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Iraq War Veterans Protest America's Army Title
Via GamePolitics, a story reported by the St. Lois Post-Dispatch of frustrated war veterans protesting America's Army . Roughly 100 veterans of the Iraq war marched near an elaborate demonstration of the military-funded game, outside of an expo center in Missouri. Their shouts of 'war is not a game' must have contrasted sharply with the elaborate simulator the Army had set up to publicize their (already very popular) FPS title.
FTA:
One onlooker told the protesters they should support their country. Another passer-by snapped back at him: "That's exactly what she's doing."
That might be the most embiggening thing about the entire episode... that people (who are not just typing it on their blog) are starting to realize that.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Yeah, but it's just a free game. If they added robot then they could probably get money for it.
Never underestimate the selling power of Nazi robots, guys. That's the first thing they taught me in business school.
After all, as the Commandant of the great military academy Rommelwood told his graduating class: The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
It's my position, and one that I see echoed in many online communities, that games don't impact actual behavior. That laws seeking to limit or restrict games based on content are out of line. That lawsuits blaming violence on games are completely out of line. So - while I understand the emotions driving these folks, from a logical stand point, I think they are wasting their time and the army is wasting money.
If someone would like to argue that the game preps youth for war and predisposes them to join the army, then they would seem to be arguing that gta prepares and predisposes players to crime and violence, etc.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
They're well within their rights to protest the game as far as I'm concerned, the VA and/or local commanders may have other views. I however, do not agree with them and believe part of making an informed decision about joining the military should not in the least be influenced by playing an "Army Simulation". Get information from every source you can about joining BEFORE your sign up, choose a path that suits you and your talents and go from there. War is not a game, it's not a joke, but it exists regardless of whether you want it to or not. The game exists and whether or not it is designed to be a "simulator" which with today's technology could only loosely be called a "simulation", or just a game for fun's sake, is beside point. I say let it go...
Yeah, but we can download it with BitTorrent. That makes it feel like stealing. Comcast will still screw with our connection.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Any time America's Army comes up, I always think about how insane it is that on the one hand many people and politicians in the U.S. are hysterical about video games supposedly causing violent behavior, while at the same time I hear no real objections from these people to their tax dollars being used to develop a game whose explicit point, AFAIK, is to persuade kids to take part in actual violence (by becoming soldiers).
I am not a pacifist, and I don't object to people serving in the military. My father served in the military and so did his father. I think that, whatever the realities, there are some good, noble reasons to become a soldier. I just don't think that "killing people is fun" is one of them.
I also don't really think (in the absence of convincing evidence) that video games generally lead to violent behavior. I do think, though, that a game put out by the Army that touts its realism can shape the ideas of what combat is like in impressionable minds, so I definitely have an ethical problem with them using it as part of a recruiting effort with people who are just coming into adulthood.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
The military is, at the very least, being disingenuous and misleading when it advertises and recruits. Recall the old National Guard slogan? No? Probably because they stopped using it... "One weekend a month, two weeks a year." Sounds like a sweet deal "Come on, the National Guard doesn't do shit! At best you work a couple months and get paid well!" It was the NG's big selling point in advertisements and television for years. That was until the Iraq war when the National Guard was required to stay for excessive and extended tours of duty... soon it wasn't enough to convince people that the "Easy" National Guard was just a couple months of training and work.
Absolutely, the military doesn't LIE and it spells out exactly what you may potentially be asked to do... but they're very good at using semantics to mislead people. In this case it is a Kickass(tm) action game meant to entice children to join the military.
According to this ad for the army, the army seems to think that war is just another game on another level. sickening.
And Zombies. And Ninjas. And of course Pirates!
Just think of the possibilities!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A random member of the public told AN IRAQ WAR VETERAN to support his country?
It's unethical because it is a lie.
In this simulation (I had a chance to play it because I used to work where they designed it.), the players are veritably invincible. The only thing realistic about it is that they are ambushed by a terrorist force of surprising size and ferocity. IEDs are blowing up all over and no players get hurt or die in any way. Also, these HMVs that you are riding in are apparently made of duranium alloy and surrounded in a force field, because the HMVs were not even affected by nearly constant rocket fire.
It supports the idea that our Army is invincible and if you join it, you will be, too. That is why it is unethical.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Next time some senator wants to censor games, how about sending him a copy of AA and ask him for a comment?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"America's Zombie Ninja Pirate Army?"
Oh, man. I'd buy two copies of that and throw one of them at Jack Thompson.
> Of course when there is a war you're expected to go fight.
Forever. Until you die or go crazy. None of this "limited tours of duty" crap that we did with WW2, no sir. It's Warhammer 40K in the corps: life is war, war is life, venerate the immortal emperor.
That's what joining the army now means. Army Strong means huddling in a corner when someone drops a book behind you.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I worked for the America's Army team when they were located at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. I wanted to get some more game industry experience on my resume and it was the only local job of its nature. It was a cool bunch of people working on the game, your typical bunch of gamers and artists. The only major difference was that we were all working on a piece of major recruitment propaganda for the Pentagon.
You had these guys in military uniforms talking about how great it was that this game saves them hundreds of millions of dollars in recruitment costs. How it has gotten millions of downloads and been very successful in weeding out people who sign up for service without knowing what they are getting into. Instead you get guys like FPS Doug who might be thinking "hey, war is just like FPS, so why not sign up for the military and get paid to goto college!"
After two weeks I couldn't take it anymore. The job was great, the environment was great, the people were friendly, and the product was encouraging young Americans to sign their lives away and be sent off to Iraq. It bothered me too much so I staged my own little protest, I just walked out of the office and never went back. Not like I was crucial to the team, but I didn't want to have something on my resume which I completely morally objected to.
The WW2 generation and their children have a sickening level of governmental trust. I heard the "we are at war" line from some old guy in the grocery store, but we are NOT AT WAR. The playtime in Iraq police action wasn't important enough to merit a declaration of war from Congress, nor a draft! I dunno about you, but I don't think we really need to be in Iraq. We should have kept in Afghanistan and found Osama, even if we did have to invade our 'allies' the Saudies.
Blar.
Really? Have you been in the military and done basic training?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...And ask for his comments, Florida anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson took a moment to share his views with us:
"This is not a situation in where the ESRB will be blind-sided by hidden or embedded content. This game promotes the killing of innocent people.
The goal is to make it such a negative thing that the retailers won't carry it. This thing hasn't really reached critical mass as a public relations problem yet; that's what I'm trying to do.
Towards that goal, I have half a mind to sue the Department of Defense and get this whole thing scrapped."
On a related note, 96% of the 1081 people polled agreed with Mr. Thompson. As one person stated: "Of course it's obvious, Jack Thompson has half a mind."
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
As evil bender once said:
Hey Sexy Mama, Wanna Kill All Humans?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
America's Zombie Jesus Army?
I got nothin'
If they start releasing games that have the same controls and abilities of UAVs and armed ground robots like Talon Swords, think of what they will have. Kids start training in elementary school, by the time they turn 16 they could be ridiculously skilled with the use of remote operated war machines. Heck, the upgrades for the machines could well come from the feed back from the kids playing the game. It could be very like the end of "Ender's Game" real battles could be remotely won by kids thinking of it as playing a tournament.
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http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=1
We are all just people.
This is kind of an aside; just recollecting what's been floating though my mind for the last few days. It seems to me that the leadership of the United States of America is losing it's way. As a frightening parallel in history, in Germany the Nazis rose to power by gradually placing more and more control into the hands of selected capitalists. We called it Fascism then. The same can be seen in the USA today, war profiteering is being funneled into the wealth of those who made the decision to war in the first place! An old-boys network such as this sadly is a fact of life but what strengthens the parallel between the Nazis and the current USA is that the leadership is also paying less heed to the wishes of the people they claim to represent. I hope that those who are ignorant of history don't drag the rest of us through it. Again.
If you read a book called Earth by David Brin, he describes his vision of the near future as basically including a war where the bankers and anyone on their records are shot - cleansing the parasitism from societies fabric.
What do you think? Because in the age of Information you can make a difference!
Shh.
In Clinton's defence how many people would turn down about the most prestigous scholarship there is to serve as a drafted grunt in a war in South East Asia that was increasingly looking as if it had nothing to do with the USA? Actually being in the forces and going AWOL for months is a different story to refusing to enlist for a legitimate reason.
The interesting thing is, that my experience with the Greatest Generation with regards to the Iraq War would be one of extreme suspect. They've seen real war -- a war of national survival, and they've seen the actions and heard the arguments from this adminstration and their backers and they're disturbed by it.
Make no mistake that there is a war on, but you're right to say that the country is not "at war." A country can not be on a war footing when only 1% (if that) of the population is fighting and when there's no sacrifice on the homefront.
Good lord! At least somebody will "cut them some slack" for exercising their First Amendment rights!
You think these soldiers have been misled by the liberal media just because they oppose the war? They saw the war. You didn't. My friend Jim, 25, was a medic in Falluja. He is against the war. He came back and his hair was gray, and he is 25. I think that gives him more than the right to have any opinion he wants.
Anecdotes aside, even if I disagree with someone who is pro-war, I can at least argue with them because I think they are wrong, giving them some credit for coming to their own views through experience or rationale...no matter how stupid I think the conclusions are. So "pray" they change their minds about it, wow. Sounds like you are ashamed of them for having minds in the first place.
Think about your argument: the big thing I hear from pro-war people with the "support our troops" line was that after Vietnam, troops came home and were spit on by anti-war people; now troops come back from Iraq and are given crap by pro-war people? And simultaneously told they need to "support the troops" by people who didn't even serve? Unbelievable.
i am the opposite of tom_good, i am the XOR of ]=9fÆ"ÝÕ and ÖÆ\KF, i am 746F6D5F6576696C00.