Episode description

Do video games help explore war? An exhibition at the Imperial War Museum includes Sniper Elite 5, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and a military training simulator. For the 2022 discussion about how we look at warfare past and present Anne McElvoy is joined by writer & broadcaster Louise Blain, retired Colonel Lincoln Jopp, game designer Florent Maurin and IWM curator Chris Cooper.

War Games runs at IWM London until May 2023 and is a free exhibition. Louise Blain presents Radio 3's Sound of Gaming - a monthly show looking at the music written for games.

You can find previous discussions available on BBC Sounds and downloadable as the Arts & Ideas podcast: Former soldier Lincoln Jopp, war reporter Christina Lamb, novelist Elif Shafak and curator Hilary Roberts explore the impact of the words we use to describe conflict in 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011cxv What does it mean to make art to commemorate histories of conflict? Anne McElvoy's talked to the artists Es Devlin and Machiko Weston, Art Fund director Jenny Waldman, chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group Ekow Eshun and Paris Agar from the IWM as Radio 3 joined with the Imperial War Museum for the 2020 Remembrance Debate https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p85j On the Free Thinking programme website is a collection of programmes called Free Thinking on War and Conflict which includes episodes on Odesa Stories; Abdulrazak Gurnah and Margaret McMillan on War in Fact and Fiction; architect Marwa al-Sabouni on Syria: Hope and Poetry

Producer: Torquil MacLeod