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Cyberwar : figures and paradoxes in the rhetoric of war video games.
Video games were born within the American military-industrial complex when the Cold War was at its height. The complex has also continuously expanded during periods of peace and has structured the games over a long-term timescale through aesthetic conventions and codes forging today's ultra-realistic games over a period of many years. This would not of course have happened if the commercial interests of the leisure industries and the army had not turned out to be convergent at the time when technological warfare and interactive mass entertainment came together. However, while this " new configuration of virtual power" as formulated by James Der Derian seems more powerful than ever, it is not devoid of paradoxes which are expressed through aesthetic choices, play mechanisms and ideologies filtered by the products. The representation of war itself inherent in the productions of the American militaryindustrial complex is set against a scene of total war that is more in accordance with game-oriented conventions. More broadly, in the face of the characteristic loss of meaning pertaining to the post-Cold War period, video games stage an artificial enemy who is diffuse and elusive, symbolised by the Other's face, and recycle contemporary ideologies to find a justification for his eradication.