COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: General
Subliminal Militarization
Adam Elkus, Wiretap
May 5, 2006
The U.S. Army and video game producers are increasingly collaboratingon war simulation games designed to attract a new generation of potential
soldiers.
In the last few years, war simulation video games have enjoyed a boom.
Marketed primarily to teenage boys and twentysomethings but played by
gamers of all ages and sexes, they offer the thrill of the age-old
battle against evil.
Particularly popular are semirealistic action games like "Rainbow Six,"
"Counter-Strike," "Battlefield 1942" and "Medal of Honor," allowing
players to become supersoldiers in historical American battles or fight against
the current bogeymen, Al-Qaida terrorists. They are obsessively detailed in
replicating the experience of battle, minus the more troubling moral
aspects of killing that are inherent in warfare. Unfortunately, they
also fill the gamer's head with an idealized view of war.
These games are in a different league than your typical GI Joe
cartoons. Military shooters provide a deceptive amount of detail, allowing you to
literally see the battlefield through the eyes of a soldier. One can
play with the exact weapons, vehicles, equipment and uniforms of the army in
scenarios that replicate historical conflicts of Vietnam, the Gulf War
and World War II, as well as fictional skirmishes against terrorists and
guerrillas worldwide. The rush of adrenaline is overwhelming. How did
the game designers develop such detailed games? In the answer lies the
problem.
New frontier in military recruitment
At a time of falling military enlistment rates, it is becoming more
difficult to reach the young. Slick advertisements with heavy metal
music and shots of aircraft carriers are not enough to reverse the loss, and
mothers are preventing recruiters from talking to their children. But
the booming industry of video games provides convenient access to America's
youth.
Video games as a whole have experienced a rapid growth in popularity.
Seventy-five percent of American households play computer and video
games. In 2005, 228 million computer and video games were sold: effectively
two games for every American household. The earnings of blockbuster game
titles often rival that of Hollywood films. "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas"
grossed an astonishing $236 million compared to the blockbuster movie
"War of the Worlds," which grossed $234 million in the United States.
Consultants from the various branches of the armed forces are paying
attention and have been involved in the production of these games.
TomDispatch and USA Today reported that the officials from the Army's
Infantry School in Fort Benning, in concert with a joint Army/USC
project
developed the Microsoft Xbox game "Full Spectrum Warrior."
The armed forces also employ simulators to train their soldiers, which
according to National Defense Magazine can sometimes consist of
modified versions of popular games. In the '80s, the tank simulation game
"Battlezone" was altered by military programmers to train Bradley
Fighting Vehicle drivers. In the mid-'90s, the military modified "Doom" for use
in training Marines in squad combat. Since then, the Naval War College, in
Newport, R.I., has worked with Sonalysts Inc. to create more than 500
games. Among them were three combat simulations that Sonalysts
developed for commercial distribution by Electronic Arts of Redwood City, Calif.,
including "Jane's Fleet Command," "688(I)," "Hunter/Killer" and "Sub
Command."
The Army has also developed its own video game, "America's Army."
According to TomDispatch, it was developed with the assistance of such
entertainment and gaming industry stalwarts as Epic Games, the THX Division of
Lucasfilm Ltd., Dolby Laboratories, Lucasfilm Skywalker Sound, GameSpy Industries
and others. It is a free game, available for download on their website
after bypassing many ads for enlistment. By making it free, the Army opened a
second front in the recruitment wars, a beachhead in the home of the
American teenage male. It can be legally downloaded by those as young
as 13; it has been downloaded 16 million times, and there are more than
four million current registered players. It is bundled with gaming magazines
and given away at NASCAR events and state fairs. The Army spent a total of
$7 million designing it, and maintaining the online play option costs it
around $5 million per year.
Rewriting History
Commentators have frequently noted that the Pentagon's control of
coverage during the Gulf War helped the U.S. military avoid the image problem it
experienced during Vietnam. Instead of pictures of dead soldiers,
crying peasants and severed limbs, the viewer saw laser-guided bombs cleanly
hitting their targets in a high-tech spectacle that resembled something
out of a video game. The war was portrayed as a conflict -- despite
abundant evidence to the contrary -- in which no one died who did not deserve
to, an extension of a Saturday morning action cartoon in which the good guys
triumphed cleanly over a mustachioed villain. The message was that
modern war was clean, efficient and fought by experts.
Today's video games present a similar worldview -- you, the brave
marine, armed with high-tech weapons, fight against evil villains who want to
kill you. The battle lines are drawn cleanly. No moral questions are posed,
and nowhere is the psychological reality of taking a life even remotely
considered. No innocent civilians die. The weapons always work like a
dream. Your enemies are evil, but they are stupid and will wait for you
to attack and kill them. When you die, you can return to the Game Over
screen.
There is more to war than strategy and calculated violence. Would a
Vietnam simulator game show the countless villages napalmed by American pilots?
The infamous photo of a naked girl running down the road, screaming for
help? The Buddhists burning themselves to protest the Diem government? The
terror of American soldiers as they are cut to pieces in a foreign land by
guerillas that melt back into the populace? Mothers crying as their
sons come home in caskets? Would a simulator ever show a legless and armless
veteran in a VA hospital?
It is difficult to answer the question of what could truly bring to
life the horrors of war for those who have not experienced them, but video
games are certainly not the answer. No artistic medium has ever come close to
replicating the true sensations of combat, though in film and art there
are many notable attempts. And, in many ways, even violence designed to be
horrific is still completely riveting. Though an antiwar director might
want you to be so shocked that you will turn your head away from the
screen, you will not. In fact, soldiers in the Gulf War, according to
Anthony Swofford's best-selling memoir, Jarhead, used scenes from
antiwar movie "Apocalypse Now" to hype themselves up for combat.
With historical war simulators, the military also has the opportunity
to rewrite history. The teenage gamers pay more attention to simulators
than a boring textbook or teacher. If they play a Vietnam simulator with its
flash and sound effects, the conflict's enormous complexity will not
register. They will remember military conflicts as pure contests of strategy and
force, with none of the external political, moral, historical,
ideological and humanitarian factors involved.
Ends justify any means
For all the talk of violence in shooting games, the real danger is the
semifascist themes inherent in many of them, and the attitudes that
they instill in players. With the notable exception of "Grand Theft Auto,"
the player usually plays a figure of authority that must snuff out some
undesirable. For example, one can get the impression from playing the
mid-90s coin-op shooter "Virtua Cop" that being a police officer
entirely involves pumping lead into endless waves of dark-suited mobsters. To
use a modern example, in "Splinter Cell," the game tells you that, as agent
Sam Fisher, "You alone have the Fifth Freedom: the right to spy, steal,
destroy and assassinate to ensure that American freedoms are protected." A
better slogan for George W. Bush's "War on Terror" could not have been
devised. Sam Fisher clearly would not have any problem torturing an adversary,
so why should you? The message is clear -- the ends justify any means.
The myriad abuses of the "War on Terror" may be a reflection of a
combat force raised on violent video games. According to Gulf War veteran Mary
Spio, now the pop culture editor of One2One Magazine, "What we saw in
the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was the tip of the iceberg -- it was a
glimpse of a generation of war gamers coming of age. [V]ideo games that allow
players to kill real human beings are desensitizing generations of American
society." Douglas Gentile, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa
State University and director of research for the National Institute of Media
and Family, agrees with Spio's sentiments: "It is probably more likely to
be a vicious circle, where increased interest in war leads to playing these
games, which leads to more aggressive feelings and increased negative
stereotypes of other cultures, which just fuels more interest in war."
We can look to the past to see the ultimate effects of this kind of
subtle brainwashing. At the start of World War I, the impressionable young men
of Europe believed that the most noble thing they could do was go to war.
They, along with their parents, believed that wars were clean, and the
coming conflict would only last a few months or a year at most. They
eagerly lined up to do battle with little idea of the reality of war.
Then an entire generation of European men perished in the muddy fields of
France. They perished in brutal warfare that bore no resemblance to the
cherished fantasy of their societies, a fantasy that centered around
notions of noble cavalry charges and pistols at ten paces. Through
games like "America's Army" and its commercial cousins, the Pentagon is
attempting to create a modern version of the noble war fantasy. But
right now American soldiers are dying in Iraq, in a conflict they barely
understand. For them, there is no Game Over screen and no extra life.
Adam Elkus lives in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He has written for
Truthdig, Strawberry Press Magazine, Wanderings and Altar Magazine.
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