When your video game is so good that it gets used as real-life warfare “evidence”.
What better way to brainwash the population than to take footage from a military-style war video game and share it across the media? Arma 3 is a great open-world, tactical shooter game that takes place around the mid-2030s.
Gameplay includes photo-realistic environments, CAS, heavy artillery, the PO-30 Orca, Mi-48 Kajman, 2S9 Sochor, Ifrit HMG, To-199 Neophron, and many more various vehicles and weaponry selections to choose from. There’s also the various squad positions from heavy rifleman to squad leader, missiles specialist & combat life saver and missions range from infiltration missions to sweeping armoured operations.
Now take all of this highly immersive experience, toss it into a nice big pot of warfare that’s simmering over the coals of our fragile society and we have ourselves the perfect recipe to boil over and cause a right-well uproar.
Indian news channels have taken full advantage of this fairly realistic video game and are using Arma 3 footage to “backup” their reports that “Panjshir is under air force attack by Pakistan”; of which it all supposedly originated from a network called Hasti TV.
Unfortunately for them, fact-checker & information analyst, Mohammed Zubair, has called out these news channels for their highly misleading headliners.
The channels have since then taken down the clips and issued apologies and corrections but there’s more than enough evidence to substantiate that this was all part of a campaign to deliberately feed the public this hogwash. However, there are still a select few channels that are attempting to shift the blame for this release of false information.
The claims were based off of the short video showcasing “C-RAM in Action – Shooting Down Hostile Jet – Phalanx CIWS – C RAM – GAU-8 – Simulation” which appears to have the effect of a cameraman filming the situation, where in reality the clip was purposefully edited as such to further expand on the more realistic aspects of the game (all of this has been confirmed by the developers and editors)
Arma 3 – Counter-Rocket Artillery Mortar System in Action
Apparently, it isn’t such a rare occurrence for Indian news channels to readily release false and misleading information either and as we all know, news spreads like wildfire, especially the sorts of untrue nature.
Rahul Majumdar – writer/contributor at IGN India – has criticized these channels for so readily taking such obviously fake “evidence” and releasing it as fuel to the fire.
This also happens to not be the first time that Arma 3 material has been used. In May, pages such as “Daily Technology” and “P Viral” attempted to pass off the same clip as yet more “proof” of Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system, which Reuters took the liberty to debunk.
It took nothing but a matter of hours for an entire country to be overwhelmed with news reports and footage of the supposed air force attack, which just as quickly begun to spread the world over. Thankfully there are still those that are fighting the good fight and very quickly debunked the claims and set things straight.
The problem is that situations like this won’t be slowing down with the world quickly advancing in the age of gaming; graphics and mechanics are only becoming more realistic and channels such as the ones above will continue to grab at the opportunities to rile up the population.
The media is seldom transparent, only feeding us what they want to, parts of the truth to make their stories more believable but not quite enough that lets on to what the actual whole truth is. It gets twisted to suit their needs.
If anything, Arma 3 developers – Bohemia Interactive – can be proud on the terms that their game has hit the spot with immersive realism.
If you aren’t yet familiar with the game and are keen to give it a go, note that it’s only available on PC; you can also play as single-player or multiplayer.