When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games. Now the wheel has come full circle as they use game-style interfaces for real-life tools of war.
Nice article. One of the reasons I loved America’s Army was how over the top the propaganda really was. You could never play as a 'terrorist" or “bad guy”. You were always in America’s Army. Incredibly jingoistic and “patriotic”. It’s an absolutely fascinating game.
I always felt uncomfortable with how you see a terrorist in game but on the other end of the internet was another person seeing themselves as the americans.
very “you will kill who we tell you to kill and not worry about it”
Exactly. I actually heard on forums at the time that the game was actually acting as an anti-recruitment tool because of things like that. It was strangely trendsetting and ahead of the game in a lot of things that later milsims would adopt.