Gamer being sent to War?

To demonstrate that a new audio system “takes you there” a New Zealand branch of a headset company are taking a 24-year-old Kiwi gamer into a real war zone: Iraq. Let’s face it – it’s not the perfect backdrop for an advertising campaign.

This is not about politics and no matter how you feel about the conflict there has obviously been a significant human cost. The Middle East is not a playground and I’m sure the families of the men and women serving in the area would agree that this is a very distasteful exercise.

Estimates have put the civilian cost at well over 100,000 and if you include deaths due to lawlessness and poor health care that number would only increase further.

The studio are quoted as saying that, "Gamers play in virtual war zones every day and night, and they want the immerse feeling of combat so we thought we'd take that experience one step further. The whole project has been an experience. Though there was a huge amount of planning it's fair to say the journey proved... interesting."

War is not a game. The Middle East conflict is not somewhere to go to advertise any product, service or experience. The reality is that this has been a devastating conflict that has affected millions worldwide and this stunt has simply tried to trivialise the entire situation.

Real war zones and virtual war zones are nothing alike. Real war is a deadly serious business, devastating local populations. Virtual war is make believe, it’s only a few steps away from playing laser quest or chasing your friends around with water pistols as a child.  For the people fighting in the armed forces this is reality, they know the job is dangerous and we should all show them the utmost respect.

IGN put this best by saying that “each piece of PR this gets – positive or negative – will only serve to make the whole stinking exercise worth it. It's why we haven't named the product involved.”

I’m doing the same thing as I also believe – “It's not appropriate to exploit real war to flog a line of video game headsets”.

I’m quite disgusted!