Brutal games: Call of Duty and the cultural narrative of World War II

Abstract

World War II is the conflict that features most in first-person shooter (FPS) video games, but despite the rapid growth of this sector of the entertainment industry, the way in which the war is recalibrated in this format has been at best ignored, at worst dismissed. Concentrating particularly on Call of Duty: World at War (Activision, 2008), this article establishes how the FPS distills war into its most basic components—space and weaponry—and considers the possibility that the FPS exposes aspects of warfare that have been obscured in representations of World War II in other media.