Video Games as a Vehicle for Political Propaganda

This article starts by discussing how some video games such as “Special Forces” and “America’s Army” are labeled as educational entertainment. However, in reality these games can be extremely persuasive and are actually made to target military recruits. Propaganda is defined as a deliberate attempt to shape ideas and persuade people to conduct a certain behavior, and Delwhiche argues that immersion, intense engagement, identification, and interactivity can all be powerful tools in influencing attitudes. While playing a video game, participants experience all of these such as immersion in another world, engagement with other players, identification as a character, and getting to control the character’s actions. Due to all of these factors, there are learning and persuasive tools within many video games, but the way each person reacts is subjective.

I don’t play many video games, but my bother is obsessed with games like grand theft auto, fortnite, and interactive sports games. While watching him play it’s hard to ignore the influence these games could have on young brains. As soon as my brother and all of his friends started gaming, they became more interested in buying airsoft guns that mimicked the guns in their game, and having “battles” in my front yard. While this seems like innocent fun, it got me thinking of how these games would impact kids who weren’t in a good place, or had access to real guns at home. Although there is no true link between the two, violent video games are often to blame for school shootings especially by politicians and in the media.

While this article goes into detail about how many of these video games are secretly propaganda for the military, it also supports the idea that each gamer is affected differently. In this same way, individuals are impacted in different ways by the violence they observe and partake in, even if it is virtual. Delwhiche discusses this idea of rewards and consequences for certain behaviors in the game. For instance, many players are rewarded for the number of kills they have, how big of a gun they buy. This could potentially send a dangerous message to young viewers, and could be educational in a negative way.