WHOEVER SAID PLAYING VIDEO GAMES was a non-educational, mind-numbing activity meant to divert you from more worthwhile pursuits such as, say, keeping up with current events? Not Kuma Reality Games, a New York City software company, whose website allows you to download and participate in reenactments of battles that actually occurred in the war on terror. “Just weeks after a military event occurs . . . Kuma creates a reenactment of the conflict, using advanced 3-D gaming tools, and delivers the mission to a subscriber’s computer,” the site proclaims. These missions place you on battlefields mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, where you are forced to seek out and demolish your enemy with the click of your mouse.

Kuma was founded two years ago and now boasts a total of 23 online missions. Its first two–“Uday and Qusay’s Last Stand” and “Operation Anaconda”–became available for download on March 31, 2004. “Uday and Qusay’s Last Stand” is a two-part mission that allows players to reenact what the 101st Airborne and Special Forces had to do to take down Saddam’s sons. Part one of the mission consists of clearing the surrounding area of opposing forces, while part two allows you to lay siege to the building, capturing or killing the Hussein brothers. “Operation Anaconda” portrays a March 2, 2002, battle in which allied forces sought to crush remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the Shah-i-Kot Mountains near Gardez, Afghanistan. Yet another mission portrays the capture of Saddam Hussein.