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Geschichte im Computerspiel: Eine machtkritische Analyse von Historienspielen am Beispiel von Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Abstract
Inwiefern spiegeln Videospiele und ihre Kultur gesellschaftliche Machtverhältnisse? Vor welchen Herausforderungen steht die Spieleindustrie und welche strukturellen Mechanismen prägen sie? Wie können virtuelle Welten utopische Möglichkeitsräume eröffnen? Erstmalig im deutschsprachigen Raum versammeln die Beiträger*innen kritische Perspektiven auf herrschende Ideologien sowie die Produktion und die Nutzung eines Mediums, dessen gesellschaftliche Relevanz stetig wächst. Dabei finden sie Zugänge über Kunst, Wissenschaft sowie Journalismus, um Videospiele im Spannungsfeld von Kapitalismus, Patriarchat und Kolonialismus unter die Lupe zu nehmen.
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In this article I argue that the structural conditions of global capitalism and postcolonialism encourage game developers to rearticulate hegemonic memory politics and suppress subaltern identities. This claim is corroborated via an application of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Japanese-developed video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This case study highlights that the hegemonic articulations of colonial histories are not exclusive to Western entertainment products where instead modes of production matter in the ‘manufacturing of mnemonic hegemony’. I also propose that the propaganda model, while instructive, can be improved further by acknowledging a technological filter and the role of the subaltern. Thus, the article furthers the understanding of the relation between production and form in contemporary technological phenomena like video games and how this relation motivates hegemonic articulations of the past in contemporary mass culture.
Civilization V as one of the most successful and definitive works of the 4X videogame genre presents a clear narrative of empire-building that, I will argue, is problematic when set against postcolonial theory. With many studies lauding the series for its educational capacities I argue that with an affective turn to the role of the player, the game's homogenization of narratives of societal progression reinforces a Western-centric notion of history. This co-opts non-colonial societies into imperialism, while in the process silencing their histories. For this study, I will read the game's goals and mechanics through postcolonial theorists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and then turn to affect theory to consider what role the player takes in writing this history. To conclude, I will consider what implications this has on the use of 4X games like Civilization V for education and the conception of history in the minds of the players, drawing on other recent scholars who have similarly problematized the series.
Auch wenn sie oft als „Neue Medien“ firmieren, sind Digitale Spiele als Medium nicht mehr ganz so jung, wie gerne behauptet wird. Sie sind nicht nur technische Unterhaltungsprodukte, sondern kulturelle und auch gesellschaftspolitische Artefakte und treiben mittlerweile ganze Wirtschaftszeige an. In sich tragen sie die Geschichte ihrer Entstehung, aber auch allgemein historische populärkulturelle Diskurse. In einer
Tour de Force geben die beiden Autoren einen Überblick über die wichtigsten Facetten dieser Entwicklungen von den ersten Versuchen der 1940er Jahre bis zu den alternativen Welten des 21. Jahrhunderts. Ein kompakter Einstieg für alle, die mehr zu Digitalen Spielen aus historischer Perspektive wissen wollen.
The goal of this article is to discuss how digital war games such as the Call of Duty series elicit consent for the U.S. military, militarism and the wars waged by the U.S. and its allies abroad. Building bridges between the humanities approach to Game Studies, American Studies, International Relations and Critical Geopolitics, we start from the assumption that digital games are more than “kid’s games”; they are sophisticated vehicles inhabiting and disseminating specific ideologies (Leonard 2004). Accordingly, our goal is to conduct a content analysis (Sisler 2008) of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to show how these games contain images and narratives that (1) resonate with and reinforce a tabloid imaginary of post-9/11 geopolitics (Debrix 2008); (2) glorify military power and elicit consent for the idea that state violence and wars are inevitable; and (3) encourage our myopia by depicting a sanitized vision of war and downplaying the negative consequences of state violence (Stahl 2006). The conclusion invites players to think about ways to criticize the way games like Call of Duty employ and deploy values that (re)write the militarist mindset that has often pervaded the post-9/11 U.S. national security debate.
The present article brings game studies into dialogue with cultural memory studies and argues for the significance of computer games for historical discourse and memory politics. Drawing upon the works of Robert Rosenstone and Astrid Erll, we develop concepts and theories from film studies and adapt them to respond to the media specificity of computer games. Through a critical reading of the first chapter of the history-based first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops, the article demonstrates how the game’s formal properties frame in-game experiences and performances, and this way predisposes the emergence of certain memory-making potentials in and through constrained practices of play. Subsequently, an analysis of the serious game Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination shows the potentials of game design to facilitate meta-historical reflections and critical inquiries.
The politics of history and memory in any society are determined by the relations of forces between hegemonic master narratives, defiant counter-memories, and silent majorities whose historical experience is rarely articulated in public. Based on Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau, as well as postcolonial critique, this article explains historico-political processes through a specified reading of hegemony theory. Two common, though by no means unambiguous, terms are reloaded with specific definitions: politics of history as the political agency directed at the establishment of specific representations of the past, and memory cultures as the structural frameworks for these politics. This approach sheds light on the relationship between official and group-specific politics of history within defined memory cultures: the possibly conflictual interaction between those who interpret certain events, inscribe them into a historical canon and thus make them points of historical reference, and those who are the carriers, consumers, reproducers, but also challengers of this history.
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