The virtual and the real; war films, video games and the Imperial War Museum

In 2022, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London opened War Games, an exhibition that explored the stories of war and conflict told in a diverse selection of video games from the 1980s to the present. This paper expands upon some of the exhibition’s themes; video games’ shared history with war, and with other screen-based media, and the tensions that exist in any attempt to render the experience of war on screen. In discussing the games featured in IWM’s exhibition, this paper seeks to reflect the diversity of games’ approaches to war, and to advocate scholars’ continuing engagement with a medium capable of shaping and reflecting our feelings about conflict and its aftermath.