Patterns upon patterns upon patterns

There is a continued understanding from graves to Orwell, that trench warfare was much less focused on killing and instead surviving. More specifically not surviving the enemy, but the wild. I forgot the place, but there was a point where Orwell describes the five things he found most terrifying and worrisome. The list included heat and cigarettes with the least concerning being the enemy. Because the shortage of weapons, the main tool used to fight, which is the main action of war, the game was more psychological. Much of the description mirrors what graves mentions in his book.

I am curious about this from a game design standpoint. If trench warfare would be turned into a game  representative of the experience these men went through, it would look nothing like Call of Duty or other popular multiplayer shooters we think of when we think of "war simulations." The main mechanic would not be shooting, not according to Orwell, who didn't even receive a rifle until he left for the front lines. He even mentioned at one point how he fired so few bullets that to kill a fascist it would take him, at that rate, 20 years.

I understand no one very much cares about this from a game perspective, (nerd alert) but I also think it's interesting to note how this shifts our cultured idea of what we think war is compared to what war actually manifests as. The question of why our media represents war as a gruesome bloody landscape of perpetual batting and fighting and shooting and killing is important to raise. What is trying to be conveyed here? That war is "fun" or "adventuresome" or "hearty" "manly"? That you should join?

I am planning to write my paper from a game studies perspective, probing into the idea of whether war can be considered a game on the theoretical level and how media representations create the illusion of what war is for propaganda purposes. I think it's important to understand how trauma affects a person (whether direct like Orwell or graves or indirect like balakian)  and how that ties into the system of war itself. Orwell gives us yet another perspective of war as a system being played by political parties and using people as pawns in their dealings, whether for an ultimate good or evil, the game is still being played by both sides.