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Political economy, government propaganda, violent video games, adolescents, transindustrial media, military-entertainment complex
Abstract
This paper uses a political economic (Bettig & Hall, 2003; McChesney, 2000; 2004; 2008; Meehan, 2005, Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) lens to examine the U.S. government's video game, America's Army. America's Army is a first-person shooter game available for free online that has military recruitment as its primary goal. The U.S. Army launched America's Army on July 4, 2002; it has been downloaded more than 42 million times and has a virtual Army comprised of 519,472 "soldiers." This paper studies the history of the government production of America's Army and uses industry and government records to explore the current ties between the public sector and transindustrial gaming conglomerates. The issue of the video game and its intended youth audience becomes even more problematic when one considers how the government combines its strength with powerful corporate interests to disseminate violent media to adolescents with military enlistment and commodification as primary goals. As a result, this paper conceptualizes the "government-gaming nexus" to explain the relationship between the U.S. government and private transindustrial media organizations to better understand how that structure functions in society. Praxis strategies focus on ratings, education, and regulation.
Why We Still Fight: Adolescents, America's Army, and the Government-Gaming Nexus
In an era of public relations sweeping government ranks (Rampton & Stauber, 2003), consolidated media ownership (Bagdikian, 2004; Bettig & Hall, 2003), and a diminished government watchdog role by the media (McChesney, 2000; 2004; 2008), the U.S. military is increasingly telling its own story through the use of targeted media, with dramatic results. Among its sharpest tools is the video game franchise America's Army, a worldwide entertainment phenomenon that is intended to recruit soldiers into a series of wars that for years were understaffed and unpopular (Hodes & Ruby-Sachs, 2002; Huntemann & Payne, 2010; White, 2005). With the ability to shape its own messages about the military, war, and what it means to be a soldier, the government is effectively using the Internet coupled with privately-developed gaming consoles to persuade a reluctant public to not just believe in war but to join it.
At the pinnacle of the America's Army franchise is the first-person shooter (FPS) video game of...