Video Game Foretells Nightmarish Scenario Of Advanced War Technology Falling Into The Wrong Hands.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, is the latest game, in the hugely popular video game series. It officially debuted Tuesday and is estimated to have amassed 7 million views on YouTube. The original version of the video game, titled Black Ops sold more than 25 million games, across the US and Europe and is widely accepted as the best-selling video game of all time. The new release has big milestone to overtake. Given the hype that it has generated, it does purport to be a worthy successor.

The most buzzing point about the video is that it’s using Oliver North, a controversial military figure, as its spokesperson. The retired US marine, was once arrested for selling arms to Iran and setting up a subversive network for the Contras. The Contras were charged with monstrous human rights violations.

David Thier at Forbes questions featuring North and asks “is it a little distasteful” using North, “who was engaged in extensive illegal activities and misuse of the military “to increase sales of a game?”

The video, made by Treyarch, is set in the future, but not too far into it, only thirteen years hence, 2025 AD. The setting creates an appropriate balance between reality and science fiction.

In the video North, spells out what future war could be like and how utterly devastating they could be. He expresses deep dread about a nightmarish scenario of hackers taking control of US ammunitions. “I don’t think the average American grasps how violent war is about to become … I have a nightmare scenario that a hacker breaks into our system that controls satellites, UAVs, even the launch of missiles. Consider what it would be like to have friendly fire from US weapons overhead.”

The video flashes images of the Anonymous member, camouflaged behind a Guy Fawkes mask, making an unrestrained declaration that hacker groups will be behind Oliver North’s “nightmare scenario.”

UAV pilot Major Hercules Christopher, even as the Anonymous member reappears on the screen, warns, “If you can hack a bank, you can hack a drone.”

To link something as serious as war, with a game and turning it into entertainment is not easy. If it is not like a real war, you will end up trivializing it and if it’s too much like real war, with people dying, it could become insensitive and cold towards the feelings of families who have lost members in war.

Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II, is a daring and powerful campaign, that warns of the dangers of war and seeks to eliminate wars from our worlds. The existent world and the fantasy world, without a glitch, merge. You can hear Ollie ominously issuing a warning, “There’s going to come a time when this technology is going to catch up with us.” Images of advanced weaponry have P.W. Singer, author and “future war expert,” wondering “What if terrorists could get their hands on this?”

A two-minute, animated trailer shows futuristic war scenes in a city, facing total destruction, under siege. The narration is by Sgt Frank Woods, who has been resurrected from his presumed death in the first video and he’s back to deliver a forbidding message, “What happens when the enemy steals the keys, and the things they built to keep us safe are turned against us?”

Both the videos ends with a tagline; “The Future is Black.”