Media Magazine

1) Diploma – freedom to play: is online gaming hazardous to health?

"They have, according to critics, sucked the social life out of many of today’s teenagers."

"A large portion of today’s teenage generation spends much of its free time sitting in front of a computer screen shooting aliens, zombies or other teenagers sitting at another computer screen"

David Pinchen is studying the new Creative and Media Diploma at Long Road Sixth Form, Cambridge.

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 28, April 2009.

2) Censorship – Debating the Issue

"Both films assume a degree of sophistication and intelligence on the part of the audience when interpreting the messages and values encoded in such graphic depictions. On the other hand, no director ever has complete control over how the representation of violence will be received by the audience."

Stephen Hill is Head of Media at The Burgate School and Sixth Form Centre in Fordingbridge, and also teaches at Bournemouth Media School. He is studying for a PhD on the Music Press.

First published in MediaMagazine 24, April 2008.

3) Studying videogames

"Some people believe that the violence portrayed in videogames is a primary cause for violent acts committed by children. They believe that games make violence socially acceptable. They argue that children replicate the behaviour they view."

4) Why should we study digital games?

"There are also those who are more concerned by the notion that games negatively affect their users. Games have been vilified in the popular press for their supposed violence. Much of the apparent evidence for the link is founded on poorly conceived or simplistic research methods, generally combined with a very narrow understanding of what constitutes play, or a game, or violence. Digital games are accountable for their content, just as any other form of media must be. But, as yet, there is no compelling reason to single games out as having a greater ‘influence’ than television, for example."

Andrew Burn, Diane Carr and Gareth Schott

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 5, September 2003

5) Categories of violence

"There is a mechanism, usually called ‘identification’, which makes viewers of ‘violence’ vulnerable to it – such that it thereby becomes a ‘message’ by which they are invaded and persuaded."

"Violence is a unit of meaning that can be abstracted from occasions and modes of occurrence, and measured – with the correspondent assumption that the more violence there is, the greater its potential for influence."

Martin Barker

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 1, September 2002

6) Diploma – the c-word: censoring the media?

"Many people use the games as a way to tune out of the real world and if they want to steal a car, they steal a car in-game instead of in the real world. In could be argued, therefore, that the game stops people breaking the law, although ironically many adults believe that such games encourage kids to steal cars and argue that the games should be banned. The amazingly realistic graphics that some of the newer games have seem to fuel such worries about their impact on young people."

Tim Hodson is studying the new Creative and Media Diploma at Long Road Sixth Form, Cambridge.

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 28, April 2009.

7) Games in the classroom – whatever next?

"Games have narratives, and as the player moves through the levels or stages, s/he experiences the game as a character. In this sense this is a unique kind of text because, as you take on the character you are playing, you ‘become’ a representation. We could get into all kinds of intellectualising here about existential postmodern identities."

Julian McDougall

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 6, December 2003

8) Spread the word / Viral and sub-viral

9) Capture the objective: postmodernism, creativity and Call of Duty

From MediaMagazine 33, September 2010. Available now as a PDF download and in the archive Creativity, Videogames, Postmodernism, Theory, A2, Popular culture ???

10) What are you playing at? – Representations of gender, race and nationality in videogames

"The main task for any student is to challenge this. You must develop a critical faculty that questions and probes how and why this ‘misrepresentation’ occurs. As you do this, the benchmark for most media study will always hold true – what is the ‘message’ behind the medium?"

Patrick Toland

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 7, February 2004

Scholar Articles

Invading your hearts and minds" Call of Duty and the (Re) writing of Militarism in U.S. digital games and popular culture
"Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to show how these games contain images and narratives that resonate with and reinforce a tabloid imaginary of post 9/11 geopolitics, glorify military power and elicit consent for the idea that state violence and wars are inevitable"

The Appeal of Violent Video Games to Lower Educated Aggressive Adolescent Boys from Two Countries
“In general, boys were most attracted to violent video games. Boys that scored higher in trait aggressiveness and lower in empathy were especially attracted to violent games and spent more time playing video games than did boys lower in trait aggressiveness.”

Academic study says violent games reduce stress

The Motivating Role of Violence in Video Games
Studies also showed that players high in trait aggression were more likely to prefer or value games with violent contents, even though violent contents did not reliably enhance their game enjoyment or immersion.

The Hitman Study
Results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but do suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management.

Playing with Race: The Ethics of Racialized Representations in E-Games
“Reinforcing the racism that justifies domination and mass killing becomes a key part of the authenticity of historically accurate war gaming.”

Worlds of affect: virtual geographies of video games
“First, there are the representational issues concerning the worlds depicted in video games, such as those portraying hyper sexualized women or Orientalist depictions of Arab enemies. We suggest, however, that these cultural, sexual, and political representations are not the only forces doing work on the player within the virtual world of a video game.”

Critical Investigation

Critical Investigation Title

How and why does graphic violence within video games such as Call of Duty attract a teenage demographic?

Keyword	Synonym 1	Synonym 2	Synonym 3
Call of Duty	Medal of Honour	Brothers in Arms	Battlefield
Violence	Aggression	Blood + Gore	Graphic Violence
Representations	Arabs	Russians	Germans
Terrorism	Post 9/11	Moral Panics	Arabs
War	Civil War
Teenagers	Media Effects	Effects Theory	Regulation and Censorship
Demographics	Primary Audiences	Secondary Audiences	Effects theory

Academic study says violent games reduce stress

Talks about how stress and depression is reduced on students by playing violent games in their spare time and sometimes even in lessons. This is an article which reflects academic life and the effects violent games have on students in college and university and therefore the reason I studied it.

Teach games in schools, say academic experts

Article on why video games should be taught in schools. Also quite academic, and also relates to my coursework as it educates me on the media effects of violent games.

The player: why games merit academic study

Call of Duty 4 Threat shuts down University

Call of Duty University > A Facebook group where owners of Call of Duty come together in varied forums to talk to each other about the game and play together. It is simply a viral campaign to make everyone aware of Call of Duty and if you do have it, you should join the group.

Kobe Bryant in Black Ops Commercial

Raising the B.A.R. with COD: Black Ops

Call of Duty Black Ops: Game with glimpses, horrors of war

"Black Ops Violence Went Too Far" - Treyarch

Call of Duty Black Ops Toned Down

Black Ops Violence Too Much

The 3 articles above are based around Treyarch (Creators/Developers/Publishers of Black Ops) and their own view on the violence of Black Ops. They have also agreed that there is too much graphic violence involved in the game and came to a point where the games violence had to be toned down to make it more socially acceptable and ensure the negative media effects would not increase

The New Audiences For Blackops : Seniors & Parents

This helps me distinguish the primary and secondary audience. In this trailer they have made it look as if Call of Duty: Black Ops is targeted for everyone as within the trailer, both genders and age bands are included connoting the specified demographic. The slogan also reads "Theres a soldier in all of us"

Further Research

Gender Portrayals in video games

Call of Duty

One of the favoured topics for modern storytelling whether it is movies, television or video games is World War II. The time period is very recent and the events still echo into our present. One of the main genres of video games that concern itself with this time is the first person shooter. While many games in the genre place the player as the one person who can save the day, while playing Call of Duty the player is just one more guy in a squad. The highest rank the player can achieve is Sergeant and that is only because of specialised training.

Obviously with a game set in World War II, Call of Duty features male characters exclusively. While it is interesting to discuss the implications of excluding female characters, it is indicative of the time period and the conflict itself. As such, only the portrayal of males will be examined.

Call of Duty falls into common stereotypes of masculinity, particularly in World War II cultural media. That is, brotherhood, loyalty and a grim determination to see it to the end. The player is surrounded by average men in an extraordinary situation. And they all, including the player, need to adapt to that. The one thing that shines through the brightest is the fact key NPCs will do anything to ensure the safety of the player and other NPCs. In an interesting turn of events, the player is almost bestowed with this same mentality. By seeing the NPCs doing such things, the player is positioned to also perform the same sort of acts to protect the men around them. This brotherhood is a key aspect of most masculine based cultural media. While the mentality and personality of the characters in Call of Duty conforms to male stereotypes, the physical representations aren’t.

The characters that the player comes into contact with, both allies and enemies are average guys. Some are tall. Some are short. Some are skinny. Others are muscly. The men in Call of Duty cover a large range of masculine body-types once again cementing in the mind of the player that these men are ‘just like them.’ With the main demographic of first person shooters being men this is not surprising. To assist with immersion, Call of Duty ensures that the characters the player comes into contact with are average day guys they could see everyday in their real world lives.

While first person shooters tend to be exclusively the domain of men, Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) are a more balanced player base in terms of gender.

Possible COD 7 Viral Campaign

Guardian Articles

Call of Duty: Black Ops upsets Cuba with Castro mission

Cuban government says segment of game in which players try to kill former leader glorifies real assassination attempts by US. A video game developed in the US that challenges players to assassinate former Cuban president Fidel Castro has provoked an angry response from Cuba.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, which went on sale in the UK this week, is set during the cold war, with gamers taking on the role of a special operative as he saves the US from a communist plot, travelling between Cuba, Vietnam and Russia.

However, a mission in which players try to kill a young Castro has sparked a fierce response from the Cuban government.

"What the United States government did not achieve in more than 50 years, it now tries to do virtually," said a story on the government-run Cuba debate website.

It said the game glorified real US attempts to kill Castro – there have been 638 attempts on the former leader's life, according to one of his bodyguards.

In 2006 Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban intelligence services, revealed how plots ranged from an exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face to a fungus-contaminated wetsuit that would infect him with a chronic skin disease.

Perhaps the most fanciful plot involved planting explosives inside a mollusc shell painted in bright colours in the hope that Castro might be drawn towards it while scuba diving in the Caribbean.

In a section of Call of Duty: Black Ops set in Havana, players gun down enemy combatants while pursuing Castro, who was president of Cuba for 49 years before resigning in 2008.

"This new video game is doubly perverse," the article on cubadebate said. "On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader … and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

It is not the first military-style shooter game to generate controversy this year. Medal of Honor was banned from US military bases before it went on sale last month because it let players take on the role of Taliban fighters battling US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. Developer Electronic Arts later changed the name of the combatants from Taliban to Opposing Force.

Reviewers of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which retails at around £50 in the UK, have been unfazed by the challenge of gunning down one of the primary leaders of the Cuban revolution. The game was given five stars by the Guardian.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is 'biggest entertainment launch in history'

Call of Duty: Black Ops has generated revenues of $360m in its first 24 hours on sale in the US and UK. Released on Tuesday, the military shooter has out-performed its record-breaking predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, by $50m. According to MCV, 5.6m units have been sold across North America and the UK. Furthermore, according to developer Treyarch, within one hour of the launch, the game's online mode was being used by 1 million concurrent players.


Activision is claiming that the Black Ops launch now represents the biggest entertainment launch in history. By comparison, the blockbusting 3D movie Avatar made 'just' $232m in its opening weekend. CEO Bobby Kotick has issued a jubilant statement: "There has never been another entertainment franchise that has set opening-day records for two consecutive years and we are on track to outperform last year's five-day global sales record of $550m."

Although, the publisher has always been bullish about the prospects for Black Ops, industry pundits previously doubted that the new game would match last year's release. Modern Warfare 2 was developed by Infinity Ward, the studio that created the Call of Duty series; its games have often been thought of as the superior iterations. Treyarch, meanwhile, has been responsible for solid performers like Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: World at War, but has never attained the same levels of critical support.

Meanwhile, Cuba's state-run news website has criticised the game for its opening mission which involves a CIA attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. According to the Associated Press, an article on Cubadebate claimed, "What the United States couldn't accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually."

Call of Duty: Black Ops looks likely to fight games slump when it launches

Call of Duty: Black Ops launches in Hollywood style

Call of Duty: are the kids all right?

Call of Duty: Black Ops upsets Cuba with Castro Mission

Cuban government says segment of game in which players try to kill former leader glorifies real assassination attempts by US. A video game developed in the US that challenges players to assassinate former Cuban president Fidel Castro has provoked an angry response from Cuba.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, which went on sale in the UK this week, is set during the cold war, with gamers taking on the role of a special operative as he saves the US from a communist plot, travelling between Cuba, Vietnam and Russia.

However, a mission in which players try to kill a young Castro has sparked a fierce response from the Cuban government.

"What the United States government did not achieve in more than 50 years, it now tries to do virtually," said a story on the government-run cubadebate website .

It said the game glorified real US attempts to kill Castro – there have been 638 attempts on the former leader's life, according to one of his bodyguards.

In 2006 Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban intelligence services, revealed how plots ranged from an exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face to a fungus-contaminated wetsuit that would infect him with a chronic skin disease.

Perhaps the most fanciful plot involved planting explosives inside a mollusc shell painted in bright colours in the hope that Castro might be drawn towards it while scuba diving in the Caribbean.

In a section of Call of Duty: Black Ops set in Havana, players gun down enemy combatants while pursuing Castro, who was president of Cuba for 49 years before resigning in 2008.

"This new video game is doubly perverse," the article on cubadebate said. "On the one hand, it glorifies the illegal assassination attempts the United States government planned against the Cuban leader … and on the other, it stimulates sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

It is not the first military-style shooter game to generate controversy this year. Medal of Honor was banned from US military bases before it went on sale last month because it let players take on the role of Taliban fighters battling US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. Developer Electronic Arts later changed the name of the combatants from Taliban to Opposing Force.

Reviewers of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which retails at around £50 in the UK, have been unfazed by the challenge of gunning down one of the primary leaders of the Cuban revolution. The game was given five stars by the Guardian.

Research November 11th

Activision Infinity Ward Court Case
The split between Activision and Infinity Ward means that some audiences may not appreciate the production of Call of Duty anymore due to the fact that different audiences may have favoured the other publishers. By Infinity Ward splitting up with Activion means that Activision and Trey Arch (also owned by Activision) are the main producers and publishers of Call of Duty which may upset some of the target market.

Infinity Ward employee group sues Activision
Through their attorneys, the so-called "Infinity Ward Employee Group" has claimed that the publisher withheld royalties in order to ensure development staff stayed on to complete Modern Warfare 3. Last month, studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella were sacked for "insubordination" and later set up their own studio, Respawn Entertainment. The duo has filed its own $36m lawsuit against Activision. Since then, a reported 26 staff have left Infinity Ward, some of whom have gone on to join Respawn.

How Call of Duty has an impact on young boys

Call of Duty: 5 years of graphics effects