The Aging Videogame That Fuels Fake Wars

A few months ago, a user from Chongquing, China, posted a video to Chinese social media platform Weibo, which has more than half a billion active users. The grainy 26-second clip appears to have been filmed on a primitive camcorder: We see a barrage of rockets ascend from a small vessel into a dusky sky, then streak toward a nearby aircraft carrier. A lens-trembling explosion follows.

The video’s title claims it is leaked footage of Houthi rebels attacking a U.S. aircraft carrier, part of the militia’s retaliation for American support of Israel’s war on Gaza. An Arabic script overlay imbues the video with television news credibility. If genuine, the footage would demonstrate that relatively minor militias have the capacity to engage and defeat American troops.

In fact, the clip shows footage, not of a skirmish in the Red Sea, but of a decade-old computer game, Arma 3. Released in 2013, Arma 3 belongs to a subcategory genre of military-themed videogames whose hallmark is hyperrealistic armed conflict. Weapons use accurate ballistics; soldiers run at human pace; wounds inflict lingering disadvantages. The Prague-based studio behind Arma 3, Bohemia Interactive, is so skilled at making lifelike war scenes that the U.S. Marine Corps once commissioned the company to make a modified version of an earlier game, Operation Flashpoint, for training its troops.