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government and mark entry into a new world of mediated government and corporate propaganda (Susca, 2012). For-profit war games created by video game companies often have ties to the U.S. Video games that are produced by and for governments have the opportunity, therefore, to inhabit and disseminate these ideologies in ways that researchers are just starting to fully understand. But, in a world where video games-more so than schools, religion, or other forms of popular culture-are teaching Americans about race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality identity, such attitudes are myopic and inexcusable. In general, there is a marked failure to recognize video games as sophisticated vehicles inhabiting and disseminating ideologies of hegemony. video game lobby, described his new-media industry’s strength this way: “Anyone who doesn’t take the video game industry seriously is an idiot” (as cited in Proffitt & Susca, 2012). More than a decade ago, Doug Lowenstein, the former head of the powerful U.S. Video Game Industry and America’s Army Growth

military’s use of video games to train soldiers to explain the growing significance of military video games and their links to real war. I focus here on the growth of the video game industry and explain the U.S. Army uses and studies its own game as a way to improve marksmanship and build teamwork as service members prepare for battlefields. It would be too easy and without methodological merit to say that playing violent video games makes people violent or more prone to military service. For this piece, I will use America’s Army as a case study to help outline the need to include more investigation of war video games on the agendas of multiple academic disciplines. When it comes to violent video games, war and conflict, and the creation, maintenance, and cultivation of adolescent entertainment space and war ideologies by military powers, the academic community across disciplines must start taking greater notice. America’s Army is a case of even greater significance because it targets adolescents and has military recruitment as its primary goal. It also helps foster feelings about combat situations soldiers are facing in real life.
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This government-produced violent video game encourages teenagers to play war for free and, once there, fight enemies like Czervenia to save U.S. Army created this narrative of a foreign despot done wrong, so it’s no surprise gamers respond with both nationalistic and xenophobic responses that appear online (Susca, 2012). The Czervenian Army launches assaults on its citizens and attacks the Republic Democracy of the Ostregals, a chain of islands to the south.Ĭlearly this region rich in mining deposits with its tyrant leader is a threat to both its own citizens and global peace.

Official game information says this about the country:įrom a seemingly insignificant nation of Czervenia, President-General Kazimir Adzic and his army set upon a campaign of murder and annihilation, setting in motion a mysterious plan. Army that has been downloaded more than 42 million times, with a worldwide virtual army of more than half a million people. Stay classy my friends,” I imagined a teenager in his basement playing America’s Army innocently seeking to channel the charismatic charm of that international man of mystery.Ĭzervenia is a fictional region in the online topography of America’s Army, a first-person shooter game created by and for the U.S. Stay thirsty my friends.” So when I first saw an America’s Army game player’s tag line that read “I don’t kill people all the time, but when I do, I kill Czervenians. In popular Dos Equis beer commercials, a well-traveled, adventurous gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and surrounded by younger women explains to television consumers, “I don’t drink beer all the time but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. It’s the stuff of adolescent male fantasy.
