Two jarring moments in Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War perfectly capture the bizarre state of modern military video games.
First: Ronald Reagan appears in a cutscene, impeccably rendered and voiced, leading a clandestine briefing about the end of the world. It's 1981, and you're chasing a Soviet spy named Perseus. When your character's more cautious colleagues raise concerns about the legality of proposed actions, Reagan waves them away: "We're talking about preventing an attack on the free men and women of the world... There is no higher duty, there is no higher honour."
Based on nothing but gut feeling, the president gives military personnel the green light to commit war crimes. While disturbing, this isn't surprising - the blurring of legal and moral lines is a central feature of military games. What's remarkable is what happens next.
You're presented with your character creation screen - a CIA personnel file where you can select various attributes. And there, alongside options for psychological profile and country of origin, is a gender selection that includes "non-binary." Choose it, and your character will be referred to by they/them pronouns throughout the campaign.
The cognitive dissonance is staggering. In 1981, Reagan actively opposed gay rights and ignored the AIDS epidemic. The military maintained a blanket ban on transgender service members until 2016. Even "don't ask, don't tell" was still years away. Yet here we are, playing a genderqueer CIA operative with full acceptance from their colleagues, taking orders from a president who in reality would have seen their very existence as a threat to national security.
This collision between military gaming's embrace of superficial diversity and its continued promotion of imperial power isn't accidental. It's a reflection of how the military-entertainment complex has evolved to maintain its grip on popular culture while adapting to changing social values.
The Military-Entertainment Machine
To understand how we got here, we need to go back to 1969, when Herbert Schiller first conceptualized the United States as a unique kind of postcolonial empire. As he noted, "United States power, expressed industrially, militarily and culturally has become the most potent force on earth and communications have become a decisive element in the extension of the United States world power."
Unlike previous empires, the US didn't primarily rely on direct territorial control. Instead, it built and policed a world system of allied states sharing its model of capitalism, liberal democracy, and consumerist way of life. And central to this project was the culture industry - Hollywood and other media working hand in hand with the state to sell the American way of life both at home and abroad.
This military-entertainment complex grew exponentially during World War II, when the government recognized the immense propaganda potential of popular media. They created an Entertainment Division at the Department of Defense that continues to shape our cultural landscape today. A 2017 FOIA request revealed that between 1911 and 2017, more than 800 feature films received direct support from the US government, including major franchises like Transformers and Iron Man.
The relationship goes beyond mere funding. The DoD actively shapes content, editing scripts to ensure the state is presented in the best possible light. They've derailed projects they disapprove of - like using a front company to outbid Marlon Brando for the rights to an Iran-Contra scandal film. They even meddle with seemingly apolitical content. When making Contact, the Pentagon forced the removal of a scene where the military worries about alien threats, dismissing it as "paranoia right out of the Cold War."
The Power of Play
But if Hollywood helped sell empire through passive consumption, video games represented something far more powerful - active participation. War games have existed as long as war itself, used throughout history to teach martial skills and instill military values. The Indian precursor to Chess, Chaturanga (meaning "four divisions" - infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry), dates back to the 7th century CE.
Beyond teaching strategy, these games inculcate the values of war into society. Just as playing with dolls shapes notions of motherhood and femininity, war games shape particular kinds of masculinity tied to nationalistic ideals. Historian Barbara Ehrenreich argues that the explosion of war-themed toys in the early 20th century helped create the "bloodlust" and jingoistic fervor that characterized public response to World War I.
Modern military video games take this to another level. The technology itself emerged from defense research - DARPA played a defining role in developing the internet, computing technology, multiplayer networks, and 3D virtual environments that gaming depends on. The earliest 3D arcade games literally ran on repurposed military simulation hardware designed for fighter pilot training.
The games themselves serve as perfect product placement for the military-industrial complex. Unlike movies, which usually use prop weapons, games feature meticulously detailed, officially licensed recreations of real firearms. Manufacturers must approve how their guns look, sound, and operate in-game. As Ralph Vaughn of Barrett Firearms puts it, their modeled weapons must "perform to the standards that their rifles do in the real world."
This creates a bizarre situation where British gamers who could never legally own a Barrett .50 Cal anti-materiel rifle can instantly recognize one on sight, complete with detailed knowledge of its specs and capabilities. The games aren't just selling war - they're selling specific weapons platforms.
The Bleeding Edge
The line between gaming and actual warfare continues to blur. Modern military technology increasingly mimics game interfaces - they've even replaced some drone control systems with Xbox controllers after finding that recruits familiar with gaming could operate them more effectively.
The DoD itself develops games for recruitment and propaganda. America's Army, released in 2002, was explicitly designed to let young Americans "virtually explore" military service. More recently, they've focused on esports teams and streaming platforms like Twitch to reach potential recruits.
The revolving door between the military and gaming industry spins constantly. Activision Blizzard's chief compliance officer previously served as Bush's counterterrorism advisor and defended the Abu Ghraib torture program. Meanwhile, Call of Duty writer Dave Anthony was hired by the DoD as an "unknown conflict advisor" to imagine future war scenarios.
Beyond Simple Propaganda
What makes video games uniquely powerful as tools of military influence is their interactive nature. Unlike films or books, games require active participation. The player must engage with and internalize the logic of military action to progress.
However, this "interactivity" is largely illusional. Games present the appearance of infinite choice while actually offering highly constrained paths. As games scholars Arsenault and Perron note, video games are really "chains of reactions" - the player simply responds to pre-determined prompts, and the game responds in turn.
This creates what theorist Alec Charles calls a "faux-scriptible" text - one that "gives its user the illusion of meaning, power and active participation, and which, in appearing to satisfy its audience's desire for agency, in fact sublimates and dilutes that desire." The game's demands for functional reactivity lull players into interpretative passivity, embedding them within an invisible but irresistible ideological framework.
The Attention Economy
Modern military games extend their influence far beyond direct play. Unlike film studios, game publishers generally allow users to create and monetize content using their intellectual property. This has birthed an entire attention economy around gaming content.
In 2020 alone, viewers consumed 100 billion hours of gaming content on YouTube. There are over 255 million videos referencing Call of Duty, with the most popular ones reaching hundreds of millions of views. Content creators can make millions simply streaming themselves playing military shooters.
This creates a powerful dynamic - creators' livelihoods depend on publishers' continued goodwill, subtly shaping what content gets produced. Popular streamers become key opinion leaders, mediating the military-entertainment complex's values for massive audiences who may never even play the games themselves.
Manufacturing Consent
The political economy of the military-entertainment complex thus works on multiple levels, tying together masculine ideologies of state power with specific iterations of military violence in media. But perhaps most importantly, it works these notions into being through gameplay itself - a process combining mediation, phenomenology, and social interaction in ways far more formative than simple propaganda.
This makes the recent trend of superficial diversity in military games particularly insidious. By grafting progressive identity politics onto fundamentally imperial power fantasies, developers can present themselves as socially conscious while continuing to sell war. The next time you see a proudly queer soldier in a military shooter, remember - representation without liberation is just another form of co-optation.
