While the explosion of videogames as a global entertainment medium has been explored in International Relations (IR) and associated fields in some detail in recent years, the proliferation of games in military settings remains under-researched. This paper examines the uses to which US military veterans put videogames following service, showing that they play an important role in healing and rehabilitation processes through community building, therapeutic relief, and suicide prevention. Drawing in detail on interviews conducted with veterans and support workers between 2017 and 2019, the paper shows that grassroots gaming groups promote forms of communication, connectivity, and community which the military's stigmatizing reintegration and mental health programs often do not. The core argument developed is that while they do not embrace an antimilitarist ethos, through their promotion of mental and physical recovery, veterans’ gaming groups can be read as important sites of everyday resistance to the violences enacted by the US military on its personnel. Unsettling critical scholarly assumptions about what resistance looks like, and where it takes place, the paper ultimately demonstrates that it is possible to challenge the embodied alienations of militarism from within.

中文翻译：

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“电子游戏拯救了我的生命”：美国退伍军人的日常抵抗和鲁迪克恢复

尽管近年来国际关系 (IR) 和相关领域已经对电子游戏作为全球娱乐媒体的爆炸式增长进行了一些详细的探索，但游戏在军事环境中的扩散仍然没有得到充分研究。本文研究了美国退伍军人在服役后使用电子游戏的用途，表明它们通过社区建设、治疗缓解和自杀预防在康复和康复过程中发挥着重要作用。该论文详细借鉴了 2017 年至 2019 年间对退伍军人和支持人员进行的采访，表明草根游戏团体促进了军队污名化的重返社会和心理健康计划通常没有的沟通、联系和社区形式。提出的核心论点是，虽然他们不接受反军国主义精神，但通过促进身心康复，退伍军人的游戏团体可以被视为日常抵抗美军对其人员实施的暴力行为的重要场所。关于抵抗是什么样子以及发生在哪里的令人不安的批判性学术假设，该论文最终表明，从内部挑战军国主义的具体异化是可能的。