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.

Comments

Good news, everyone!

[Cervantes]

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.

Games and Reality

[stoolpigeon]

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.

Re:Games and Reality

[Chris Burke]

Well, to briefly restate a position I've written here before -- I don't believe that video games affect the conceptually related real-life behavior, unless that person is mentally equating the game with the real-life behavior. In the case of someone who becomes violent playing GTA, that mental equation is a result of mental instability and derangement, which is basically a requirement for equating stealing cars and shooting cops in GTA with doing so in real life. If you can't separate reality from fantasy, then yes I do believe a game could affect your real life behavior, but that's the fault of whatever caused the mental deficiency in the first place, not the game.

By the same token, sometimes we create such a connection on purpose. The difference between a military-style video game and a military training simulator isn't so much accuracy and detail. The difference is that when practicing on a training simulator you are deliberately, explicitly, and with the support of your superiors trying to equate the simulated action with its real-life counterpart. I think it's worth noting that even when conflating games with real life in order to train someone to kill is the explicit goal, still a large portion of soldiers find that when push comes to shove and they're faced with the actual chance to shoot someone that they are unable to pull the trigger. Yet that portion is much smaller than before we started training soldiers to be comfortable shooting a person, starting back when we replaced normal firing range targets with person-shaped ones.

Now what about America's Army? While it isn't an explicit combat trainer, it is a game called "America's Army" put out by the U.S. Army itself. It's not just any video game, it's official advertising for the Army, their P.R. for what being in the Army is like and what kind of exciting things you'll be able to do. Look at how in the game no matter which team you are on, your side is always the U.S. Army and the other side is the evil terrorists.

What I'm saying is that AA has an implicit reality claim intended to create a connection between the game and reality. It is implicitly a brochure for what you can experience in the Army, going to foreign lands and shooting the "bad guys" for the sake of your country. The Army wants you to form a connection between the game and the real-life choice of joining the Army.

It certainly isn't the same as explicit military training simulators, and I doubt any peacenik nerd playing AA for fun is going to rush out to join the military, or much less so run out and buy a gun to start shooting people. I'm just saying that there is a definite connection between the game and reality that doesn't exist in other games and thus causes more of an effect on people. BF1942 is in no way ever presented as showing how you could be a WWII soldier. GTA has no connection to real-life crime outside of the minds of the deranged. Yet if the next sandbox/crime game were to be produced by the mafia for purposes of recruitment, then I do think you would see a much stronger connection between the game and real-life crime.

Long story short: unlike other games, America's Army is designed to make you think about the real-life Army while playing the game, because otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for it to exist.

Re:Games and Reality

[Fallen Kell]

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. Actually I would argue that the "America's Army" game preps youths for war and does prep them to possibly join the army. Anyone who has played the game and gone through the "basic training", they get a fairly good idea of what to expect at real basic training. In other words classes on identifying dangers, targets, vehicles, friend and foe and classes on basic medical procedures that might just save your life or the life of someone else. It lets you see what some of the courses are like that you will need to be able to physically tackle, and how the gun qualification and sniper qualification systems actually work (you won't get to be trained as a sniper unless you already are proficient with the weapons and can shoot fairly well to begin with, so if it is your life's dream to be a sniper in the Army, well, you better go and practice before you join up, because you will not get the training unless you can already shoot very well to begin with). This is what the game can attempt to simulate.

Now does "Grand Theft Auto" train people to be a good car thief? Hell NO!. Now it COULD, however that would include teaching you how to bypass car alarms, pick locks, hot wire the ignition circuits, get past fuel line cut-off mechanisms, economics of the black market, what cars and car parts are currently worth, how to easily spot and recognize potential easy targets. But, it doesn't do that. It just lets you run around and get in the car and hit a button and you have stolen it, doesn't let you know how to actually do that stealing, which I believe is the reason why the game is fun to play, not tedious and hard work. I mean, if you had to know how to by-pass a proximity based keyless entry and ignition system for a car in the game by needing to either get and obtain (or make) a fake master key or intercept someone's key's code and clone it with another device, well, you should be out working as either a security expert at one of the said car manufacturers or something else, but you wouldn't be playing a time consuming game...

I would say that the shuttle astronauts play "video games" as well. Simulators can and are "games" in a sense. Heck go to any game store/website and there will usually be a category of games called "simulator". These simulate an environment and actually can teach the players important things. The more realistic the simulator (not just realistic graphics, but realistic physics, realistic environmental interactions), the more that the person using the simulator can actually learn. This is why airlines and aircraft manufacturers create "simulators" for their new planes and designed to train their pilots before they even enter a real plane. In fact, they create the simulator "before" they even build the first prototype and have pilots test things out and tweak things while in the design stage (i.e. moving a control to a different location, changing which information is located on what display, changing the orientation of a switch or knob, or control stick, moving a petal, etc., etc.).

They're Within Their Rights

[$lingBlade]

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...

Re:They're Within Their Rights

[DragonWriter]

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.

It is, in fact, designed to be a recruiting tool (or extended advertisement), more than a simulation for the sake of accuracy or a game for the sake of entertainment.

AA vs. Real Violence

[internic]

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.

Jack Thompson weighs in

[meglon]

...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."

Re:America's Army

[Original Replica]

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.

http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=12 2

Re:The Fuck?

[Chris Burke]

Well, as a Bush supporter, I see it as the opposite. Democrats, or more accurately, the left wing, have convinced their followers that opposing America is somehow patriotic.

And since what they're actually opposing are the policies of the President, you have proven that Bush supporters have been convinced that opposing George Bush is the same as opposing America, and that supporting George Bush is supporting America.

Just like every time in the last six years somebody has said "support our troops!" what they actually meant is "stop questioning George Bush!"

Here's a hint: George W. Bush is not America. If I'm against how Bush's policies because they are ruining America, it's because I'm for America. If I'm against how Bush is wasting our soldiers' lives, it's because I'm deeply concerned about our troops.

Oh, and I think the fact that AA is a recruiting tool disguised as a game is part of their complaint.