ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a reading of The Phantom Pain that short-circuits its initial exploitative lure. In 2013, Hideo Kojima presented the trailer of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which portrayed multiple characters enduring torture and physical violence within the fictional military and political context that, together with its stealth game mechanics, became the franchise signature. The chapter argues that The Phantom Pain trailer instructs the player on the unjust and unreliable nature of interrogation techniques that is then reflected via procedural rhetoric in the game. The interactive character of video games is often identified as the source of the ethical problem with the representations, for it establishes a more direct form of engagement between the object represented and the player. The non-mimetic nature of the button-pressing activity on a physical device critically informs the representation of violent iconography in videogames, as the interpretative activity of meaning-making is faced by countless iterations of player’s performance.
