Multimedia Lecture and Booksigning by Ed Halter

New York-based writer and media programmer Ed Halter is a film critic for The Village Voice and a frequent contributor to other publications, including Kunstforum, Filmmaker, and Vice.

In a multimedia lecture based on his book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games, Ed Halter explores the intricate relationships between the video game industry and American military culture, from wargaming's roots in ancient civilizations, through the Cold War-era development of computing for battle, to a recent crop of Pentagon-funded shoot-'em-ups and commercial video games based on real wars. With high-tech weapons and scenarios ripped from the headlines, games offer an important case study in the militarization of popular culture, even as new possibilities emerge to use games for antiwar activism and critique. Examining U.S. military projects like America's Army and Full Spectrum Warrior, commercial games from Battlezone to Conflict: Desert Storm, as well as mods, artworks, and homebrewed games, Halter offers a political history of the video game and a powerful argument about its role in the way Americans have come to think about war.