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 (15)
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.
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it." - Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men)
"We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us." -George Orwell
- I am an American Soldier!
Mike,
Thank you for your service to this amazing nation, and for your patriotism, particularly in unpopular times.
However, I do have to say that I have the utmost respect for the men and women who dedicate and sometimes sacrifice their lives in the name of freedom, I simply to not believe that we can allow that respect to provide carte blanche for politicians and politically motivated military officials to manipulate the best interests of the people they have sworn to protect.
Take the war in Iraq for example. Do I believe in it? Yes. But not for the overwhelming reasons that we are involved there. I believe that when a government begins killing its people in the name of ethnic cleansing, or starving people because of their lack of worth, or any such moral injustice, they need to have their government privileges taken away, post-haste. I DON'T support being selective about who we "liberate" by what serves Haliburton's bottom line the best.
And if you believe for a second that our government doesn't play favorites when it comes to being a savior to the weak and a staunch promotor of freedom and democracy around the world, answer me this: How many people actually had to die before it became a media issue so huge that we had to step in and take out Slobodan Milosevic? No oil over there.
How many women, children, innocents have their hands or worse cut off on a minutely basis in the ever changing war torn countries in africa, where we haven't any oil interests either? "We Are The World" was a catchy song, both times, but seriously....like 60% of the continent has AIDS and we're shrugging out shoulders.
On a happy note, I did enjoy A Few Good Men :)
I have so many problems with the idea of this video game that I'm not sure I could coherently explain them all, so I'll just stick to one. The idea of using a game with a "puff of blood" to recruit children is horrific. In real life, when you get hit by a bullet you don't get a "puff of blood" and a sound effect. You can't just get your health bar refilled. It's "fun" when you are sitting in your living room playing the game, but when you actually go out in the real word it rapidly goes from "fun" to "horror."
I also think that there is something wrong with teaching 13 year olds that it is fun to kill. This isn't like Grand Theft Auto, where everyone knows that you shouldn't take that kind of behavior into the real world. This specifically encourages children to develop an attitude that it is enjoyable to kill the other people. It encourages to join the army, so that they can do that in real life. It's not a game about working as a team, or any of the other positive things the military does, it is about learning that killing is fun, and if you join the army, you get to actually kill people in real life.
This would be bad enough if it were aimed at adults, but the fact that it is aimed at children makes me truly ashamed to be American. I don't know what the American military fights for, but it isn't for me or my values, apparently.
I meant "It encourages them to join the army"
Sorry
I actually enjoy the game and I feel that alot of the training aspects in the game relate to actual "soldier experience" in those training atmospheres. The fact that kids play this game as young as 13 is not a travesty... This game does promote teamwork and the "puff of blood" is not the reason people play the game. This is an awesome tool to promote "The strongest army in the world". And, if a teenager is thinking of doing something with their life then the military is a great jump forward. There is nothing wrong with promoting teens or adults in to having pride in their country's armed forces. Only one percent of the American population chooses to defend our country, and our country is defended only by volunteers. Don't pretend that the military is a bad thing... The men and women who serve are some of the most respectable people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I know that you surely have the same respect that I do, but it seems like you're making it out to be the worst thing possible for a teen to consider becoming a soldier.
@Mike - I think this video game goes far astray from simply promoting pride in the nation's armed forces. It's an entirely inappropriate recruiting tool specifically designed to convince teenagers that military service is something that it's not. Someone who is 13 is not ready to consider joining the military, and a video game targeting someone so young and impressionable is wrong. Indeed, there are laws, domestic and international, against recruiting children that age for military service without receiving parental consent -- consent that is not required to register for and play "America's Army."
I'd also strongly challenge the idea that "only one percent of the American population chooses to defend our country." Liberty and freedom and justice can and is defended here and abroad via many, many other avenues and techniques that are non-violent and non-military. As we're learning in Afghanistan and Pakistan, violence as a tool of foreign policy almost always leads to more violence, rather than achieving the ends that those who support military action believe it will. The destruction it leaves behind is far away, and hidden from most Americans. This is made easier by relying on an all-"volunteer" force.
While we see this a bit differently, I'm glad you took a few minutes to comment.
--Bill
Another thing, I believe that if the game had more than just a "puff" of blood there would be many more people commenting on this motion than what you have experienced here. I'm sure that the Army didn't intend for a 13yr old to play this game but, if the Army had made a game that was as violent and realistic as actual battle, I'm sure they would have had a much larger following. Being that this is America and our people complain about every aspect of government, there is one phrase that rings true here... "You can't please them all." If the game was focused more toward the "gory" look of a combat injured soldier people would definitely have a problem. But here are the select few people who "Make a mountain out of a mole hill" or "Blow things out of proportion" to create some type of attention or focus on something that they caught wind of or misconstrued into a different portrait of what is actually a good thing. This game gives actual insight to a civilian in America to actual military training. It is very acurate and does the job that it was set to do. If the government was spending money on a recruiting program that didn't bring record numbers into the service you would actually have a case to dispute. Being that this game does fulfill its intended purpose and does it in an efficient manner, I believe America's Army has hit a "Home Run" with this recruiting tool!
In addition, the military is directed by members of congress and has no say as to where they are set to deploy or what types of missions they will perform in those locations. As it goes, joining the military does not hold a condition stating that you must agree to what "military actions" your country may enter into. It does however state that "-do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me-". Furthermore, any person under the age of 18 must recieve parental consent before being allowed to enter into any branch of the service. Therefore, no persons who are playing this game under the age of 18 will be kidnapped and forced into military slavery. Our country is one of those countries that requires consent to join the military. Consent is not required to play this game or any other game that is deemed to be "age appropriate" by our governing laws as a nation. I believe that sometimes a person should take a step back and a long look at the big picture in order to gain a new aspect. I believe that your argument started out to be against the use of this game as a recruiting tool aimed at teens. But in foresight, I believe that your view is mainly because you disagree with the way our military force is used. This should not be your directive or a means to remove a very beneficial tool for our military. If you disagree with the way our military operates, write your local congressman. If this does not please you, vote someone else into office... That is the beauty of America, right?
I hope that I have given new light to your views.