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master chief during happier times

With the imminent release of Halo 3, I thought that I’d focus today’s post on videogames and military policy. During my Halo glory days I read quite a few gaming magazines, and even then I noticed that each and every one was chock full of military recruitment advertising. On the whole, this seems quite logical. Teenage males, who comprise the core demographic of the videogaming world, are also the primary target of military recruiters. Additionally, by presenting themselves in the context of the videogame world, such ads create a sort of implicit syllogism; namely 1) videogames are fun 2) the army is like a videogame 3) joining the army would be fun. Playing off of the success of such ads, in 2002 US military created a videogame of its own, America’s Army. Praised for its authenticity and generally thought to be, well, fun, the game has been downloaded upwards of 5 million times and has recently been followed up by a sequel. Which isn’t to say that America’s Army has been entirely without controversy.

One line of attack is that the multimillion dollar program is an egregious waste of time and money, particularly at the same time that real live American troops are fighting and dying on the battlefield. Yet although this objection has a sort of visceral appeal to it (you’re spending our money on WHAT?!?) the fact is that the 15 million dollars invested in the creation of such tools is a drop in the bucket compared to the 4 BILLION dollars spent each year on military recruitment, to say nothing of the 439.3 billion dollars of annual Department of Defense expenditures. Furthermore, as stated above, the program seems to have netted some results in terms of getting people interested in the military, and it seems likely that improving the simulation would yield even better results.

A far more compelling objection, however, comes not from economics but rather from ethics. As many are quick to point out, the implicit message of videogames about war is that war is itself a videogame. To critics, this carries two significant harms. First, by showing that violence is a fun experience, such games could hypothetically desensitize youngsters to the point that killing no longer carries any moral value. This is a case of fiction being mistaken for reality. Second, and more importantly, such critics argue that videogames will dupe recruits into thinking that fighting in a war carries no costs. Once in war, such soldiers will realize that the struggle they face is hardly child’s play. As one eloquent proponent of this view writes:

Sure, the game shows soldiers die in war -- thus the "death animation." But it doesn't show the thousands more who live forever maimed, with one arm, one leg or no limbs. It doesn't show the agonizing rehabilitation that often follows. It doesn't show the mental anguish of seeing a buddy killed in front of you, or having to shoot the enemy when you can look into his eyes.

A clear case of reality being mistaken for fiction. In this view the army is unacceptably misrepresenting the reality of warfare to dupe the young into the ranks of the armed forces. Those who hold such views have often engaged in creative and sometimes harrowing protests. For example,Joseph DeLappe of the University of Nevada has recently engaged in a so-called "online gaming intervention, which involves logging onto the America's Army multiplayer server and using the text messaging system to broadcast the names of real men and women killed in Iraq. Yet although such objections seem persuasive on face, they actually fail to take into account historical and scientific perspectives. When such evidence is accounted for, both fall.

As to the first objection, the notion that videogame violence will desensitize people to real violence, scientific evidence seems highly ambivalent. As game theorist Eric Zimmerman explains, entering the videogame realm places players into a “magic circle” of sorts, in which it is understood that the normal rules of reality are temporarily rescinded. Put another way, most people know that games aren’t real. This theoretical outlook has been validated by empirical evidence, which has yet to produce any solid proof that playing violent games actually translates into committing violent acts.

And as to the second, the notion that such tactics are uniquely unfair, I would argue that the existence of cultural artifacts that glorify warfare and the soldiering life are as old as the Western tradition itself. From Homer to Halo, one finds a plethora of cultural artifacts that could be construed as not accurately reflecting warfare. In light of this fact, it seems that the particular scrutiny heaped on videogames that promote warfare seems somewhat unfair. From my perspective it seems as though a movie, book, or epic poem can promote battle as persuasively as a game. Moreover, the entire point of military recruitment IS to put a positive spin on the realities of warfare. As such, it remains to be seen why the use of somewhat unrealistic videogames is any more morally odious than the use of uplifting 30 second commercials or the newsreels of the 1940s. At this point, it seems wildly inconsistent to attack videogames while ignoring other forms of art or expression. Obviously, some would purport that videogames are qualitatively different in that they are interactive, but I would argue that in earlier ages popular fiction or movies held no less influence over the young of the era. If the soldiers recruited today don’t know the full picture on the ground, their ignorance pales in comparision to the jolt the young men of Europe received when they gleefully rushed toward World War I. Indeed, given the realities of a strong anti-establishment and anti-government ethos among our generation, it seems unfair to deny the military this tool in terms of reaching recruits in the xbox era.

virtually harmless


Of course, this is not to say that military recruitment is always perfect (or scrupulous). Yet the harms presented by offering videogames seem comparable to the harms of tv commercials or internet banner ads. Put another way, unless one is willing to call for an end to all military advertising, it is philosophically inconsistent to call for an attack specifically directed at gaming.

The broader point here, though, is that videogames ought to be treated on a fair playing field with other media. Whenever a new information technology enters wide use it has been hailed as the downfall of civilization. So far, all such predictions have proven incorrect. Some videogames are trashy, violent, and without merit, but so too are some movies, books, and plays. As such, it seems that a paradigmatic shift is needed away from attacking gaming as an institution and toward considering each game as an independent work on a par with any other text in society. Getting from here to there, however, will take a great deal of time, but such changes are already in the works. What is most remarkable about the military recruitment videogame is thus not that it is an egregious or unethical tactic but rather that it reflects the growing mainstream acceptance of videogames as a useful tool, an attitude that will doubtless gain great purchase in the decades ahead. Stay safe, DER