Mahshid Mayar (Bielefeld University)
In the post-9/11 world, critics and advocates of the so-called preemptive war have resorted to video games as a metaphor, or at least a motif, to reach opposing ends. The virtual world has already turned into a space where campaign wars are fought and elections are won. In their capacity to engage with sociopolitical realities, video games have been continually mentioned in debates over war: either comparable to a first-person shooter, or far more technically, affectively, and politically complex than any game title.