Crogan is right to call game studies naïve; we have underemphasized the role of military technology as an important foundation of computer games. His book offers a welcome new perspective that belongs on the shelves of any games scholar, for all of us should embrace the many traditions that intersect with digital games. But another naivety is at work in Gameplay Mode too: one that takes computer games’ undeniable genealogical relationship to military logistics as primary, trumping all others. Gameplay Mode’s strength is its convincing account of Cold War military technology’s unseen influence on video games. Its weakness, perhaps, comes from the assumption that such origins can only ever stain the medium until we cast it off through the same predictable critiques leftist cultural critics have provided for decades.
trace the movement from swords to plowshares, or to axles, or to watch works, rather than once a sword always a sword. See also The Iron Giant for “I am not a weapon”.