Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 413)

participating in a certain totalising idea of foreign policy without ever examining its own
assumptions. Other developers are already seeing the problem and avoiding it: the squad-
based combat sequel Conflict: Desert Storm 2 (2003), for example, was set like its
predecessor during the first Gulf War, so as not to be embroiled in controversy about the
2003 war on Iraq.
But videogames are also becoming a site for a certain sort of symbolic political protest, as
in the example of artist Anne-Marie Schleiner’s Velvet-Strike (2002), which represents
what you might call aesthetic counter-terrorism. Schleiner says she was disturbed by the
post-9/11 militarism in the online gaming community, particularly by one game
modification in which Bin Laden was represented as an Arab liquor store owner in the
US, and the gamer was enjoined to enter the store and shoot the proprietor. In response,
she developed a series of provocatively pacifist graphical “spray paints” which can be
used as graffiti on Counter-Strike servers. Stealthy spraying in the midst of the macho
violence drops ironic images into the environment: gunman silhouettes form a big heart;
a teddy bear holds a rifle; two soldiers embrace in various homoerotic poses. Sprays with
provocative verbal slogans include “Hostages of Military Fantasy”, or “We Are All Iraqis
Now”.
Velvet-Strike is not a game in itself but an attitude. The idea of invading online spaces
that exist for no other reason than to gratify militaristic fantasies, and then gently
defacing them with anti-war slogans, is not just funny (though funny it is), but also a
demonstration of how online gameworlds, even those of apparently simple shooters, are
already sophisticated enough to be arenas of political debate, sites of symbolic activism.
Steven Poole
London, May 2004