Predator drones and simulation

Jane Mayer's recent New Yorker piece and NPR interview about the US military’s use of remote-controlled Predator drones draws an interesting parallel to this week's readings. Obviously, the object of a Predator mission (actually killing “enemies”) is drastically different than a video game that is entertainment-based, yet the two “simulated” forms not only illustrate how visual technologies have transformed warfare (and vice-versa), but also how these very technologies complicate political, ethical, and economical ideologies (again, vice-versa). For example, what becomes of human rights when killing enemies becomes at once more precise, furtive, and less treacherous to the humans “controlling” the Predator drones? Likewise, from the viewpoint of the military, how can the use of video game technologies, as a popular form of simulation, alleviate certain aspects of warfare (costs, magnitude, etc.)?

While reading “Simulation versus Narrative, ” I wondered how Gonzalo Frasca would classify war simulations with “real” consequences, in regard to the paidia/ludus dichotomy of simulations. In the article, Frasca challenges the notion that video games are extensions of representational narrative; rather, he argues, they function on a different rhetorical structure known as simulation. Whereas established representational media excel at “both descriptions of traits and sequences of events,” (223) or narrative, simulations permit manipulation and modifications and require a certain level of interactivity, opening video games (as structures of simulations) to chance and change. With its looser rules and open-ended structure, paidia simulations, like Sim City, is a game without a goal or end—playing for the sake of playing. Ludus simulation, on the other hand, has clear limitations and rules and is exemplified by traditional, narrative-based games like Mario Bros, Zelda, etc. The Predator drone, albeit not a typical video game but nonetheless a type of “simulation,” rejects Frasca’s dichotomy and the idea that narratives are totally divorced from simulations. As Frasca notes, “games are not free of ideological content,”(233) meaning that as cultural objects, games and the use of games arise out of contextual frameworks, the results of which can be viewed as certain “narratives” themselves. In the case of the drone, its use and “success” is dependent on larger ideological narratives that are the foundations for the nation/state, religion, and war in the first place. Its use as a “simulation” with severe consequences is precisely to perpetuate a narrative.

The use of Predator drones shows that video game technologies, or Frasca’s “simulations,” are not solely entertainment or educational vehicles. Rather, their practice and popularity in popular cultures can be capitalized on and used for devastating purposes. That is not to say games are responsible for the atrocities at Columbine or any other tragedy, but following Ken McAllister, they represent, literally and figuratively, an ideological struggle as “a medium through which these values are articulated and re-produced” (26).