Estimates put the civilian cost of the War in Iraq at well over 100,000. With excess deaths thanks to increased lawlessness, plus degraded infrastructure and healthcare, that number is dramatically higher. Upper estimates for civilians killed in the War in Afghanistan are in the tens of thousands.

The Middle East is not a playground. You can ask the families of the men and women who've been returned to their countries of origin in a box with their national flag draped over it.This is not about politics. However you feel about the conflict overseas there is a human cost; that much is clear. It's a situation with a certain degree of gravity to it. It's not really the perfect backdrop for an advertising campaign. At all.Except if you're a popular gaming headset manufacturer.To demonstrate that its audio systems "take you there" the New Zealand branch of said headset company is taking a 24-year-old Kiwi gamer to a real warzone: Iraq."Gamers play in virtual warzones every day and night, and they want the immersive feeling of combat so we thought we'd take that experience one step further," said a spokesperson for the company. "The whole project has been an experience. Though there was a huge amount of planning it's fair to say the journey proved... interesting."War is not a game. The Middle East is not a theme park you can take everyday schmucks to just so they can see how the reality of devastating conflict compares to their video games. Having a gamer visit the Middle East as a means to spruik some headphones simply trivialises the entire situation. The journey proved interesting? Are you sure you didn't mean depressing?Real warzones and virtual warzones are nothing alike. Real war is a deadly serious business. Real war devastates local populations. For the men and women who choose to serve in the armed forces it's a dangerous job filled with risks they acknowledge and accept. Virtual war, in the likes of today's most popular first-person shooters, is make-believe. It's a mere hop, skip and jump from running around the backyard with your index fingers outstretched yelling BLAM and hoping your kid brother will play along and fall down. It's pretend. It's a game.The bodycount from the conflicts in the Middle East continues to rise for all parties involved. The civilian death tolls, as we mentioned above, are obscene, and you can add thousands of KIA from the coalition forces present in the region (nearly 5000 in Iraq and almost 3000 in Afghanistan). For New Zealanders specifically, it's only been a few months since two NZ SAS operators were killed in action in Afghanistan within six weeks of each other. Corporal Doug Grant was killed in Kabul in August, leaving behind a wife, a daughter, 7, and son, 5. Lance Corporal Leon Smith, the first medic to treat Grant before his death, was killed the following month. That the ad agency behind this stunt, Droga5 New Zealand, has organised to take a gamer to the Middle East to play soldier in the aftermath of some very real and very crystal examples of just how profoundly uncompromising war can be is nothing short of baffling.Of course, each piece of PR this gets – positive or negative – will only serve to make the whole stinking exercise worth it. It's why we haven't named the product involved.It's not appropriate to exploit real war to flog a line of video game headsets. It's that simple.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can track him viaor chat to him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia