Iraq War Veterans Protest America's Army Title

Via GamePolitics, a story reported by the St. Lois Post-Dispatch of frustrated war veterans protesting America's Army . Roughly 100 veterans of the Iraq war marched near an elaborate demonstration of the military-funded game, outside of an expo center in Missouri. Their shouts of 'war is not a game' must have contrasted sharply with the elaborate simulator the Army had set up to publicize their (already very popular) FPS title.

Re:They're Within Their Rights

[DragonWriter]

The game exists and whether or not it is designed to be a "simulator" which with today's technology could only loosely be called a "simulation", or just a game for fun's sake, is beside point.

It is, in fact, designed to be a recruiting tool (or extended advertisement), more than a simulation for the sake of accuracy or a game for the sake of entertainment.

Re:Games and Reality

[Fallen Kell]

If someone would like to argue that the game preps youth for war and predisposes them to join the army, then they would seem to be arguing that gta prepares and predisposes players to crime and violence, etc.

Actually I would argue that the "America's Army" game preps youths for war and does prep them to possibly join the army. Anyone who has played the game and gone through the "basic training", they get a fairly good idea of what to expect at real basic training. In other words classes on identifying dangers, targets, vehicles, friend and foe and classes on basic medical procedures that might just save your life or the life of someone else. It lets you see what some of the courses are like that you will need to be able to physically tackle, and how the gun qualification and sniper qualification systems actually work (you won't get to be trained as a sniper unless you already are proficient with the weapons and can shoot fairly well to begin with, so if it is your life's dream to be a sniper in the Army, well, you better go and practice before you join up, because you will not get the training unless you can already shoot very well to begin with). This is what the game can attempt to simulate.

Now does "Grand Theft Auto" train people to be a good car thief? Hell NO!. Now it COULD, however that would include teaching you how to bypass car alarms, pick locks, hot wire the ignition circuits, get past fuel line cut-off mechanisms, economics of the black market, what cars and car parts are currently worth, how to easily spot and recognize potential easy targets. But, it doesn't do that. It just lets you run around and get in the car and hit a button and you have stolen it, doesn't let you know how to actually do that stealing, which I believe is the reason why the game is fun to play, not tedious and hard work. I mean, if you had to know how to by-pass a proximity based keyless entry and ignition system for a car in the game by needing to either get and obtain (or make) a fake master key or intercept someone's key's code and clone it with another device, well, you should be out working as either a security expert at one of the said car manufacturers or something else, but you wouldn't be playing a time consuming game...

I would say that the shuttle astronauts play "video games" as well. Simulators can and are "games" in a sense. Heck go to any game store/website and there will usually be a category of games called "simulator". These simulate an environment and actually can teach the players important things. The more realistic the simulator (not just realistic graphics, but realistic physics, realistic environmental interactions), the more that the person using the simulator can actually learn. This is why airlines and aircraft manufacturers create "simulators" for their new planes and designed to train their pilots before they even enter a real plane. In fact, they create the simulator "before" they even build the first prototype and have pilots test things out and tweak things while in the design stage (i.e. moving a control to a different location, changing which information is located on what display, changing the orientation of a switch or knob, or control stick, moving a petal, etc., etc.).

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Re:The Fuck?

[Jarjarthejedi]

Last time I checked it wasn't disguised at all. I have the CD around here somewhere, not on hand, but it mentioned something about recruitment. A quick browse of the website shows 2 links, on the front page, to recruitment. I do believe, though I only tried the game briefly, that there were a few not disguised at all recruitment things in it.

Honestly if the fact that AA is trying to recruit can be considered disguised then I've got a well hidden bridge to sell you in Brookland, no one will know that it's there.