Modern Warfare 2: Massacre Civilians to Save the World

"People have really strong reactions to the airport scene and it's been fascinating because we all wanted to make it something that would be upsetting, disturbing, but also something people relate to. ...

"Ultimately, our intention was to put you as close as possible to atrocity. As for the effect it has on you, that's not for us to determine. Hopefully, it does have an emotional impact and it seems to have riled up a lot of people in interesting ways."

"There's three things you can do. Once you realize what's happening, you can open fire on the other terrorists that are with you. They'll turn around and kill you quickly, but that is an option. You can do nothing for the first half of that level too. You're not obligated to do anything other than walk and watch, which I think portrays another completely different feeling of helplessness. And the third option is [that] you can open fire.

When we tested the level, it was interesting. Steve Mancuda, who ran a lot of the testing, said people would get angry or sad or disgusted and immediately wonder what the Hell was going on here. And then after a few moments of having that experience, they would remember that they were in a video game and they would let go. Every single person in testing opened fire on the crowd, which is human nature. It feels so real but at the same time it's a video game and the response to it has been fascinating. I never really knew you could elicit such a deep feeling from a video game, but it has. "

In testimony to Congress regarding the success of converting virtual soldiers to real ones, the Army called the America’s Army game more effective than “any other method of contact.” This statement correlates with a study done in 2008 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that “30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined.”

The story quotes an Air Force Colonel, Commander of a Predator drone squadron, as stating that the younger, videogame generation were naturals at piloting the remote-controlled aircraft; however he thought that the same group suffered when attempting to consider the consequences of their actions:

"The video game generation is worse at distorting the reality of it [war] from the virtual nature. They don't have that sense of what really going on. It [videogames] teaches you how to compartmentalize it."