My Enlightening Gaming Experience
By Ross Beurmann
I returned from Iraq in late December 2004. I was in the Persian Gulf region for almost the entirety of 2004 with the 504th Military Intelligence Brigade. This blog post isn’t about that really, it’s actually about a revelation I made with my wife’s help regarding my gaming habits pre and post deployment. I know this sounds funny, in fact I actually feel a little strange writing about this due to the lack of importance gaming has on real life to most people, but I will explain what I think is behind my gaming transformation.
Madden 2003
Pre-deployment I mostly played sports games like Madden 2003 or NHL from EA Sports. I never got bored of playing with my wife or a friend or even with the computer. A month before I deployed my wife got me a present which was actually a joke, but she bought me a game about Desert Storm, and since my brother in law was coming into town, she said he could help me train for my deployment. We started playing taking turns, and it was enjoyable when he was around but not fun to play the 1st or 3rd person shooter type game without the company of a friend. I continued to play sports games mostly and only played shooter games when I was hanging out with my brother in law.
During my deployment I played Ghost Recon on my roommates Xbox. I had never really played Xbox, as I had been a PlayStation fan, but this game had a Cooperative mode where we could both play at the same time and it was a lot of fun. It was a great way to spend the time at the desolate remote location like we were in. We only got a PX at our post 5 months into our stay there. You know it is a problem when people are fighting to draw convoy duty so they can pick-up stuff at the Baghdad PX.
Metal Gear Solid IV
Post deployment, or what I consider my complete shift away from sports games and becoming mostly a shooter gamer (I use the term “gamer” loosely since I typically reserve that for people who are actually consistently good at games and not people who just really enjoy them like me), I have found myself easily bored of sports games while playing with others, online, or versus the computer. I recently got rid of all of my sports games. A friend at work recommended Metal Gear Solid IV to me and since I purchased that I have strictly played only that game along with a few other shooters like Battlefield 1943 and MAG, a game I am currently a Beta Tester for.
What I find is that these games bring me back to when I was deployed. There is tons of action, explosions, small arms fire, bombers, mortars, air defense, compatriots, and stress. This stress is short lived and not constant but it is there. The sounds are there, the graphics are extremely life like. It brings me back to a place where I felt that what I was doing was important on a global level. It has instant highs and lows: one round you may do excellent and 5 minutes later at the end of the next round you are completely disappointed with your performance. It’s a way to get some of the good and bad feelings back from my deployment and without the bad you don’t realize how great the good ones are. I am sure this sounds odd to those who haven’t experienced a deployment. It is definitely a unique way to feel when you return home and since for me it has been almost exactly 5 years since my return it obviously has had a long lasting effect on my life.
Ali Manouchehri, another contributor on this site, told me about a study Oxford did regarding Tetris and combating flashback memories in PTSD cases so I read an article about it. I have never had a flashback, and I do not have a debilitating case of PTSD, but I think that this article is important so I am posting a link to it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7813637.stm I can say for sure that my experience serving in the military has changed me, most of the time for the better but I am sure that every change isn’t for the best.
In my opinion, here is the bottom line. These shooter games allow me to relive things from a time that I am too scared to actually recreate in real life. These games allow me to have all of the excitement and adrenaline rush of the combat experience without having to be put back into actual harm’s way. I really enjoyed and miss the Army, so this allows for me to have my family time and the excitement of explosions, bullets, and team work.
