I think Brun is closer to the truth- they can trivialize war, which is not the same as glorifying it. Glorfying war requires a more specific message, and I don't see many games actually take a stance in order to do that.

Presenting the subject matter as entertainment, yes, I get that. But I believe there is some distance between that and inserting values in a game which honors war, which honors the traits of combatants or honors ideals about war in the same way. Glorifying war usually involves glorifying death- putting combatants in love with death. Poems that glorify war often more talk about the values in dying for a cause more than they even glorify killing an adversary.

Games like Battlefield don't really do this- the action is too much running around and dying but re-spawning again playing capture the flag rather than glorifying blood soaked standards on the field of battle. The games just aren't that sentimental.

This doesn't mean you don't get all the leet speak on open comm channels and insults and taunts running back and forth, but that goes more to trivializing war rather than glorifying it- it's still sort of self contained in its own universe, despite the subject matter it emulates.

For example, people might comment on a player's mad skillz, which are wholly unrealistic and unrelated to actual war, but this wouldn't be the same as a game which teaches players the lesson that war is the only necessary and desired outcome, that war is the highest example of human experience and culture, or simply, that war, and death are beautiful. It's more the skills involved in bunny hopping or sniping a pilot through a helicopter canopy rather than a sentimental approach to the subject matter, in other words.

I've met some characters like this, and it wasn't video games that put that in their heads. These usually tended to be very idealistic but lonely people who always felt like they didn't belong or something.


No one gets out of here alive.