This article was contributed by Mestew guest writer, Justin Powell.

How fun are video games?  Where else can you fly a plane, race a car, or be the starting quarterback for the Lions?  (Ok, maybe some things aren’t THAT tough to accomplish.)  Ever since Mario was jumping on Koopa Troopa’s heads in the 1980’s, the video game industry has had one basic goal:  Make the games more realistic.

One segment of the industry that has had success with this goal is the First Person Shooter genre, which is basically carrying a gun of some sort and shooting everything in sight.  This type of game exploded in popularity in 1992 with the classic Wolfenstein 3d, and has rocketed into one of the largest grossing segments of the video game industry.  The newest video game consoles have taken the shooter genre to never before seen levels.  Titles such as Team Fortress 2, Halo, Unreal Tournament, and Call of Duty put the player in environments that appear shockingly realistic, complete with surround sound explosions and the ability to communicate with other players via headsets.

This realism has not come without a firestorm of controversy.  Former West Point psychology professor Lt. Col. David Grossman, author of the book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, has referred to these games as “murder simulators”.  He maintains that the realistic depiction of weapons and the mental stimulation of killing people negatively impacts children and their view on society.  Joe Lieberman and Tipper Gore have attempted to ban violent video games with legislation, but having only succeeded in the 1990’s with the ESRB rating system, that all video games must have stamped on them.

Up till this point in my life, I have never understood where these people were coming from.  Personally, I fail to see how blowing up hordes of mutants with a plasma cannon trains me to do anything in real life, let alone increase my violent tendencies or teach me how to fire a real gun.  I’ve also believed that if you don’t like something, don’t watch it, don’t buy it, and don’t let your kids listen to it.  Just don’t ruin the fun for the rest of us that do not have a problem separating the real world with a fantasy world.

Then, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 happened.  And my world has been officially rocked.

I’m going to preface this Youtube clip of the game with some context about the game.  You (the player) are going undercover to infiltrate a Russian terrorist cell.  Part of your mission is to gain the trust of the terrorists, even if that means participating in their terror to some extent.  Your mission in this level is to accompany your new terrorist friends into Moscow’s airport…  and slaughter enough innocent civilians to make the terrorists think you are one of them.  The brutality starts around the 1:40 mark.

Please use discretion when watching this video, as it may not be suitable for children.

Video games are fun because they open doors to virtual places that you can’t experience in real life, and let you do things you would never be able to do.  I never thought that video game developers would see that as an opportunity for players to experience what it’s like to do something that they would never want to do.

Outside of how sickening it is to simulate slaughtering innocent people, for the developers of this game to release this scene on the heels of the Fort Hood killings seems in bad taste altogether.  I wondered how someone closer to the situation would react to this video, so I talked to former Army PFC Benjaminn Davis, who was stationed at Fort Hood for 13 months.  His reaction:

“Wow, that is actually quite disturbing for a video game…  I really got a chill within the first 30 seconds of that clip, thinking about how I just had one guy I knew killed, and one of my good friends shot in the Fort Hood incident, and it was almost in the same fashion.”

Did this video game cross the line?  Is there even a line to be crossed?  I know that watching this video for the first time made me sick, and that isn’t something that I like to feel when playing video games.  Maybe next time I play video games, I’ll put down the PS3, and reach for some good old Mario.  He’s as real as I want my games to be.