Cognition Dissemination: This Is Not De-escalation

Given the audience for Call of Duty games and the developers who both share their mindsets and want to appeal to the millions upon millions who will purchase them over several months, each installment is guaranteed to have a piece of iffy and problematic content, some to the point of goofiness. Whether it’s the presence of aids denier Ronald Reagan, a mission that lets players massacre a whole group of people, or the legendary “Press F to Pay Respects,” Call of Duty has long been what a certain type of gamer would call a “politically incorrect” franchise.

I should not be surprised that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (the new one and not the 2009 game) has a particular eyerolling moment during its gameplay. Yet, I am. It represents the kind of gloriously dumb tastelessness expected from the franchise.

There’s a point during the campaign when the soldiers stroll through a trailer park, while regular people look on and approach frighteningly or curiously — or both. Here, the player is given an option to deescalate tensions that arise quickly among excited onlookers. MWII’s approach to handling this? Letting the player aim their gun at them.

Unbelievable moment in the new Call of Duty campaign, where, stalking through a trailer park, the game tells you to de-escalate a situation, and "de-escalating" means pointing your gun directly at civilians pic.twitter.com/HyRxeXzIoh

— Jacob Geller (@yacobg42) October 24, 2022

My initial reaction to seeing this wavered between bafflement and bemusement. Aiming a gun at someone is in no way a method to de-escalate a situation outside the video game world. It, in fact, amounts to a significant escalation. You don’t aim your gun at someone unless you intend to shoot them if need be, and considering that one of the biggest countries in the world possesses no shortage of trigger-happy fools willing to commit all sorts of atrocities, it’s quite unnerving. But it also represents how the team members know their audience.

I mentioned “bemusement” in the last paragraph because this scene is so ludicrous that I had to cackle a bit. The memes posted following this have been funny too, including one that references the infamous (and previously referenced in this post) “No Russian” mission from the original and similarly-named Modern Warfare 2. This game, truly, needed to continue the tradition. Time will tell if it will take off as well as other CoD memes, but it’s well on its way.

But it’s also a dangerous moment to add to a game like this. I’ve already seen plenty of defenses rationalizing this, from people who seriously believe this method is a working strategy. But there are untold examples showing how horribly awry this can go in real life, chief among them the police killing unarmed people in the United States, the majority of targets being black males of varying ages. I’m not saying there will be plenty of people inspired to try this after seeing it in this game, as a person who’s previously (and rightfully) argued that video games don’t inspire real-world violence. But it’s wildly insensitive even though it’s on-brand for CoD.

It was shortly after seeing it on Twitter that I posted this in our Discord (which you’re free to visit here if you haven’t — we don’t bite too hard) with a joke that police were likely consultants for this game. Little did I know at the time that the lead writer for MW2, Brian Bloom, is an ex-cop himself. Per Wikipedia:

“Bloom also attended the Sheriff’s Academy and served as a Reserve Deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department from 2001 – 2011. He is a certified self defense expert and a Sifu of a rarefied street lethal modern Self Defense System called ‘Bojuka’. He has participated in combat seminars and taught use of force techniques to law enforcement, military and private security worldwide.”

Bloom is more well known for being an actor and voice actor, with one of his biggest roles being the voice of Captain America across media like Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the last two Marvel vs. Capcom titles, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 (in which he also voiced the Punisher and Daredevil). He’s a man of many talents, apparently including implementing the use of force techniques he taught to a perhaps-startling number of soldiers and guys who like to dress the part in a MW2 scenario.

For as much as I and others have laughed at the sheer ludicrousness of this style of “de-escalation” being in the game, this is serious and jarring stuff. This is what cops and military types do on the regular, to sometimes horrible results that they’ll more than likely receive no punishment for. It’s not great that these kinds of actions have become normalized in the CoD series, but there’s little way to stop them now. That doesn’t mean they’re above criticism.