Photo: Activision
See, mom? Video games are a good thing sometimes.
So not only do gamers last longer in bed, but they apparently help you survive the chaos of war. Well, at least Call of Duty helped gamer John Duttenhofer. Duttenhofer, an avid gamer, decided that it was time to quit his job in April 2017 and head on over to Syria to fight ISIS. And for the next four months the 24-year-old did just that.
Duttenhofer fought the terrorists alongside the Kurdish People’s Protection Units as they fought to get rid of ISIS from Raqqa, the caliphate’s de-facto capital, a mission that was successful as the people were finally liberated last October. And Duttenhofer is claiming that he was able to survive and fight ISIS after playing Call of Duty 13 hours a day. And all of this playing was enough for him to understand weapons and basic combat skills.
Duttenhofer indicated he was still every inch the gamer, as he would play Dungeons & Dragons during his downtime in Syria—but it was Call of Duty that prepared him for his mission. The game gave him basic lessons in weaponry and survival skills.
That said, the Daily Mail reports he didn’t end up killing any ISIS members—as far as he knew. He did see comrades take out enemy fighters, including his best friend on the battlefield, a Briton named Jac Holmes. Regarding the death of fanatical enemy fighters, Duttenhofer reportedly said, “I had no guilt about it.” To Duttenhofer, ISIS is “a group worse than the Nazis.” The terrorists “want to live the dark ages out again,” he continued, “and I didn’t want to live in a world with them.”
“Video games prepared me in a way for knowing strategies and how not to get killed, like how to use cover and not to stand in the open,” Duttenhofer says. “I don’t think you can really draw a comparison between the mental state of mind of playing a game and going out and potentially losing your life. In a game you will get shot and you quickly learn if you are killed, but in real life you just die.”
First off, kudos to Dutterhofer for going out there and risking his life to protect us all, and kudos to Call of Duty for apparently preparing men and women for war. And now to find out what Pac-Man has prepared me for.
