It may seem like an unreachable goal. But two games are already at the forefront of this game/documentary vision: Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Gearbox Software's Brothers in Arms.
Call of Duty 4's pivotal "wow" moment occurs early in the game's narrative. A nuclear missile detonates as invading American soldiers withdraw from a Middle Eastern hotspot, incinerating everything in its wake. To nobody's surprise, your character survives the blast and ensuing helicopter crash. But in a daring twist of events, you're unable to fight on. You crawl out of the smoldering chopper into a red-tinted wasteland to get a brief glimpse of the crumbling buildings, disintegrated greenery and dead bodies that line the streets before your vision fades to black.
This is, in my mind, one of the most emotionally charged scenes in videogames. There are very few people on the planet who have lived through a nuclear attack, but Infinity Ward managed to capture pure horror in that sixty second chapter. Call of Duty 4's isolated detonation sequence is a brilliant way to teach the effect of nuclear holocaust - beyond simply shocking viewers, it compels them to imagine the effects that such an event would have on their own surroundings.
The Brothers in Arms series, too, ditches the "run and gun" urgency of most shooters without shying away from brutal violence. The first title follows a party of men trying to reach Hill 30, an American-occupied zone, from Normandy, France. Along the way, your character's comrades and closest friends fall under Nazi gunfire. Based on real people and events, the tactical shooter has an immediate sense of disturbing realism. The upcoming current-gen sequel, Hell's Highway, features similar objectives and true-to-life events. Gearbox isn't afraid to show the worst parts of war, yet the Brothers in Arms series is still incredibly fun to play. Could the developer take a lesson from itself and utilize these grim settings to create a simulation that focuses less on chewing apart bad guys with machine guns and more on giving players a feel for the time? They've created characters that are emotionally engaging, so what's to stop them from creating real-life scenarios in which players can participate in more ways than we're seeing today?
Therein lays the roadblock. We know what we want, but how do you make a game playable and informative at the same time? The developers I've mentioned have approached this paradigm, but why isn't someone compiling it in to one cohesive experience?
When this dream is eventually achieved, we'll see videogames become more respected. The violence inherent in the public's negative assumptions about gaming would no longer be scoffed at as disgusting or morbid - it would be part of a pragmatic and educational product that would remind players of the sobering realities of war. With Saving Private Ryan as the go-to reference point for all things World War II, we could use something that could best it.
Why not a videogame that's more than just a game?
Mitch Dyer is a Canadian freelancer who regularly contributes reviews and features to Official Xbox Magazine and OXMOnline, and is one of two head Editors at gaming website Nukoda, where he writes pertinent news, the odd preview and reviews for games that are way old. When he feels like it, he complains about terrible anime on his personal blog.
