Nick Robinson gives his view on how videos games replicate the complexity of modern war.

Dr Nick Robinson was recently quoted in a news item for Alphr looking at videos games and how they replicate the complexity of war.

The article focused on the politics of war-themed video games and their depictions of post 9/11 enemies.

Dr Robinson states “After 9/11, there was a boom in war-themed games,” Robinson continued, “Some of these games go straight into a post-9/11 social imaginary. I think that on some level there was a desire to think about what this set of circumstances might actually mean. How we can re-win the war on terror, as it were.”

Yet recently, war games, have increasingly moved away from replications of contemporary war, pointing to a combination of possible war fatigue in entertainment alongside contemporary anxieties about war in places such as Syria. As Dr Robinson argues:

“While it is not totally clear why the developers have shifted focus, they could have done so for a number of reasons. Perhaps they’ve run out of things to say about post-9/11 conflict? Perhaps their players have become bored of fighting the same old wars? Perhaps, however, with the failure to find WMD in Iraq and the increasing war fatigue, the moral certainty of the early games released after 9/11 has become increasingly difficult to sustain, so we seek entertainment in the past and the far future."

The full article is available to read on the Alphr website.