Pentagon Sells War To Children As A Game To Entice Them To Join

[bigtree]

Army's War Game Recruits Kids
by Joan Ryan - Published on Thursday, September 23, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Your kids can download the "America's Army'' video game for free. Well, it is free for them. You have already paid for it with your tax dollars. In the game, kids get to kill people with cool weapons that look and respond like the real things. They get to ambush terrorists and, when caught in a firefight, they can hear bullets whistle past their ears and even hear the shell casings from their M-16s clatter onto the concrete floor.

The only thing better would be an actual war with actual weapons!

Which is pretty much how the Army hopes your kids will respond.

"America's Army''(http://www.americasarmy.com/) is one of the U.S. Army's most popular and effective recruiting tools -- conceived, designed and distributed free to reach the 13- to 21-year-old crowd. It is a brilliant marketing tactic. Unlike 30-second TV ads, the game is what the ad industry calls "sticky'' advertising: Consumers are engaged for much longer periods than with traditional commercials and ads.

The game and its upgrades have been downloaded more than 16 million times since the original version was released to strong acclaim in the gaming world two years ago. It comes bundled in gaming magazines. It is given away at NASCAR events and state fairs. Since the game's release, players have completed 600 million missions during 60 million playing hours. There are more than 4 million current registered players, making it the No. 1 on-line action game.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0923-11.htm


From Army site:

Clan Mercenaries Recruitment-
"Clan Mercenaries is currently recruiting. We are looking for active players who want to compete and have fun as well."
http://www.americasarmy.com/events/event_detail.php?id=1348


What's Next? Install a Dictator Game? Prison Torture Game? Bomb a Village Game? Unbelievable Madness. What have we become under these militaristic dinosaurs?

[whistle]

1. The pentagon practically owns the History Channel....

...tons of war documentaries their for young impressionable minds

[rockymountaindem]

4. I hardly think that's going to make people clamor to join the army.

Shows like "The Color of War", with letters home talking about people being blown apart, living with lice all over you, seeing your friends die... yeah, it's about war, but I don't think it's going to cause people to line up outside the recruiting station.

[punpirate]

2. Here's the kicker to all this...

... the Army has spent over $7 million developing and issuing this game, not to mention the cost of keeping the online version going.

From this, the Army estimates they will generate about 400 recruits--close to $20K per recruit, and I think those estimates come from before the time that recruiting and re-enlistments went sour due to Iraq.

[whistle]

5. Uhmmm $7million in development costs and how much is the game...

..selling for? It this a kind of neo-con version of the Hitler Youth movement in Nazi Germany?

<edit> I just saw that this game is free and signing onto the site I see there are 4,019,492 registered players/members. That's a pretty good share of 13 to 21 year olds!

[punpirate]

6. It's not sold...

... it's free, as yet one more recruiting tool.

Cheers.

[Kolesar]

3. link to that guy getting his head cut off in Iraq

That'll give them realism!!!