“A Video Game That Lets You Torture Iraqi Prisoners: Press 🅰 to waterboard.” by Kaveh Waddell

This article by investigative journalist Kaveh Waddell examines an unreleased video game that challenges players to occupy the morally abhorrent position of an American soldier torturing Iraqi prisoners at a detention center in southeast Iraq. At the level of design the game is intended to offer critical reflection on the action it portrays: This ranges from the bodily, the in-game acts are intended to provoke revulsion in the player, to the ludic, the points players accumulate in fulfilling their tasks never amount to anything, and further the teleological, that the game-world outcome of this torture is not victory for America but the formation a new terror group, the Islamic State (IS). Without access to the game the article holds back from speaking to the project’s success or failure, but rather approaches and, to an extent, problematizes the game by looking at the discourses around its popular reception.

The article is perhaps most interesting for the discourses that it collects and records: Firstly, the game developers, a group of graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University and New York University, choose not to reveal their names; explicitly due to fear for their physical safety. Secondly, due to a lack of information about what went on in the real world detention center that the game is based on, the game developers state that they reconstructed events both from archived news articles citing allegations from ex-prisoners as well as a leaked Red Cross report. And thirdly, it is notable that popular reception around the game’s production included expressions of subversive or trolling sentiment from some users. Taken together, the strands collected by this article point to the power that the concept of this game possesses: One that, without the need to be available to play, is provocative enough to beg diverse reactions and even introspection.

Author of this entry: Alie Tacq

Waddell, Kaveh. “A Video Game That Lets You Torture Iraqi Prisoners.” The Atlantic, August 1, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/a-video-game-that-lets-you-torture-iraqi-prisoners/493379/.