War: The RPG

Wagner James Au of Salon offers a surprisingly fawning article on the Army's use of an online computer game called America's Army as a recruitment tool.

The game has become so popular with U.S. troops and Pentagon brass, says Lt. Colonel Wardynski, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis and the man who initially conceived it, that there's even talk of shipping computers to Afghanistan, so soldiers can play it from there.

Am I the only one who finds this a little disturbing? I play these games. I have friends who play these games. I've seen people who claim to be adults giggle with glee when they take out an enemy city. I've done the giggling myself. Maybe I'm just idealizing, but I don't think these are the emotions I want soldiers feeling when they fight a "just war" in my name.

The makers of America's Army claim to have changed the focus of this game from the typical "divide and conquer" to something more like restoring order to chaos. However, they tellingly admit that those "new" rules only apply in certain types of gameplay.

So in "America's Army," the server keeps tabs on your fealty to the military's strict rules of engagement (ROE) -- crossing them too often gets you removed from the game, thrown into a virtual depiction of Fort Leavenworth prison. (Multiplayer games are usually anarchic, free-fire zones.)

I'm willing to bet (and anyone please correct me if I'm wrong) that most of the people are playing those "anarchic, free-fire" multi-player games. Also, the article quotes journalist Mark Bowden, who wrote the 1999 book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (that Ridley Scott made that tripey movie after) as denouncing the "war games".

"[Games] have a certain amount of potential value in making someone interested in history or in the military or how the military operates," says Bowden. "It has that kind of educational value." But he's skeptical their utility may extend beyond that. "In terms of preparing someone for the actual experience of combat, particularly infantry soldiers, I just regard that as really unlikely. Because I think the essential element in real combat is terror. And I don't believe you can re-create actual terror in a video game. It's a game; you can turn it off whenever you want to."

Even Capt. Jason Amerine, an "Operation Enduring Freedom" vet who loves the game, admits its limitations as something representative of real warfare.

"When I was in a shoot-out with the Taliban, it occurred to me that I had to stick my head up to shoot at them and I might very well catch a bullet between my eyes ... and I was aware of it, but I knew what I had to do. That's not something you can re-create in a computer game, the fact that your life is in danger. And also, when you actually have to see the results of what you did, when you go over and you see the enemies that've fallen by your hand, that's something else you can't re-create."

I don't really have a problem with the idea of this game. (Far from it, I enjoy these kinds of games a lot.) But for the Army to think it can use computer games to entice people to join the army strikes me as a bit short-sited. People (at least people I know) whom play violent video games do so for fun.

They do so for escape. Violent games (whether it's the violent army warfare in the games this article mentioned or the violent gang warfare in the much-maligned Grand Theft Auto 3) are fun because they let you do things you would feel horrible doing in real life. Would the defenders of America's Army also stand up for Grand Theft? My hunch is no.

Violence is violence, killing is killing. This is the same sort argument I got into so many times about the (also tripey) film Saving Private Ryan. The same people who praised the "realistic portrayal of warfare" (too bad the realistic portrayal of acting wasn't paid as close attention to) would decry the "cartoon violence" of The Matrix.

Actually, I change my mind. I think America's Army should be more violent. I think it should be as loaded with gore as Ryan's opening beach invasion. But then the game might not serve the Army as well. James Au says:

I challenge [game designer] Wardynski on the game's dearth of on-screen gore. (Hits are rendered with a prim red dot, as if the weapons were shooting out magic markers.) Doesn't that sanitize the gruesome aftermath of an M-16 hit? Gore would disqualify the game from getting the intended Teen rating from the ratings board, he responds -- and besides, "We respect our audience [enough] to know that if we don't have that in our game, they're not dumb and they'll still know that [gore is] part of combat."

Uh-huh. Ask the same kid how much he "knows" after he's seen that gore for real.