Impotence and Agency: Computer Games as a Post-9/11 Battlefield

Abstract

Immediately after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC took place on 11 September 2001 game publishers shelved or delayed projects with images, plotlines or game-actions reminiscent of the events. According to one observer, the attacks sent the industry ‘into a frenzy’ (ConsoleWire.com Staff, 2001). On 12 September, Electronic Arts (EA), the world’s largest game publisher, suspended Majestic, an ‘immersive game’ that blurred boundaries between game and reality through pervasive, even intrusive use of the web, fax machines and telephones. Its plot included unexplained bombings, but after 9/11 frantic phone calls were as painful a memory as bomb threats; EA explained that ‘someone who was waiting for a call from a family member or friend (involved in the attacks) [might] get a call from the game’ (quoting Brown of Electronic Arts, 2001). Westwood Studios, a division of EA, delayed Yuri’s Revenge (2001), the eagerly anticipated expansion of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (2000), to revise packaging art that showed screenshots such as a surprise invasion of New York City, though not to remove missions involving attacks on Washington, DC and the Pentagon. Activision, Konami, Ubi Soft, Microsoft and other publishers delayed or altered games, often to remove images of the World Trade Center. They hoped to avoid ‘stirring emotions unnecessarily’, as a Ubi Soft press release (Gallagher, 2001) put it. Yet, players resisted these intentions. Microsoft erased the Twin Towers from Manhattan’s skyline in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002, a ‘last-minute panic alteration’ according to one reviewer, but players created their own patch to put the removed Towers back into the default scenery (Dale, 2002).