or giving mentally ill patients in the ”Batman: Arkham” games irreparable brain damage.

Sure, “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” might be a hair ahistorical here and there — pedants will likely grouse about the invocation of Iranians and hostages, even if the opening scenario has nothing to do with the actual hostage crisis.

But if you can’t appreciate strapping on body armor and grabbing your rifle when it means sauntering off to East Berlin, Cuba, the USSR and other communist strongholds to defend the very freedoms of each and every American at home and abroad — well, maybe that says more about your inability to set aside your politics to appreciate the artistry involved immersing yourself in another perspective than it does about the game itself.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/19/new-call-duty-demonstrates-what-makes-video-games-art/

2020-11-19 17:49:00Z
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