Swedish Dad Takes Gamer Kids To Warzone 419
Z00L00K sends this excerpt from The Local:
A Swedish father has come under fire for taking his two sons on a trip to Israel, the West Bank and occupied Syria in order to teach them the reality of war. [Carl-Magnus Helgegren is] a journalist, university teacher, and proactive dad. And like so many other dads, Helgegren had to have the violent video-game conversation with his two sons, Frank and Leo, aged ten and 11 respectively. "We were sitting at the dinner table last autumn, and my kids started telling me about this game they wanted to play, the latest Call of Duty game, and told me about the guns and missions," Helgegren told The Local on Friday. So Helgegren struck a deal. The family would take a trip to a city impacted by real war. The boys would meet people affected, do interviews, and visit a refugee camp. And when they came back home, they would be free to play whatever games they chose.
Problem is (Score:1, Interesting)
If they see themselves on the winning side, they'll want even more war. They get to leave the war zone, the refuges are stuck. A week will teach nothing. They need to know years of war and what it does.
Re:Fiction. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a grayer area than that. Blasting Nazis on Mars or whatever was one thing, but the US Department of Defense now throws millions of dollars at game developers, tasking them with making war look like just another extreme sport.
IMHO (and in the opinion of most credible researchers) even these games are not directly psychologically damaging to young people. But I don't like the message they are engineered to send. It sounds like this father has found a great way to give his kids an inside look at the game they're really being trained to play.
Re:Fiction. (Score:3, Interesting)
but... but US is the "global Force for Good"
are you eeeeveeel?
Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you do it if they were reading comic books about war? Watching movies? Watching 50s movies with John Wayne about war? Reading novels about war? Playing war in the yard? If they started playing cops and robbers in the back yard with the neighbor kids, is it time to haul them off to a Scared Straight session at a prison, to impress upon them the harsh realities of a life of crime?
I think that every American should have to take a trip to the war zone to see what our tax dollars go to supporting.
Much more practical: send elected representatives on those trips.
Shut down the congressional cafeterias for a few months out of the year to pay for it, or IDK, tell them there's free hookers and blow in Libya.