‘Shall we kill the pixel soldier?’: Perceptions of Trauma and Morality in Combat Video Games

The western media has been eager to construct an apparent link between the so-called moral desensitization of soldiers in the 2003 Iraq War and their expe-rience of video game combat. Commentators assert that ‘games have avoided engaging the real-life issues to which they are responding’ (Zacny 2008), includ-ing the issue of combat trauma. Contrary to such positions, many video games already simulate the trauma in their gameplay experience; this article explores this concept from Brown’s definition of trauma as ‘outside the range of human experience’ (1995: 101). This evokes recent work in games studies on in-game involvement and identity-formation and raises questions about the role of moral-ity in gameplay, especially in multi-player combat games like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4 and America’s Army. Working from these hitherto overlooked aspects of trauma in gameplay experiences, this article challenges the oversim-plified association of video games with the desensitization of US troops in recent conflicts.