End 'America's Army' Funding
By Bill Shein
February 19, 2010
War is many things, but it’s certainly not a game. That’s why we can’t allow a violent video game – designed by the Pentagon specifically for children as young as 13 years old – to be used as a military recruitment tool.
Over the last decade, the U.S. Army has spent more than $33 million to develop, launch, and market an online, multiplayer, “first-person shooter” game called “America’s Army.” It can be downloaded for free by anyone 13 or older. It’s also available for Xbox and PlayStation. Launched in 2002, it’s now in its third major release.
Like other violent video games, America’s Army boasts an “immersive” experience, featuring highly “realistic” imagery of military operations, “realistic” sounds of weapons, and “realistic” missions against a digital enemy known as “OpFor,” or “opposition force.”
A Gamespot.com review praises audio that “helps you feel like you’re really in the middle of brutal firefights.” Which, of course, you’re not. Another review gushed over the way players are wounded and killed: “It’s pretty realistic – you take one or two shots and you go limp, you take one more and you’re done.”
How do we know what was spent to create America’s Army? It took a Freedom of Information Act request by Gamespot.com to unearth the budget. But the Army claims that releasing full details would be “damaging to the U.S. Army’s position in the video-game industry.”
The Army has a “position” in the video-game industry?
The Pentagon points out that the game includes “training” exercises that must be completed before entering “combat operations.” The training highlights teamwork, leadership, and following rules of engagement – components, it says, of real-life military training.
To its credit, the Army is open about the game’s recruitment goals. The game’s Web site features many links to goarmy.com. It also includes sections about army careers and profiles of soldiers under the heading “Real Heroes” – seamlessly merging “fun,” video-game fiction with real-life soldiering.
In testimony before Congress, the Army has boasted that America’s Army is its most effective recruitment tool. A survey at Fort Benning conducted by the game’s developers found that fully 60 percent of new recruits played the game at least five times a week. Four percent said they enlisted specifically because of the game.
And a 2008 MIT study found that “30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined.”
At present, the game has nearly 10 million registered users. America’s Army tournaments are held regularly online and around the country. To participate, sometimes you have to contact your local recruiting office, as was the case with a contest in Odessa, Texas, earlier this month.
America’s Army is rated “Teen” for “blood and violence.” Yet there’s no mention of real war or violence on americasarmy.com. The puffs of “blood” in the game aren’t real. Instead, gamers are told that in the military, “You will discover a life filled with adventure and meet other smart, motivated people like you.”
The bottom line? To penetrate youth culture and boost enlistment, the Pentagon has merged entertainment with war in a highly sophisticated way. But as noted in a devastating ACLU report in 2008, America’s Army violates the U.N. Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child – which the U.S. Senate ratified in 2002.
Among other responsibilities, the Optional Protocol requires that any recruitment of a child under 17 take place only with the approval of a parent or guardian. Yet parental consent in not required to play America’s Army. This is one of many reasons that citizens and parents must demand that Congress close down this project.
Of course, that’s unlikely. Why? Because it was Congress, in 1999, that called on the military to find “aggressive, innovative experiments” to increase enlistments.
Mission accomplished. But at what cost?
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Bill Shein longs for the simple, long-ago pleasures of Pong.
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Reader Comments (7)
Come on, Bill. Just because Grand Theft Auto and Mafia Wars doesn't compile statistics on recruits you are singling out the Army? If you condemn one you have to condemn them all. The fact is there are millions of sources of undesireable values being fed to our kids while we stand by. At least this one has the defense of our country as the goal. My stance, again is to teach your children the values you hold dear, show them how to critically analyze the input in their lives and trust they will make the choices that coincide with their consciences.
BTW I love Pong.
Thanks for the comments, Peggy.
The other games you cite weren't designed to be recruiting tools, aimed at children as young as 13. So I'd say those games aren't relevant -- except to say, as I often have, that violent video games, particularly Call of Duty and that ilk, are a dark sign of our times. Our culture is soaked in violent "entertainment," which is one of the things that makes the creation and continued use of "America's Army" so troubling.
Note that the Army has said that it carefully calibrated the level of blood and violence to ensure that "America's Army" recieved a "Teen" rating. Why? Because if it received a "Mature" rating, like Call of Duty, it would not be able to market it to 13 year olds. That's why they refer to "puffs of blood" when someone is killed in the game, compared to the spurting blood of other violent games. This fact alone damns the whole enterprise -- the goal is clearly to engage young teenage children in a "game" that is explicitly designed to increase the number of people who enlist with the armed forces.
Also, I can't agree that the "defense of our country as the goal" makes the development and marketing of "America's Army" acceptable. It's clearly not. This project violates a host of international agreements -- we are properly outraged at the use of child soldiers abroad, and we should be similarly outraged that children are being targeted for recruitment in the United States at only 13 years old.
Unfortunately, Congress continues to overlook and ignore a variety of recruitment activities that are on a scale from illegal to unconscionable. I believe that's another sign of how the military -- and the use of violence -- has become part of the fabric of our society and culture, to the point that we barely notice, and therefore accept it without question. And no doubt why permanent war is now our ever-present companion.
I also continue to strongly agree with you about helping make sure our kids are equipped to see these kinds of things for what they are. It's not easy, and this example shows why: The Army has set out, in this case, to slip between parents and their children.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment!
P.S. Pong rules! (I linked above to a little online Pong game you can play. There are others out there, too.)
@Peggy: Anyone who believes that the purpose of the American military is "the defense of [the] country" doesn't understand much about the bloodsoaked American corporatist empire. To understand why America needs an endless supply of recruits, start by reading this.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175204/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_america%27s_shadowy_base_world/
oops - try this shortened link:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175204/
Do you object to the NBA or NFL recruiting at 13? Or perhaps the local fire department? To equate a training tool like America's Army to training and employing child soldiers is a giant leap. Besides who is going to defend your not so skinny butt when the Real bad guys want to make you convert or be killed?
There really are bad people out there that are making it a goal in life to end your way of life. If you were in Poland in 1938, I am sure you would be spouting the same line. "Why cant we all just get along?" Thank God for the US military, you have a problem with what they do, take it to the folks that issue the marching orders.
I have to agree with Peggy as far as singling out goes. While it is a bit disturbing that the Army took a step further into the macabre by actually launching a program of study to create a video game designed to recruit young people as well as desensitize them to killing, I would submit that they had not exactly entered into a virgin market. It seems like every single form of media that kids are exposed to anymore lends itself to rampant sexuality and violence. The only thing that seems to be changing to that end is our blind eye to the continued lowering of the "age of consent" to which we allow these kids exposure.
All of that said, saying the Army is stepping out of bounds by producing a video game is kind of like chastising one catholic priest for squeezing one adolescent buttcheek. Is it wrong? Oh, yes. Yes it is. But when you consider the grand scope of wrongness that's going on, you're effectively majoring in minors.