Could playing video games make you a war criminal? The International Committee of the Red Cross is looking into whether realistic war video games should be bound by international laws such as the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
If the committee finds that the laws do apply, they could ask game studios to adhere to the laws or even petition governments to regulate war video games, Kotaku reported.
The Geneva Conventions are a series of treaties and protocols created after World War II to establish international law around the humanitarian treatment of victims of war. The conventions prevent, among other things, the use of torture, inhumane treatment, hostage-taking, and excessive violence.
The International Committee of the Red Cross upholds the Geneva conventions in all manner of armed conflict, but they recently gathered at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva to discuss whether their mandate extends to virtual victims in video games.
The event harkened back to a 2007 study held by TRIAL, a Geneva-based organization that monitors and reports on international crimes. The study examined 19 games set in real-world war environments to see if the games adhered to international law and found that:
"In computer and video games, violence is often shown and the players become 'virtually violent ... However, such games are not zones free of rules and ethics. It would be highly appreciated if games reproducing armed conflicts were to include the rules which apply to real armed conflicts. These rules and values are given by international humanitarian law and human rights law. They limit excessive violence and protect the human dignity of members of particularly vulnerable groups."
Anyone who has played a first-person shooter video game has seen some pretty grizzly digital action. Characters are blown up by rocket launchers, recently killed characters have full clips emptied into their bodies, civilians or unarmed combatants are shot and that's not even counting the sometimes brutal multiplayer arenas where its not uncommon for players to gloat over kills by shooting or even miming sexual acts.
Of course, it's just a video game. Those aren't real wars and those aren't real people being blown up or defiled. After beating a game, no player wants to then sit through a mock war trial for the civilian they accidentally shot in the first mission. These moments are, however, real concerns in modern warfare. The International Committee of the Red Cross, to the best of our knowledge, isn't trying to stop wholesale the violence that occurs in video games but rather to give those acts context by applying the very real international laws that govern modern combatants. It is less about curbing game violence and more about creating realistic (and ethical) conditions in war games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3.
International war laws wouldn't apply to every type of game. Sci-fi shooters such as the Halo series would be exempt since the Geneva Conventions don't apply to marauding aliens (yet). But the International Committee has some difficult questions to answer even if it can get war games to adopt the conventions. For example, how can they be so concerned about modern shooters but turn a blind eye to possible actions in open-world games such as Grand Theft Auto? (Critics of video game violence often use the GTA series as an example since it allows players the freedom to, for example, have sex with a prostitute and then kill her.)
An integral part of GTA is the criminal lifestyle and avoiding arrest. The criminal acts may sometimes be heinous but at least there is an in-game punishment system. First-person shooters are starting to implement similar controls. For example, killing a civilian in Modern Warfare 3 will force the player to restart a mission. "It would mean a wasted opportunity if the virtual space transmitted the illusion of impunity for unlimited violence in armed conflicts," the TRIAL study stated.
Where do you stand on video game violence? Would the conventions ruin your in-game fun or help the games become even more realistic? Sound off in the comments.