War is particularly ubiquitous in video games. From the original Metal Gear to Battlefield: Bad Company to Spec Ops: The Line , it has become one of the most popular backdrops for a long line of games, and the de-facto setting for online multiplayer. It makes sense; after all, video games are so often about conflict resolution, and what type of conflict is more recognizable than war? And there's no more recognizable name in war games than Call of Duty

Since the first game was released in 2003, Call of Duty has grown from a singular game about World War II into one of the most popular franchises in the world. CoD has dropped players into battlefields ranging from occupied France in the 1940s, the mid-2000s Middle East, the front lawn of the White House, and even into outer space. Players have rescued hostages, conducted black ops missions, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and stopped nuclear weapons from striking the continental United States.

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This year, Infinity Ward is rebooting the Modern Warfare series, aiming to make its campaign more realistic. IGN has seen an extended demo of the single-player campaign when it was first revealed, and gone hands-on with its multiplayer component, including its traditional match styles as well as the new Gunfight and “Realism” Mode. It’s here, especially in consideration of “realism,” that I feel the development team has made a problematic choice in its online mode: it uses White Phosphorus as a killstreak reward.

To understand why I think the use of White Phosphorus is a problem, we need to talk about war. Real war — not the stuff of games.

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Content warning: this article contains graphic descriptions of the effects of white phosphorus on the human body, and may be difficult for some to read.

I am a former U.S. Marine. I completed a five-year enlistment, which included multiple deployments in two different theaters of war in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). I've served in multinational environments, bantered with Iraqi merchants, and dined with Pashtun farmers. I've walked patrols through Karmah, driven through the Uzbeen Valley, manned a 240G in Mahmoudiyah, and ran for cover in Kandahar. I've watched rounds impact a foot away from me and fallen asleep with the knowledge a rocket might kill me before I wake. I was wounded in action in May 2004 near Fallujah. I've seen things I can still hardly believe. I have names I'll be looking for whenever we get around to building some memorials.

John Phipps conducting counterinsurgency operations in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in 2009.

Regardless of the rationale behind the variety of wars throughout history, there's one commonality they all share: they are all a tragedy. As a Marine, I tried my best to conduct myself as a humane, professional warrior. No matter who you fight for, your job is to kill the enemy. People were trying to kill me and I, in turn, was trying to kill them. But I also had no desire for anyone to suffer needlessly. I believe in the Laws of War. The battlefield is hellish enough with us already trying our hardest to kill one another. Adherence to the accepted international rules of combat prevent unnecessary suffering, provide guidelines for proportional responses, and define humane treatment of prisoners of war.

There are two realities in war: you're coming home alive, or you're coming home in a box. Period. But one of the absolute worst ways to go is being struck by an incendiary weapon, and if you are hit with an incendiary weapon containing White Phosphorus, it’s even worse. Your end will be slow, agonizing, and tortuous. But just what is White Phosphorus? Why do I feel so strongly about it? Why do I think the specifics around its inclusion in Modern Warfare is misplaced?

“ I don't object to things like WP being examined in games, so long as we depict them as they truly are.

White Phosphorus is a material created from the chemical element Phosphorus, which is used in everyday items ranging from matchbooks to fertilizer — but for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on its use in incendiary weapons. Munitions armed with WP are also used for marking targets and screening movement, but even when not used offensively the results are the same: a WP weapon detonates, particles stick to the skin and catch fire; the adhesive nature of these particles makes stopping the fires particularly difficult, and they continue to burn until deprived of oxygen or consumed, making them among the deadliest incendiary weapons in existence. And it doesn't stop there; as your skin is melting and bubbling, the chemical is absorbed into the body through the burn itself, causing extensive damage to your liver and kidneys, eventually resulting in total organ failure.

Of course, that's not the only way White Phosphorus kills. Breathing the smoke for an extended period will burn you from the inside as it chokes you to death. Even without direct contact, inhaling the fumes can kill you, causing osteonecrosis in your jaw. What this means in layman's terms: the bones of your lower jaw simply putrefy and rot away. You will die extremely painfully as part your head literally starts to rot while you're still alive.

Use of White Phosphorus is heavily regulated by international law. The same provisions of the Geneva Convention that prohibit the use of incendiary weapons against or near civilian areas also applies to WP. There's no rule or law against its use in targeting military installations or personnel, but many consider it to be unacceptable and/or a war crime. Many people have decried its use against the insurgency in Iraq as both a real potential for causing civilian casualties but, politically, a potential narrative that could be used against us through propaganda. The U.S. military itself is split on its use; according to the field manual on the Rule of Land Warfare, the use of these weapons doesn't technically violate international law. However, the ST 100-3 Battle Book used at the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth states "it is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets." Anecdotally, both from my personal perspective and that of the veteran community around me, most abhor its use and do not believe we have any justification for its deployment against ANY target.

White Phosphorus isn't something to be taken lightly. That doesn’t inherently mean it has no place in games, as Spec Ops: The Line showed us with its brutal depiction of the aftermath of a WP strike. Weapons like this and the resulting horror they inflict can be handled with nuance, and respect for the reality around the weapon itself, as well as our history with it. Spec Ops: The Line not only treated WP with gravity and horror, it also depicted the psychological effect it can have on the soldiers responsible for using it when confronted with the results.

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I believe it's perfectly fine to weave a serious narrative about war in video games. But I find Modern Warfare’s use as a killstreak reward a nearsighted glorification of what myself and others consider to be a violation of the laws of armed conflict. Contrary to their overall goals towards realism in its campaign, the multiplayer mode in CoD doesn’t depict the effect White Phosphorus has on the human body in any kind of realistic way -- the developers’ statement in response to their controversial choice to include the weapon actually cited this as a defense. In real life, you don't take mild damage and stagger away, coughing with impaired vision; you scream in agony as you slowly melt while your organs systematically shut down. I don't object to things like WP being examined in games, so long as we depict them as they truly are: a means of causing an extremely painful, slow, and unnecessarily horrific end to a human life.

Other killstreak rewards, such as UAVs, vehicles, radars, and missile strikes are commonplace on the battlefield. I’ve seen every single one of them used in real life. White Phosphorus is on an entirely different scale. Yes, military weapons like gunships and airstrikes are designed to kill. But those are traditional weapons of war not designed to cause undue suffering, and their depiction as portrayed in Modern Warfare is more or less accurate. But the visceral horror of WP is completely lost in multiplayer. Civilian collateral damage isn’t part of the equation there; your K/D ratio is. If you want to tell a story about the horrors of warfare, frenetic multiplayer isn’t the place to do it, especially with one of the more controversial weapons out there.

I don’t believe something as legally and morally questionable as White Phosphorus is appropriate in the very specific way Infinity Ward is applying it here. As someone who's seen first-hand what can happen to the human body in combat, I wish Infinity Ward would give this one a bit more consideration.

John Phipps is a former United States Marine, TakeThis.org Ambassador, and co-hosts Super Deformed Gamescast. You can find him on Twitter at @mistermegative and @officialSDGC