About three years ago I interviewed a group of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan about gaming on the battlefield. Here were three men, fully trained soldiers, trained in combat, who spent most of their spare time LANing Modern Warfare on their laptops.

“Why do you guys spend so much of your time,” I began, tactfully, “playing a video game that attempts to replicate the kind of real, terrible violence you guys have to deal with day in and day out?”

Their response was uniform and shocking.

They laughed at me.