It's No Videogame: News Commentary and the Second Gulf War

Mia Consalvo's study examines how U.S. news media and commentators deployed "videogame" as a dismissive descriptor during coverage of the Second Gulf War, drawing on a sample of 75 stories from March and April 2003. The analysis finds that the term was used predominantly in pejorative ways, typically to characterize the war coverage as fake, trivial, or unreal, most often by critics who argued the conflict lacked the real human suffering that would make it serious. A second strand of commentary described the war as "just like a videogame" because of its hi-tech sophistication, revealing both generational unease and fascination with military technology.

The central argument is that these uses reinforce a hegemonic "common sense" view of games as inherently trivial and lacking seriousness. This dismissive framing sits in tension with mainstream media's contrasting portrayal of games as dangerous, particularly in coverage linking them to school shootings and youth violence. The contradiction is sharpened by the military's growing adoption of game-like technologies and its collaborations with game and toy companies for training, a reality that complicates any simple reading of games as merely frivolous.

The study concludes that these contradictory views, which cast games as both trivial and threatening, expose unresolved tensions about what counts as "real" in media discourse. Consalvo argues that such inconsistencies cannot be fully explained by a generational divide between players and non-players who control most media outlets, and that deeper structural causes must be considered. The analysis is grounded in news broadcasts, newspaper articles, and academic sources from the spring of 2003, situating the discussion within a specific and closely examined moment of American wartime coverage.