Read on Twitter
https://twitter.com/camilateleSUR/status/1115449883442413568 Call of Duty has a continual agreement with the US military for recruitment and propaganda purposes, in exchange (including use of military assets and personnel for consultancy) they're given full rein over trademarks and the like
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/call-of-duty-gaming-role-military-entertainment-complex many storylines, various timelines the US wants to explore or otherwise put out there are paid for fully. They get war criminals like Oliver North to come talk about meeting brutal military dictators, the studios get millions and suits design the campaigns
xbox controllers are currently used on some of the military's most capable submarines, to control drones, on lasers, gaming controllers are extraordinarily widespread because they recruit from personnel pool very familiar with them https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/military-contractor-just-went-ahead-and-used-xbox-controller-their-new-giant-laser-cannon-180952647/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/28/life-us-drone-operator-artist drone pilots themselves describe operating predator drones as "playing a video game, 4 years on the same level", and these same pilots are extraordinarily aware that their murders are indiscriminate
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/press-releases/call-of-duty-writer-and-director-dave-anthony-named-nonresident-fellow-at-atlantic-council/ Dave Anthony is a pre-eminent writer and director for the Call of Duty campaign and he was brought onto the Atlantic Council in 2014, specifically to help gain insight into "future of conflict" through his use of COD as wargaming
here an Iraq War veteran describes Black Ops 2 and Modern Warfare (2016) as "the ultimate FPS experience" , saying that the games reflect real life combat. Notably, one of the core parts of COD is depersonalization and desensitization to violence https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-military-is-using-violent-chaotic-beautiful-video-games-to-train-soldiers-73826
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/playing-war-how-the-military-uses-video-games/280486/ historically from the 60s on, the military has invested tons of funding into games development, from "Spacewar!" to being behind or in coordination w/ a number of FPS shooters today, primarily COD, but including "Tactical Iraqi", "UrbanSim" to train troops
America's Army notably was used as a recruitment tool back in 2002, released for free and intended to bring teens into service right before the invasion of Iraq. "Virtual Afghanistan" again was used to help troops with PTSD, or to give troops an idea beforehand of the land
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4x44yp/theres-no-reason-for-no-russian-to-exist-in-modern-warfare-2 Here's an article on No Russian, the terrorist simulation portion of Modern Warfare 2. You mow through hundreds of people in an airport for the sole purpose of dehumanization, supposedly to characterize the villain, but rather, the US enables this massacre
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-02-02-the-military-recruitment-of-gamers From the widely mocked US military esports team, throwing recruiters onto Twitch that are now regularly harassed, to recruiters successfully finding a space in LAN tournaments, sponsorship of major esports teams and tournaments for ad space and time
https://www.wired.com/story/military-gamer-recruitment-twitch/ More on the Twitch recruiters - it was discovered that, unsurprisingly, one Personnel Specialist played with his racist friends that mocked war crimes of the US and then another recruiter used a Nazi meme. War crimes are a verboten subject in their chats
Small detail here, but "double tap" is a regularly featured perk in the games - which of course is directly correlated to a war crime. As discussed in this article, double tap describes how targets are bombed multiple times to ensure the deaths of medics https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1350&context=flr
https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2019/08/07/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-catches-heat-for-including-white-phosphorus/ Notably, Call of Duty this past year added white phosphorus to its killstreaks and here is the "Military Times" mocking the idea that this could be a bad thing to introduce into a video game designed to propagandize to children and teens
Re: the COD Venezuelan mission. That wasn't a mistake, that means the operations to invade Venezuela have been planned since Chavez, because the DoD does feed scenarios and missions and other parts of the games to the developers. That's been going on for years!
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/jul/22/playing-video-games-doesnt-lead-to-violent-behaviour-study-shows gaming publications put out a yearly article on how "studies show" that video games dont make you violent, but they're not going to make the connection that should be obvious - games are a way of dehumanizing targets of imperialism to prep recruits
If you watch the No Russian mission you get a really clear view of exactly the kind of brutalism + bizarre post-cold war narratives that are desirous of the MIC - its also encompassing of the post-9/11 airport panic (that still persists today!)
On this topic, you have the question of Kuma Games. Which was a company that made a series of simulation wargames for wars of aggressions or strikes, including the invasion of Iraq, killing of OBL, the murder of Qaddafi https://kotaku.com/alleged-iranian-spy-confesses-that-u-s-video-game-comp-5869477
In it the designer was implied to have been tortured into a confession that he was a CIA spy, although the game company he worked near immediately admitted to creating training video games for the DOD and he himself a former DARPA employee. Then there are followup articles.
Apparently, he's "sentenced to death" according to the article, but then, 4 years later we arrive at this followup. Now we get the most tortured ideation of his sentence, as follows: solitary, a death sentence, communited to 10 years, then released by 2016 https://www.cinemablend.com/games/Former-Game-Developer-Claims-He-Was-Tortured-Imprisoned-Iran-138107.html
Never mind the absolute bonkers conception of sentencing or how judicial systems work, none of this makes sense and clearly the American government had to negotiate for his release to the point that they had to let some people in Guantanamo or another black site go.
http://astukagaming.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-very-strange-case-of-kuma-games.html?m=1 then there's this site, which more or less connects the dots. Kuma Games was getting very eerily accurate info, and basically stopped updating its games around a year before the man was captured. The logical conclusion here is that it was a CIA front
Notable points of contact here for Kuma Games: they had a direct in with the History Channel, and would recreate recent battles on their (free) game only days after it happened, with hyper realistic detail and timings https://twitter.com/jhal9000/status/1150861455513702400?s=19
now the reason I mention Kuma here is because this is mostly an example! But how is it that a small studio making a "free" game with scarily quick updates in accordance to real time events was doing all this and ended up on the radar for Iranian intelligence?
