A growing amount of attention is now being paid to the interplay between video games and the military. Numerous products from the popular Call of Duty franchise produced by Activision to the US Army's own on-line platform 'America's Army' take military themes and narratives as the basis for game play.
Professor James Der Derian of Brown University has been exploring this relationship for the past twenty years, describing it as the Military Industrial Media Entertainment Network--or MIME-Net for short. One of the most interesting findings of his research is that the process of simulation is not just one where video game producers attempt to best replicate military hardware in order to provide a realistic experience for players. Rather, military hardware manufacturers also try as much as possible to make the operation of their equipment simulate the video game playing experience itself. Thus, both are increasingly embedded in the design of the other. Why might this be important?
Back in January, Reuters reported that the US Army had opened a $12 million state of the art recruitment center in a suburb of Philadelphia that replaced 5 old recruitment stations in the area. According to the report, the facility contains 60 computers loaded with military themed video games, 19 Xbox 360s, and interactive displays outlining career opportunities and bases. There is also a lounge area with couches and rock music that is piped in.
GamePolitics.com has been following the story ever since, including close coverage of a recent protest at the center where the appropriateness of using video games as a recruitment tool was publicly challenged. The protest included parents of soldiers currently serving in the US military as well as veterans and peace activists.
Much of the condemnation was based on the argument that the content of the video games on offer at the recruitment center helps to desensitize young people to violence and acculturate them into seeing war as 'fun' and without lasting consequence. Thus, it is argued that it is the video games that make kids more susceptible to recruitment into the army by glamorizing violence.
But this misses the larger point brought up by the work of Der Derian. In this case, the content of the video games is secondary to the experience provided by the recruitment center itself. And it is important to see the interconnected processes of simulation going on.
In part, the recruitment center serves as a simulation of a world where typical adolescent social and material aspirations are fulfilled. In turn, the recruitment center is also working as a simulation of a highly managed representation of military life. And in this case, military life is one that is being primarily defined through the fun and camaraderie of leisure. For young people who potentially face a working future comprised of a series of alienating and isolating McJobs with poor pay and little free time, the attraction is clear.
The success of the center--which so far has matched the figures of the stations it replaced-- is therefore being driven by how well it is able to sell this simulation of military life, which itself is a simulation of an aspirational adolescent life, to prospective recruits. To put it crudely, the idea is that in the army you will have leisure time and it will involve hanging out with your group of friends, playing your favourite vids on the latest systems, and listening to cool tunes.
Therefore, with this center being at the cutting edge of military recruitment tactics, we should be aware that the problem really lies in the simulations it performs, not necessarily the content of the video games on offer.
P.S. If you're interested in finding out more about MIME-Net, simulation, and security, Routledge has just published a second edition of James Der Derian's Virtuous War.
Comments