When playing games like Medal of Honor, which strives so much to recreate WW2 as best as possible, questions about the ethics of the game sometimes arise (this time it was from a relative of mine). To don my alarmist hat, is it right that videogame companies get profit, and the public detract enjoyment, from the deaths of millions of people? The question itself is a little hyperbolic, and most would disagree with it. If it is wrong to profit from death then we may hound up all the gravediggers, tombstone makers, morgue and crematorium workers, and burn them at the stake. Don't forget those bastards from Six Feet Under. But then the amorality extends to Steven Spielberg for profiting off Saving Private Ryan, along with everyone else who has worked on a war film, publishers for charging money for books of war poetry, dealers of war memorabilia and any store that's selling Band of Brothers DVDs. As such, it is rather illogical to attack war games, unless you're one of those middle-class neo-conservatives who thinks that all violent videogames are evil.

Rather, it is this writer's view that war games, more specifically action-orientated ones like FPS', can be seen as a tribute. Different forms of expression, and means of entertainment, like films, prose, poetry, music, television and videogames do a much better job of educating about war than any school lesson. The stuffy, uncommunicative textbooks may tell you the dates, figures and series of events, but the aforementioned mediums do a far better job of conveying the feeling behind the events; the dirty, bloody, futile killing, as well as the courage and bravery of the human spirit. Arguably, war is a stage for the best and worst poles of the human condition, but history lessons can render it as dull and functionary as, well, history lessons.

Films and programmes can do a spectacular job of giving you a glimpse at both the horror and valour of warfare, but games surpass them both, in potential at least. With the former you're just a spectator, but with the latter you're actually taking part (in some way). You're not watching a soldier firing from the trenches. You are a solider fighting from the trenches. This thought was seldom absent from my mind when playing Medal of Honor. Whenever I was fleeing from turret fire, the bullets ripping apart the ground at my feet, or watching a distant rocket coming straight for me, frozen like a deer in the headlights, I couldn't help but think that people had to actually do this in real life. If I was strafing like a madman, desperate to catch a glimpse of the enigmatic sniper who was sending erratic shots my way, then dying wasn't too great a worry. Game Over? Press Start to Continue. But for men fighting just half a century ago, there was no Start button. No continues left. They knew not the luxury of a second chance. That was them dead. A human life snuffed out. Potential left unfulfilled. Experiences left unexperienced. A widow made from a wife, who's life will be changed forever once the sympathetic suit arrives at her house. The sullen nature of school textbooks struggles to tell the stories behind the facts, while films, poetry, and the more atmospheric games, educate with ease.

Most history teachers will no doubt be quick to dismiss videogames as a trivial little children activity, with no role in the classroom at all. Hopefully some of you will be open-minded enough to realise that videogames have changed so much in so little time, that they are indeed as valid an art as poetry or film. Scoff if you want; I believe it anyway. A tool not just for entertainment, but for elevation, inspiration and education. Ooh, alliteration.

But it isn't enough for me to just sit here and decree the value of these war games. If the aforementioned qualities of the games can be seen by not just the readership of CE, or indeed the army of games-loving persons on the net, but by society as a whole, then perhaps there is hope. My last paragraph may have criticised some history teachers, but the truth is that it's hard to blame them (and, indeed, most of society that sees games in such a small-minded view); how do they know that war games are more than just mindless blasting for bloodhungry teenagers if we don't try and educate them (there's a thought)?. I can only advise you to look beyond the trigger-happy action and exercise the cranium a little, and to try and convince others to do the same.

Frontline. Allied Assault. Battlefield 1942. As videogames they are great fun. But as recreations of an important historical event, they offer so much more.

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