It was only a matter of time before the video game industry, that great engine of intellectual vacuity, discovered a fresh target for its adolescent fantasies. The latest outrage concerns the upcoming Call of Duty title, which apparently features a plot line involving an invasion of North Korea. I am told that this has sparked outrage. Outrage? One might as well be outraged that a child has drawn a moustache on a photograph of the Prime Minister. The real scandal is the sheer poverty of imagination and the relentless descent into historical illiteracy that such a conceit represents.
Let us be clear. The notion of a military invasion of North Korea is not merely implausible: it is a geopolitical suicide pact. The Pyongyang regime may be a grotesque parody of a state, but it possesses enough artillery and, one suspects, enough desperation to turn Seoul into a sea of fire within hours. To treat such a catastrophe as fodder for a video game is not merely tasteless. It is a symptom of a culture that has lost all sense of proportion, that mistakes the simulation of violence for a meaningful engagement with the world.
One is reminded of the decadence of the late Roman Empire, when the circus games became ever more extravagant and brutal, all while the barbarians gathered at the gates. The modern equivalent is the video game industry, which churns out ever more realistic and morally vacuous spectacles of destruction, while the actual crises of our age – climate change, nuclear proliferation, the hollowing out of our civic institutions – go unaddressed. The Call of Duty franchise is the coliseum of our era, and its audience are the idle spectators, cheering on the latest CGI atrocity.
But there is a deeper absurdity here. The notion that a game about a North Korean invasion could be considered 'outrageous' in a moral sense is itself a sign of our confusion. We have become so inured to the actual horrors of war, so anaesthetised by the endless stream of images from Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, that we reserve our indignation for a digital fantasy. It is rather like being shocked by a painting of a decapitation while the real thing happens on the news every evening. The outrage is misdirected, a form of moral self-indulgence that allows us to feel virtuous without actually doing anything.
And what of the supposed guardians of public decency who have expressed their displeasure? They are the same people who cheerfully consume entertainment that depicts the slaughter of countless digital enemies, provided the enemies are of the correct political complexion. Kill a Nazi in a game, and you are a hero. Kill a North Korean soldier, and suddenly you are a monster. The hypocrisy is staggering. It reveals that the objection is not to violence per se, but to the identity of the victim. This is not morality: it is tribalism dressed up in ethical clothing.
The real problem, however, is not the game itself but the culture that produces it. We have reached a point where the simulation of reality has become more important than reality itself. A game about invading North Korea is not a serious commentary on geopolitics. It is a product designed to titillate, to provoke, to generate controversy and thereby sales. The outrage is part of the marketing strategy. The game developers are not stupid: they know that a little bit of manufactured scandal will drive pre-orders. And we, the audience, play our role perfectly, dutifully expressing our indignation on social media, thereby amplifying the very thing we claim to deplore.
In the end, the Call of Duty North Korean caper is a perfect metaphor for our times: a culture that has run out of ideas, that can only generate excitement by dabbling in the most dangerous subjects, but that lacks the courage or the intelligence to actually engage with them. It is the intellectual equivalent of a teenager shouting obscenities at a funeral. It is juvenile, tasteless, and ultimately pathetic. We deserve better. But we will not get it until we stop treating video games as a serious art form and start treating them as what they are: a sophisticated form of time-wasting for people who have nothing better to do with their lives.
