Video games that have had war in them have been around for decades. Franchises such as Call of Duty and Halo have built their video games around war and the violence that comes with it. Fox has recently reported on the stance that the humanitarian group The International Committee of the Red Cross has taken, arguing that video games with war should take the idea of war more seriously.
To delve deeper into what The Red Cross wishes for people, it is important to note that they do not want to tell people to stop playing these war-themed games, they simply wish for players to adhere to rules followed by people who actually are in war. According to the report released by The Red Cross, they state:
Our intention is not to spoil player’s enjoyment by for example, interrupting the game with pop-up messages listing legal provisions or lecturing gamers on the law of armed conflict. We would like to see the law of armed conflict integrated into the games so that players have a realistic experience and deal first hand with the dilemmas facing real combatants on real battlefields. The strong sales of new releases that have done this prove that integrating the law of armed conflict does not undermine the commercial success of the games.
That being said, there are specific rules that they urge players to follow in order to respect what soldiers go through in war and to try to more accurately represent it. These rules do not account for video games that have fantastical elements or that have wars against aliens or other-worldly foes. The more realistic the war setting, the more closely the Red Cross wishes that players adhere to some of the rules of war.
Fox lays the four primary rules out in their article as follows:
The first rule: “When an enemy is down and can’t respond, you can’t keep shooting at them.”
The second rule: “Bots that don’t fire unprovoked are considered civilians, and you can’t target or harm them.”
The third rule: “In any given game map, houses, schools, or hospitals are considered safe zones that you cannot harm. When fighting in these spaces, you must do everything you can to avoid damage.”
The fourth rule: “If you have an unused med kit that works on others, you must give it to those who need it—be they friendly or enemy.”
It seems as though the main goal of these rules is to keep the fighting that goes on in the games respectful. It is unclear how gamers would react to these limitations, as some of them can be pretty restricting in the way the game is played, however, these are just suggestions The Red Cross wishes to place on video games to make sure they are respectful of the wars going on in the world at the moment.