| Summary: | Video games have become the highest grossing entertainment industry in the world, earning more than double that of the music and film industry combined. Many of these games contain political messages, intentional or not. Some game developers explicitly claim that the games they make are apolitical, and this thesis examines whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is as apolitical as its developers claim. The research is conducted with the aid of Barthes’ work on mythologies and semiology to analyse the various signs present in the game in relation to construction of myths and ideological messaging. This is aided by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to enable the analysis of gameplay choices as a semiological sign. The main theories are supported by Murray’s writing on immersion and the first-person perspective. The analysis shows that Modern Warfare consistently uses signs and myths that construct an ideological message that coalesce into a mythical image of the special forces soldier as a sort of human but superhuman character that must be given free rein to perform their mission, while also displaying western politicians as incompetent, the threat of terrorism as omnipresent, and Russia as a dangerous threat. Regardless of intent, such a message is undeniably political.
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