Serious Games I - IV

In Serious Games, Harun Farocki explores the connections between virtual reality and the military. At a Marine Corps base in Twenty-Nine Palms, California, before their deployment to a war zone, U.S. troops are trained using computer simulations in which the physical environment of Afghanistan has been recreated in detail on the basis of geographic data.

These simulated locations resemble the VR environments used in the psychological aftercare of soldiers returning with PTSD. To enhance the immersive effect, realistic sound effects are added, and the lighting is adjusted to match the time of day at which a traumatic event took place.

The effect is uncanny when Farocki films a military exercise in a recreated desert town built on the base. Only when a role player interacts with one of the soldiers does it become apparent that this is not a computer animation. Not only does the environment seem to be modeled on the aesthetics of a game, but the soldiers themselves also take on an unsettlingly virtual appearance.