ABSTRACT
The relationship between the military and videogames has evolved dramatically over the last few decades. Along with their use by militaries for the purposes of training, recruitment and increasingly the rehabilitation of soldiers, military-themed videogames have also come to dominate commercial entertainment landscapes worldwide. As Stahl (2010: 112) suggests, “videogames are increasingly both the medium and the metaphor by which we understand war.” This infiltration of virtual warfare into public life has spawned a burgeoning critical academic interest which has sought to trace the political, cultural and social implications of the relationship between videogames and the military. But despite this growing scholarly interest, analysis has predominately focused on the ‘videogame-as-text’. This has involved deconstructing and commentating on the relationship between virtual worlds and the military ideologies, values and sensibilities apparent in their visual schemes and playful structures (Leonard, 2004; Power, 2007; Shaw, 2010). What remains unclear, however, is how players themselves consume, engage and interact with the explicitly militarised content of military-themed videogames.
