I feel games like Call of Duty should be allowed to exist. I know from personal experience that it is actually educational. The first 3 and World at War gives you information of certain important battles and surrounding events. I learned things from this game and saw footage that I was previously unaware of. It is also very informative in the weapons used in the time period. For example I thought the flame thrower was introduced in the time of Vietnam but I learned that it was used in the second world war and then later that it was actually used in the first world war. Also it gives the average person an idea of the kind of weapons each side had and the kind of technologies they had then. There are gruesome parts of this game that I feel help the player depict real war time. Of course a game and real life war time is something that is hard to compare because playing a game I will not be able to feel the anxiety, fear, and pain that the soldiers feel in war but I am no longer as oblivious as before. So to a point these games are helpful but there are parts of them that diminish the realities of war. For example in Call of Duty it is very easy to take over a land and is done very quickly. In real war time this would take a very long time with many many lives lost. Also it takes a while to die in a game and in real life this was not the case. In reality even if you were shot in the leg you would be in trouble because if you were immobile then you are in grave danger of an enemy coming to get you or going into shock from pain and blood loss which leads to death. But I do know that many other people who play this game do not take from it like I do. Of course there is that group that plays just for fun or to embarrass "newbs". But just because something is done for recreation, doesn't mean it should be banished. Because this game is based from a real scenario it makes everything more fun and more realistic. So a portion of the gamers who play this game do not get anything from this game, but everything in life is not always black and white there are going to be gray areas especially with today's youth. To sum it all up, these games actually help the gamer more than they do diminish the true violence of war. As a Call of Duty player and an avid lover of history I do not find a clash with the two. Even if I did not like the way this game depicts war, the thought of taking these games away is not a realistic one. The youth of today will go to the midnight release of Call of Duty and play all day long. The taking away of this game is not something that will go over easily. And I feel for a long time humankind will be thoroughly fascinated with the idea of war, even if it is just in video game form.
