Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

The biggest thing is getting youngsters to interact with history. It's incredibly difficult. And if their Xbox or their PlayStation gets them to think about history... Certainly when we talk about World War II and we show them a picture it will be, "That's Saving Private Ryan," or, "That's Call of Duty." And if you do that and it gives you an 'in' to talk about history then that is always a good thing.

All of these games ultimately deal in the death of other people. It doesn't matter if it's Fallujah in 2004; whether it's Afghanistan now; whether it's the Barbarossa campaign, D-day - people die as a result of it. You can't honestly say, "Call of Duty, Brothers in Arms: good. Anything modern: bad." They all have their roots in the management of violence. They are all games that deal with the death of somebody, and I don't think it matters much whether those deaths occur in 1944 or whether they occur in 2004. All of us that play those games have to accept some responsibility that that's precisely what we're doing.

That's a long way of saying I don't get 'pissy' about any of that nonsense.

If it's done properly it should just remind people that that's what happens in war: people die, and it's not particularly pleasant no matter which way you look at it. Things like Grand Theft Auto are completely and utterly glorified. If the wargames were treated in that way it would probably be distasteful. But I don't think you can make a game about war without people dying. That's unavoidable, and all of us that play those - and all of us that enjoy those - have to accept that. It can be a little bit pious of people to think it's okay to play Call of Duty or Brothers in Arms and then draw a line at Fallujah because it's up to date and current - I have a bit of an issue with that.

The other thing is that nobody these days - NATO or UN - has conscripted armies. All of us that do what we do, or did what we did, know full well what we're doing. I was a volunteer soldier, I've always been a volunteer soldier - the people out in Afghanistan are volunteer soldiers. It makes the Second World War games worse if anything! Most of those [soldiers] were conscripted and didn't have a choice but to die. The first waves on Omaha Beach died in their droves and they hadn't a choice about that. You could say that's probably worse than the violence that's going on in Afghanistan or Iraq at the moment.

No. I play a lot of this stuff online, and I've been a soldier for 20-odd years. I've got a few medals on my chest - it's not double rows, but I've got several medals and I've been in a few operations. And I get thumped all the time. The key to any of these games is nothing to do with military service, it's to do with dexterity; it's about hand-eye coordination; it's about practice.

In the short term, Flashpoint probably has a point where you can make an impact on the tactical side of a game. But I tell you something: if you put any one of those Special Ops guys who's not a good-quality gamer against a 30-stone, sit-in-a-rocking-chair, eating crisps, drinking pop eight-hours-a-day gamer, [then] the fat guy always wins.

My answer to that as an academic would be: definitely, yes. Kids don't read books any more - there's a different skill-set. If we don't keep up, there's a huge danger that somebody else will do it before we do.

They key problem is that these things cost money, and defence procurement is something that's always going to be under threat. And to upgrade and update in the same way that Microsoft do, for a public sector organisation like the public forces, is almost impossible. And that's the dilemma. The army would have a very different technical look if it had all the money it wanted to.