Call of Duty: Playing Video Games with IR
| Author | Felix Ciută |
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829815601488 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2016, Vol. 44(2) 197 –215
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829815601488
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Call of Duty: Playing Video
Games with IR
Felix Ciută
University College London, UK
Abstract
This article attempts to further develop the IR research agenda on video games. The argument
starts with a critique of the narrow focus on war-themed blockbuster games of current IR work
on video games. I argue that this narrow view of IR and of video games is unsustainable and
counterproductive, and has led to the positioning of IR as a regime of value with an unwarranted
focus on the ideological effects of video games, and also to a paradoxical closing off of its research
agenda. In the second half of the article I attempt to sketch two directions of research that could
help overcome these initial limitations. The first outlines the potential for the IR study of the global
aesthetic economy of video games, and the differentiated distribution of its regimes of value. The
second encourages the study of game-worlds as practical-theoretical spaces where a particular
relationship between academic subjectivity and its objects is constituted. The significance of
this argument transcends IR video games research: it has relevance for cross-disciplinary issues
regarding the status of academic moral-aesthetic judgements about cultural artfacts and practices;
the relationship between academic and ‘popular’ knowledge; and the potential for political
mobilisation at the interface of entertainment and social critique.
Keywords
IR theory, duty, playfulness, video games, popular culture, regimes of value
‘Seriously?’ – was a friend’s witty retort to the news that I was writing about video
games. Her deliberate double entendre captured perfectly the twin questions that flank
the argument of this article – and, in the era of ‘impact’ and ‘relevance’, accompany all
IR research: what constitutes serious IR work, and can IR work be other than serious? In
both senses, video games bring to the IR research agenda an opening as well as a closure
of sorts, each accompanied by its own analytical and deontological challenges.
Corresponding author:
Felix Ciută, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Email: f.ciuta@ucl.ac.uk
601488MIL0010.1177/0305829815601488MillenniumCiută
research-article2015
Article
198 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44(2)
1. Lucian Ashworth, ‘“You Will Change the World and Create History!” Computer Gaming’s
Use of Classical Geopolitics’ (paper presented at ISA, Montreal, 16 March 2011); Frédérick
Gagnon, ‘Invading Our Hearts and Minds’: Call of Duty® and the (Re)Writing of Militarism
in U.S. Digital Games and Popular Culture, European Journal of American Studies 5, no. 3
(2010): 1–17, available at: http://ejas.revues.org/8831; David Grondin and Frédérick Gagnon,
‘Studying Militarized Visualities through the Video/Digital Game: Rethinking the Aesthetic
Turn in IR through Digital Militainment’ (paper presented at ISA, Montreal, 16 March 2011);
Marcus Power, ‘Digitized Virtuosity: Video War Games and Post-9/11 Cyber-Deterrence’,
Security Dialogue 38, no. 2 (2007): 271–88; Nick Robinson, ‘Videogames, Persuasion and
the War on Terror: Escaping or Embedding the Military–Entertainment Complex?’, Political
Studies 60, no. 3 (2012): 504–22; Nick Robinson, ‘Have You Won the War on Terror? Military
Videogames and the State of American Exceptionalism’, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies 43, no. 2 (2015): 450–70; Mark B. Salter, ‘The Geographical Imaginations of Video
Games: Diplomacy, Civilization, America’s Army and Grand Theft Auto IV’, Geopolitics 16,
no. 2 (2011): 359–88; Mark B. Salter, ‘Gaming World Politics: Meaning of Play and World
Structure’, International Political Sociology 5, no. 4 (2011): 453–56.
2. Peter W. Singer, ‘Meet the Sims … and Shoot Them: The Rise of Militainment’, Foreign
Policy 178 (2010): 91–95 Available at: http://atfp.co/1BebhTg.
3. See Jason Rutter and Jo Bryce, eds., Understanding Digital Games (London: SAGE,
2006); Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, eds., The Video Game Theory Reader (London:
Routledge, 2003).
4. See for e.g. Andrew Barry et al., ‘Logics of Interdisciplinarity’, Economy and Society 37,
no. 1 (2008): 20–49.
5. Espen Aarseth, ‘Computer Game Studies, Year One’, Game Studies 1, no. 1 (2001).
Available at: http://bit.ly/1u5Avsi; Christopher Douglas, ‘“You Have Unleashed a Horde
of Barbarians!”: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines’, Postmodern
Culture 13, no. 1 (2002). Available at: http://bit.ly/1ED7NqL; Markku Eskelinen, ‘Towards
Computer Game Studies’, Digital Creativity 12, no. 3 (2001): 175–83; Thomas M. Malaby
and Timothy Burke, ‘The Short and Happy Life of Interdisciplinarity in Game Studies’,
Games and Culture 4, no. 4 (2009): 323–30; Adrienne Shaw, ‘What is Video Game Culture?
Cultural Studies and Game Studies’ Games and Culture 5, no. 4 (2010): 403–24; Jonathan
Corliss, ‘Introduction: The Social Science Study of Video Games’, Games and Culture 6,
no. 1 (2011): 3–16.
On the first count, video games have become so ubiquitous that IR simply could not
afford to ignore this enormous domain, whose significance and reach is only likely to
grow. IR scholars have already heeded this call of duty: video games are now at home in
IR,1 and have even made brief appearances in mainstream publications aimed at the for-
eign policy establishment.2 However, answering this call is not without difficulties,
which stem from the extraordinary diversity and complexity of video games, but also
from the peril of analytical duplication. Simply put, IR research on video games must be
distinct from what other academic perspectives have to say,3 distinct from the prodigious
and often sophisticated output of video games journalism, as well as different from what
game designers and gamers say. Interdisciplinarity – the usual antidote to disciplinary
perspectivism – would be a tempting solution, were it not for the difficulties entailed by
interdisciplinarity itself,4 and for the concerted attempts to establish Games Studies as a
stand alone discipline which now has its own gurus, bibles, schisms, journals, and a first
generation of academics trained as games scholars.5
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