German Researchers Claim the U.S. Military Invented Violent Video Games

Scene from "America's Army," the only violent video game the U.S. military actually did create.

When I read through this statement, it sounded like it came out of 9/11 Truth, but in fact it comes from a pair of reputable German researchers who were looking into the roots of violent games:

“During the nineties the killing simulators, employed for hand to hand combat in the US army and police, were released by the Pentagon to be sold for private use on the public markets. As a consequence the computer and video game industry that had co-operated with the Pentagon from the very beginning, boomed. Since then the so-called killer games have wreaked havoc among children and youths.

The US army’s electronic training programs for killing people must be taken back to the US barracks, where they came from. They have to disappear from civil society altogether. They may be appropriate for the purpose of national defense or fight against crime; they have no place, however, in children’s rooms or in living rooms.”

Um, have these researchers seen what games looked like in the nineties? If you consider a blob of polygons disintegrating another blob of polygons a “killing simulator” you may want to go ahead and research what “simulator” means. Playing an FPS game like Doom in order to train yourself to kill is like playing Madden to get you ready to try out for the NFL. It will not help you in the least. Surely the U.S. military would have realized this once their video game-trained soldiers started frantically scurrying around the battlefield looking for floating health packs and ammunition.

I understand that Germany has been going crazy about violent video games since they had a school shooting there recently where the kid was found to have touched an FPS at some point in his life, but now we’re bordering on conspiracy theories here. The U.S. government training soldiers with murder simulators, then sending them out for public consumption by the children of the world? Sounds like a great episode of Fringe, but it has no place in real life, where government conspiracies only involve waterboarding and covert BJs.

[via Gamepolitics]