Gamers must keep committing virtual war crimes
The Red Cross has called for gamers to stop committing virtual war crimes.
In the latest episode of Is Satire Going Out of Business?, the Red Cross, a once sensible humanitarian organisation dedicated to providing emergency assistance to those in need, has now won the leading role in a would-be Babylon Bee headline.
The Red Cross has not sounded a siren call for the public to donate life-saving supplies nor sign themselves up as volunteers. Instead, in order to address more pressing matters while remaining relevant in this century of total insanity, it has called for gamers to stop committing virtual war crimes. How The Onion still turns a profit is anyone’s guess.
In other news, the DLVA has scolded those without a driver’s license for playing Rocket League, and threatens to slap all gamers with three points should they make an opponent’s car explode; The Football Association has put pressure on EA Sports to prevent those without a coaching qualification from commanding elite level teams with their console controllers; meanwhile the United Nations Human Rights Council is expected to rule that zombies in video games are sentient persons and that killing them would classify as a murder offence. Anyone who has played Dead Rising may be guilty of genocide.
All jokes aside (well, not really), The International Committee for the Red Cross has launched a Play By The Rules initiative, where gamers are ‘invited’ to abide by the Geneva Convention at all times, which involves not shooting wounded targets, avoid killing non-combatant NPCs, and (my personal favourite) sharing medical healing points with their enemies.
Now promoting the awareness along with the enforcement of The Geneva Convention is a necessary and honourable goal, in order to prevent armed conflicts from degenerating into unbridled animalistic savagery, the issue here is that video games are the realm of make believe. It is a universe where the suffocating rules and regulations of ordinary life are to be discarded and forgotten about.
Now we stand at a point in modern history where gamers could be penalised because someone from the Red Cross needs to go to Specsavers because they can’t differentiate from a computer graphic and footage from a genuine battlefield. There’s only one problem with that assessment: ripping the Geneva Convention limb from limb in a video game does not cause any real-world consequences. As can be seen from the hyperlink, the Red Cross have played a strategic game of Mission Creep for a long time.
Are we on the verge of returning to the days of ‘video games cause school shootings’? Where the harmless actions of sofa-dwelling gamers are scrutinised by a nosy, sneering elitist class who would have been terrified of darkened movie theatres seventy years ago?
Nevertheless, this madness from the Red Cross and its allies in the gaming industry should stop here, and there is one, indefatigable way of ensuring it does. Gamers, fighting for the ideals of liberty and self-determination, must keep committing virtual war crimes, as defined by the United Nations.
The use of poisonous gas, extensive destruction of property unwarranted by military necessity, deliberating directing attacks against civilian targets, killing NPC soldiers who have surrendered, pillaging settlements for virtual booty, a gamer need only play the game normally to break the Geneva Convention. If you think it crosses the lines, it probably does.
The good news is that most of the offences can be committed with a game which the media pounds with the torch of ignorance and the pitchfork of hysteria: Grand Theft Auto. A game where you can play tennis, compete in triathlons, manage local businesses, and go clothes shopping, but everyone just seems to turn this sandbox world into one of mass killings and John Wick style showdowns with the police. Each to their own.
With the tactics pinned down, it is now up to gamers to roll up their sleeves, switch on their devices, and just play their games normally. They’ll annoy the Red Cross soon enough.