In a video opinion piece published this week on YouTube, host of the PBS web series Idea Channel Mike Rugnetta asks, "Is buying Call of Duty a moral choice?"
Rungetta begins the episode by charting the history of guns in video games. He questions whether firearms' ever-increasing digital realism should be troublesome, especially if doing so amounts to "supporting the arms industry," a topic chronicled in a report earlier this year about gun manufacturers like Barrett Firearms Manufacturing whose firearms appear in video games. Do those realistic weapons make purchasing a video game a moral issue? And what should individuals do about it if so?
Make sure to watch the video above to see how Rungetta work out the answers to his own questions in about five minutes. He really really gets into the meat of his argument about three minutes in. You can check out more videos from the show "that examines the connections between pop culture, technology and art" to hear him talk about things like Kinect, Community and post-modernism and more at PBS Idea Channel's home on YouTube.
