Moral Choice and Critical Engagement in Modern Military ShootersC
Senior Project Advisor
Melissa Osborne
Document Type
Project
Publication Date
Spring 2024
Keywords
modern military shooter (MMS), moral disengagement, moral choice, video games
Abstract
This paper initially came from a directed independent study in public sociology. The goal was to find ways of doing and presenting sociology that are more accessible and digestible to general, non-academic audiences. To do this, I selected a topic that not only interests me, but is likely to interest a lot of people outside of the academic space: moral choice in modern military shooters.
Moral choice has been a feature in video games dating back to the 1980s but is rarely found in games belonging to the modern military shooter (MMS) genre. The depiction of warfare and lack of player choice in the genre reinforces reductive notions about the nature of war and has the potential to promote moral disengagement both from the games themselves and the real-world events that inspire them. In this paper, I examine moral choice in the MMS games with particular attention paid to its ability to promote critical thought and moral engagement in players, using the games Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Spec Ops: The Line as critical case studies. Through this, I argue that a more realistic portrayal of the rules and consequences of war alongside the addition of moral choices can help the genre depict the very serious topic of war in a manner that is more conducive to engagement with and critical thought about these games and the events that inspire them.
I then took the paper I wrote and recorded a podcast, which is essentially an abridged version of the paper and is targeted towards a more general audience. I thought that the audio format would make it digestible to people who don't often read academic literature, especially those who don't want to read an entire 37-page paper.
[The podcast can be found at the link at the blue button. The paper is in a supplementary file attached at the bottom of this page.]
Department
Sociology
Recommended Citation
Brun, Claude, "Moral Choice and Critical Engagement in Modern Military ShootersC" (2024). WWU Honors College Senior Projects. 847.
https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwu_honors/847
Type
Text
Rights
Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Paper: Moral Choice and Critical Engagement in Modern Military Shooters