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2012 Why We Still Fight: Adolescents, Virtual War, and the Government Gaming Nexus Margot A. Susca

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION

WHY WE STILL FIGHT: ADOLESCENTS, VIRTUAL WAR, AND THE GOVERNMENT- GAMING NEXUS

By MARGOT A. SUSCA

A dissertation submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2012 Margot A. Susca defended this dissertation on February 29, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Jennifer M. Proffitt Professor Directing Dissertation

Ronald L. Mullis University Representative

Stephen D. McDowell Committee Member

Arthur A. Raney Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

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For my mother

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my major professor, Jennifer M. Proffitt, Ph.D., for her unending support, encouragement, and guidance throughout this process. I thank her for the endless hours of revision and counsel and for having chocolate in her office, where I spent more time than I would like to admit looking for words of inspiration and motivation. I also would like to thank my committee members, Stephen McDowell, Ph.D., Arthur Raney, Ph.D., and Ronald Mullis, Ph.D., who all offered valuable feedback and reassurance during these last two years. I also must extend a heartfelt thanks to Laura Arpan, Ph.D., for her support over these last four years. I am a better researcher and teacher today because of all of them. I am grateful to have worked under their direction.

I also would like to extend gratitude to my friends in the department who have provided an additional layer of support and encouragement in those moments when finishing seemed like something that other people did. I am forever grateful to Ginevra Adamoli, Nicole Cox, and Ashavaree Das. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Kyle Quinn Pincince, the best friend a woman could ever have, who over the years has been an enormous source of inspiration.

I could not have finished this journey without my family. I am especially thankful to my parents, Patricia Susca and Peter Susca, for their love, encouragement, and advice. To my husband, Michael Bender, words never could express all that you have given me these last few years. I am so lucky to have you. To our daughter, Zoe, who arrived in the middle of this process: Your smile, dancing, and laughter erased even the worst days. I dedicate this work especially to her, in the hope that she may know a more peaceful world.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..…vii

Chapter One: Introduction ...... 1

The Problem ...... 1 About America’s Army ...... 3 Research Questions ...... 13

Chapter Two: Review of Literature ...... 16

America’s Army ...... 16 Adolescents as the Target of Corporate Marketers ...... 18

Violent Video Games, Aggression, and Desensitization ...... 21 Militarism, the State, and Entertainment ...... 26

Video Games Go to War ...... 32 The U.S. Government and Mediated Propaganda Lessons from World War II ...... 34 Discussion ...... 38

Chapter Three: Theoretical Framework and Methodology ...... 40

Political Economy ...... 40 Conducting Political Economic Analysis ...... 48

Kellner’s Three-Part Model ...... 49 Methodology ...... 50 Discussion ...... 57

Chapter Four: Production ...... 59

America’s Army and Recruitment ...... 61

Targeting Millennials ...... 67

Creating the Next Audie Murphy ...... 71

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Links to Private Corporations ...... 74

Branding War and Advertising to Adolescents ...... 78 Discussion ...... 84

Chapter Five: Textual Analysis ...... 88

Branding the U.S. Army: The Real Heroes ...... 90

Engaging the Audience: Messages from the Government ...... 125 Discussion ...... 131

Chapter Six: Audience Analysis ...... 137

Threads Chosen for Analysis ...... 140

Analysis of Online Comments ...... 141 Militarism ...... 148 Violence ...... 154 Recruitment ...... 161 Commodification ...... 165 Discussion ...... 169

Chapter Seven: Conclusion ...... 173

Review of Research Questions ...... 176

Contributions: The Government-Gaming Nexus ...... 185

Limitations and Future Research ...... 188

Praxis ...... 191

A Final Note ...... 194

References ...... 196 Biographical Sketch ...... 222

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation uses a political economic analysis (Bettig & Hall, 2003; Bagdikian, 2004; McChesney, 2000; 2004; 2008; Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) combined with a cultural studies lens to study the website associated with the government-produced video game America’s Army. America’s Army is a first-person shooter video game available for free online that has military recruitment as its core mission. The U.S. Army launched America’s Army on July 4, 2002, and since that time the game has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for its popularity. The game has been downloaded more than 42 million times, has more than 8 million registered users, and a virtual Army comprised of 519,472 “soldiers.” This dissertation examines the online website of the video game America’s Army--its last version was updated in July 2010--and the consequences of government-created media through a three-part analysis (Kellner, 1995) that focuses on its production, the text itself, and audience’s ideological engagement with the text through an analysis of comments posted to the official gaming website. Such a three-pronged approach analyzing America’s Army allows for the criticism of the political-economic environment that has cultivated the game’s expansion; provides further understanding of key game features and narratives presented on the game’s website by the government; and simultaneously helps to develop an understanding of how users are ideologically responding to the text as an arm of government propaganda. The game simultaneously whitewashes the real problems of violence just as it sanitizes the horrors of war. Its primary purpose is military recruitment although in recent years the game has also sought to commodify its adolescent audience. As the volume of qualitative data available on the game’s website, its related social media sites, and the game itself is extensive, this dissertation proposes to unite this three-part analysis by further limiting the data that will be the subject of study. This analysis studies the production, the text, and the audience of the video game and its corresponding website with one overarching theme. The theme that both unites and narrows this analysis is looking at adolescents as the targets of the government-created media messages. By sufficiently narrowing the subject of data collection and analysis to fully explore how and why adolescents are the targets of the media message, the dissertation can better add to the existing literature on militarized entertainment, state-created video games, youth identity in digital spaces, and the political economy of video games. The dissertation’s major contribution is the development of

vii the government-gaming nexus--an extension of militainment (Stahl, 2006; 2010) and the military-entertainment complex (Andersen, 2006; Lenoir, 2003; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003; Leonard, 2004)--that specifically focuses on adolescents as the target of militarized entertainment. Praxis strategies to fight these messages inherent in the government-gaming nexus focus on existing ratings systems, media literacy, and advertising regulation.

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“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.”

Jim Morrison

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

In early July 2010, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates tightened rules that govern the agency’s flow of information to the American media. Gates explained that the move was designed to stop senior administrative and military officials from “speaking out inappropriately on foreign-policy issues” (ABC News, 2010, para. 3). He explained his position further: “Even more worrisome, highly classified and sensitive information has been divulged without authorization or accountability” (ABC News, 2010, para. 6). Gates clarified that his intent was not to alter existing reporting on the military from the battlefields in Afghanistan or Iraq but, rather, to reaffirm the messages that the media—and therefore the American public--receive are from the correct persons within the U.S. Defense Department. Some reporters responded in print, online, and broadcast channels that the policy and its aftermath “could cause a chilling effect in relations with the press” (ABC News, 2010, para. 1). A New York Times reporter, Thom Shanker, described Gates’ real intention--through his own use of national security sources--as trying to stop the flow of information to the public about weapons procurements, matters involving war, and the Pentagon’s budget. After the publication of Gates’ memo, Shanker wrote that Gates had said of the American military: “we must continue to tell our story — we just need to do it smartly, and in a coordinated fashion” (Shanker, 2010, para. 16).

Documenting the ways in which the government coordinates and tells its story is central to understanding the role of both the press and the government in a democratic society. When the government targets adolescents and teenagers with its mediated messages, understanding the process by which those messages are created and disseminated is crucial to developing praxis strategies that may lead to changes—changes either in how those messages are produced or changes in how media education campaigns are designed that can help the public understand the motives of that media.

The Problem

In an era of public relations sweeping government ranks (Rampton & Stauber, 2003), consolidated media ownership, and a diminished government watchdog role by the media (Bagdikian, 2004; McChesney, 2008), the U.S. military more and more is telling its own story through the use of targeted media with dramatic results. Among the government’s sharpest tools

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is the video game franchise America’s Army, a worldwide entertainment phenomenon that is intended to shape public opinion and to recruit young soldiers into a war that for years was understaffed and unpopular (Hodes & Ruby-Sachs, 2002; Huntemann, 2010; White, 2005). America’s Army has “penetrated contemporary culture” (“Army Game Project,” 2011, para. 1). With the ability to shape its own message 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. To illustrate why adolescents are the target for such messages, Trend (2003) explained: “Media violence isn’t for everyone. Its biggest audience is adolescent boys” (p. 297). Understanding the power this demographic holds, the government is attempting to combine its messages about war with others from corporations eager to exploit the same demographic for its purchasing power.

Researchers (Acuff, 1997; Calvert, 2008; Cook, 2004; Deutsch & Theodorou, 2009; Kapur, 2005; Kunkel, Wilcox, Cantor, Palmer, Linn, & Downick, 2004; Thomas, 2007) have explored the trend toward commercialization of children with some suggesting that boys who are targets of corporate marketers are buying into a culture of war and violence through the consumption of toys and other violent media (Linn, 2004; Miedzian, 1991; Schor, 2004). Minority children and low-income children may be at an even greater risk of these violent marketing strategies because of the amount and type of media they consume (Levin & Carlsson- Page, 2003). Evidence of how the U.S. government has been coordinating its mediated Army recruitment drives targeted at young boys emphasizes a troubling trend in the production of government-created media, its resulting ideological function, and its partnership with corporate video game companies beset on profiting from the same group that the U.S. Army hopes to persuade to serve.

During wartime, the ability and force of a free press are tested and, unfortunately, those tests in the last decade have shown deep problems with American journalism (McChesney, 2008). The government, not a free press, tells its own story, shapes its own narrative, and by doing so, has created a mythology of war so looming and large that young people—especially boys--are being caught in its net with little to no critical information provided about such production. A U.S. Army lieutenant colonel told The Wall Street Journal that a video game designed to recruit young soldiers is “another way to tell our story ourselves” (de Avila, 2008, para. 12). The issue becomes even more problematic when the government combines its strength 2

with powerful corporate interests to create and disseminate ultra-violent media designed to sway public opinion and shape ideologies. What develops is an arena of publicly-financed and privately-created media so powerful in force that it takes on the same significance in the 21st Century as Hollywood film propaganda had before and during World War II.

About America’s Army

At the pinnacle of the America’s Army franchise is the first-person shooter (FPS) video game of the same name but the brand has been expanded and revamped since its first launch through an official America’s Army YouTube page, Facebook page, and a graphic novel (Holmes, 2009). America’s Army sponsors a NASCAR team and is now available on the XBox, Gameboy, and PlayStation consoles while it also is presented through mobile phone applications and through promotional materials in magazines that target computer gamers (“America’s Army”, n.d.; Reagan, 2008). The game is designed as a recruitment tool but also serves a pedagogical function for the government, attempting to train enlisted soldiers in the areas of marksmanship and desensitization to violent scenes soldiers may encounter on the actual battlefield (Belanich, Orvis, & Sibley, 2004; Nichols, 2010a; 2010b; Orvis, Orvis, Belanich, & Mullin, 2005). Li (2004) explained that funding for the initial game version reached $7 million with an annual $2 million U.S. Department of Defense commitment through 2007 to fund further game development and technology support. The game is like many other commercial war video games: It is a FPS format, and players are able to communicate with each other through an online network as they move through fictional battlefields and war-torn cities trying to complete military missions as they fight and kill enemy combatants. Connections are furthered between gamers and with the government video game makers through a free Internet website1. The game is rated “T” for “Teen” meaning the Entertainment Software Rating Board [ESRB] judges it suitable for children age 13 years and older. Holmes (2009) explained its primary target demographic is males aged 13-21.

In less than a decade, the first America’s Army video game and more than two dozen other game releases that followed as a part of the franchise have made the America’s Army brand one of the most downloaded and respected of all time, in part, for what players of the fictional game believe is true authenticity in depictions of battle (Callaham, 2006; Dobson, 2007;

1 The video game website may be found at www.americasarmy.com. 3

Huntemann, 2010; Li, 2004). America’s Army launched on Independence Day 2002, and within two years, 3.3 million registered players had spent 60 million hours playing (“U.S. Army to Highlight Weapons Systems,” 2004). Holmes (2009) explained that the game’s 40 million downloads put it in the Guinness Book of World Records. By 2005, 5.4 million users registered to play through the Army website and, as a result, the U.S. Army, recognizing how profitable and popular the game could be, licensed versions of America’s Army for release on the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation, giving the private gaming company Ubisoft exclusive rights (Dobson, 2005; White, 2005). Ubisoft developed with the government the XBox version, titled America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier. By July 2010, more than 10 million registered users had played at least one version of the game, available as a free online download from government websites or on CDs at Army recruiting centers and recruiting events nationwide (“Letter from Leadership,” 2010). The game is billed as the “Official U.S. Army Game” on the game’s website where the Letter from Leadership explains: “The game has exceeded all expectations by placing Soldiering front and center within popular culture and showcasing the roles training, teamwork, and technology play in the Army” (“Letter from Leadership,” 2010, para. 3). The U.S. Marines embraced the FPS video game (and privately-created) Doom (Der Derian, 2001), but America’s Army is the first game solely produced and conceived by the military as a part of its over-arching public relations strategy (Clearwater, 2006; Lugo, 2006; Power, 2007). Sirota (2009) explained: “For the general public, the objective is sedation” (para. 6). Entertainment is a byproduct of play; the real goal is recruitment and creating and maintaining an acceptance of war in society.

A top U.S. Army official conceived the game as a way to speak “to teens in their native tongue,” and the results have shown it is extremely effective. Colonel Casey Wardynski conceived America’s Army in 1999, after dwindling recruitment and Army bases moved out of city centers to remote locations in the Southwest and Southeast provided top military officials with evidence of a disconnect between American boys and a desire to join the military. On a trip to the big-box retailer Best Buy, Wardynski explained that his sons had told him many of the most popular video games looked like the military in some way (Huntemann, 2010). Increasing broadband connectivity in homes nationwide coupled with a reliance on computer gaming for entertainment provided Wardynski with further evidence of how the Army could reach young men and women. Wardynski told Huntemann (2010):

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With game technology we can make something very vivid. We can deliver it into pop culture; we can structure it in a way that was designed for teens 13 and above. So now we’re not going to get there last, we’ll get there about the same time as other ideas for what to do with your life. (p. 179) And it has reached them.

An Army recruiter from Virginia named Bo Scott was quoted in The Washington Post about his experiences dealing with young men who were interested in joining the Army after game play. Scott (as quoted in White, 2005) said:

The game is never going to overcome someone’s trepidation and fears regarding the ongoing war on terror. But it does get some people talking to recruiters who might not have otherwise. It opens a window, and if they look in and they decide to join, great. (para. 14)

Wardynski agreed, telling Huntemann in a 2008 interview that: “We’re not after recruits, we’re after competent, confident soldiers” (Huntemann, 2010, p. 185). Critics, however, have said that the game does little to emphasize the dangers of war. Sirota (2009) wrote: “It’s a good bet more than a few enlistees will expect their service to be happy video game tournaments, only to find themselves dodging real bullets in a Baghdad shooting gallery” (para. 9). While Wardynski may have conceived the bridge between the military and apathetic teenagers, the real story behind the game’s development lies in the heart of a world-famous advertising agency.

America’s Army was conceived as a branding strategy and serves primarily as war-time advertising for the military and its corporate partners. In 1999, the Army hired Leo Burnett, a top advertising agency, to strategize how to boost recruitment and to rebrand the Army. Holmes (2009) wrote: “A key aim of the new recruitment strategy was to ensure long-term success by cultivating the allegiance of teenage Americans” (para. 9). The allegiance would build not just Army recruits, but also cultivate purchasing loyalties to consumer brands associated with the video game franchise and provide detailed links to private corporations eager to better understand the online consumer behavior of teenagers in the United States and worldwide. In an interview (cited in Huntemann, 2010), Wardynski has stated that the video game franchise is a key part of the military’s branding strategy. That strategy is advertising that uses high-technology methods to try to

5 reach a technologically-savvy youth audience. However, although the video game and its corresponding website and social media applications are considered advertising by the military and its corporate partners including NASCAR, the U.S. Army does not conform to existing federal advertising regulations. These regulations, which will be discussed in the conclusion, should force the government to declare that the purpose of America’s Army is advertising and branding.

These regulations adopted by the Federal Trade Commission should force the government to disclose to players and users that the game and its website are advertising, meant to change attitudes and behaviors just like any other product. That the website targets teenagers and adolescents means that its role as advertising would force the government to comply with even stricter Federal Trade Commission laws that recognize even greater steps must be taken to protect children from potentially persuasive messages. Nowhere on the America’s Army website—a chief portal to game play for millions of violent video game players--does the military state that the video game or any of its corresponding mediated applications are advertising. Such a blatant disregard for advertising policy helps to foster the perception that the game is entertainment when the real goals of play are meant to satisfy military recruitment targets and create illusions that war is something fantasy-based, fun, and exciting.

The game America’s Army, now in its ninth incarnation, and its corresponding website purposely skirt rules on advertising to make the game—and war—seem fun to an audience too young to think otherwise or already immersed in a media environment saturated with violence. The game and the America’s Army franchise has become an excellent way to court the demographic the Army most needs—a demographic that is also highly sought after by corporations and advertisers. An internal Army report explained: “Its timing as a mediator of Army culture to game-playing teens has been ideal” (Davis, et al., 2004, p. 2). Ideal in the sense that the country’s top Army official explained recruiting goals were on target despite fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that for years left young men and women unwilling to enlist. In an October 2008, official Army newsletter, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Army chief of staff, explained that one of the military’s goals was to transform the current state of its enlisted soldiers to account for future staffing needs. He wrote: “All the while, we continue to transform to adapt

6 our Army to meet the demands of the 21st century. We are on path to our goal of growing the Army to 1.1 million uniformed members by 2011” (“America’s Army in an era,” 2008, p. 21). A 2010 Army Posture Statement explained that recruiting targets in the year after Casey’s written statement reached 104% of the military’s goal. Critics responded that the video game leaves the impression that war is not a threat. “In response, the Pentagon hopes to make prospective volunteers believe their tours of duty will be as safe as a night on the couch” (Sirota, 2009, para. 6). Internal military reports reveal further how successful the recruitment message is when wrapped in a first-person shooter gift box:

AA’s insistence on getting the Army right implies unlimited potential for expansion as the game evolves and occupations and missions accumulate. The game’s fan sites (americasarmy.com/community.php) reveal diverse interest in both the game per se and as it relates to the real Army, an encouraging sign that an ever-wider range of individuals will sign on in future releases. (Davis et. al., 2004, p. 10) Wardynski, credited as the man who conceived the initial idea that a video game could be used for recruiting while simultaneously re-creating and reshaping the Army’s image in society, has explained that the use of the game should prepare young people entering the workforce to consider a career in the Armed Forces. He wrote in the introduction to an Army report (“America’s Army PC Vision and Realization,” 2004):

For these individuals, having had no tangible contact with Soldiers, a game would provide virtual experiences and insights into the development, organization and employment of Soldiers in America’s Army. In this way, such a game would place the Army in an accessible format and familiar environment for young Americans. In so doing, the Army would gain increased salience in their life- course decisions. (p. 7)

The official Army website, goarmy.com, links to other military video games including America’s Army where the catch phrase is: “Nobody knows military simulations like the world’s premier land force, the United States Army” (“Games and Downloads,” 2010). But critics, including Jamie Holmes, who wrote a 2009 editorial in The Christian Science Monitor, called the recruiting strategies and subsequent game portrayals troubling. The current recruiting tactics aimed at America’s youth are especially concerning. “Not only do the very tactics that have been boosting recruitment sanitize war and create false expectations, they prey upon the vulnerable imaginations of children” (Holmes, 2009, para. 6). As an example, Holmes explained that an

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America’s Army graphic novel shows a staff sergeant who survived an explosion. He was uninjured.

Death: Sanitized and Researched

For all of the top Army officials’ talk about realism and simulating reality, the game fails to provide realistic information about death and does not reveal any information about the 6,335 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and November 2011 (figures provided by icasualties.org, 2011). Death in America’s Army is temporary. Injuries can be fixed. A website started by military families explained their outrage about a video game supposedly meant for entertainment that showed soldiers “killed” in battle. A 2009 news release from that group read:

Joanna Polisena, sister of Army Staff Sergeant Edward Carman, Killed in Action in Iraq on April 17, 2004 added ‘When our loved one’s ‘health meter’ dropped to ‘0’, they didn’t get to ‘retry’ the mission. When they took a bullet, they didn’t just get to pick up a health pack and keep ‘playing’...they suffered, they cried, they died. We--their parents, siblings, spouses, children and friends--absolutely find it disgusting and repulsive that those so far detached (and clinging to denial of reality) find it so easy to poke fun at such a thing.’ (“Gold Star Families Speak Out,” 2009, para. 7) In this way, the Army sustains its utmost fiction—its true fantasy—in attempting to recruit young soldiers to a battle they believe they can survive.

The sanitized version of war provided in the video game is done intentionally, as guided by the work of scholars (Der Derian, 2001; Stahl, 2010) writing about links between militarism and video game technology. When these are blended with theories on moral development, the potential resulting consequences for a youth audience may be grim. Der Derian (2001) termed technological advances mainly through war coverage as a “virtuous war” and explained that in such a war: “One experiences ‘death’ but not the tragic consequences of it” (Der Derian, 2001, p. xvi). A U.S. Army spokesman was quoted in The Nation discussing the game’s sanitized features. That spokesman said: “We were very careful on the blood thing. There are no sound effects when players are shot; only a small red blotch appears, similar to a paintball hit” (as quoted in Hodes & Ruby-Sachs, 2002, para. 6). The game’s art director explained in a military report: “Our purpose here is not to show the horror of war. Our job is to show Army values”

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(“America’s Army PC Vision and Realization,” 2004, p. 35). The game simultaneously whitewashes the real problems of violence just as it sanitizes the horrors of war.

The game’s position as advertising and advertising targeted at adolescents manages to both commodify the war-as-fantasy mythology just as it normalizes the consumption of war and the recruitment to war for an unassuming public. The Army is selling violence, hegemony, and sanitized war to a youth audience that is not yet equipped to process its messages or to understand the vast and troubling consequences. In his writing on moral disengagement, Albert Bandura (1999) explained that: “in early phases of development, conduct is largely regulated by external dictates and social sanctions” (p. 193). These standards that are adopted, for example in the early years of an adolescent’s development, help form opinions about morality and moral conduct. Death that is both sanitized and celebrated may create in adolescents the perceptions that these acts are moral and become embedded in their moral codes. That these perceptions are created by the U.S. government is even more troubling.

Perhaps even more disquieting is the amount of extensive research conducted by military scholars on how best to improve game features that attempt to extend players’ time online, and therefore more greatly affect player experiences with the game and exposure to the America’s Army brand. The production and research by the leaders in the Army’s upper echelons are affecting play and, subsequently, ideologies of some citizens, as will be demonstrated in the analysis. Belanich, Orvis, and Sibley (2004), two of whom are members of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, completed research on 21 men to assess key game features to increase players’ motivation. The researchers explained that a key component of motivation in video games is fantasy or, as they describe, “the feeling that players are engaging in an activity that is not real” (Belanich, Orvis, & Sibley, 2004, p.7). However, the researchers also attempted to assess how levels of realism in the game could affect motivation. Nowhere did the researchers suggest that actual realism--death or injury sustained, for example-- be made a part of the game. The authors write: “Therefore, it is likely that individuals may be more willing to persist in a training game if it endows them with feelings of control” (Belanich, Orvis, & Sibley, 2004, p. 17). The Army, in numerous internal research reports, refers to the game not as a first-person shooter but instead as a first-person perspective, further whitewashing the true intent and outcomes the Army’s highest-ranking officials want sustained by individuals’ game play. 9

An Army technical report about the use of FPS games to train cadets explained that FPS- learning transfers to real-world situations (Orvis, Orvis, Belanich, & Mullin, 2005). Another U.S. Army study (Belanich, Orvis, & Sibley, 2004) used America’s Army to gauge how players who had not yet attended basic training learned combat procedures from the game. Researchers explained that the information participants learned best was “procedural,” which included scenes of “virtual marksmanship” and “virtual weapons familiarization” (Belanich, Orvis, & Sibley, 2004, p. 2). The Army, too, has sought to better understand (Orvis, Horn, & Belanich, 2008) how previous game play translated to on-field expertise and social situations, perhaps further suggesting how the government intends to expand and grow its army of teenage soldiers to create a more seamless transition to real-world fighting abroad.

Research Goals

America’s Army has helped reach war-time recruitment goals as it shapes a government- run narrative about what the military means in a society, what ideologies it represents, and why young people should become a part of it all. Yet this government-created and government- funded website, with more than nine million unique visitors in the first eight years of operation, is understudied by academe in the areas of production, textual analysis, and audience studies with a specific focus on its contribution to the consciousness industry (Jhally, 1989) and perceptions of reality created and reinforced by media images (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992). Kellner (2003) explained the importance of studying ideology as a function of structure. He wrote: “Ideologies make inequalities and subordination appear natural and just and thus induce consent to relations of domination” (Kellner, 2003, p. 11). This dissertation examines the online website of the video game America’s Army--its last version was updated in July 2010--and the consequences of government-created media through a three-part analysis (Kellner, 1995) that focuses on its production, the text itself, and the ideological effects on audiences through an analysis of comments posted through its official gaming websites. Such a three-pronged approach to analyzing America’s Army allows for the criticism of the political- economic environment that has cultivated the game’s expansion; provides further understanding of key game features and narratives presented on the game’s website by the government; and simultaneously develops an understanding of how users are ideologically responding to the text as an arm of government propaganda.

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This dissertation proposes a three-pronged analysis of America’s Army. First, the game’s production will be studied as a function of government propaganda through the lens of political economy. Traditional political economy of media (Bagdikian, 2004; Bettig & Hall, 2003; McChesney, 2000; 2004; 2008; Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) focuses on concentration of ownership, conglomeration, and the commercialism and commodification of audiences at the expense of media that is vital to the maintenance of a democracy. Herman and Chomsky (2002) introduced a “propaganda model” that explained the media do not just serve the corporate interests of its owners but that the structural factors of media and corporate hierarchies are illustrative of how stories are covered, if they are covered at all. Herman and Chomsky wrote of the model: “It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public” (2002, p. 2). The authors emphasized the Internet as a possible avenue for change and cited its potential as a channel to thwart typical narratives produced by mainstream media. In the case of America’s Army, the government need not provide a watered- down version of the truth through a media outlet or public relations campaign; it functions as the sole storyteller through the very medium Herman and Chomsky seemed so hopeful of in the early part of the last decade. The government possesses complete control of the game, and through targeted branding, limits even further the ability for criticism of the game or the ideologies it represents. Analysis of the video game through a political economic lens is more relevant when one understands the public-private relationship that exists related to America’s Army. In a 2004 interview, Huntemann said:

Another aspect of video games and militarism, is not just the connection between what the games might be teaching players and what cultural messages they are sending about warfare, but the political-economic connection between the video game industry and the military industrial complex. (p. 5) Since the time of that interview, the U.S. government has turned part of the production of the game over to corporate video game companies, which are expected to reap $13 billion in profits by 2013 (Reagan, 2008), a connection that further emphasizes the utility of political economy and one that will more thoroughly be explained in chapter four during a review of the game’s production.

Next, the America’s Army video game website will be studied as a text to better understand how it functions as an ideological tool of the government while it simultaneously

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seeks to commodify the military experience for its targeted adolescent audience. Ahearn (2005) wrote: “The word ‘authentic’ doesn’t quite do the game justice as everything from player’s boots to the actual weapons that they’ll be carrying will be authentic to what our boys are using in the Middle East” (para. 10). The dissertation plans to further explore certain textual features of the America’s Army FPS video game to better map how such a text could influence young players’ ideas about militarism and military recruitment. This part of the analysis will include a focus on the website’s use of “Real Heroes,” battlefield veterans provided as mentors to the game’s players. Third, and finally, this dissertation proposes a study of part of the vast America’s Army audience through an analysis of online comments posted through the gaming website. More than 268,700 registered members have contributed more than 2 million unique online threads to the game’s online forums, web-based discussions that range in topics. Comments to one thread that discussed killing “people” by accident included this one posted by a person who described himself as an Army sergeant:

I killed 3 unsuspecting victims in 3 shots and recieved [sic] a deadeye coin for my troubles. all [sic] three headshots, all 3 dead. Ive [sic] killed 8 people in a round before but this was the most rewarding round ive [sic] had. (“Come Back Stories,” 2010) Another group of online comments was quoted in an article about the game in The Nation. Those comments, as re-created by the article’s co-authors (Hodes & Ruby-Sachs, 2002), read:

‘Take that, you dirty Arabs,’ one player radioed after a successful strike. This sparked a debate among fellow players regarding whether Afghans are actually Arab. The squadron eventually concluded that it doesn’t really matter, since ‘ragheads are ragheads.’ (para. 9) These comments will be studied as both artifacts and evidence of the ideological functions the game creates, maintains, and sustains through war-like game play with a particular emphasis on how it glamorizes a career in the Army while it simultaneously sanitizes the real risk of military violence.

As the volume of qualitative data available on the game’s website, its related social media sites, and the game itself is extensive, this dissertation proposes to unite this three-part analysis by further limiting the data that will be the subject of study. This analysis proposes to study the production, the text, and the ideological effects of America’s Army on adolescent audience members with one overarching theme. The theme that both unites and narrows this

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analysis is looking at adolescents as the targets of the media messages. By sufficiently narrowing the subject of data collection and analysis to fully explore how and why adolescents are the targets of the media message, the dissertation can better add to the existing literature on militarized entertainment, targeted marketing, childhood consumption, youth identity in digital spaces, and the political economy of children. In the case of America’s Army, the reason children are the targets of the mass mediated messages is twofold. First, the government targets the youth market as a way to establish its messages about war and violence in society as it simultaneously attempts to recruit soldiers to join. Second, the corporate partners of the government also seek to cultivate violent and consumerist ideologies in the youth demographic, to establish brand loyalty early, to continue sales of military-themed toys and games, and to harness the power of this demographics’ spending.

Previous authors (Andersen & Kurti, 2009; Li, 2004; Nichols, 2010a; 2010b; Nieborg, 2010; Power, 2007; Stahl, 2006; 2010) have examined America’s Army though none have studied it through this three-part analysis forwarded by Kellner (1995) examining its production, text, and ideological impacts on the user-audience, and even more specifically, on the adolescent audience. A full explanation of these previous works is explained in chapter two, the Review of Literature. This dissertation hopes to address the gap in the current literature by focusing more deeply on production as an element of political economy, while meanwhile studying the video game text and ideological functions that are so far missing from the research record related to America’s Army. The focus on adolescents is meant to further limit this analysis and hopes to add to the literature on military-themed and government-created entertainment. The analysis focuses specifically on the gaming website--and not on actual game play--because the website serves as a primary portal to game play. It is many people’s first interaction with military branding and the website offers players key technical support and an arena for public communication and online interaction.

Research Questions

Based on this gap in the literature, this dissertation will focus on Kellner’s (1995) cultural studies approach as a part of a larger political economic analysis by asking the following seven questions.

Production

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RQ1: Why are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game America’s Army?

RQ2: How are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game America’s Army?

RQ3: How does the partnership between the federal government and its corporate sponsors target adolescents?

Textual Analysis

RQ4: How are the themes of consumerism presented for adolescents on the official America’s Army website?

RQ5: How are the themes of militarism and violence presented for adolescents on the official America’s Army website?

RQ6: How does the Army use the Real Heroes to promote militarism and recruitment for an adolescent audience?

Audience Analysis

RQ7: What does an analysis of online comments by players of America’s Army reveal about game users’ responses to the ideologies presented by the Army and its corporate partners?

Chapter two will provide an in-depth literature review of topics including: An explanation of literature explaining the growing youth market, which will help to frame the issue of why and how children are the targets of these mediated messages; research on aggression and violent FPS video games; an overview of the war-entertainment complex and militainment; and information from previous government initiatives to use the media as a form of propaganda with an emphasis on the United States government during World War II. Chapter three then will explain the political economy of media as both a methodological and theoretical framework that will guide this analysis supplemented by Kellner’s (1995) three-part framework. Chapter three further will address the data that will comprise the proposed analysis. Chapter four will explain America’s Army through an in-depth review of its production, a hybrid of public government propaganda and private video game capitalism. Chapter five will detail key elements of the America’s Army website text, including features on the game website that invite web users to interact with “Real Heroes,” who are military personnel currently enlisted in the Army. Next, 14 chapter six will analyze part of the America’s Army online audience to better understand the effect of government and corporate production of ideologies. Chapter seven will provide concluding remarks including a discussion of the “government-gaming nexus,” considered the key contribution of this dissertation to the field of both political economy and the study of government-created military entertainment aimed at an adolescent audience.

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CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

As illustrated in the introduction, America’s Army has become a cultural force due to its popularity in the gaming world as it simultaneously acts as an arm of government propaganda, attempting to both shape ideologies in a democratic society and to convince young players to enlist in the military. Several authors have written about the game, as will be explained first in this chapter. However, to uncover the real force behind the video game’s meaning in a democratic society and its purpose as a tool of the government, it is necessary to explore literature that moves beyond just that which explains America’s Army.

After an explanation of the literature that explores the video game, this analysis will move to highlight research on children as targets of marketing viewed through a child development lens and then will document social science and medical research on violent video games and two effects: aggression and desensitization. Next, the chapter explores authors’ works uncovering evidence of the military-entertainment complex and the genre of “militainment,” to explore the roots and modern realities of militarized game play and ideologies of the government represented by video games, film, and television often through formal (but not well-known) private-public partnerships. Finally, this chapter concludes with research about U.S. government propaganda throughout the 20th Century, most notably the government’s relationship with film companies during World War II, which sought to persuade a reluctant public to accept war as both a necessity and a public good. Evidence from World War II provides the best historical lens to understand the current state of American video game technology as propaganda, which blends military and state ideologies with entertainment and audio-visual narratives.

Academic Literature on America’s Army

Most academic discussion to date of the video game America’s Army centers around its position as a recruitment tool while others have studied how it simultaneously brands the military in a such a way that is reserved typically for private corporations trying to sell products and services in a consumer culture. Lugo (2006) explained the game’s role akin to a consumer product this way: “In the end, while using video games to recruit youth is unethical, it is also brilliant. The process begins similarly to other advertising campaigns—by offering a product for free” (p. 14). Andersen and Kurti (2009) explained that the game’s emphasis on perceived

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realism and reality were prime goals of the U.S. Army’s recruitment drive. The authors wrote: “The thrilling excitement of entertainment replaces the emotional truth of war, a trend with highly negative consequences” (p. 45). Van der Graaf and Nieborg (2003) explained America’s Army is an advertisement that shapes the target audiences into laborers in a system where production and distribution is blurred by technology. The video game is at the center of a re- branded and re-calculated commitment by the U.S. Army to show itself in a new light, especially to young men, after years of missed recruiting goals. Nichols (2010a; 2010b), too, focused on America’s Army’s dual mission as recruitment tool and cultural adver-game, explaining the game’s best success is the possible realization for other countries and companies to use similar technology to brand themselves in the video age.

Li (2004), in a master’s thesis for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examined the game as a public sphere, interviewing players and communities that grew out of game play. His exploration of America’s Army began in 2002-2003, coinciding with the start of the Iraq war. Li (2004) expressed surprise that more players chatting online and talking through headsets during active game play did not express an opinion--or even an online recognition--of the ongoing war. “For most, the idea of discussing real war seemed to threaten their sense of carefree pleasure and represented the encroachment of the serious into the luminal space of gameplay” (Li, 2004, p. 5). Through in-depth interviews with 20 players and other interviews with top U.S. Army officials, Li was one of the first scholars to address the America’s Army audience including interviewing a person identified as “K” from Ohio, who was in 2003 a part of the “Drunks with Guns” online clan and who eventually joined the actual U.S. Army (p. 16). Li (2004) conceptualizes the game as an important part of the Army’s shaping of public policy in addition to functioning as a clever recruitment tool that uses technology to reach a new crop of potential soldiers. His focus on the audience paid specific attention to three groups: veterans, evangelical Christians, and hackers.

Researchers (Lenoir, 2003; Nieborg, 2010; Power, 2007; Stahl, 2006; 2010) also have paid attention to the game’s function as an arm of government propaganda and as a function of militarized public space. Barron and Huntemann (2004) equated the America’s Army franchise to modern-day propaganda not unlike Frank Capra’s Why We Fight films during World War II. The stark difference is that the military video games do more than explain the why of fighting but also act as a how-to guide as well. Stahl (2006) suggests that America’s Army is one of a number of 17

commercially-available games that re-constitutes civilian space into a high-technology militarized zone, a re-mapping of “traditional lines between battlefield and home front” (p. 125). Power (2007) explored the “entanglement” of the military and digital games sphere, while also noting that games like America’s Army both validate and rationalize military involvement. Payne (2009) used in-depth interviews to study the game, focusing on America’s Army’s production, explaining after his analysis of six hours of interviews with three military game producers that the game is a fusion between the private sector entertainment gaming companies and state- funded government organizations. Such a blend produces a blurred line between fiction and fact, fun and government training, and leisure and combat. Nieborg (2010) highlighted the inherent messages of America’s Army, calling the game’s creation and free dissemination, quite simply, government propaganda. Gamers are positioned to receive a favorable impression of the Army as they enter the website and play the game, which also has commercialization and commodification as one of its core goals. The game attempts to serve a marketing function for both the U.S. Army and for corporate partners of the Army. In this way, it continues a tradition of corporations targeting children for their spending power and marketplace value.

Adolescents as the Target of Corporate Marketers

Early adolescence—characterized as ages 13 to 16 by Acuff (1997)—marks a time of great physical, cognitive, and emotional developmental change and adjustment for both males and females. Arnett (1999; 2000) explored this time period in an adolescent’s life previously termed “storm and stress” (Hall, 1904) as marked by three key elements. These three are: conflict with parents; disruptions in mood; and a propensity for risky behavior. Developmentally, the risk behavior of this group often is conceived as a result of a cognitive immaturity (Alberts, Elkind, & Ginsberg, 2007; Arnett, 2000). Elkind (1967) hypothesized that this time period is marked by risk behavior that is a function of an adolescent’s construction of a personal fable, a marker of one’s egocentrism. Lapsley, Aalsma, and Halpern-Felsher (2005) described this period as: “Invulnerability is not so much a cognitive error but a narcissistic adaptation to a normative developmental task” (p. 2). The effects on cognitive and emotional development may come from internal factors related to biology and physiology or from outside factors including family, peer groups, and the mainstream media.

Arnett (1995; 1999) explained that adolescent development researchers do not agree if,

18 how, and to what extent adolescents may negotiate storm and stress but media are an important factor in identity development and social negotiation for many in this age group. Effects of media use including aggression, substance use, and sexuality are well documented in adolescents (Strasburger, 1995; Strasburger & Donnerstein, 1999). Arnett (1995) suggested that media socialization for this age group becomes a kind of self-socialization in that adolescents may choose particular media that may help them make sense of their environment. That self- socialization is marked by the use by adolescents of media: to entertain, to cope, to identify with youth culture, and to shape their own identities. A fifth marker of adolescent media usage is dominated mostly by boys at this stage and is deemed by Arnett (1995) as the “high sensation” (p. 523) media use intended to produce thrills and linked to their sense of invulnerability and egocentrism. Acuff (1997) suggested that attempting to achieve power and status while experimenting with rebellion are other features of early adolescence; these features often are revealed in the media choices that adolescents make during this time. Also at this age, adolescents are first working through issues of moral development, attempting to determine issues of both right and wrong, as the brain undergoes dramatic changes. During late adolescence, typically conceived as the period between ages 16 and 19, decision making based on those choices may improve. Klein et. al. (1993) documented that mass media use by adolescents aged 14 to 16, was correlated to more risky behaviors.

Marketers target the adolescent demographic for the purchase power of this group but also realize this period of tumultuous physical, emotional, and affective change means that adolescents, often, are an easy target for products aimed at satisfying part of their desire for independence, thrill-seeking, or for inclusion into a greater social order. Linn (2004) wrote: “Because children’s attitudes and values are not as solidified as those of adults, they are more impressionable. The stories we create for them—about ourselves, our values and our culture— have a profound impact on their development” (p. 110). In a media system that is motivated by profit, these stories are created with an emphasis on branding and building buyer loyalty no matter the age.

Children and adolescents represent a valuable commodity in the present with the potential to be shaped by a corporate brand or marketing strategy for many years into the future. The messages that children acquire from media, whether commercial or governmental, may be remembered and shared with outside social groups. Larsen and LeFleur (1954) in a study of 19

susceptibility of children and adults to propaganda messages showed that children were far more likely that adults to remember media messages created as propaganda and were more likely to share that message with other persons, increasing the messages’ diffusion rate.

Adolescent boys face a toy and entertainment culture especially targeted toward war and violence, a direct result of corporate free enterprise (Miedzian, 1991). Kapur (2005) believed that marketing to children is a natural progression in a capitalist economy, of which selling to children becomes just another niche market. Cook (2004) explained that the child market becomes a function of misplaced adult aspirations to exploit sentimental narratives for profit. Linn (2004) continued: “Because advertising and marketing work to create a continuous need for products, one of the most powerful techniques media marketers employ to hook children is to exploit their aspirations” (p. 110). Schor (1991) studied violence-themed toys at the 2002 International Toy Fair and found that action figures based on war narratives were being targeted to pre-schoolers, further evidence that when profit motivation is involved, the concern to protect children becomes less of a priority. Linn (2004) suggested that violence-themed toys now have been replaced by violent video games, which have a greater influence on the user hypothesized as a function of interactivity and links to aggressive schema (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) Deutsch and Theodorou (2009) said that adolescents use consumption to aspire to certain socially-constructed identities. Their ethnographic study revealed that boys in the age group 12 to 18 used buying as a way to negotiate their conceptions of what it means to be a powerful man in society just as it shaped their position as dominant members of the household. Success for this group was explained as a function of material wealth and acquisition. Linn (2004) wrote:

The word ‘aspirational’ turns up a lot in marketing literature these days, especially in the context of selling to children. For instance, teens are seen as aspirational twentysomethings and twelve-year-olds are described as aspirational seventeen- year-olds. When it comes to mass media, it’s not just that kids are buying products—or persuading their parents to buy them. They are also buying into the behavior, values, and attitudes of characters designed to attract and hold their attention in order to sell video games, shampoo, CDs, and numerous other products. (p. 111) Corporate marketers began placing advertising in video games as a way to target the key male demographic and appeal to teenagers’ unique desires (Calvert, 2008).

In the case of America’s Army, the game itself is the advertising, a way to target those desires and aspirations in a FPS format. When children are the targets, and when viewed through

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the prism of America’s Army, the behavior may be manifest in two ways: Consuming and fighting. The next section will explain social science research on violent video games and two potential effects of game play documented in the literature: aggression and desensitization. The threat of cognitive and behavioral effects of violent video games must be understood and interpreted to contextualize the potential impact of the game on the susceptible adolescent audience. The connections between the quantitative literature on violent video games and the critical focus of this dissertation will more fully be explored in the conclusion of this dissertation.

Violent Video Games, Aggression, and Desensitization

The link between violent media, including violent video games, and aggression is well established, however; before the documentation of the literature in this area is provided it is necessary to first explain the definition of “violent” forwarded throughout the manuscript and then explain key works in the literature that document media violence and aggression. For the purposes of this dissertation, the characterization of America’s Army as a “violent video game” will be explained using an existing definition of media violence forwarded by Signorelli (2003). That definition is:

The overt expression of physical force (with or without a weapon, against self or other) compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt or killed, or actually hurting or killing. To be coded, violence had to be plausible and credible; idle threats and verbal abuse were not coded. All acts of violence that fit the definition, regardless of conventional notions about types of violence that might have ‘serious’ effects, were recorded. Violence in a humorous context was included. ‘Accidental’ violence and ‘acts of nature’ were also recorded because they are purposeful, claim victims, and demonstrate power. (p. 44) The game website affiliated with America’s Army, the text of which will be more fully explored in chapter 5, clearly meets this definition created by Signorelli (2003). The game is a first-person shooter format, which means that players move through a fictional warzone setting as if they were holding an automatic M-16 gun, which is always in their vision as they play on the virtual battlefield. All weapons used in the game must mimic those that “real soldiers” would use in battle, and the game website includes a section dedicated to weapon selection and description. The purpose of the game is to kill enemies who are motivated to avoid that harm. In some cases, the violence of the game may be unintentional or accidental, yet this type of game violence still inflicts harm to persons and characters in the game.

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Bushman and Anderson (2002) explained that the time to debate the causal effects of violent media on aggression should have ended based on the volumes of social scientific and medical research utilizing experimental, longitudinal, and cross-sectional methods—methods that have improved in the last decade. Violent video games, like violent films and television, should provide society with concerns when related to potential aggressive outcomes in children and adolescents based on this extensive research record (Barlett, Harris, & Baldassaro, 2007; Barlett, Harris & Bruey, 2008; Gentile & Gentile, 2008; Hopf, Huber, & Weiβ, 2008; Huesmann & Taylor, 2006; Moller & Krahe, 2009; Wallenius & Punamaki, 2008; Weber, Ritterfeld, & Mathiak, 2006). For example, Holtz and Appel (2011) found that online gaming, Internet use for communication, and FPS game play predicted externalized problem behaviors, characterized as aggression and delinquency, for adolescents in their sample aged 10-14. This “widely accepted” violence research that has established links between violent video game content and the effects on adolescents and teenagers makes the video game industry vulnerable to potential regulatory and legal issues related to certain games’ content (Collier, Liddell, & Liddell, 2008, p. 109). Bushman and Anderson (2002) wrote: “There is sufficient research to conclude that violent video game exposure can cause increases in aggressive behavior and that repeated exposure to violent video games is linked to serious forms of aggression and violence” ( p. 1679). The authors continued (see Anderson & Bushman, 2001; 2002; Anderson et. al, 2003; 2004; Bushman & Anderson, 2009) in the wake of the aforementioned 2002 piece to address the processes of why violent media is linked to aggressive cognition and aggressive behavior in some individuals.

They forwarded the General Aggression Model (GAM) as a way of synthesizing how violent media causes the effects documented over the previous two decades, and perhaps most importantly, devised a model that links potential behaviors with aggressive cognitions and behaviors. For some people, information processing and retrieval, even in situations where violent outcomes may not be expected, are often directed by knowledge structures called “schemas” or “scripts” (Bushman & Anderson, 2002, p. 1670) that leads to violent reactions and interpretations. The authors explained that such scripts, especially when combined with trait hostility and frequent exposure to violent video game play, cause increases in aggressiveness for some people. The introduction of aggressive cognition prompted by violent media ultimately may lead to aggressive behavior.

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Researchers have attempted to quantify for which people and under what circumstances violent video games are likely to have the greatest effect with the contextual features of violent video games receiving equal treatment in the last decade to further understand effects. Konijn, Bijvank, and Bushman (2007) showed identifying with video game characters is positively correlated with aggression and makes male adolescent players feel more immersed in a game. A study by Gentile, Lynch, Linder, and Walsh (2004) showed links between the amount of violent video game play and hostility. Their sample included 607 seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders (mean age=14) and found links to aggressive behaviors. Video game usage also predicted arguing with instructors, lower school grades, and involvement in physical fights. Funk, Buchman, and Germann (2000) studied preference for violent electronic games to identify whether some players are “high risk.” Those students who identified a preference for game play with more violence, revealed lower self-esteem and scholastic competence than others in the sample. Konijn, Bijvank, and Bushman (2007) showed that Dutch boys who identified with characters in violent video games were more aggressive after play than those who played a fantasy game without such identification. The identification effect was stronger for those adolescents in the sample who were more immersed in the game and believed it was more realistic.

Barlett, Harris, and Baldassaro (2007) sought to extend the research on aggression and violent video games using the GAM by examining weapons differences. They allowed participants to use either a traditional gun used in first-person shooter games or an “interactive light gun” (p. 489). They hypothesized the use of the interactive light gun would further heighten aggression from a baseline measure based on the Weapons Effect, which suggests that just the presence of a weapon may increase aggression scores. The researchers also found significant links to aggression and physiological arousal for those students who played using both types of weapons. An increase in aggression was found after 15 minutes of playing a violent video game, though continued play had no further effect.

Other researchers have sought to determine the effects of violent video games on participants’ desensitization to violence. Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, and Baumgardner (2004) studied media violence exposure and desensitization, aiming to see the differences in exposure between real-life violence, video game violence, film violence, television violence, and Internet violence. The authors emphasized that video games are the most prominent source of exposure 23 and because they employ a design wherein players actually control, actively participate in, and create the violence, they hypothesized these players may actually undergo greater desensitization. They define desensitization as: “The attenuation or elimination of cognitive, emotional, and, ultimately, behavioral responses to a stimulus” (Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, Baumgardner, 2004, p. 25). They explained further that emotional desensitization occurs when a person who would have been likely to have had a reaction—to a violent incident, for example-- instead does not experience a typical reaction due to being anesthetized after lengthy media exposure. In a sample of 150 students of elementary school age, the authors asked participants to complete four questionnaires that outlined demographic information, media use and preferences, a survey about real-life violence exposure, an assessment of each child’s attitudes toward violence, and a gauge of each child’s empathy. Children who self-reported the highest amount of violent video game play demonstrated the lowest empathy scores while also revealing stronger pro-violence scores; the authors maintained this is evidence of desensitization. The authors concluded: “The values operative in violent video games may be more likely to have lasting impact on children who are still developing moral reasoning principles as a guide to pro-social behavior than on individuals with established value systems” (Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, & Baumgardner, 2004, p. 34). Carnagey, Anderson, and Bushman (2007) further explored desensitization but were interested in physiological desensitization after violent video game play. They defined this dependent variable as: “a reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence” (p. 490). Participants played one of four violent video games or non-violent video games for 20 minutes and then were shown a filmed scene of actual violence for 10 minutes. Heart rate and a galvanic skin test, used to determine levels of psychological stress, were measured for all 257 participants. The researchers explain that students exposed first to the violent video game demonstrated a lower heart rate and galvanic skin response compared to students who were randomly assigned to the non-violent condition, demonstrating their lessened physiological arousal and greater desensitization to violence.

Violent video games, research has explored, are not just causing aggression or leading to desensitization in some individuals based on an arbitrary game design. Research suggests that corporately-manufactured and distributed games actually are quite adept at teaching aggression based on key game features. Gentile and Gentile (2008) in a study of game design techniques explained that violent games often use proven pedagogical tools to hook young players who

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learn aggression by playing over the long term. These tools include: Providing clear objectives; the over-learning of tasks through practice and repetition; use of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards; acquisition of content knowledge to move forward and expand the knowledge base. Vividness of video game images also provides opportunities for greater memory and information retrieval. The factors add to the possibility children will learn aggressive behavior from violent video games. The Gentile and Gentile (2008) sample included: elementary school children, adolescents in middle school, and college-aged students at a large Midwestern university. Participants were surveyed about their prior video game exposure and were asked to rate how much violence they prefer in video games they play. Higher video game play with violent features explained higher levels of physical aggression and more physical fights.

In recent years, researchers have begun revealing through longitudinal studies, like the experimental and survey ones before them, evidence that violent video game play is linked to aggression. A 2-year longitudinal study by Hopf, Huber, and Weiβ (2008) found violent video game play by German students first studied at age 12 and then again at age 14 was the strongest risk factor of violent criminality. Möller and Krahé (2009), over a period of 30 months, examined 143 German adolescents’ use of violent video games but looked at both hostile attribution bias and aggressive behavior. Video game exposure at time 1 was a significant predictor of both physical aggression and normative acceptance of aggression at time 2. Furthermore, the researchers found evidence to support a “selection hypothesis” (p. 85) that revealed over time students who played more violent video games became more aggressive. Digital video game violence measured at two times in a group of Finnish adolescents aged 12 to 15 showed a link between play and aggression (Wallenius & Punamaki, 2008). For that sample of 316 children, not even positive parent-child communication was enough to reduce the long-term effects of violent video game play on aggression.

Brain research, too, has received more attention as technology has improved. Weber, Ritterfeld, and Mathiak (2006) used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the effect of violent video game play on the brain. The researchers studied 13 males aged 18 to 26, who played a violent video game, in an effort to synthesize neuroscience methods and communication research. In addition to MRI scans, the researchers compared through content analysis a frame- by-frame sample of the game to the brain scans. The scenes were coded one of five ways: passive; active without violent interactions; active with potential danger; active and under attack; 25 and, finally, active and killing. Violent video game play stimulated brain activation consistent with aggressive behavior and thoughts.

The medical community, working either separately or in conjunction with social science researchers, produced empirical work (Funk, 1993; Worth, Chambers, Nassau, Rakhra, & Sargen, 2008), provided suggestions on media use with an emphasis on concerns about violence (Gentile, Oberg, Sherwood, Story, Walsh, & Hogan, 2004; Strasburger & Donnerstein, 1999) and conducted meta-analyses of existing social science research (“Media Violence,” 2009) to convey concerns and document negative effects of media violence. In a policy recommendation published in October 2009, pediatricians wrote of the extensive prevalence of media violence and its documented links to aggressive behaviors and cognition. The authors wrote: “The evidence is now clear and convincing: media violence is 1 of the causal factors of real-life violence and aggression. Therefore, pediatricians and parents need to take action” (“Media Violence,” 2009, p. 1495). Among the recommendations, the pediatricians who authored the 2009 report asked that doctors treating children become aware of the growing body of media effects studies and, next, that doctors ask at least two media-related questions when children attend annual physical checkups. The two media questions involve how much time the child spends watching or playing digital media and, second, where is that child getting access to media. The report states that pediatricians should identify heavy media viewers and subsequently evaluate those children for possible aggressive outcomes. In terms of policy, the report states that media violence is not a violence issue, but a “public health issue and an environmental issue” (“Media Violence,” 2009, p. 1499). Of industry leaders, the report authors asked that efforts be made to stop the glamorization of violence, eliminate the comedic portrayals of violence, and halt the glamorization of weapons. These recommendations were directed at entertainment corporations that produce violence media. Unfortunately, to date, the medical community has not directed its study at government-created violent video games.

Militarism, the State, and Entertainment

Social scientists have long established links between violent video game play or violent media viewing and aggression. While some of those popular first-person shooter games and films are based on war narratives, the links between entertainment and militarism are revealed through other American media as well and include, most notably, television and film in addition

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to video games. In the history of American film propaganda, research has revealed how the mass media led the American public to change its opinions about the state as an actor in a global system and shaped its mores about the culture of war. Trend (2003) explained: “War is the ultimate example of rationalized state violence. To gain public consent for war, its stakes must be raised to the level of myth and history” (p. 303). The media, either through news or entertainment, elevate those stakes to the levels of myth and history described by Trend (2003). Authors have attempted to quantify and to classify how this merging of media and politics— based on ideologies often unknown to the viewing or listening public—affected the political, cultural, and social sphere. Researchers have classified this trend as the result of a relationship between government, private, and media sectors—relationships that were best known in the early- to mid-20th Century--as propaganda. The tradition of militainment—or the military- entertainment complex (Andersen, 2006; Lenoir, 2000; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003) or the military- industrial-media-entertainment network (Der Derian, 2001)—is as old as media itself although it may carry different names. An understanding of this linkage is appropriate before literature on propaganda is presented, although the two may certainly be regarded as similar.

Stahl (2006; 2010) explained militainment, a genre that blended military ideology with entertainment across platforms and through various mass media. Stahl also revealed that America’s Army is not the first medium of popular culture to blend war and entertainment nor does his analysis suggest that government-influenced, government-created and/or government- financed media that could shift a nation’s ideologies regarding war, consumerism, and the identities of capitalism began with the modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stahl (2010) defined militainment as:

State violence translated into an object of pleasurable consumption. Beyond this, the word also suggests that this state violence is not of the abstract, distant, or historical variety but rather an impending or current use of force, one directly relevant to the citizen’s current political life. (p. 6) What Stahl (2010) offered is a perspective on the “changing civic experience of war” (p. 3) in the United States, largely represented by an increasingly powerful Hollywood-Washington D.C. relationship. The militainment era also is marked by two curious cultural facts that seem at odds with each other: First, an American public that seemingly lives distracted and distanced from war yet it is one that during the modern times of war has had an increasing ability to inject itself into the action through news coverage and, mainly, interactive entertainment.

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And so, in this ambiguous culture of violence and interaction, just more than one decade after U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf said during Operation Desert Storm that “war is not a Nintendo game” (as quoted in Stahl, 2010, p. 5; p. 91), the U.S. government designed and produced one of its most successful recruiting tools of all time: a video game (Singer, 2010). The use of video games, Stahl (2010) suggested, is a strategic move by the American government to blur the lines between entertainment and the battlefield. Such a blurring means that the government produces games for use with its own ranks of enlisted soldiers just as it provides those games to a civilian population hungry for a war experience and violent mass media.

Authors (Andersen, 2006; Andersen & Kurti, 2009; Lenoir, 2003; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003; Leonard, 2004) studying the military-entertainment complex have explained the structures in place that have fostered relationships between the government and private video game makers, television networks, or filmmakers to tell militarized stories that often have anti-terrorism as dominant themes while simultaneously celebrating the state and its hegemony. Studying the military-entertainment complex or militainment is rooted in an academic basis for inquiry that seeks to chart and understand the relationships between popular culture and state action. The news media have their own role in the violence narrative. As Trend (2003) explained: “[Media] representations of violence play an important role in the legitimization of police and military action” (p. 302). Andersen (2006) explained in her analysis of the military-entertainment complex that the profit-motivated media, including news organizations, are just as hungry for the war experience as civilians who have become accustomed to the technology that modern warfare provides. The link between entertainment corporations and the military proves far more nefarious than just trying to make profits off of video games.

Andersen (2006) explored the relationship between the U.S. Defense Department and Disney, Pixar, and George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, which actually sought to create systems that could be used for both entertainment and militarization. Films produced after September 11, 2001, including Behind Enemy Lines, actually promoted the “War or Terror” (Andersen, 2006, p. 252), President George W. Bush’s political strategy. Davison (2006) explained that television, too, is a part of militainment. His analysis of the former NBC hit, The West Wing, explained that the fictionalized account during an episode of the political drama legitimized the killing of Muslims while it reinforced the power of the Hollywood-Washington D.C. relationship he refers to as “Washiwood” (p. 469). He contrasted the “hard” power of the 28 state actor, with its ability to actually go to war, to the “soft” power of Hollywood, with its beautiful visual imagery yet subtle messages of fear of the Muslim including those portrayed in the aforementioned episode of The West Wing. He wrote: “LA [Los Angeles] and DC [Washington D.C.] thus complement each other, even when they appear to be institutionally separate” (p. 468). The effect of both appears to be an overwhelming anti-Muslim sentiment that helps the government to justify its actions abroad, no matter the cost (Boggs & Pollard, 2007; Davison, 2006).

Authors may not define the work of the private-public partnership that results in government- or policy-minded motion pictures or television specifically as militainment or as a part of the military-entertainment complex though these works still document the relationships between the public and private spheres and resulting ideologies produced through mass media products. This infusion of military ideologies into media products may seem as obvious as a film like Black Hawk Down, yet it also happens more subtly as in the case of the use of military film reels during the 1950s Disney television show, The Mickey Mouse Club. Robb (2004) and Boggs and Pollard (2007) are included in this group of scholars who seek to understand how the military-entertainment partnerships have affected content ranging from films made for adult audiences to others designed for children and adolescents.

Robb (2004) has written extensively about the films of Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, including Black Hawk Down, the true story of a downed U.S. Army helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia; Pearl Harbor, a fictionalized big-budget Hollywood recreation of the World War II attack; and Top Gun, the story of hotshot U.S. Navy pilots, to illustrate how Hollywood functions as a result of the demands of Washington D.C. political and military leaders. Most of Bruckheimer’s blockbuster films are militarily-themed and most have required editing by the military before hitting movie theatres worldwide. Robb contends that the films are made, like all others by private Hollywood studios that create big-budget war films, under the direction of a government-created manual titled, “A Producer’s Guide to Army Cooperation with the Entertainment Industry” (Robb, 2004, p. 92). Another of Bruckheimer’s films, Armageddon, about a group of oil workers who are tasked to save the Earth from an asteroid, received similar approvals from the military and the private sector that filmmakers sought to represent. Disney produced and distributed the film, but executives there first had to negotiate with the U.S. government before filming even started. Robb (2004) cited a Disney executive’s pitch to the 29 head of the Pentagon’s film division:

The heroes of our story are the U.S. military, NASA technicians, and oil industry civilians. Already, we have the complete support of NASA and strong interest from the oil industry. We firmly believe that with the support of the U.S. military, Armageddon will be the biggest film of 1998 while illustrating the expertise, leadership and heroism of the U.S. military. Our experience with you and the U.S. Army on the film In the Army Now was extremely positive. I am looking forward to working with you on yet another exciting pro-military project. (p. 93) Films that receive official Army approval are not just seen as being more positive in their representations of the American military and American soldiers, but Hollywood studios and filmmakers have a financial incentive sometimes worth millions of dollars to depict the government and the military according to how the government and military want scenes written, shown, or shot.

Writing pro-military scripts or removing language and characters the military sees as counter to cultivating its positive messages in society are just two ways that the government has control over content, but Robb (2004) also said that changing content to be more military- friendly helps military recruiters expand their pool of potential applicants. The trend is revealed through film and television relationships with the military. For example, in the early 1980s, the U.S. Navy regarded The Right Stuff, a film about men involved in the early space missions, as a way to improve recruitment. A top U.S. Navy official wrote to another: “The production promises to benefit Navy recruiting efforts” (as cited in Robb, 2004, p. 177). But, in order to maximize the recruitment benefits, the filmmakers would need to cut out coarse language that would have garnered the film an R rating, making it unsuitable for children under the age of 17. Robb cited the U.S. Navy official writing: “If distributed as an ‘R’ it cuts down on the teenage audience, which is a prime one to the military services when our recruiting goals are considered” (p. 177). The film eventually was released with a PG rating.

Other examples further illustrate this drive to make films that appease the Pentagon by emphasizing military recruitment. In 1990, a top Paramount film company executive wrote to then-U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney about the upcoming movie, The Hunt for Red October, a submarine drama that portrayed Russia as the clear enemy of the United States. The executive wrote, as cited in Robb (2004):

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The demographics for this project show that we will have a strong percentage of viewers in the 15 to 19 age group, which presumably would be the correct audience for the Navy. In addition, the parents who see these films will be favorably impressed and supportive of the Navy recruiting content. Considering both the quality of the audience and the potential for a minimum of 60 million unduplicated impressions, the recruiting benefits for the video release will be of major significance, with particular emphasis on the high priority targets concerning recruits for nuclear power and aviation roles in the Navy. (p. 180) In exchange for the positive portrayals and delivering the right demographics to the military, Paramount requested $3 million from the Pentagon as advertising money.

Recruitment is often the goal of Hollywood-government partnerships and is present both in television and film. For example, during screenings of Top Gun, the 1986 film that starred Tom Cruise as an F-16 pilot, the U.S. Navy set up recruitment stations in theatre lobbies. Targeting an even younger audience, Walt Disney knowingly allowed the military to include film reels on The Mickey Mouse Club (Robb, 2004) as a way to increase recruitment and provide a sanitized military storyline weekly to millions of child viewers in the 1950s. Boggs and Pollard (2007) explained that some films shown during World War I also required U.S. Navy approval and intended to urge military enlistment.

The relationships with entertainment corporations were forged after the government had made others with key private defense contractors—known as the military-industrial complex— including the world’s largest like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Electric, which also owns NBC. America’s near obsession with gun culture and violence may be based, in part, on the American media’s violence saturation combined with its militarism (Boggs & Pollard, 2007). Jhally (1989) suggested that any mention of the controversy surrounding the war manufacturer’s position would be ignored by the media corporations that it owns, effectively stifling debate before it even begins. Boggs and Pollard (2007) say: “The tight linkage between military and civilian forms of violence in the outgrowth of the role of the Pentagon has come to play in so many areas of politics, the economy, culture, media and everyday life” (p. 25). With the corporate and government actors united and civilians merely along for the high-technology, interactive ride, Andersen (2006) suggested that even in peace time, the military-entertainment complex is gearing the public up for any inevitable war. Boggs and Pollard (2007) explained their critical look at American militarism as a function of what they term the “Hollywood war machine” (p. 52). These war-themed motion pictures are prominent factors in explaining a

31 culture that is more accepting of both violence and war. Films, too, throughout the 20th Century, have provided a glamorized look at the role of the American soldier and military while simultaneously justifying foreign incursions or enemy civilian deaths as both necessary and forgivable.

Video Games Go to War

The progression from film and television to video games seems natural in the military- entertainment complex or in a culture that hopes to create an emphasis on state militarism to sway public opinion and also boost military recruitment. Leonard (2004) explained: “War video games are no longer purely about training soldiers already enlisted; rather, they are about recruitment and developing future soldiers, while simultaneously generating support among civilian populations for increasing use American military power” (p. 4). Games, with their interactively, are even more powerful agents to further elude a commercial public and players that war is fantasy, that training is sport, and that death and destruction are entertainment (Payne, 2009). Andersen (2006) explained: “Video games create virtual worlds of action and combat that engage players as participants. The movement from narrative, either fictional or documentary, to interaction has created new spaces for war” (p. 254).

Lenoir and Lowood (2003) and Leonard (2004) have suggested that this military- entertainment complex’s power is made even stronger by the combination of the increasing importance of the video game industry in American culture and the decades of gaming and simulation tactics that the government has perfected since World War II. Power (2007) said that war video games: “Represent a powerful medium to explore the ways in which visual culture can be used to elicit consent for the U.S. military and to enable the expression of militaristic fantasies” (p. 273). The video games are not just used to reflect current foreign affairs or foreign policy, but are instead used to actually legitimize foreign policy while helping corporations who produce war-themed content profit. Relationships including those developed by General Electric for video-game maker Sega are just part of that power structure that encouraged the production and dissemination of war technologies for public, commercial uses in an effort to, as Power (2007) described, elicit that consent. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009) suggested that video games illustrate this hybrid of military and entertainment meaning that the unification under the guise of the military-industrial complex leaves players both commodified and exploited.

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Such relationships showed the U.S. Marines that the groundbreaking video game DOOM, first available in the early 1990s, could be used to train soldiers (Lenoir & Lowood, 2003). The DOOM model showed that both profits and consciousness could be altered through the use of video games. Massachusetts-based MÄK Technologies began producing simulations for the U.S. Department of Defense that it was agreed would be slightly modified for commercial uses, further blurring the line between military application and civilian entertainment and eventually cultivating an environment that would produce America’s Army. Lenoir (2003), like Davison (2006) when describing the military-entertainment linkage and how it affects television, explained of video games: “Although Hollywood and the Pentagon may differ markedly in culture, they now overlap in technology: War games are big entertainment” (p. 13). Walther (2009) further argues video games are a natural fit for the military-entertainment complex because of the simulation necessary in both domains. And the military must compete in this environment in order to recruit and to build its brand just as it must enlist private game makers to create war-themed narratives to continue shaping violent ideologies and to further brand militarized state power. The U.S. Navy, not to be outdone by its U.S. Army counterparts, created the SOCOM games with media giant Sony Corporation. Mirrlees (2009) described the resulting game as simultaneously building and improving the U.S. Navy’s branding goals while it sought to recruit young people to join that branch of the military through its emphasis on promoting masculine values. Mirrlees (2009) wrote: “It is a digital war game. As such, it requires players to wage virtual war” (p. 177). Simulation helps to promote the ideas of patriotism and military power.

Also focusing on simulation and relationships between government, media, and industry, Der Derian (2001) coined the term military-industrial-media-entertainment network, hoping to document the increasing military reliance on simulation as he explained the military functioning rather closely with entertainment organizations in Hollywood until they intersected in a state of “virtuous war.” He suggests that military simulators would reinforce and re-strengthen bonds between Hollywood and the Pentagon unknown since the mid-1940s. As an example, Der Derian (2001) explained that the University of Southern California at Los Angeles hosted in 2000 military leaders and executives from top media companies to celebrate the launch of a $45 million Institute for Creative Technologies [ICT]. ICT’s mission was to: “pool expertise, financial resources, and tools of virtual reality for the production of state-of-the-art military

33 simulations” (Der Derian, 2001, pp. 161-2). At that same event, Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that Los Angeles is not the entertainment capital of the world; Washington D.C. is. Der Derian (2001) explained the distinction: “Ever since [World War II], the military and the movie industry have been in a technological relay race for seeing and killing the enemy while securing and seducing the citizen” (p. 165). This is evidenced by a rash of post-Vietnam era films that have glamorized war and promoted military values. Decades before Vietnam, filmmakers and the government worked together on initiatives that explained and demonized enemies just as they espoused the importance of consumerism. A history of the American government’s propaganda through its own means or through relationships with entertainment corporations will be reviewed next through an analysis of World War II-era media.

The U.S. Government and Mediated Propaganda: Lessons from World War II

Film is traditionally thought of as the most powerful mass medium to shape, refine, and engage audiences about war narratives, based on strong history in American culture and its sheer cultural force. During World War II, the U.S. War Department equipped and funded propaganda films while Hollywood supplied the actors and directors necessary to actually make a film (Der Derian, 2001). “During the war [World War II] the government, convinced that movies had extraordinary power to mobilize public opinion for war, carried out an intensive, unprecedented effort to mold the content of Hollywood feature films” (Koppes & Black, 1987, p. vii). For the purposes of this section, the definition of “propaganda” that will be used and relied on is the one forwarded by Koppes and Black (1987): “The expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations” (pp. 49- 50). The achievement by the military-government alliance seems all the more spectacular when one considers that the United States was the only major world power at the start of World War II without an official propaganda industry (Koppes & Black, 1987). What the American government did have was access to a Hollywood star system and silver screen mythology that the public both loved and admired.

The combination of entertainment media acting on behalf of the government—actually with the government in some cases—would have extreme consequences for the American public during and after World War II (May, 1996; Robb, 2004). May (1996) explained that the World

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War II-era head of the Motion Picture Producers’ Association, Eric Johnston, was closely tied to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s national economic team. Johnston believed, as explained by May (1996), that militarism and economic growth were two concepts that should be closely tied together. May (1996) explained of New Deal and New Left scholars writing about the economic- media ties: “All concur that with the exception of the occasional film or artifact critical of the status quo, a constant commitment to liberal capitalism and consumerism informed the popular arts from the 1930s to the 1950s” (p. 72). To shape this Americans-as-united ideology, mass media in the post-World War II era had to treat as subversive any ideas and media products judged as counter to the capitalist structure. Any reaction by the public and expressed through mediated channels to the economic inequalities of the Great Depression and its aftermath in the early 1930s was quickly replaced by unity narratives and capitalist ideologies once the United States entered into World War II.

May (1996) studied 240 film plots of movies released between 1930 and 1940. He categorized themes and related those to the time periods that corresponded to the country’s entry into the war. As the nation approached war, film goals began a shift toward collectivist approaches to problem solving. Also during that time, dominant narratives included themes of reverence for authority figures and official institutions. These figures and institutions were seen as protectors of Americans from outside threats, not the internal threats popular after the Great Depression. An even greater threat than those posed by the other or outside enemies was subversion of the dominant political ideas of wartime. Heroes aligned with those political ideas spiked during wartime film releases.

By 1944, 40 percent of the films May (1996) analyzed had a hero with a patriotic mission compared to 10 percent the decade prior. In this narrative, the state became both “the source of security and prosperity” (May, 1996, p. 84) for Americans. The 1942 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Sergeant York, showed a poor Tennessee farmer reluctant to enlist in World War I until, as May (1996) described, the young man read a history book. He then enlisted. As a soldier, York captured 132 enemy German soldiers. And the government provides him with riches obvious only in a capitalistic system: A farm that would have been unavailable to him without his participation in war. The movie starred Hollywood heavyweight Gary Cooper and had military recruitment as its primary theme. Cooper made a visit to the White House to promote the movie, further blurring the lines of entertainment and war for an apparently 35

unsuspecting public. May (1996) attributed this entertainment-political-military alignment to the striking increase in just nine years of public perceptions of involvement in foreign affairs. In 1937, slightly more than one quarter (26 percent) of Americans favored involvement in foreign affairs. Just eight years later, that percentage jumped to 81 percent.

Scholars of media and World War II (Koppes & Black, 1987; May, 1996) point to legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra’s work as the emblematic (and problematic) example of how the political influence on the arts may affect not just the individual filmmaker, but the culture at large. Frank Capra, the Columbia Pictures director who had made such classic 1930s films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It Happened One Night, produced for the U.S. government a series of seven films called “Why We Fight,” after his own military enlistment (Barron and Huntemann, 2004; Koppes & Black, 1987). The first film in the series, Prelude to War, won an Academy Award in 1942 for Best Documentary. Just three years later, the Italian- born Capra produced the film, Know Your Enemy—Japan. The film was not just a reminder to the public of who the U.S. military was fighting in World War II, but a stepped-up propaganda campaign at a time when President Franklin Roosevelt sought to cloister Japanese-Americans in West Coast internment camps. Koppes and Black (1987) called the Japan-themed film “Frank Capra’s propaganda masterpiece” (p. 250). The film was, in part, to blame for an increasing hatred toward the Japanese. In 1944, 13% of Americans claimed that they had wanted to kill a Japanese person. In 1945, the year Capra’s “masterpiece” was made, 22% of Americans wished that more atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan.

Those films that depicted an enemy as they glamorized the home front were not the only effects of the Hollywood-government partnership. May (1996) explained that Frank Capra’s 1930s films highlighted the struggle of the working class against corporate oppressors. Yet after the war, those film topics would become taboo, a direct influence of the new monopolistic Hollywood corporations running movie production, exhibition and distribution (Mattelart, 1979). By the late 1940s, the heroes in Frank Capra’s films were corporate leaders. Families that recognized freedom at home through commercialism--and not political activism—provided evidence of this new order and starred in his post-war movies.

Neither Frank Capra nor his film studio were the only culprits in facilitating the Hollywood propaganda machine during World War II, helped by the government’s official

36 propaganda agency called the Office of War Information that had both war themes and capitalist ideologies as its main societal functions (Brinkley, 1996; Huebner, 2008; Koppes & Black, 1987; May, 1996; Roeder, 1996). Government offices including the Office of War Information were created to incentivize Hollywood film makers to “promote the spirit of war to a population removed from the fighting” (May, 1996, p. 74). Between December 1, 1941, and July 24, 1942, the Office of War Information categorized war as the primary theme in 72 motion pictures; however, the war themes lacked what the government thought were essential messages of U.S. power and military might. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced in June 1942 the creation of the Office of War Information to coordinate the government’s information activities, to create public relations campaigns in the United States and abroad, and to act as a liaison to news and entertainment media, activities that would certainly help position the government to boost the war images it found most favorable to its foreign policy related to World War II and domestic policies like the New Deal (Brinkley, 1996; Roeder, 1996). Sorensen (1968) explained the Office of War Information acted under the direct supervision of the U.S. State Department and the government’s top military leaders. Brinkley (1996) explained the Office of War Information’s mission went beyond just representations of the enemy and military recruitment:

MacLeish [the Office of War Information director] sought to keep the public’s gaze fastened on the future beyond the war. He hoped to persuade Americans that out of this struggle would come a new and better world in which the liberal promise of the New Deal could be realized and expanded both in America and in other societies. (p. 313) Not long after the Office of War Information’s creation, the head of the agency released the “Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry” (Koppes & Black, 187, p. 65). The manual explained how the government believed the world--and America’s role in the world--should be explained and glamorized on the silver screen. It also wanted Hollywood to show American democracy at work and highlight people’s sacrifices made during the war effort as a testimonial to staying happy during the war. The manual also sought to position the Germans and the Japanese as enemies of the state just as it showed common and not-so-common people, enlisting to fight as a way to boost military recruitment. “Even Tarzan, isolated in his jungle vastness, enlisted for the Allies” (Koppes & Black, 1987, p. 61). Roeder (1996) analyzed government documents from the 1940s to explain how the Office of War Information staff members did not just influence Hollywood scripts, but either completely edited out sections or

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forced filmmakers to include material not present in earlier versions.

The effect of government propaganda through media cannot be underestimated either for the power it yields the government or for the ideologies it helps cultivate in a public. Sorensen (1968) said:

Propaganda unrelated to policy is almost certain to be ineffective and can be harmful. Used as one of several instruments in a coordinated campaign with specific and realistic objectives, it can do much. That, perhaps, is the most important lesson of propaganda taught by World War II; it is a lesson repeatedly retaught in the peacetime propaganda operations that followed. (p. 21) Chomsky (2002) explained that the real success of decades of U.S. propaganda is the perpetual use of force against other nation states, often with human rights abuses. Writing about the Gulf War and U.S. military atrocities, Chomsky explained that if such atrocities were done by any nation or military other than the United States, the American public would think that those acts were barbaric. Chomsky (2002) wrote: “That’s a success of propaganda of quite a spectacular type” (p. 53).

As this section has demonstrated, the U.S. government at various times throughout the 20th Century has had coordinated propaganda campaigns that helped to define enemies, increase sentiments to go to war, and promote ideas of commercialism and consumerism while elevating corporate interests at significant points in American history. Althusser (2006) explained that it should not matter if the resulting ideologies that come from such a state apparatus begin in a public or private sector, meaning that both the government and private media companies have incentive to create and to foster such thoughts and cultural mores.

Discussion

Most of the research regarding America’s Army has presented analyses of its function as a military recruitment tool. While some studies have explored its relationship to commodification, little research has explored the function of the game’s production, text, and audience in both a militarized and commodified society, highlighting a gap in the current literature. Even the literature on militainment, the military-entertainment complex, and the military-industrial-media- entertainment does not address the textual representations of such media and has yet to address the audience as active meaning makers in such a system, a system that is not just a function of

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the government propaganda but also the corporate marketers and private video game companies seeking to commodify the same adolescent audience. Further, these models of viewing U.S. cultural media products do not isolate analysis to adolescents specifically considering their unique media usage and developmental processes.

As was explained in chapter one, the goal of this study is to understand the game’s production, text, and ideological function due to the power of both the government in a global society and how the game interacts with young audiences. To understand these processes currently at work, one must understand the existing social science and medical research on violent video games and aggression. The game America’s Army functions, too, as an arm of the government, seeking to both glamorize military service while it simultaneously attempts to recruit young people to become a part of the spectacle.

Unfortunately, the spectacle—the key ingredient in the military-entertainment or Hollywood war machine or militainment cultures—is far removed from the real and harsh realities of war and foreign affairs. Further troubling is the government’s partnership with private game makers; the militarized video game becomes then an agent of both corporate profits while it spreads messages of war, hate, and desensitization to violence. When the military- entertainment complex is considered in relationship to the government interests focused on adolescents, the problem of America’s Army takes on an even more stark reality. The video game has become the 21st Century version of the war film that had such a key place in U.S. policymaking during World War II. Yet media scholars have not, to date, fully analyzed the game as a function of propaganda while considering the cognitive and behavioral effects the game violence has on young people. Such an analysis only hopes to increase the understanding of the game and its role in society.

The next chapter covers the methodological and theoretical framework for this study and explains the samples that will be the subject of the analysis.

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CHAPTER THREE

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

Corporate mega-media structures now colonize the political and cultural terrain, including TV, radio, film, cable TV, print journalism, and the Internet. Through giant multinational business empires like General Electric, Viacom, Disney/ABC, and News Corporation, elites have achieved greater capacity to influence the flow of ideas, information, and entertainment than at any time in the past, increasing the power to shape governmental decision making and mass consciousness. The mainstream media have become an extension of corporate interests, not to mention government and military agendas, hardly a recipe for viable democratic politics based in active citizen participation. (Boggs & Pollard, 2007, p. 41)

This chapter will explain political economy, which serves as both a methodological and theoretical framework for this analysis. For the first part of this chapter, a general explanation of political economy, including an explanation of its historical roots and key works, will be provided. This chapter also will provide a more detailed explanation of the three-pronged model outlined by Kellner (1995) that forms the basis for the analysis proposed in chapters four, five, and six. Then, this chapter will discuss why political economy serves the needs of this dissertation with an emphasis on which elements of the America’s Army franchise and which parts of the government’s corporate partners will be studied and how they will be studied. This chapter concludes with a detailed explanation of the data that will be used as evidence in each of the three chapters proposed.

Political Economy

The modern political economic research tradition is largely associated with the impact of shrinking media ownership on the political process and democracy and on the corporatization and commercialization of media (Bagdikian, 2004; Bettig & Hall, 2003; Herman & Chomsky, 2002; McChesney, 2000; 2004; 2008; Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005). Twenty-five years ago, 50 corporations controlled media in the United States. In the 21st Century, a shrinking number of multinational conglomerates control a majority of American film, television, radio, print, and news content with little emphasis on content diversity and a heightened reliance on advertising revenue. In 2001, Robert McChesney published an article explaining that seven multinational conglomerates controlled the majority of domestic and global media production and distribution.

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Today, that number stands at just five, or one-tenth of what it was 25 years ago. Bagdikian (2004) explained: “Five global-dimension firms, operating with many of the characterizations of a cartel, own most of the newspapers, magazines, book publishers, motion picture studios, and radio and television stations in the United States” (p. 3). Artz (2003) said that the result of such consolidation means that these commercial media companies are seeking to only deliver audiences to advertisers, not to deliver art or substantive cultural products. The cost of such a practice means that capitalist ideologies are reinforced, often at the expense of the public interest.

While modern political economists study the corporate media structure and its impact on the public interest, the historical roots of political economy further explain the emphasis on class and labor in a capitalist system. Wasko (2005) explored the 18th and 19th Century roots of political economy as they were—then as now—focused on material wealth and on resource allocation in a capitalist society. She suggested that to understand political economy, including its modern interpretations, one must study the foundations of the discipline back to its roots in social theory and moral dilemmas faced in a society.

The study of economic issues changed dramatically during the second part of the 19th Century, emphasizing individual instead of societal conditions. By the late 19th Century, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were studying materialism and social class issues as capitalism expanded and, especially, because the working class was marginalized by the dominant economic system of the time. During that time, Marx and Engels (cited in Mattelard & Siegelaub, 1979) wrote:

Insofar…as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. (p. 98) Marx (1904) further explained that the production and distribution together created a want for the individual just as the individual had served a purpose for the producers and distributors. The consumer acted as a special kind of laborer in a capitalist, material, and industrialized society. As society industrialized, more and more, classical and then neoclassical economics took precedence away from critical political economy and, for at least a time, an emphasis was not on normative conditions in society but, rather, on individualistic gains and wealth accumulation in a capitalist system.

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Marx (1904) argued that a capitalist economy is rooted mainly in the labor and division of labor that the system is based upon but that such a system will eventually “conclude with state, international exchange and world market” (p. 293). Furthermore, Marx (1904) explained how the state serves as an important actor in a capitalist system, which is believed to be based solely on the production and distribution of private goods and services without government interference in the marketplace. However, the government often interferes in market activities, often to benefit corporations. Such interference shows that a capitalist system does not operate without government interference (Bettig & Hall, 2003; Gandy, 1992). The government inevitably becomes tied to a system that is believed to be without any government interference or intervention. However, the government becomes involved in many ways, ways that Bettig and Hall (2003) conceived put the government and the media on the same agenda. When viewed through the prism of the current video game analysis, the producers and thinkers, according to Marx and Engels (cited in Mattelard & Siegelaub, 1979), would be the government focusing on potential recruits, in combination with industrial and private game makers sharing their own ideas and production born from a material system beset on maximizing profits. Part of the violent video game market, therefore, does not exist outside of the government intervention but because of the government intervention.

As capitalism defines markets worldwide in an ever-globalized system and, specifically as the discipline relates to mediated communication dominated by companies that transcend international geographic boundaries, political economy remains a strong discipline that helps frame both theoretical and methodological concerns with an emphasis on corporate structure and the ideological functions produced by that structure. Wasko (2005) explained: “Political economy focused on the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of wealth and the consequences for the welfare of individuals and society” (p. 26). Mosco (2009) says that political economic work focuses on the commodification of both the media and its content with an emphasis on who holds the power in such a structure—often the power lies with large media corporations or governments. The fact that the structure is not challenged—it is actually accepted and promoted—by government leaders only furthers and enhances corporate media power while simultaneously allowing the government to avoid the criticism one would and should expect in a democratic system. McChesney (2008) explained: “Allowing for oversimplification, the modern U.S. media tend to reinforce the fundamental economic and social contours of U.S. society while

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ignoring, trivializing, or demonizing social movements that challenge the legitimacy of the status quo” (p. 342). Mosco (2009) wrote that political economy “asks us to concentrate on a specific set of social relations organized around power or the ability to control other people, processes, and things, even in the face of resistance” (p. 24). In this way, political economy may lend itself to any study of markets or rules that govern markets, including regulatory mechanisms or bureaucratic realities that result from powerful lobbying of government officials by political lobbyists. A political economic analysis is meant to serve a normative function by explaining the role of media and government in a democratic system.

The political economic tradition has been used less related to video games because game companies’ collective power as an industry has only been realized in the last few years, unlike the consolidation across other media. Nichols (2010a) wrote: “Taking these ideas and applying them to the study of video games requires that we recognize that the video game industry--like other communications industries…exists within a capitalist framework” (p. 3). Williams (2002) explained that there were early signs of the video game’s consolidation and integration, which mirrored other media companies’ trends. Nintendo had control of 99% of the handheld video game market and Sony controlled more than half (55%) of the console manufacturing. Dyer- Witherford and de Peuter (2009) explained that video game conglomerates including Electronic Arts marked a new era for video game software and hardware development just as the console market became dominated by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, companies that all partner with the government to provide versions of America’s Army on their consoles. They explained this era as “favoring the biggest studios” (p. 40), a time not unlike the Hollywood studios during World War II. Mansell (2004) suggested that the new media industries may appear to have a lack of concentration of ownership while they promote ideas of open access though the reality is a structure similar to those “older” media industries that have received so much attention from political economic scholars.

It is worth noting, to emphasize the power of the video game industry as a structural force, that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a lobbying and trade organization of the video game association, represents 90% of video game manufacturers and has extensive ties to politicians through a revolving door and lobbying, a trend Marx (1904) anticipated in a capitalist system. The ESA also owns and operates the ESRB, the industry board that oversees video game ratings. In 1994, the ESA was created after politicians expressed concerns about 43

violent video game content. The average game represents a $10 million to $20 million in investment. Related to the America’s Army franchise, that capital outlay is funded by public tax dollars with Ubisoft, a private game company, receiving much of the financial benefit of the partnership. Ubisoft is represented by the ESA (“ESA Members,” 2010). Reagan (2008) explained: “Like so many aspects of contemporary military operations, the development of later versions of the game has been handed over to corporations for private profit” (para. 5). This relationship will be fully explored in the context of production in chapter four and hopes to add to the literature on the political economy of video games.

Political economists also seek to interpret the output and construction of the cultural products that are the foundation of the consumerist society. In this way, the interpretation may better help to shape the understanding of how products are created to reflect the ideals of the government and private ideologies. Meehan, Mosco and Wasko (1994) explained:

This research uncovers connections between ownership, corporate structure, finance capital, and market structures to show how economics affects technologies, politics, cultures, and information. In the U.S., where media are always and primarily businesses, the approach has been crucial to understanding why we get what we get. (p. 105) Oscar Gandy Jr. (1992) suggested that societies should be concerned with not just the power and wealth of an industry but also how its cultural products are distributed, another explanation of how and why we receive the mediated cultural products or ancillary products that we do. Gandy (1992) explained: “When competition and profit maximization are presented as rational, a critical response seeks to demonstrate that the products of such pursuits are something other than optimal” (p. 24). Jhally (1989) explained the critical critique this way, further explaining not just the origination and destination for products in the industrialized system but also reflecting on the meaning such products are meant to hold for the public who consumes them:

An important part of the Frankfurt School critique is that the products of the culture industries do not challenge people to think and reflect on the world— instead, as standardized products, the response to them is built into their own structure. In this way cultural meaning is imposed upon the audience rather than being created by the audience. (p. 72) The structure of the government-created and financed video game industry together through its partnerships with private video game companies may be viewed as a way to help young Americans view the world in a certain way, a way that attempts to rationalize U.S. hegemonic

44 authority. Mosco (2009) explained that political economy is “the study of the social relations, particularly power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of resources” (p. 24). The emphasis of political economy scholarship often focuses on structural conditions, though Mosco’s more recent work (2009) addressed the importance of studying audiences in combination with an analysis of structure and ideology.

As this chapter highlights key works from the political economy of communications and explains how to conduct a political economic analysis, it is perhaps worth noting what political economy is not, framed here as a limitation of the tradition. Questions posed by political economic researchers imply a normative function of government just as they suggest a normative function of a media system, one that should work toward upholding democratic ideals based on open access to information not profit motives. The political economic tradition is, therefore, a critical qualitative theoretical and methodological lens. It does not offer a perspective on causality or even correlation. We cannot in political economy draw an equation that forecasts how, if, and when playing the America’s Army video game will lead directly to military enlistment.

Even noting how political economists study the output of culture industries suggests that those in the audience are in some way affected by their participation in the system. But, political economy does not trace the effects of that participation through quantitative means. Also, political economists may study artifacts of the culture industries themselves to draw conclusions about how the messages are framed and to conclude how those messages are being received by an audience. In explaining how to conduct textual analysis in critical social science research Fairclough (2003) wrote:

Texts have social, political, cognitive, moral and material consequences and effects, and that is vital to understand these consequences and effects if we are to raise moral and political questions about contemporary societies and about the transformations of ‘new capitalism’ in particular. Some readers may be concerned about ‘objectivity’ of an approach to text analysis based upon these motivations. I don’t see this as a problem. (p. 14) Texts studied become artifacts of a global capitalist order meant to convey who is in power and why. Drawing on the literature review section of this dissertation, one must view then the video game America’s Army in a way framed similarly to Fairclough.

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The consequences and effects of the text require—urge even—the researcher to approach it as a part of the larger cultural industry; thus documenting its presence suggests that those subjected to it face some influence. One may see such an approach as a limitation, however, critical and cultural studies scholars concerned with the text’s place in society actually embrace the paradigm’s difference. This study is not experimental or quasi-experimental. It does not seek to generalize. It does not seek to explain causality in the traditional sense of the quantitative paradigm. It does seek to study the current political and economic realities of the relationship between the U.S. government and video game industry to see how participation is fostered at the production level, represented at the textual level, and received by an audience that may know very little about the entertainment it uses.

Instead, evidence in the political economic paradigm is generated in part through thorough analysis of corporate and government documents, understood as a product of structural realities of corporate systems and government doctrine. Analysis, therefore, takes research produced by these corporate or government structures and views them through a critical paradigm to make judgments about their intent and impact. Once one understands that such a system is motivated by profit or motivated by the creation and maintenance of a global hegemon, as in the case of the U.S. Army video game franchise studied here, the output of such a structure must be studied as being directly derived from the power that produced the structure and the artifacts. Such an analysis does not rely on random sampling but rather relies on a systematic investigation of the messages produced and a critical interpretation of what a sample of these messages say called interpretive textual analysis by Bettig and Hall (2003) and ideological textual analysis by Kellner (1995). To chart America’s Army’s website and game production, to study its text as an artifact of corporate and government power, and to map user comments responding to those ideologies, does not imply evidence of generalizability to an entire population. Rather, it suggests social, economic, and political conditions at work that cultivate certain social realities and inequalities that marginalize a population or populations through an application of government or corporate power and dominance at the expense of competing discourses.

The Consciousness Industry

Dallas Smythe asked Marxist scholars to re-interpret their perceptions of the mass media

46 communications systems. Smythe worked as an economist at the Federal Communications Commission and had first-hand knowledge that the media system was not delivering on the promises it should in a democracy. He wrote: “The activities of these institutions are intimately connected with consumer consciousness, needs, leisure time use, commodity fetishism, work and alienation” (p. 1). Smythe’s “consciousness industry” (1977, pp. 1-2) revealed its importance again through later works by Jhally (1989), who described Smythe’s work as focused more on the consumerist aspects in such a system rather than focused on the ideological functions of the media industries. Under such a capitalist system and function, according to Smythe, the content of the mass media systems to entertain, to inform, and to educate is meant to create in audiences a subject of their attention and their loyalty. Prior to his critical work, communications scholarship neglected the economic realities of media systems, yet after his work, a strong tradition developed and flourished that sought to understand media structure and its reciprocal relationship to social institutions and to audience ideologies (Wasko, 2005).

Authors (Enzensberger, 1974; Jhally; 1989; Kellner, 1995; 2006) have explored in what ways a dominant corporate structure influences audiences in a capitalistic system and have suggested how researchers may envelop an audience analysis within the study of political economy. Jhally (1989) wrote:

While culture cannot be reduced to mere economic factors, it cannot be understood, either, without understanding the economic context that surrounds and shapes it. The process of consciousness and representation is a real material process that requires material resources for its existence and survival. (p. 67) Jhally (1989) explained, as Bettig (2004), Enzensberger (1974), and Smythe (1971) did, that the “consciousness industry” helps to reinforce power structures and emphasizes how ruling elites are able to maintain authority over subjects. One way that governments are able to hold such power is through the use of military strength. Further, as an example of the consciousness industry, the media act as a way to legitimize such government military force rather than challenging it. This idea helps to interpret how the structure of this government-created video game reinforces and creates ideas about militarism and the military for millions of users. Enzensberger (1974) explained: “In order to exploit people’s intellectual, moral, and political faculties, you have got to develop them first” (p. 13). Enzensberger’s (1974) conceptualization of the consciousness industry sought to explain that the importance of cultivating capitalist ideologies, with or without state intervention, extended to power structures ultimately exploiting

47 the ideologies. Consolidated media structures or “monopolies” (Enzensberger, 1974, p. 96) as he described them are far more efficient at cultivating and exploiting these ideologies among consumers.

Conducting Political Economic Analyses

Wasko (2005) explained that political economic analysis focuses on the technical as well as structural and institutional factors at work. She believed that an effective political economic analysis includes historical analysis, an understanding of corporate media structure, globalization, as well as the relationship between media and state actors. She said: “To understand the media’s role in society, it is essential to understand relationships between media power and state power, as well as the media’s relationships with other economic sectors” (Wasko, 2005, pp. 38-39). She also explained that political economic analysis should be studied in relationship to other approaches, a key feature of Kellner’s (1995) integrative three part framework. Further, Garnham (1995; 2006) and Mosco (2009) also suggested the integration of cultural production and reproduction as a way to elaborate political economic studies that focus on structure. But they also suggested that such analysis must include the understanding of the media consumption process as a function of ideology that has roots in economic and political institutions.

Key authors (Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) contributing to the political economic tradition have suggested four areas must compose political economic study. These include an understanding of social change and history, social totality, moral philosophy, and praxis. First, an analysis of the cyclical nature of economics and capitalism as well as the explanation of the state as an actor in the system help to frame the issue under study and its relationship to the government. Next, related to social totality, the authors noted that the political economic discipline should include an examination of multiple relationships of social groups and institutions to further understand the social conditions at work in a capitalist system. Related to moral philosophy, Wasko’s (2005) modern interpretation of the Marxian tradition followed the early social theorists and included the analysis and understanding of moral issues and social problems that may have resulted from the economic system and dominant structural forces in power. Finally, political economists (Artz, 2003; Macek, 2006; Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) emphasized the inclusion of praxis, which is the emphasis by modern political economists on

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affecting social change, in light of the understanding of the key social and moral problems that may result from the dominant economic and political systems. Macek (2006) wrote: “the point is to change it,” citing a commonly-referred to phrase by Karl Marx. Praxis related to America’s Army’s position as a cultural identity shaper must center around its position as a military recruiter targeted at youth and work to either end its production totally, a best-case scenario, or work to see that the U.S. government is complying with all advertising regulations through its use of the video game. Furthermore, the video game is currently rated T for teen. Working to make those changes—as Macek and others have suggested—another alternative form of praxis would be to urge the industry ratings board to rate the game for older teenagers or as adults only, the strictest rating available. Media literacy campaigns that focus on the message creator, the techniques used to create the messages, the values inherent in the media presentation, and educating about why messages are sent also shift praxis from the production to the audience (Lewis & Jhally, 1998), But in order to affect change in the largest ways—in ways that help to educate and inform about the video game’s true motives--one must understand the system at work and the ideologies that are the result of such a system, a key goal of this dissertation. To gain strategies initiating praxis, one must understand all elements of the text, including its production, its representations, and audience interactions.

Kellner’s Three-Part Cultural Studies Analysis: Production, Text, and Audience

Kellner (1995) explained that the ubiquity of media and its dominant and recycled storylines are responsible for not just how Americans see themselves but also how they see themselves as a part of U.S. culture. In a later work, Kellner (2003) wrote: “The concept of ideology is of central importance, for dominant ideologies serve to reproduce social relations of domination and subordination” (p. 11). Understanding that the foundations of such ideologies-- ideologies that may be racist, sexist or lack diversity from a white, Eurocentric perspective— arise from the domestic media system and its cultural products, Kellner has suggested that a three-pronged approach to studying cultural products is appropriate. Such an analysis must explore: first, the production and political economy of a text; second, a textual analysis of the product; and third, the audience’s interaction with the text and their reception to its messages. His emphasis on political economy as one of the three factors necessary for analysis recognized that the structure of production and distribution is largely responsible for the type of texts circulated within a society. Further understanding that the corporate media structure is motivated 49

by profit explains how certain genres of film, music and television remain popular in American culture. This analysis will look at the production, the text, and the audience as factors related to the adolescent as the target of the violent media.

Kellner (1995) believed that to understand cultural artifacts’ importance as ideological shapers and shifters, one must also examine them through textual analysis and by understanding the function of audiences’ decoding of the text in the dynamic. This part of the three-part analysis helps to better understand the ideological functions and meanings inherent in a text and map the audience responses to these ideologies. Using a film as an example, Kellner (1995) wrote that a textual analysis of the 1980s movie Rambo would examine elements of the Hollywood war film with U.S. soldiers portrayed as the heroes who always (and, repeatedly, thanks to sequels) win the triumph of good over evil. But a textual analysis of such a movie could go beyond just the message and examine camera angles, lighting, and heuristics to help the audience understand the hero’s role in society. Understanding these production tools combined with the text’s dominant themes, forms the basis of an ideological textual analysis.

But Kellner (1995) suggested that studying audience members’ reception to the mediated text helps the researcher to understand the purpose and possible ideological effects. Lindlof (1991) explained audience studies as a function of cultural studies this way: “qualitative audience study could be a viable way to do critical analysis of mass media” (p. 28). Bettig and Hall (2003) suggested that audiences interact with media in ways that affect what we “read, hear, and see” (p. 11). It is important to note regarding Kellner’s third piece of the three-part analysis that not every member of an audience is the same nor do they share the same personal characteristics. However, through the integration of a political economic analysis with his cultural studies model, Kellner suggested that studying the audience as a unit helps to understand how dominant ideologies are reinforced and shape the audience’s reaction to and use of the media, in this case, the website of the America’s Army video game.

METHODOLOGY

Chapter four: Production

RQ1: Why are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game, America’s Army?

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RQ2: How are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game, America’s Army?

RQ3: How does the partnership between the federal government and its corporate sponsors related to the America’s Army franchise target adolescents?

The focus of this chapter will be on the game’s production and the production and distribution of America’s Army’s ancillary media products. This section will focus on the government creation of the game and on the private-public partnership that exists to advertise and target to an adolescent demographic. This section will demonstrate how this hybrid production spreads messages of militarism and violence, attempts to recruit, and benefits private industries as it creates an audience for advertisers.

To address these questions and to more fully explore this adolescent-as-target idea, this section will focus on government documents and reports related to Ubisoft, a France-based corporation which is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Government documents proposed for this section include a review of: U.S. Army promotional materials, internal research reports on the use and effects of game play, and a review of promotional materials. Further, interviews with government officials documented in newspapers, books, and magazines, including U.S. Army officials, also will be included in the review of the game’s production. To better understand the structural power of Ubisoft, information from its publicly-available stock reports will be include in this study. Also, trade publications and gaming websites that both explain, and often celebrate, the public-private partnership will be explored to understand the military- entertainment structure, production, and distribution of the video game especially related to adolescent game play and enjoyment.

Chapter five: Textual analysis

RQ4: How are the themes of consumerism presented for adolescents on the official America’s Army website?

RQ5: How are the themes of militarism and violence presented for adolescents on the official America’s Army website?

RQ6: How does the Army use the Real Heroes to promote militarism and recruitment for an adolescent audience?

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The second chapter of analysis proposes to meet Kellner’s (1995) textual analysis element. The primary text of this analysis is the official America’s Army website, which serves as a portal to the free game download and hosts players and fans with community chat functions and message boards. The game website will be studied as an artifact of both a corporate and government need to target a specific adolescent demographic.

Specifically, the pages of the website that focus on the Real Heroes will be analyzed to understand the prominent ideological functions of the space. The Real Heroes part of the website includes biographies of war veterans and service members, who act as morale boosters for players just as they serve as in-game mentors and post to message boards. The web representation is being reviewed because these Real Heroes comprise a crucial part of the game’s function as a military recruiter and arbiter of military culture to a civilian audience. Analyzing the Real Heroes section of the website serves a political economic function as well. Dobson (2007) interviewed Marsha Berry, an America’s Army software developer. Based on that interview, he reported that Toys ‘R Us will feature Real Heroes action figures for sale to the general public, yet another sign of how the government is targeting a youth audience.

Furthermore, the textual analysis will address questions of the partnership between America’s Army and private corporations including NASCAR, another function of branding and military recruitment strategies. It will study part of the government-created forum posts to gauge how the Army tries to shape the online conversations available on the community message boards. Of roughly 2,000 of these posts, 100 have been selected for an interpretive textual viewed through a lens of political economy and cultural studies. These posts also reveal evidence of America’s Army’s place in the military-entertainment complex, which suggests the government engages civilians in war-themed entertainment to cultivate acceptance of war.

Within the study of this part of the America’s Army website the textual analysis will focus on messages related to militarism, violence, patriotism, support for war, and commodification. These will better help conceptualize how and why the text of the video game leads adolescents to consider a military career. To conduct this analysis, I have created PDF files for each of the Real Heroes web pages, which are featured prominently on the America’s Army web page, and for the messages created from the community forum pages. These Real Heroes stories and government-created posts will be interpreted as artifacts of the government-created

52 website to help address the three research questions related to this section. Here, the use of data in political economic research and cultural studies must be addressed. Threads and posts chosen for analysis were purposely selected, often based on the title of the thread or the number of responses to the post keeping in mind the socio-political climate that produced the text. This study seeks to study the structural factors at work and the ideological facts that emerge from that structure. This is why I have chosen many of the threads purposely, looking for these themes that political economy and cultural studies help to explain exist in the current climate. In his explanation of critical cultural studies analysis of audiences, Lindlof (1991) wrote:

Critical researchers seek to explicate how modes of consciousness are embedded within and/or reproduce relations of power. One of their main goals is a critique of the structuring influences in society. These descriptions are ideal types. They distill essential attributes of ‘interpretive’ and ‘critical.’ (p. 32) Interpretive textual analysis then provides the opportunity to allow themes to emerge from the data to better understand what such messages and responses say as a part of the military- entertainment complex and as a function of state propaganda. Bettig and Hall (2003) wrote of interpretive textual analysis linked to political economic study: “Interpretive textual analysis examines how various levels of meaning are expressed—intentional meanings, but more importantly, the hidden and often unintended meanings found in media content” (p. 11). As noted earlier in this chapter, the political economic analysis is not meant to generalize; as such, it is not necessary to randomly sample texts within the web pages. I have uncovered parts of the web pages that are directly linked to military recruitment goals and will devote time to a textual analysis and explanation of these. Determining praxis strategies, which will be discussed in the conclusion, for these messages is vital.

Chapter six: Audience analysis

RQ7: What does an analysis of online comments by players of America’s Army reveal about game users’ responses to the ideologies presented by the Army and its corporate partners?

The official maintainers of the America’s Army website (“Community Overview,” 2010) wrote of the online chats and threads that users interact with and respond to: “The forum community is quite large and very active. We have thousands of visits every day from different countries, cultures, and age groups” (para. 1). While this helps to highlight the expansiveness of the America’s Army playing audience, it also illustrates the difficulty of trying to navigate the

53 vast number of online comments and chats that comprise the game’s website. Both fans and the government have the ability to post to this website on a wide range of topics or issues related to the game. The government posts highlight the function of the game as a public relations strategy and advertising vehicle aimed at branding the U.S. Army. In April 2011, the government created a new forum page2 and archived “older” posts. This textual analysis includes study of posts from both the archived forums and active forums, which both still are available from the main America’s Army forum page. On the forum page where online gamers and the public (after a brief, free registration) may go online to respond to questions or items posted by the Army officials or by other gamers, there are 10 main discussion headings that include places for “News and Announcements” or “General Discussion” as examples.

As of December 2011, within those 10 main headings, there were 290,000 threads with more than 3 million individual posts contributed by website users and/or gamers in the nearly 10 years the game has been in operation. Not all of these threads will be studied for this dissertation and next I will explain how I have limited my analysis to about 9,610 online posts on the America’s Army website according to guidelines provided by authors studying audiences in a critical media studies paradigm (Kellner, 1995; Lindlof, 1991) using interpretive textual analysis (Bettig & Hall, 2003). Bettig and Hall (2003) wrote:

Interpretive studies of audiences focus on how meaning is produced by receivers. By treating the making of meaning in Phases, we are able to concentrate on both the context of production and the messages we find in the texts. (p. 11) Over a period of 18 months, I would estimate that I have read more than 150,000 comments in various parts of the online forum and have been exposed to at least 10,000 unique threads. This reading has been at times purposeful, looking at the headings for subjects that are related to the themes of interest in this dissertation. On other readings, the selection of topics and threads to read was done without looking for these themes; threads and posts instead were chosen as a way to check those that were purposely selected. In both cases, material provided insight into the subjects and themes under review. Many of the comments read during this time have been one word responses or short sentence answers and often themes repeat from post to post.

As was noted previously, this dissertation seeks to better understand the audience posts as artifacts of the video game when viewed through a political economic and cultural studies lens.

2 The link to the main America’s Army forum may be found at forum.americasarmy.com. 54

This intent helps to limit part of the analysis and has helped to reveal the threads that will be studied. This chapter proposes an analysis of specific threads of the website that have been chosen purposely to investigate further the influence of how the political economic and cultural studies artifacts interact with a video game audience. These video game messages have been archived on the America’s Army web page. I have created PDF documents of each of the online threads and posts that are the subject of the study. All threads were analyzed according to the themes described earlier viewed through a political economic lens; meaning they were studied as evidence of a government and private structure that attempts to shift ideologies related to military recruitment, support for war, and consumerism. But the analysis also seeks to explore how this structure may appear as evidence of the effect—similar to the effects of WWII propaganda--in online posts by game players. When cases are presented that suggest a counter point to these themes I have selected for review, I will also discuss these. These counter points are admittedly few.

Threads have been chosen for how they reveal themes of militarism, violence, commodification, or possess specific examples of interactions with the Real Heroes and with the government game developers, both primary points of analysis in chapters four and five. These themes were chosen with an emphasis on past research on FPS game play and aggression; on government propaganda effects; on militainment or the military-industrial complex; and, finally, on efforts to commodify the youth audience. Often, players explain in these posts their level of engagement with the game while also sharing how they are able to kill game enemies. Such self- characterizations further will help to better understand how players emphasize video game death while they simultaneously become desensitized to the realities of death. These threads also help to better explain how the video game website may be used by adolescents undergoing massive developmental changes related to storm and stress (Hall, 1904) and moral development.

One thread that I have selected for analysis is called “Who is actually Joining the Army?” which includes 124 posts. Also, I have included a thread titled “Realism? Really?” which includes 90 comments and where users include a discussion about death and life in the video game and how it is presented in a military game specifically. Another thread included in this analysis is titled: “Game balancing vs realistic.” This thread includes 28 comments and most are related to weaponry in the game; such an analysis includes a way to examine how players explain and articulate the use of violent tools, which are used in the Army and featured 55

prominently in the game. Furthermore, I will study 234 posts under the “Remember when…” thread available under the “General Discussion” main link on the forum page. This thread provides interesting details from players engaging in a discussion of older versions of the game, providing a nostalgic look at enemies, violence, and killing. Also, I have studied 48 posts under the “AA3&NASCAR” thread, which provides insight into militarism, culture, and consumerism. These comments further reveal and reflect how the players become a part of this larger commodified world of new media as it further provides evidence of commodification and consciousness cultivation in the military-entertainment complex.

Another point of data analysis is the popular heading listed under “Hot Topics.” The thread is called “Come back stories.” As of December 10, 2011, there were 40 posts by users explaining anecdotes of how they were accidently killed or had accidently killed a teammate, further illustrating this desensitization to violence and death that acts as an ideological function of the game and could have extensions to real life outside of the gaming world. This analysis also includes the thread titled “An important easy to do tweak regarding killing injured,” a thread that was discovered on a random search of threads under the “General Feedback” section of the now- archived forums. This search lead me to further explore the “ROE” threads, that is, those threads that mention and discuss Army in-game “rules of engagement,” or how soldiers should handle themselves in battle situations when dealing with the enemy. This analysis also includes a study of some of the responses to the Army-created posts described above (the text of these posts will be analyzed at the end of chapter four). This includes 61 posts responding to the “America’s Army 3.2 Version 3.2 Released!” thread; 102 posts in response to the “Where in AA3 is this?” thread; and 65 posts responding to “Satellite Photos from Czervenian Region.”

Also, the America’s Army forum page has a “search” function. Of course, this type of search is limited by the player’s spelling or use of the word and just the word’s appearance does not mean that the use of the word is related to the contexts of this study. I have been able to use this search function to look for key terms related to the subjects of my analysis outside of these key threads already mentioned. I have searched for key words and also jargon that I have discovered through my analysis of these posts that are related to my research questions.

For example, I have searched and analyzed posts that mention the word “frag,” which is gaming jargon for “kill.” I also have searched for the term “fragweiser,” which is the name of a

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popular game clan. Also, I have searched for posts that include the word “NME” and “opfor” gaming--code words for “enemy”--to better position how messages about that subject play out on the America’s Army website. As an example, a search for “opfor” turned back more than 10,000 results of threads. Within those results, I conducted interpretive textual analysis of 1,000 threads to search how the audience has written about the enemies in the game and what this may suggest about the political economic realities of the audience interaction with the game. Also, I have searched for posts that include the term “hooah,” which is considered an Army battle cry. That search produced 9,390 results, many of them used the word itself. Such a use of the word helps to further understand the normalization of military lingo thus further bringing the citizen into the virtual war theatre.

I also searched for “ROE,” which is a video game abbreviation for “rules of engagement.” There are 7,695 posts related to ROE. I selected these to analyze from this section to see how players were discussing issues of the treatment of enemy soldiers and the use of killing in the game. Also, my analysis includes posts that have included the terms “recruit” or “recruitment” as well as those that have included “enlist” or “enlistment.” Each of the Real Heroes was searched for to determine how those soldiers were both written about by the Army and by the audience. After this search, I came across a thread started in April 2011 with 57 posts called “AA3 project might be shutdown,” which provides an interesting survey of the relationship players and fans have with the website as well as their perceptions of its use as a recruitment tool. Also, I have studied the 115 posts of a player identified as “EagleReid,” who includes in his online presence the fact that he has met one of the Real Heroes, a relationship that will be explained in chapter six.

Discussion

A political economic analysis coupled with a cultural studies model adds value to the study of America’s Army. Looking at the creation of the website by the government and how the government now partners with private game companies to further commodify and target an adolescent audience helps to further the understand of the role the video game has in contemporary culture. The gamers become both commodities in war and a militarized society just as they become commodities for the private advertisers who put their messages to work on the game’s website with children as key targets of both commodified messages.

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Users’ cultural value is determined by their worth as players of the technologically- advanced game just as it seeks to add to their cultural value by exploiting their patriotism by recruiting them to go to war. Players’ identities and ideologies are effectively controlled by the private-public partnership that makes the game possible or as Wasko (2005) explains, understanding the state-entertainment nexus that has teenagers as its central labor force. The media structure employs redundant and manufactured storylines that seek to maintain the militarized status quo, an effect made all the more severe by the use of government agencies to create and disseminate the violent media. Finally, the political economic tradition’s inclusion of praxis will allow for suggestions about how best to change the problems of America’s Army, placing normative concerns about the military-entertainment complex and the propaganda model at the forefront of this dissertation’s contributions that will be discussed in the conclusion.

In this chapter, I have provided an overview of what each upcoming chapter will explore to address the seven research questions. Chapter four will study production; chapter five will study the text of the video game; and chapter six will study part of the America’s Army audience, hoping to gain more of an understanding of how audiences engage with the text, which is meant to contribute ideologies about militarism, violence, recruitment, and consumerism to an adolescent audience. Because praxis strategies are meant to emerge from a study of the political- economic realities of a text’s place in society, each chapter’s discussion section will include elements of praxis related to each section of Kellner’s three-part framework.

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CHAPTER FOUR

PRODUCTION

The Army was smart enough to recognize this marketing trend and use it effectively. But there are several troubling issues: Should the government be in the business of producing violent video games when research indicates a correlation to heightened aggression? Is it appropriate to depict war as a game at a time when real men, women and children are being killed in Iraq? And what are the ethics of using video games to feed propaganda to 13- and 14-year-olds, especially propaganda with such complex moral and life-and- death implications? The Army isn’t trying to sell kids hamburgers. It’s trying to sell kids on the notion that joining the Army would be a really cool thing to do when they grow up. (Ryan, 2004, p. 4)

“I like that I got to use a gun!” said 13-year-old Spencer Padgett, after visiting a travelling Army installation in Illinois that includes America’s Army game play. (as quoted in de Avila, 2008, para. 2)

This chapter will explain America’s Army through an in-depth review of its production, a hybrid of public government propaganda and private video game capitalism. A main concern of this chapter is production viewed through a political economic lens (Bagdikian, 2004; Bettig & Hall, 2003; McChesney, 2000; 2008; Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) but it should be noted that this chapter sets out to trace and unravel why that production should matter for culture; that is, such a production analysis is meant not just to examine how and why the game is produced but to furthermore engage in a deeper reading of what that production says about the culture that has created it and allows it to flourish. The video game’s production is rooted in the government’s military recruitment goals but, as was explained earlier, part of the production of the America’s Army game has been turned over to Ubisoft, a private game corporation, with other corporations engaged in ancillary product deals that have America’s Army’s success as a prime function of profitability.

Researchers (Chibnall, 1977; Murdock, 1973) have examined the influence of violence in media portrayals as functions of state authority and as tools to legitimize that authority. Here, while the government private partners have a vested economic interest in the success of the America’s Army video game and brand, the Army’s position and ultimate success in the marketplace means market share is equivalent to manpower. Li (2004) explained

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In the case of America’s Army, whilst the institutionalization of the gamespace is not directly commercial in the sense of a for-profit transaction-oriented enterprise, it nevertheless depends upon a technical rationale of commercial publicity. The gamespace is ultimately generated and maintained so long as its economic instrumentality is able to excel in terms of quantitative measures such as cost- effectiveness and return on investment. (p. 104) This chapter sets out to further chart how the video game production—considered here as a hybrid of state and private interests—is linked to military recruitment and commodification of an adolescent audience.

This chapter’s focus on production, which is the first part of Kellner’s (1995) three-part framework, addresses the first three research questions proposed in this dissertation and seeks to further this look at domination through an analysis of a video game that combines the production with state and non-state actors. These research questions are 1) Why are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game, America’s Army?2) How are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game, America’s Army? and 3) How does the partnership between the federal government and its corporate sponsors target adolescents? The theme that both unites and narrows this analysis is looking at adolescents as the targets of these violent media messages, messages that are forwarded by both the United States government and its partnership with global gaming companies including Ubisoft and other corporations including NASCAR to a massively diverse and heterogeneous population worldwide.

This section will review trade publications, official government documents, and news reports to explain why and how adolescents are the targets of a government-created FPS video game. This section also hopes to add to the literature on video games as a faction of the military- entertainment complex, which seeks to desensitize players to violence and asks them to gain acceptance for war-based careers as the complex commodifies their entertainment experience. The latter of these goals will be accomplished by explaining the structure of the video game companies that have a financial and technological relationship with the United States government, one that seeks to commodify players, especially teenagers in early- and mid- adolescence.

By sufficiently narrowing the subject of textual analysis to explore why and how adolescents are the targets of the media message, the dissertation can better add to the existing

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literature on militarized entertainment, targeted marketing, childhood consumption, and the political economy of media specifically looking at children and violence. In the case of America’s Army, the reason children are the targets of the mass mediated messages is twofold. First, the government targets the youth market as a way to establish its messages about war and violence in society as it simultaneously attempts to recruit soldiers to join. Second, the corporate partners of the government also seek to cultivate both violent and consumerist ideologies in the youth demographic, to establish brand loyalty early, to continue sales of military-themed toys and games, and to harness the power of this demographics’ spending power. In explaining his discursive analysis of mass mediated texts, Gerbner (1985) wrote:

Instead of measuring change causally attributed to communications injected into an otherwise stable system of messages, our analysis is concerned with assessing the system itself. That assessment is a first step toward investigating the role of message systems in establishing and maintaining stable conceptions of reality. (p. 14) As this section uses a political economic framework for analysis, it is important to note that the structure of the organizations that create these mediated messages will be explained and document their links to the creation and the maintenance of these conceptions of reality.

This chapter is divided into three sections keeping in mind the research questions related to production addressed in this dissertation. First, it examines the America’s Army video game franchise and its relationship to military recruitment; next, it examines the relationships at the nexus of the U.S. Army and private game makers that has as its dual function targeting adolescents as a function of fostering ideology and targeting adolescents for their untapped spending power; it then looks at both government and corporate branding and advertising that seek to shape and sway public opinion about the video game as much as it seeks to deliver adolescents to online marketers; and finally, it looks specifically at the production of the “Real Heroes” section of the America’s Army website because these heroes’ stories are meant to serve as mentors for young people who may feel disconnected from a potential Army career.

America’s Army and Recruitment

In 1999, under pressure from Congress, a Harvard-educated U.S. Army colonel stumbled upon what would become the most successful military branding and recruitment strategy of all time. At that time, before the War on Terror, military recruitment had hit an all-time low for two

61 consecutive years. U.S. Army bases moved away from high population centers. Many young boys and adolescents felt a disconnect between their lives in general and their lives as potential military servicemen. Col. Casey Wardynski was with his sons at the big-box retailer, Best Buy, and there he noticed, as he later explained to a CNN reporter (San Miguel, 2002) and to a professor (Huntemann, 2010), that military-themed games were popular. Wardynski thought that they could be used to connect to the demographic that the Army most needed to reverse its lackluster recruitment. Wardynski explains the video game strategy further to a CNN reporter:

If you walk down the aisle of any store that sells games, you’re going to see lots of them that borrow off of Army themes, either past, present or future, and of course, we use simulations in the military as well so it seemed like a real logical way to connect to young Americans. (San Miguel, 2002, para. 8) In a more recent interview, Wardynski, who conceived of and now directs America’s Army operations in addition to his work as an economics professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, explained that there were fewer “touch points” where young men and women could discover their potential in an Army career. In 2008, Huntemann (2010) interviewed Wardynski who told her that recruiting soldiers due to a loss of those touch points was becoming a costly operation for the Army.

Wardynski explained that, on average, an Army recruit costs the military $26,000 with some costing upwards of $200,000 when Army staff time and traditional television advertising are factored in to how many people will enlist based on those expenditures. In a military report published in 2010, Wardynski and two other authors explained that America’s Army can recruit soldiers “at a cost that is 10 to 40 times cheaper per person-hour of mindshare than traditional media” (Wardynski, Lyle, & Colarusso, 2010, p. 31). Wardynski explained:

Think about what I get from a commercial versus what I get from playing a game for an hour? With the game you’re in the world. It’s vivid, it’s active, you’re learning, you’re experiencing, you’re communicating. To me, there’s no way to compare the two. (Huntemann, 2010, p. 185) A 2003 report from the game’s military creator (Zyda, Mayberry, Wardynski, Shilling, & Davis, 2003) estimated that the Army was saving between $700 million and $4 billion a year in recruitment costs because of the game, and that was before it had reached its pinnacle of online and console popularity. Speaking at a gaming conference in 2005, Wardynski explained that America’s Army costs the government about $2.5 million annually; funding that he told the

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audience was responsible for 60,000 unique daily website visitors and 6.1 million active users by that date (Tochen, 2005).

A Freedom of Information Act request to the government from video game website GameSpot, found that 10 years of America’s Army development and expenditures had reached nearly $33 million (Sinclair, 2009), still a relatively low cost when compared to how much the Army had spent previously to increase its recruitment figures. One computer magazine writer said: “Funded with tax dollars and developed by the U.S. Army as a recruiting tool, America’s Army makes us wonder whether all the anti-media-violence politicians were out playing golf the day this game got approved” (Brown, 2003, para. 1). But it was Congress in 1999, facing dismal recruiting numbers that had suggested that the U.S. Army get both creative and aggressive regarding recruiting, and the U.S. Defense Department increased military recruiting budgets that year to $2.2 billion, part of which was able to fund America’s Army research and development (Hodes & Ruby-Sachs, 2002; “NewsHour transcript,” 1999). A 1999 entry in the Congressional Record, the government’s official record of Congressional proceedings, included a directive to the Secretary of the Army to “recruit new members” (“Congressional Record,” 1999, p. 12168) and suggested possible military reorganization if recruitment goals could not be met.

Although Congress did not specifically request that a video game be used to recruit those new members, the military turned to media to develop ideologies just as it had during previous major wars, as was described at length in the literature review of this dissertation. Internal Army documents show that the military leadership drew on the lessons from past government propaganda efforts to affect recruitment in the 21st Century. Zyda et. al. (2003) explained in their report about the creation of the America’s Army video game:

The Army had previous success using popular entertainment media—they piggybacked advertisements onto newsreels in movie theaters in the 1930s and 1940s and employed trailers in theaters and Super Bowl TV advertisements in recent years. The emerging question, then, was: Could the Army use PC games for strategic communication? (p. 29) Supporters of the Army’s video game mission explain that America’s Army was to the global War on Terror what Frank Capra and the “Why We Fight” films were during World War II. Au (2002) explained:

In that regard, America's Army and Delta Force: Black Hawk Down are the “Why We Fight” for the digital generation. Though not explicitly doctrinaire in an

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ideological sense, by showing the very young how we fight, applying the moral application of lethal force on behalf of liberal values, these games create the wartime culture that is so desperately needed now. (para. 11) Once Congress was prepared to spend money and manpower to affect recruitment and once Wardynski had conceived of the idea to use a video game to attract young people to the Army, the task to create the game was turned over to his office within the Army and to the MOVES Institute, the U.S. Naval Academy’s California-based post-graduate school. (MOVES stands for Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation.) Wardynski further explained that the game was designed so that players over time would experience a higher comfort level with the concept and visualization of actually having a career in the Army, further hoping that the game would attract young people to join the military.

Game designers developed a 3D, first-person shooter game, based on actual Army fighting and training. Weapons are based on those that “real” soldiers would use in combat and include sniper assault rifles, M-16s, fire mortars, and grenades (Zyda, Hiles, Mayberry, Wardynski, Capps, Osborn et. al., 2003; Zyda, Mayberry, Wardynski, Shilling, & Davis, 2003). While realistic weapons, terrain, sound, and graphics may have been at the forefront of game artists’ and designers’ minds, the ultimate goal behind the game always was increasing and improving Army recruitment. Therefore, built in to game play, and also available on the official America’s Army website, where people must go to download the PC-version of the game for free, is a link to the Army’s recruitment pitch. There, gamers (by this time considered potential recruits) learn how to “get the skills of an Army soldier by immersing yourself in real-life missions” (goarmy.com, 2011). Other information at that website includes links to exploring scholarships for enlistees, discovering two U.S. Army car racing teams, and “meeting” other regular people who signed up for military service who then were honored by NASCAR for their military service.

But an internal government report (Davis et. al., 2004), released less than two years after the first free distribution of America’s Army, explained that there were concerns initially about using a video game to recruit young soldiers, soldiers who would likely never have considered a military career without extensive game play and video game exposure. The concern was not that the military would use a video game to propagandize teenagers or adolescents, but the concerns

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were described in internal Army reports as how to do so without raising the ire of the public or the media. The report authors explained:

All parties understood that setting the right tone was key to avoiding public- relations disaster. The Army could not be perceived as celebrating trigger-happy Rambos, nor, by downplaying lethal force, be guilty of deceit and hypocrisy; must not pander to the testosterone of the demographic; yet must keep teens engaged; must avoid charges of jingoism, mesmerism, cynicism, cliché, exploitation of vulnerable youth, incitement to violence, or a hundred other incorrectnesses [sic]. In light of these constraints, the Army, having stated their objectives, had to invest a great deal of trust in the sincerity and comprehension of the civilian crew building AA. One postmodern excess and the game was up. (Davis, Shilling, Mayberry, Bossant, McCree, Dasser et. al., 2004, p. 9) In this way, the game and its missions reveals its true colors as propaganda, whose real mission is to gloss over the government initiatives of production to entice young people to join.

A 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study showed that nearly one-third (30 percent) of all Americans aged 16 to 24 expressed a more positive impression of the Army because of the game (Shein, 2010). Young men and women who played America’s Army at sites set up strategically by the U.S. Army were 30 percent more likely than those adolescents who had never played to consider military service as a possible career option. According to an Army News Service press release (“Army achieves,” 2003):

The “Army Game,” that debuted in 2002, continues to draw awareness to the Army attracting more than 2 million players as of August 13th. It is the second most played game worldwide. More than 1.2 million America’s Army players have completed basic training in the game and continued to play more than 1.8 million game missions, spending more than 18.5 million hours exploring the Army. (para. 12) One in five cadets entering West Point in 2005 had already played America’s Army. Double that number of enlisted soldiers had played the game before enlistment. On hearing Col. Wardynski speak at a 2005 convention, GameSpot writer Dan Tochen remarked: “The Army’s experiment in serious gaming is starting to look like a franchise” (para. 2).

The popularity of the America’s Army franchise was realized less than a decade after the project was conceived and developed through a private-public partnership. In 2006, four years after its initial launch on Independence Day 2002, the active-duty Army had recruited nearly 73,000 new soldiers, almost 3,000 more than its target (“’America’s Army’ Video Game Adds

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Real Soldiers,” 2006). By 2007, that number hit 80,000 new recruits, attributable, in part, to the success of America’s Army video game downloads (de Avila, 2008). In 2009, that franchise anchored by several versions of the FPS video game—some available on private consoles-- resulted in the Army again meeting its recruitment goals, a trend started in the first years after the game’s launch (Holmes, 2009). And, also in 2009, the Army began seeing more than just players playing and expressing interest in the military. In 2008, gamers spent almost 231 million hours playing the PC version of America’s Army. The game had been downloaded more than 42 million times, had 8 million registered users, and the virtual Army online was comprised of 519,472 soldiers, according to a Guinness Book of World Records press release (“America’s Army PC Game,” 2009). Based on those successes, the Guinness Book of World Records in 2009 included five new entries for the America’s Army game. The five are: largest virtual Army, most downloaded war video game, most hours spend playing a free online shooter, earliest military website to support a video game, and largest travelling game simulator, for the Army’s work on the Virtual Army Experience, a travelling military installation that will be explained next.

Increasing broadband connectivity in homes nationwide coupled with a reliance on computer gaming for entertainment provided Wardynski with further evidence of how the Army could literally connect to young men and women. Yet to ensure its message reaches potential recruits even in communities that may not be wired, the U.S. Army also created the Virtual Army Experience, a 10,000 square-foot travelling homage to the military that allows entrants to both play America’s Army while seeing, riding, and holding actual or modified Army equipment including tanks and weapons. According to the Virtual Army Experience website, the installation tours the country stopping at festivals, state fairs, and air shows displaying more than 35 flat screen televisions. On the official Virtual Army Experience website, which is under the umbrella of the larger America’s Army site, a video plays on the main page about the Virtual Army Experience. It reads:

First came the America’s Army game created by the U.S. Army. 8 million players worldwide based on actual missions. The Army brings you the Virtual Army Experience. Join your team. Engage the enemy. Defend freedom. Your mission awaits. In 2009, the Virtual Army Experience, an exhibit that is anchored by the video game America’s Army, won awards for both recruitment and brand experience (“VAE Facts,” 2011), showing the

66 success of military recruitment efforts when fed to adolescents in a high-technology, high-energy package.

Participants at VAE sites must provide personal information to play America’s Army. To sign up for a chance to play, people provide their age, address, phone number, and email address. An Army official enters the information into a government database where, once the players turn 17 or if they are already that age, they will be contacted within 24 hours by local U.S. Army recruiters. The Army Experience Center was a more permanent version of the Experience installed at a suburban Pennsylvania mall and set up as a recruitment pilot project. A Philadelphia writer visited the Army “theme park” there and explained her reaction to the government’s education program this way:

The Army Experience Center…bills itself as a ‘state-of-the-art educational facility that uses interactive simulations and online learning programs to educate visitors about the many careers, training and educational opportunities available in the Army. Nonsense. The only thing they’re teaching here is how to blow shit up. If it’s state-of-the-art anything, it’s state-of-the-art adolescent boys’ wet dreams. (Coleman, 2008, para. 1) Under public pressure, the Philadelphia site shut down. But, the travelling installation still thrives in many other parts of the United States where Army officials provide media and technology experiences to vulnerable minors. There’s a reason why the Army hopes to connect with this generation, typically identified beginning at age 13 in Army documents (see Davis, et. al., 2004; Wardynski, Lyle, & Colarusso, 2010), reasons that will be discussed in the next section.

Targeting Millennials

Army research suggests that this age group is not just technologically savvy but also that a generation born between 1982 and 2001, known as the “Millennial Generation” and sometimes referred to as “Generation Y,” possess both independence as a result of their technological familiarity while simultaneously showing a trust and respect for authority based on reliance in institutions that they have needed growing up in an age of war and crisis. Drago (2006) suggested that this generation grew up and came of age in a time of violence, citing the Oklahoma City bombings and Columbine High School shootings as examples that have shaped part of this generation’s perceptions about society. Furthermore, Drago (2006) reported that Millennials prefer Internet communication, which allows them to feel connected while still allowing them to remain sedentary, just one part of their overly-entertainment driven lifestyles.

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Wardynski, Lyle, and Colarusso (2010) wrote in an Army monograph about military leadership recruitment of this Millennial generation: “In sum, their size, character, beliefs, behavior, and location in history make Millennials an excellent officer prospect population for the Army, provided the Army tailors its approach to attract them accordingly” (p. 18). But, the monograph also explained that this generation is used to cognitive heuristics based in part on being surrounded by technologically-driven popular culture and “vivid” (p. 23) advertising or war imaging including 3D technology that provides young people with the feeling that an Army career over-emphasizes risk. Wardynski, Lyle, and Colarusso (2010) wrote: “This information can systematically shape youth impressions, overshadowing Army marketing in reach and volume” (p. 23). The authors continued: “Because Army efforts to recruit potential officers do not go into full swing until young adults reach age 17, there is significant time for popular culture to shape beliefs and perceptions of military service” (pp. 23-24). In order to achieve its message before other pop culture forms and media, the government created a video game rating that can attract its key demographic.

A 2002 Army report released just weeks before the official launch of America’s Army was more direct about how to attract the youth demographic. The report stated key among the Army’s strategic communication goals to reverse low recruitment would be to “exploit the Internet” targeting Generation Y (Chambers, Sherlock, & Kucik, 2002, p. 60). Report authors Chambers, Sherlock, and Kucik (2002) stated: “Fortunately, the demographics of the average game-playing member of Gen Y also generally correspond to those of the Army’s prime recruiting targets” (p. 62). Wardynski told Huntemann (2010) in an interview from 2008: “We’re in the marketplace competing for youth mind share” (p. 183).

America’s Army is rated “T” for “Teen,” meaning it is suitable for children aged 13 and older under the ESRB voluntary ratings system. An internal report created by the MOVES Institute, the game’s military creator, reflects why the game received its younger-than-expected “T” for “Teen” rating. Report authors (Zyda, Mayberry, Wardynski, Shilling, & Davis, 2003) explain:

The Army estimates America’s Army is conserving some $700M-$4B per year. With respect to recruitment, actual results won’t be known for four or five years, when the current raft of thirteen- and fourteen-year olds will be old enough to join. (p. 2)

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The rating provided to the game is notable because other popular FPS games--including those “depicting” war and enemy fighting like Call of Duty and Half-Life 2--have ratings of “M” for “Mature,” meaning they are suitable only for teenagers age 17 and older. Critics (Holmes, 2009; Sinclair, 2008) of the America’s Army rating have said that the “T” rating coupled with the knowledge that the Army is unambiguous about using the game for its recruiting goals, means children are too young and face undue influence from game play.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a report in 2008 titled, “Soldiers of Misfortune,” that claimed the game-based recruitment practices actually violate international law. That international law is stated in Article 3(3) of The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which requires that military recruitment efforts have the consent of the person’s parents and that people subjected to the recruitment efforts “are fully informed of the duties involved in such military service” (as cited in ACLU, 2008, p. 17). Yet despite the international safeguards in place, the ACLU (2008) reports that 4% of new recruits said that they had joined specifically as a result of their America’s Army game play while another 60% of new recruits had played America’s Army more than five times per week before enlisting.

A retired U.S. Army major and now deputy director of America’s Army operations was quoted in the New York Times (Schiesel, 2005) explaining the rating:

We have a Teen rating that allows 13-year-olds to play, and in order to maintain that rating we have to adhere to certain standards. We don’t use blood and gore and violence to entertain. That’s not the purpose of our game. We want to reach young people to show them what the Army does, and we’re obviously proud of that. (para. 32) Despite this Army commander’s assurance, the game is rated “T” based on “blood” and “violence,” descriptors that are made available on the game’s front page. Col. Wardynski told Au in an article published on salon.com (Au, 2002) that the game would need a Mature rating if gun shots showed the real consequences of that type of violence. The explanation for the game’s T rating is continued on social media sites like Facebook, where America’s Army has an official page that includes a discussion board where fans and players can interact with game officials. An October 21, 2010, post by a player named “Jeff” said: “They need to add blood to the game.” An official responded: “As for more blood, we like our Teen rating :P” and “The Teen rating has to stay in place to allow it downloadable without going through all kinds of age verification” (“Official America’s Army Facebook page,” 2010). Zmuda (2008) also reported that an Army

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spokesman said the teen-rated game is not about recruiting—despite assurances it is from other Army officials and numerous government reports--but about creating a “factual” and “entertaining” environment for children under age 18 (para. 6).The textual analysis provided in the next section will explore the idea that the website provides few facts about war or the horrors of war despite this claim to realism and authenticity.

The U.S. Army is not without other critics—critics in and outside of government who know the actual consequences of war--for its tactics to attract the 13-year-old demographic hoping they will play throughout adolescence and then enlist after high school. Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman from Ohio, criticized on the floor of the House of Representatives the Army’s targeting of young teenagers. Kucinich said (as quoted in “In Congress,” 2009):

I think we can agree that the Virtual Army Experience video game must be revalidated to ensure that its age-appropriate rating is accurate in the context of how it’s being employed; that the Virtual Army Experience content should be reviewed to ensure it accurately reflects the consequences of war; and that there must be increased transparency with regard to how the personal information of the participants, collected during participation, will be used by the Army. (para. 5) Furthermore, a group known as Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), like the ACLU, has claimed that the game should be forbidden for teens under age 18 under United Nations protocols. DASW wants both the Army and corporate partners of the Army that sell the game to provide parents with a warning label. The warning label would read:

Warning: This video game has been developed by the United States Army to recruit children under the age of 17 in violation of the UN Optional Protocol and international law. Combat service has been known to cause death, irreparable injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and lifelong feelings of overwhelming guilt. (Sinclair, 2008, para. 4) The group also notified Ubisoft North American President Laurent Detoc--as Ubisoft contractually partners with the American government—of their outrage over the game’s rating and recruitment goals.

Ubisoft executives responded to the group’s claims, as well as to the ACLU report published in May 2008, that the company did not intend to make any further games with the U.S. Army; however, they have a contract with the Army good through 2015 (“Protest March,” 2008), a relationship that will be more fully explored in a later section of this chapter. As of March 1, 2011, two America’s Army games are available for console gaming, including the game

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America’s Army: True Soldiers available for the Xbox 360, through the Ubisoft corporate website. The games range in cost; a 2007 version cost $62.99 in 2011. On the Ubisoft sales page where game listings are available, the Xbox version of both America’s Army games says, “The only game developed by the U.S. Army” (“Game listing,” 2011), suggesting both authenticity and realism are for sale with one’s purchase of the teen-rated game. Despite critics from inside and outside its ranks, Congress made no changes to the Army’s funding for the game or the virtual soldiering experience that the game anchors.

The U.S. Army has a vested interest in keeping as many adolescents and teenagers playing as possible to maximize its recruiting and marketing goals as well as to benefit the marketing goals and bottom line of its corporate partners. The video game America’s Army is one way that the Army has sought to balance what it knows about what could make the Millennial generation a good fit for military service yet still needs to counter these popular culture images or impressions that may affect recruitment of this media-savvy generation. Internal government reports (Wardynski, Lyle, & Colarusso, 2010; Zyda, Hiles, Mayberry, Wardynski, Capps, Osborn et. al., 2003; Zyda, Mayberry, Wardynski, Shilling, & Davis, 2003) have suggested that America’s Army is the key to unlocking recruitment potential and keeping those recruits in lifelong Army careers. One government report published by the Strategic Studies Institution at the United States Army War College explains:

The ‘America’s Army’ game is a prime example of a program that accounts for imperfect information and irrationality by adapting new media and technology to communicate Army opportunities to young adults…Designed to account for key decision-making heuristics and biases likely to afflict the market for new Army talent, the game provides a platform for the Army to communicate with its prime market. (Wardynski, Lyle, & Colarusso, 2010, pp. 301-302) While Wardynski may have conceived the bridge between the military and war-weary teenagers to boost recruitment, another part of the story behind the game’s development and expansion lies with the corporate relationships that the government has fostered to further spread its messages about war in society.

Creating the Next Audie Murphy

President John F. Kennedy’s gravesite is the most visited at Arlington National Cemetery. Audie Murphy’s is the second most popular. Murphy, a World War II soldier famous for killing 240 enemies in the heat of battle, graced the cover of Life magazine in July 1945.

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Murphy, a fifth grade dropout from a rural Texas town and orphaned at age 16, was the most decorated WWII soldier, awarded three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, and the Medal of Honor, according to his Los Angeles Times obituary from 1971. After his WWII service that included fighting in France and Belgium, Murphy became a Hollywood actor who appeared in more than two dozen films (“Audie Murphy,” 2011). He was nationally-known and recognizable as a patriotic hero whose Army enlistment and tales of killing German enemies became woven into the country’s fabric about the WWII effort and its overwhelming success to end tyranny. His legend and legacy remain. As recently as 2006, a USA Today article about Veteran’s Day and modern-day soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan begins with a description of Murphy’s heroism (Zoroya & Dorrell, 2006).

During WWII, Americans had fewer media channels (Barnes, 2005), which may explain part of how and why Murphy’s story resonated with so many and for so long. As was described in the literature review, Hollywood and major news outlets became voices of the Army, of its war heroes, and helped to spread the message of patriotism to the public during the early and middle parts of the last century. Today, with numerous media outlets fighting for the attention of the 21st Century adolescent, the Army in the early part of the last decade was faced with a two- part problem. First, it had lower-than-needed recruitment numbers and, next, it was missing the tale of a heroic and patriotic soldier like Murphy to serve as a role model for young people. The Army’s attempt to turn the Jessica Lynch story into that tale exploded with the Army private eventually testifying to Congress about how her story had been fabricated as part of the Bush administration’s propaganda efforts at the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Lynch was still a teenager when in 2003 was on a military HMMVVE that crashed and she supposedly was taken by hostile Iraqi forces and kept as a prisoner of war. The government narrative initially credited Lynch with firing her M-16 at enemy forces as she escaped; the first POW to do so since WWII. But, Lynch told news outlets that the U.S. Defense Department had exaggerated accounts of her capture and rescue (Kirkpatrick, 2003).

As that story fizzled, the Army through America’s Army, had a timely way to transition telling its story to a demographic it coveted. In 2006, it began effectively targeting adolescents with its messages of patriotism and heroism using FPS gaming media. In 2006, Army officials added a feature to the video game known as the Real Heroes. Within its America’s Army video

72 game, the Army hoped to increase recruitment by targeting teenagers with a specific call to arms by highlighting the voices of highly-decorated soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; soldiers who would be for Afghanistan and Iraq what Murphy was during and after WWII. The “Real Heroes” section of the website begins this way:

Heroes are people of distinguished courage and ability, admired for their brave deeds and noble qualities. The America’s Army Real Heroes program puts a face on some of the exceptional Soldiers who are at the forefront in the defense of freedom. (para. 1) Each soldier is provided with a unique biography, with his or her own videos, with a section detailing his or her unit awards and skill badges, and, for some of them, blogs detailing their participation at national military proceedings and civilian events including NASCAR races. Internal Army documents reveal that these heroes were chosen specifically with an emphasis on branding; blog posts (posts that will be included in the chapter five textual analysis) reveal that they receive media training.

Barnes (2005) explained that in the early 20th Century the Army through more traditional media—media that reached American homes or was presented by Hollywood as fictional accounts of military heroes and military stories—had provided the public with reasons to accept war. Beyond acceptance, Barnes (2005) suggested the American public actually admired heroes and accepted war. By the time of Vietnam and Korea, the media, and therefore the public, had become skeptical of war and foreign incursions. No heroes like Murphy emerged from either of those wars. Public acceptance of war reached levels far lower than it had been in the 1940s. Sagging recruitment during the modern Iraq and Afghanistan wars showed the Army that it needed to reach young people with an updated hero, someone that they could both relate to and venerate. Barnes, in a 2005 U.S. News and World Report, article explained:

Earlier this year, Chris Chambers, a retired Army major who helps oversee the America’s Army game project, began thinking about the lack of recognizable heroes from Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘There are thousands of soldiers winning Bronze Stars and Silver Stars, but their stories are just not known,’ Chambers says. As he thought about it, Chambers realized the Army did not need the press to tout its heroes, at least not with teenagers. Today, young people spend far more time playing video games than they do reading newspapers. ‘We think that America’s Army is the most popular pop-culture tool the Army has available,’ Chambers says. ‘It might be able to create the next Audie Murphy.’ (para. 10)

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The Army has produced the Real Heroes’ stories and created action figures (another private- government partnership described later in this chapter) that were sold at Toys ‘R’ Us to further target young people and to help create the 21st Century Audie Murphy for an unassuming American public. Before game play of America’s Army, the most current version available as of October 2011, the website explains that animated characters—most of them likenesses of the Real Heroes--can help players navigate the game’s unfamiliar terrain and weapons. The website (“Characters,” 2011) says:

You’ll also meet some of our Real Heroes, Soldiers who have earned awards for bravery and valor in combat operations and who epitomize the Seven Army Values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. The opportunity to meet these Real Heroes is one of the many ways that America’s Army 3 is a game like no other. (para. 3) Just as Audie Murphy was a real-life hero who won numerous medals for his bravery, the Army has spun the real-life stories of these eight men and one woman to try to achieve the hero mythology it had during WWII with Murphy. Now, with the three-part Kellner model as a guide, studying what those stories say becomes a crucial stage in understanding the cultural impact they—and the game—have on young people. Those stories will be analyzed in the next chapter.

Exploring the Links to Private Corporations

Once the U.S. Army had successfully secured funding for its America’s Army project in 2000 and with the directive to increase military recruiting, top military leaders turned to gaming- industry insiders to make the video game a hit and secure its position as one of the key voices providing war-themed entertainment to adolescents, teenagers, and adults. The game would be based on actual Army weapons, values, and missions, but even the strength of MOVES on its own was not enough to turn the video game into the blockbuster success story the Army needed to increase recruitment numbers and re-brand military service. As such, Zyda, Hiles, Mayberry, Wardynski, Capps, Osborn et. al. (2003) explained that the government’s top simulation creators turned to the video game industry’s top artists, designers, and computer programmers from gaming giants including Electronic Arts, Sony, and Kalisto. Sound professionals from Dolby Laboratories and Skywalker Sound helped game designers use state-of-the-art audio within the game that allows players to hear “a flash-bang grenade scud off the floor behind him just before being incapacitated by the roar and ring of tinnitus in the ears” (Zyda, Hiles, Mayberry, Wardynski, Capps, Osborn et. al., 2003, p. 29). The collective industry experience at work on the

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Army game together had created 31 successful video games leading up to their involvement with the America’s Army project.

The powerful government relationship to gaming giants was revealed in 2009, when a top gaming website called GameSpot filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find information about the budget and operations of America’s Army. The Army released some information about the cost of the game—far more expensive than military leaders initially claimed—but military leaders balked at releasing more information about the game and any industry ties. Shein (2010) explains by quoting Army officials’ response to the public records request: “The Army claims that releasing full details would be ‘damaging to the U.S. Army’s position in the video-game industry.’ The Army has a ‘position’ in the video-game industry?” (paras. 5-6). Clearly, the government’s power through the use of America’s Army had been realized and, in less than a decade, had come to fruition. That power benefitted both the Army, regarding its position related to recruitment, and private game companies that could work from the taxpayer-funded game framework and had access to millions of unsuspecting users.

In 2004, as the Army sought to once again pump recruitment (“America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier,” 2005), the U.S. Army turned to French-based Ubisoft to attract new distribution deals for the video game America’s Army. Ubisoft considers itself a “leading producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products worldwide and has grown considerably through a strong and diversified line-up of products and partnerships. Ubisoft has offices in 26 countries and has sales in more than 55 countries worldwide” (Ubisoft Press Release, 2011). It is considered one of the world’s largest video game publishers. During the 2009-10 fiscal year, Ubisoft generated sales of €871 million, worth approximately $1.2 billion at December 2011 exchange rates.

The gaming world reacted with excitement that the popular FPS America’s Army, previously a military secret, would be available through console gaming, thus providing another outlet for game play and another outlet for in-game marketing. Gaming trade publications called the agreement “historic” (“America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier,” 2005) and said it was the “first time that the commercial world is using a military-designed game” (Peck, 2004, para. 1). Ubisoft could utilize the vast resources of the U.S. Army, including visits to basic training sites where game developers received primary information about how and what a military career could and

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should look like, technology that could be part of America’s Army and future military-themed releases as well (“U.S. Army and Ubisoft join forces,” 2004). Naish (2006) noted that a gaming company can spend between $15 million and $20 million to bring a commercial video game to the market; such a financial outlay was not required by Ubisoft to bring America’s Army to console gaming.

The French company also detailed in a 2004 news release that by partnering with the U.S. Army, it could tap into the top military gaming market that accounted for the industry’s most popular and profitable franchises. The point was to translate that military access to the game features and try to outpace other military-themed FPS games. Ubisoft Vice President of Marketing Tony Key was quoted in a gaming online article saying: “America’s Army is a strong brand…Ubisoft and the Army are set to deliver a solid and authentic Army experience” (“America’s Army: True Soldiers Xbox 360,” 2007, para. 4). A 2004 article published in National Defense magazine explained the corporate benefits of the Army-Ubisoft partnership this way: “For its part, Ubisoft gets the marketing benefits of highly visible and valuable brand names” (Peck, 2004, para. 6). In its 2005 annual report, Ubisoft executives explained the benefit of taking an existing game and developing for a console gaming system like the Xbox and PlayStation2. The annual report said:

By bringing out a title onto multiple platforms (home consoles, portable consoles and PC), while ensuring that each version respects the specificities of the support and offers novel features, the company reaches an ever-increasing number of consumers without a proportional increase in production costs. (p. 15) After the U.S. government turned part of the production of the game over to Ubisoft, the company was expected to reap $13 billion in profits by 2013 (Reagan, 2008) with an exclusive publishing agreement with the U.S. Army (“Ubisoft annual report,” 2005).

The military benefits included yet another boost in recruitment and visibility. The Army deal with Ubisoft came in 2004, the same year the Army saw a slight drop in the number of recruits, a trend previously reversed by the online video game America’s Army. Partnering with Ubisoft allowed the Army greater distribution on home gaming consoles including the Xbox with little financial risk. The Army gets to spread even further its messages through the video game industry in a FPS format that is extremely popular among adolescents age 10-14 (Holtz &

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Appel, 2011). Meanwhile, Ubisoft gets the benefit of an existing game brand and gets to license the game and ancillary products.

Other corporate partners include NASCAR; the America’s Army video game sponsors a race car and it is represented on the game web page. Stahl (2010) wrote: “Extreme sports provide a storyline and purpose that enables the interactive consumption of state violence,” (p. 72). The Army website explained: “The U.S. Army team races with a dedication, teamwork and passion which is inspired by the Soldiers [sic] who defend our freedom. Led by new driver Ryan Newman, the U.S. Army car thunders down the track with more than 850 [horsepower] under the hood” (“AA3&NASCAR,” 2009, para. 1). The creation of the America’s Army car is just one more way to reach an adolescent audience and target recruitment through this government- private partnership. NASCAR fans are 1.5 times more likely to serve in the military than the general population (“Democratic Rep. targets,” 2011). Demographics of NASCAR fans also show key similarities to the Army’s prime recruiting targets; such a blending of racing and militarism helps to further cultivate the brand loyalty of both the young people who play and the NASCAR fans who watch. Newman and Giardina (2010) wrote:

More specifically, we contend that NASCAR is at once the corporate sport organism that best exemplifies the principles of this burgeoning free-market empire and the archetypal, if not centrifugal, sporting apparatus orchestrated by political and corporate intermediaries in the manufacture of pedagogies of consent in an age of global capitalism. (p. 1515) A 2009 report from research firm Scarborough explained that 55% of NASCAR fans annually earn $50,000 or less, below the national average, and 59% have children under the age of 18, outpacing the national average.

This relationship also signifies another way that the audience of America’s Army is being commodified by both the government and a corporate partner which have similar interests; both measure successes by targeting adolescents. For example, Spanberg (2011) wrote: “During a January conference call to discuss the publicly held company’s full-year results, ISC president John Saunders reiterated the importance of attracting new, young fans” (para. 4). Furthermore, a marketing executive is quoted in that article:

We’ve got to get the 18-to-34s and to get them in the future, you better get the 12- to-17s,’ says Mike Boykin, executive vice president of sports marketing at GMR Marketing, a frequent consultant to companies with motorsports sponsorships.

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‘They’re looking at a lot of things, from the networks to NASCAR, things in social media.’ (para. 8) A November 2001 news article (Koslow, 2011) explained that NASCAR has a new director of brand and consumer marketing who will work to grow its youth fan bases. Neely (2011) reported that a Minnesota state representative wanted an end to the NASCAR and Army partnership. Neely quoted a spokesperson for the congresswoman saying the NASCAR-Army relationship was “nothing more than corporate welfare” (para. 4). In North Carolina, a popular NASCAR location, a Republican representative said that car racing was “a target rich environment for military recruiters” (Diaz, 2011, para. 5). The partnership between NASCAR, private gaming companies, and America’s Army then works to position adolescents as the targets of these mediated messages. The reason they are the targets is to make them a part of either a militarized audience or a commodified one, and possibly both. The effect is a boost in potential recruits as well as a way to increase corporate profits at the expense of taxpayers.

As the Army began increasing its recruitment budgets it also changed tactics from traditional Super Bowl advertisements or television spots and focused its budget on America’s Army and its partnership with NASCAR (Edwards, 2004). The Army spent $7 million to sponsor a NASCAR race car in 2010. The Army now estimates that it received 46,000 recruiting leads because of that sponsorship (Glucker, 2011). On the day of the Daytona 500 in 2011, the Army allowed Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakley to speak to the media about the benefits of sponsoring a NASCAR race car. Menzer (2011) asked the military officer how many of those 46,000 potential leads actually become recruits. Freakley answered: “A large part of what we’re for is getting them to what we call the marketing funnel” (para. 6). The same interviewer asked Freakley “Why is NASCAR and the U.S. Army such a good fit together?” Freakley answered:

Have you ever watched a NASCAR opening? How patriotic is it? Flags, the national anthem, pride in country, pride in my guy….I just think there is a nexus of this is America’s sport, and the Army is America’s team. We are America’s Army…We know this is having an impact on recruiting and helping our recruiters with their jobs…We have a great and, in my mind, treasured relationship with NASCAR because it gives us a great venue to tell our story as soldiers where people are receptive to it. (Menzer, 2011, para. 16-18) What the America’s Army success shows is how, when, and why to target a young male demographic.

Branding War and Advertising to Adolescents

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The military’s prime goal of America’s Army is increased recruitment. It targets adolescents to help young people consider a career in the military. Corporations also covet this key demographic for its spending power. A Nielsen report (2009) explained the age group’s significance for marketing this way:

Globally, there are more than 1.2 billion people ages 10–19, according to the U.S. Census. Of those, there are about 33 million teenagers ages 13–19 in the United States. Beyond sheer mass, this demographic wields tremendous influence—on their peers, their parents and the culture at large. As well, the formative nature of their years has implications for everything from consumer packaged goods marketing to the democratic process. (p. 1)

Furthermore, a how-to guide to reach the coveted age 12-24 male demographic (Koeppel, n.d.) explained that playing video game consoles like PlayStation and Xbox is this group’s top leisure activity. Koeppel wrote: “Even though this group doesn’t read traditional print media very much, they do read articles and view ads online” (para. 6). The Army has been successful at targeting this demographic through the use of its FPS game. As has been explained the America’s Army advertising campaign has been the most successful recruitment tool in the history of the organization.

The branding of the Army in such a way provided corporate marketers with insight into the success of reaching this key demographic. In a section of the America’s Army gaming website, the Army details its “partners” and says: “America’s Army is dedicated to supporting our partners with innovative marketing programs” (“America’s Army Partners,” 2011, para. 1). Its “partner list” explains six companies that the Army has relationships with. These companies include GameSpy Industries, which “reaches the largest audience of hard-core gamers available on the Internet, according to all major Internet measurement firms” (para. 7). Other partners recognized on the website include NVIDIA, which develops games. Also, the website links to Pragmatic Solutions, a software development company. Perforce Software is another partner that describes its work as “video game development, federal government [work], electronics, pharmaceutical and financial services markets” (para. 4). Pragmatic’s website explains that it works to “create meaning and value” (para. 1) for gamers through elevating the “engagement” (para. 2). Epic Games, a North Carolina-based developer of computer and video games works with America’s Army to create the game engine that America’s Army uses to run its game including the characters, maps, terrain, and in-game renderings of characters. Epic, which

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produces titles like Gears of War 3, creates these game geographies for Sony, Apple, and Sega, who also all are major corporate players in the video game marketplace.

These partners become valuable for the Army because they provide the best and latest, cutting age video game technology while they also receive the benefit of a vast teenage audience that plays America’s Army for free online. An Epic press release (“U.S. Army Licenses,” 2005) said: “By harnessing the power of the Unreal Engine, America’s Army produces extraordinarily engaging and realistic environments and experiences” (para. 4). The Army may use this technology—like the Unreal game engine created by Epic—to entice users who are used to sophisticated graphics in FPS games. The gamers get a free game if they choose to download it through the website and Epic and other Army partners get the free exposure associated with the Army game’s millions of downloads and visitors. Also, these video game partners receive insight and instruction in how to create game terrain and game technology modeled after actual battlefield and military technology and terminology, an authenticity considered highly valuable for the corporate video game market (Andersen & Kurti, 2009). In the partnership between the government and private gaming companies, the creation of such authenticity is considered a hefty commodity.

Three years after its initial launch and five million registered users later, America’s Army showed not just the military, but entire industries that branding through video games had arrived as the key way to type male-oriented products and reach key male demographics (Delaney, 2004; Oser, 2005). In 2008, Huntemann (2010) asked Col. Wardynski how his office measures the success of the game. He answered:

When we met with our marketing firm, they asked, ‘Well, what do you think success looks like?’ We said about a million people playing it in the first year. And they said, you’re nuts. Now we’re up to 9.5 million registered users who play our game. (Huntemann, 2008, p. 185) Marketing the Army and delivering youth to marketers would both be keys to the development and success of the video game with adolescent boys, who often remain more immersed and more attracted to video games than to traditional television advertising (Delaney, 2004). A 2004 article (“And now,” 2004) explained that the branding success of America’s Army has led corporations including Coca-Cola to consider shifting parts of its marketing budget online, specifically to reach the coveted 18-34 male demographic.

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But the Army is not just harnessing that power and the power of that many players alone. In 1999, the U.S. Army hired Leo Burnett, a top advertising agency, to strategize how to boost recruitment and rebrand the Army. Holmes (2009) wrote: “A key aim of the new recruitment strategy was to ensure long-term success by cultivating the allegiance of teenage Americans” (para. 9). The allegiance would build not just Army recruits, but also cultivate purchasing power in the form of consumer products associated with the video game brand and provide corporate partners of the government millions of dollars in annual sales and revenue. In a Rutgers University report, the relationship between the government and major corporate marketing firms was detailed and explained. That report (“Targeting youth,” 2008) stated:

In 2005, the Army entered into a five-year contract with global advertising firm McCann Erickson for $1.35 Billion of ‘advertising, promotional, and publicity programs to support all recruiting and retention programs.’ McCann Erickson’s client list includes multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations such as: Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, General Motors, American Airlines, Goodyear, Intel, and Pfizer. From 2000 to 2005, the Army had contracted with the Leo Burnett agency, which ‘handles many of the world's most valuable brands and successful marketers, including McDonald's, Disney, Procter & Gamble, Marlboro, Altoids, Heinz, Kellogg, and Nintendo.’ (p. 4) The government has achieved its recruitment goals of targeted marketing through the use of advertising firms popular for selling products and services. The strategy obviously was effective.

Col. Wardynski said of America’s Army in an interview with an advertising publication: “It’s sort of a deep marketing effort—a branding tool” (as quoted in Oser, 2005, para. 2). In 2008, an Army spokesman named Paul Boyce told Advertising Age magazine that the Army was successfully meeting its recruitment goals but did so without glamorizing or sanitizing war. Branding and marketing, in part through the use of the America’s Army video game, were tactics that were helping the government meet its steep goals during war time. Boyce (as quoted in Zmuda, 2008) said of meeting recruitment goals:

We have done that by continuing to evolve and change and refine our communications. We’ve been looking at marketing carefully for a decade. We’re an all-volunteer organization, where we have to recruit more than 80,000 people every year, and we have a force of 1.1 million. That is not something that one does by the seat of the pants. (para. 11) The Army successfully branded itself, but in the process it also brought a key demographic to other companies and organizations, all of whom have made extensive profits partnering with the

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U.S. Army through the use of its record-holding, popular video game. Ubisoft stands to earn $15 billion in profits from its partnership with the U.S. government (Reagan, 2008).

Toys, product placements, and even clothing continue branding the Army and garnering revenue for corporate partners where the online and console versions of the video game may not reach. Retail giant Sears in 2008 began selling an Army clothing line (Landman, 2008). Less than one year after the partnership between the Army and Ubisoft was sealed, NMA, a product placement firm, was hired to promote America’s Army. Christopher Chambers, deputy director of America’s Army, told Brandweek magazine that: “We want it in dialogue, situations, content, things that bring up the essence of the game. We don’t want it just in the background” (as quoted in Ebenkamp & Wasserman, 2005, para. 2). Jhally (2003) said that toys are a crucial way that advertisers are able to alter the perceptions of children and colonize from an early age their imagination and views about the world. He wrote: “The commodity-image system is now implicated, due to changes in the way that toys are marketed, in the very structure and experience of children’s play” (p. 254). Military toys and video games then act as a way to form from childhood into adolescence perceptions about mediated narratives children interact with. Those narratives of FPS video games discussed in the Literature Review often are laden with violence and have documented cognitive and behavioral effects. The push to further brand the Army and reach even more young people through targeted advertising and military video games came as the Army also was promoting a line of action figures.

The Christmas season of 2002, just five months after the game’s first release, saw sales of military-themed toys and violent games outpace others, based on the success of the America’s Army video game and other popular FPS titles (Goldberg, 2002). By 2006, with its Ubisoft partnership in full swing and reaching more young people through the Xbox and online, the Army had turned the Real Heroes throughout the gaming website and social media sites affiliated with the Army game, into action figures for sale at $10 each (“America’s Army video game adds real soldiers,” 2006). A toy website that promoted the dolls’ release described them this way in an online news release: “Each Soldier’s action figure includes a Real Heroes trading card highlighting the Soldier’s heroic accomplishments and Warrior Ethos, authentic uniforms, weapons, unit insignias, and awards” (“Jazwares launches,” 2007). In 2011, the Army still promotes on its official gaming website several action figures based on those soldiers, made by Jazwares, a toy company with links to Disney (Stahl, 2010). Tommy Rieman, an Army sergeant 82

and one of the models for the action figures, told the Associated Press that he hoped the game and his likeness provided teenagers with role models who were not athletes or celebrities. In a later interview with the American Forces Press Service, Rieman, who is made available online to interact with fans and players, said of the video game: “It’s a developmental tool for kids in that decision-making age process. It’s out there to educate them” (Wood, 2006, para. 7). The America’s Army website promotes the eight action figures and playing cards (female hero Monica Brown does not have a doll). All of the 6-inch-tall action figures are pointing guns. The toys are suggested for ages 13 and older. But marketing research (Bartyzel, 2007) has suggested that younger boys age 8 to 10 typically prefer action figure toys including G.I. Joe dolls, which look similar to the Real Heroes toys. This suggests that the Army targets with the toys and clothing deals children who are even younger than 13.

In 2006, four years after the video game America’s Army was first launched, the U.S. Army under Col. Wardynski’s leadership took further steps to ensure teenagers could relate to soldiers in the game, and therefore in real life, as it set about a marketing strategy that would prove profitable by Christmas of that year. By 2004, the U.S. Army faced yet again declining recruitment yet used the power of the game with a real-life marketing strategy to meet more recruiting targets. In November 2005, one month before Christmas and at the start of the holiday buying season, the company Game Live, a California-based video game marketing company, announced that America’s Army would be one game featured to “kick off the Xbox holiday retail tour” (“Game live,” 2005, para. 1). Game Live promotes and markets “video game” experiences and counts both Ubisoft and the U.S. Army as its clients and as its partners for the holiday publicity stunts, according to its website gameliveevents.com. To promote the Xbox in 2005, one year after the Army and Ubisoft partnered, Game Live targeted more than 300,000 shoppers at ten mega malls nationwide. Admission was free. Play time was unlimited.

Another marketing strategy that Ubisoft pioneered via America’s Army included the use of Xfire, a free in-game instant messaging system that early in its development attracted both Mountain Dew, MTV, and chip maker AMD as advertisers that were trying to target the “elusive male demo[graphic]” (Bulik, 2004, para. 1). Bulik (2004) described marketers as “enthusiastic” about the online service, which would have unique in-game access to reach males aged 18 to 34. Xfire tracks playing time of individual users and calculates how many people are playing at one time, using the company’s communication software. Xfire also allows gamers to see which 83

games their friends may be playing when they go online (Gabbay, 2006). Fulton (2006) explained that Xfire “gives media providers a lucrative way to contact prospective viewers while they’re certain to be paying very, very close attention to their screens” (para. 2). Media-giant Viacom purchased Xfire for between $102 and $110 million in April 2006, a service that proved successful and profitable due to the success of the communication being bundled within America’s Army (Brightman, 2007; Gabbay, 2006). Although no longer owned by Viacom, currently its website (www.xfire.com) provides information for advertisers that says that the company: “Offers high value, high visibility advertising opportunities to marketers targeting the elusive young male demographic.” It reads further:

We offer the only way to reach these passionate gamers while they’re actually playing games. Game publishers, movie studios, and consumer brands have used Xfire’s IAB-standard ad impressions and fully immersive sponsorships to reach their best buyers in an effective, hip, and truly unique way. (para. 1) As of March 2011, the company’s website explains that more than 10 million registered users are playing video games online using Xfire on average of 80 hours per month. In March 2011, Xfire calculated on its website that 211 America’s Army gamers were also using their product for a total playing time each day of 16,640 minutes. America’s Army: Special Forces, another part of the U.S. Army franchise, had 185 Xfire users playing per day on average in March 2011, with players collectively averaging 18,820 minutes of game time play per day. Advertising and marketing in the game are not the only ways Ubisoft seeks to commodify this sought-after demographic.

Discussion

At the time of this writing, the most recent “Army Posture Statement,” an annual military report provided to Congress, was released in early 2011. In its section on Army staffing, the posture statement revealed that recruitment and enlistment needs must be balanced to maintain successful numbers of active-duty soldiers. In a later section on “Army Gaming,” the statement authors wrote: “The ‘America’s Army’ gaming project is a long-term commitment, focusing on the development of future products that will further the integration of CRM [risk management] and safety throughout America’s Army gaming, simulation, training, and outreach products” (para. 3). The game seems to be part of the military strategy for years to come. The addition of the Real Heroes section to the website in 2006 further adds evidence that the U.S. Army has tried

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to cultivate in a youth audience both mentors for the war and role models for impressionable adolescents, eager to find role models during a period that adolescent development scholars suggest is marked by conflict with parents and attempts to find meaning in a larger social system (Acuff, 1997; Arnett, 1995; 1999; 2000; Klein et. al., 1996).

Tracing the production of such mediated messages is essential to understanding how the game functions in society. But it also can help media scholars and the public develop an understanding of why and how the adolescent audience is a target. Such vulnerabilities of the youth audience are exploited by the video game website and corporate interests. The production of characters like the Real Heroes is meant to provide mentors to the adolescent audience as a way to help them engage and make sense of the world around them. As these young people seek to make meaning from that world and if they turn to the video game franchise, those stories of heroism wrapped in violence and thrill-seeking may help to shape some young peoples’ identities.

In 1999, to boost fledgling recruitment, the Army turned to the FPS video game as a way to network with war-weary teenagers. The video game would displace more traditional television advertising and past advertising campaigns including “Army of One.” Nearly a decade into the America’s Army FPS franchise, , the game is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the most popular shooter franchises in history. It has helped recruitment during wartime and has fostered corporate partnerships that have both commodified adolescents and spread war ideology through games and other ancillary products including toys, clothing, and other gaming entertainment. Such partnerships have benefitted both the government and the corporations. The government gains recruits or manifests hegemonic ideologies for an adolescent audience. The corporations gain capital and profitability.

What the analysis of government documents, trade publications, and news reports shows here is that the government targets adolescents in order to increase their willingness to join the Army. The Army, through a sophisticated network of games and social networking sites that form the basis of the America’s Army franchise, is able to cultivate in thousands of young people the idea that a military career is one that fits their ideals and future goals based on their experience with a video game that fails to show what happens when a soldier is wounded. To reach recruitment goals, the government uses an age rating to target adolescents as young as 13

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and allows, through action figures and contact with online soldiers, messages to resonate with young people about the benefits of joining the Army. Adolescents and teenage game players are further affected by the partnership between the Army and private corporations by being exposed to branding strategies that have made McDonald’s and Coca-Cola frontrunners in culture for decades. The partnership commodifies adolescents, especially young male teenagers, and attempts to sell them products and services while they are engrossed in militarized game play. Moreover, the game and its website mean to sell the U.S. Army as a potential career to adolescents who are both on the cusp of decision-making but also face a key developmental period of storm and stress. Arnett (1999; 2000) drew on Hall’s (1904) work outlining this developmental period in an adolescent’s life. In early adolescence—between the ages of 13 and 16 and corresponding to present-day characterizations of Millennials—researchers have explored this period as one that is dominated by risky behavior, mood disruptions, and conflict with parents. The media may act as a kind of stabilizing agent, helping some adolescents eager to carve out their identities with social negotiation strategies that do far more than just entertain. In this way America’s Army’s production offers a powerful salve to the social and physiological disruptions and identity negotiation at work for many adolescents, especially those in the “high sensation” seeking category identified by Arnett (1995). While Wardynski has said in interviews that the game was meant to connect with adolescents and gain a place in their ideas about future careers, the game and website production also are meant to engage an audience undergoing a tremendous period of storm and stress and whose decision-making abilities may be compromised by rapid changes in brain chemistry and physiological development. This government-created system then serves as a way for war-hungry adolescents to live out that sensation seeking and thrill seeking that they may be developmentally predisposed to.

Political economy with its focus on structural conditions and production of cultural texts helps to foster an understanding of how and why the government has partnered with corporations including Ubisoft and NASCAR. Such a structure reveals the production of messages meant to commodify the video game audience but also creates hegemonic dominance for those producers (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992; McChesney, 2001). Kellner and Durham (2006) explained: “The structure of political economy links culture to its political and economic context and opens up cultural studies to history and politics” (p. xxvii). As Bettig and Hall (2003) wrote: “In order to understand the communications system at any point in history, we must place it in its

86 political-economic context” (p. 9). Through this political economic view, these players are much less likely to challenge the authority of the video game’s creator or the ideologies that the creators represent. Here, the creator is the government, so it would likely face even fewer challenges from players accepting of the game’s ideologies and has even farther-reaching implications on issues of, for example, foreign relations and military spending. Understanding the production is crucial to understand the texts and potential ideologies that result in response to the text (Kellner & Durham, 2006).

Furthermore, the private institutions that seek to commodify the audience also would face less critique from an audience that had grown up and matured playing the video game and being exposed to its commercialized ancillary products including toys targeted at boys as young as 8. McChesney (2001) wrote: “Economic and cultural globalization arguably would be impossible without a global commercial media system to promote global markets and to encourage consumer values” (p. 1). Building those corporate and ideological messages for a youth audience helps to cultivate messages built into such a structural system. It continues to benefit the government, the military, and the private partners by stalling debate and limiting dissent. Kellner and Durham (2006) wrote: “To properly understand any specific form of media and culture, one must understand how it is produced and distributed in a given society and how it is situated in relation to the dominant social structure” (p. xvii). Charting America’s Army’s production and distribution by studying trade publications, stock reports of its corporate partners, and demographic characteristics of audiences, reveals how the text has been created as an artifact of government authority and corporate profit maximization.

One praxis strategy that may be used to counteract this government-private production hybrid is to change the video game rating to its more appropriate “AO” for Adults Only, using the ESRB guidelines. The ESRB states that titles in this category are appropriate only for an audience aged 18 and older. Video games that receive this rating include content that is judged suitable only for an adult audience. Such a rating could provide valuable information to parents that the game may contain content that is unsuitable for early adolescent consumption. Even though the game’s violence may be outpaced by other FPS games in the commercial market, the fact that America’s Army is government speech that means to position itself in the minds of adolescents means that it should face an even tougher standard.

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CHAPTER FIVE

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

I am still confused as to why [the U.S. government] chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary. The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don’t need to be told elaborate tales. --Former Army Private Jessica Lynch testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.

For this chapter, the textual analysis will explain key features of part of the America’s Army mediated franchise. Furthermore, the chapter uses interpretive textual analysis (Bettig & Hall, 2003) to study part of the America’s Army website with a primary focus on the Real Heroes3, who are actual people with records of military service who have a strong website presence and serve as in-game mentors. This analysis also includes a section on the textual analysis of government-created posts on the online community forum. The forums may be accessed from the main America’s Army website by clicking on “Community” and then clicking on the “forum” tab on the left side.4 Community is one of the seven main tabs on the gaming website. At the forum point, a free registration is required and users must choose a login name and a password. This analysis will explain details of the gaming website linked to militarism, foreign military incursions, violence, youth participation in war, and commercialization of the youth audience. The website is used by millions of people to play the America’s Army game and, as such, offers dozens of links and sub-links where players can go to receive information, to interact with other players or Army officials, and to find entertainment in a multi-player FPS video game environment.

As has been discussed in the methods chapter (chapter three) and the production analysis (chapter four) of this dissertation, the focus for the government and its private gaming partners is on adolescents. That focus is about cultivating brand identity—of both the U.S. Army and its corporate partners--for an impressionable youth market as an effort to normalize these brands into society and to affect behavior, that is, to induce participation in the U.S. Army during war time and/or to influence purchasing decisions. As such, the website--a key portal to game play

3 A link to the main page of the Real Heroes may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/ 4 A link to the forum section under “Community” may be found at http://forum.americasarmy.com/ 88

and the messages of the U.S. Army--of the America’s Army game must be studied as an artifact of those targets by the government and corporate partners including, but not limited to, NASCAR and Ubisoft. Studying texts must be placed in relation to their production (Gerbner, 1985; Kellner, 1995) as a way to determine not just what those messages say but how they relate to dominant conditions. Gerbner (1985) cautioned about finding faulty “extrapolations” (p. 13) based on one’s personal taste and suggested that researchers then derive deeper analytic analysis to better understand these texts. He wrote:

Mass media discourse reflects policies of media institutions and enters into the cultivation of conceptions in ways that can be investigated. Therefore, informed policy-making and the valid interpretation of social concept formation and response require the development of some indicators of the prevailing winds of the common symbolic environment in which and to which most people respond. Such indicators are representative abstractions from the collectively experienced total textual of messages. (p. 13) This investigation of the text presented here is rooted in both the modern popular culture of violent video games and the historical understanding of the U.S. government’s use of entertainment media to attempt to sway audiences to go to war or to join a war. The America’s Army text must be treated as function of government propaganda with special attention paid to its use as advertising meant to target adolescent perceptions and behavior. Of the potential ideological effects of texts Kellner (1995) explained:

The artifacts of media culture are thus not innocent entertainment, but are thoroughly ideological artifacts bound up with political rhetoric, struggles, agendas, and policies. Given their political significance and effects, it is important to learn to read media culture politically in order to decode its ideological messages and effects. (p. 93) For Kellner, 1980s films like Rambo and Top Gun legitimized the policies of the Reagan presidential era and legitimized interventionist policies of the ruling political elites. Here, it is even more important to consider America’s Army as an arm of similar political elites and goals to legitimize foreign action. Unlike Kellner’s texts, this video game and its website do not just ask for acceptance of messages. It asks audiences to join.

What will be presented next is a reading of key parts of the website that explain how the U.S. government and corporate partners ask young people to do that. Using this political economic and critical cultural studies arc to explain how the government aims to sway that

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participation, this analysis then focuses on key parts of the America’s Army website that deal with these themes of commodification and military recruitment. This chapter focuses on the fourth, fifth, and sixth research questions. These are: 1) How are the themes of consumerism presented on the official America’s Army website? 2) How are the themes of militarism and violence presented on the official America’s Army website? and 3) How does the Army use the Real Heroes to promote militarism and recruitment?

The goals of this chapter are meant to analyze the messages on the America’s Army website linked to these two key themes and serve to limit the analysis. Although commodification of a youth audience is certainly problematic for culture at large, the efforts by the U.S. government to use a “T” rated video game targeted at youth to join war certainly serve a far darker and more nefarious purpose and, as such, deserve more critical attention in this chapter. This chapter focuses primarily, then, on the “Real Heroes” section of the America’s Army website and is meant to fulfill the second part of Kellner’s three-pronged analysis, that is, the textual analysis element viewed through the political economic and cultural studies frameworks.

I have created PDFs of each of the Real Heroes’ biographies that are the primary subject of analysis. Also, I have included transcripts of blog posts for those soldiers who have them on their websites as these, also, were a subject of analysis. This chapter also looks at other pages within the website that offer information about the treatment of enemies as well as information provided about merchandising and advertising targeted to adolescents because these too offer insight into the text as an artifact of this political-economic structure. The material presented here will be linked back to the production section and will serve as a bridge linking upcoming material that focuses on audience analysis. This section concludes with a discussion.

Branding the U.S. Army: Real Heroes

In this section of the chapter, the textual analysis will focus on the Real Heroes section of the America’s Army website and is primarily concerned with addressing the research question related to how the government website presents the text in such a way as to encourage militarism, enlistment, and violence. The Real Heroes page is one of the seven main links built into the America’s Army website. (The other six are: two links to the game play, one link to download the game, a community message board, technical support, and another to the official

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U.S. Army home page.) In that heroes section of the online site, the Army has created profiles of nine soldiers who they say exhibit “warrior ethos” and have been chosen to represent all of its 450,000 enlisted men and women to the vast gaming audience.

This section will provide first a collective overview of the heroes derived from analyses of their web pages, and then will explain and evaluate all nine of the soldier’s individual sites. Finally, themes will be presented based on the textual analysis of the soldiers’ online presence. Before those descriptions and analysis are presented, it is helpful to understand how the Army produces the “Real Heroes.” Kellner and Durham (2006) wrote:

The system of production often determines what type of artifacts will be produced, what structural limits there will be as to what can and cannot be said and shown, and what kind of audience effects cultural artifacts may generate. (p. xxvii) The production of the Real Heroes and other parts of the text reviewed here are directly linked to their position as agents of ideology created and disseminated by the government.

The Army Real Heroes are: John Adams, John Amerine, Monica Brown, Robert Groff, Jason Mike, Timothy Nein, Tommy Rieman, Gerald Wolford, and Mathew Zedwick. The Army presents these nine soldiers at military functions nationwide, at NASCAR events throughout America, displays them and their stories prominently on the America’s Army website, and animated versions of the soldiers serve as in-game mentors for players. Many of the Real Heroes’ events target teenage boys; soldiers visit high schools and amusement parks to encourage Army careers. They spend time with Boy Scouts.

Although they are targeting adolescents, impressionable and likely still undecided about future careers, the Real Heroes also have a place in popular political and sports culture. In 2007, the Army struck a deal to make Real Heroes action figures sold nationwide at Toys “R” Us stores (“Jazwares launches,” 2007). At many events, soldiers talk about a career in the Army and give away T-shirts and these action figures. Real Hero Rieman wrote on his blog about his outing to a Six Flags amusement park: “I had a lot of fun because there were tons of younger, motivated kids there that just loved the Army and wanted to learn more.” One of the heroes appeared on the prime-time game show Deal or No Deal, a gig conceived by the U.S. Defense Department. Rieman also attended the 2009 Super Bowl and wrote about it for his blog. A photograph from that event includes this caption:

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SGT Tommy Rieman and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Joe Delamielluere stop to chat with a sportscaster from a Charlotte, N.C., radio station during Super Bowl week in Tampa, Fla. Rieman and Delamielluere visited several stations along Radio Row to talk about football, America’s Army, and the Real Heroes program. Moreover, Rieman was in 2007 the guest of President George W. Bush at the State of the Union address and a guest in 2009 at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. He also has been the subject of a People magazine story (Transcript, 2007). On October 6, 2011, Amerine appeared on Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report” in full dress uniform talking about America’s involvement in Afghanistan, where it has been fighting a war for more than 10 years (“The Colbert Report,” 2011).

In the next section of this chapter, I will provide a textual analysis of each of the Real Heroes web pages. On each of the nine soldiers’ individual web pages, there are tabs leading to more information. These tabs include: overview; media; personal awards; unit awards; skill badges; biography; and blogs. Each of the nine soldiers has a biography that will be analyzed. And, for those soldiers who have blogs, these, too, will be analyzed. The Real Heroes will be presented in alphabetical order.

Sgt. First Class John Adams—“One AIF down!”

On Adam’s Real Heroes page5 it explains that he grew up in Illinois where he was a “young outdoorsman” who loved fishing, hunting, and camping (para. 2). Before starting high school, his family relocated to Pensacola, Florida. Adams is described as a Florida State University sports fan that dreamed of going to college to study forestry but could not afford it and was not offered scholarships to offset the costs. The website also describes him as someone who hoped to avoid student loans when he did not win scholarships. His biography explains: “Not wanting to assume a huge student loan debt, Adams considered the military” (para. 5). He considered careers with the U.S. Marines before deciding on the Army after a chance meeting with an Army recruiter. The website explains that he chose to meet with the Army recruiter and join before he was 18. It also says: “The Recruiter never pressured him.” The inclusion of this information is likely in response to a survey (Yeung & Gifford, 2011) of military recruitment

5 All of the information from this section is taken from John Adams’ Real Heroes page. The website can be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=7. Where appropriate, paragraph numbers are inserted in citations taken from this part of the website. 92 websites and advertising effectiveness; many of the respondents listed issues with military recruiters’ credibility and trustworthiness as issues at the point of recruitment.

John Adam’s Real Heroes page says that he was required to receive parental permission to join the military through an Army program called the Delayed Entry Program because he was so young. It is as if the inclusion of this detail is meant to provide adolescents seeking information about him with not just the idea about joining, but with the name of the program that lets them join. As the economy continues its lackluster performance, the military purposely engages adolescents with ideas about recruitment. Gary Evans, a California physician who studies military recruiting strategies, said of the military-college link: “The oasis is a mirage” (para. 39). He explained that roughly 30% of those who join the military thinking that they will secure a college education receive no tuition assistance and that the rest often receive a fraction of the full tuition that they hoped for.

Adams’ biography provides further insight into how the Army uses the website to target adolescents to cultivate excitement and eagerness to join the ranks. His biography is filled with references to military machinery and makes them seem as fun as a day at the toy store. The biography explains that the Army recruiter asked: “Would you like to carry your weapon into battle or would you like your weapon to carry you?” (para. 8). And, the biography says, it was at that moment that Adams realized he wanted to be a part of the Armored Division to “command his own tank” (para. 8). In Iraq, after basic training in Kentucky, Adams achieved that goal. He “would spend most of the next decade atop or inside one of these $3.5 million technological marvels” (para. 9). Furthermore, the biography explains that to Adams: “there was nothing more exhilarating than firing the 120mm cannon from the 68-ton vehicle while it barreled over the range at 30 mph” (para. 10). The M1 Abrams tank that Adams is in charge of is described as “formidable” (para. 16). In the part of his biography where it details his service in Iraq, Adams is described as getting out the tank with “his M9 Pistol [sic] drawn” (para. 21). In another part of his biography, it says Adams “retrieved his M4 Rifle [sic]” (para. 23). The references to his weapons are meant to engage adolescents and make a military career as exciting as playing with toy guns and virtual weapons.

In this section, the references to weaponry and tanks are linked specifically to the production of the website. As was described in the literature review of the dissertation, the

93 military-entertainment complex (Andersen, 2006), the military-industrial-media-entertainment network (Der Derian, 2001), and Stahl’s (2010) militainment have revealed links between the U.S. military and private corporations like General Electric that both have a stake in media and in lucrative military contracts. Stahl (2010) looked at how the blurring of lines between fact and fiction is done quite effectively by the U.S. government when it uses video games. This America’s Army analysis of Adams’ biography is awash with references to militarism and “marvels” then helps to further the linkage between private militarism and government- sponsored war. Adams’ biography shows off that high-priced and high-powered weaponry that is at the center of the military-media-corporate nexus. The use of such machinery and weaponry is further normalized and accepted when it is put forward by the government and military as a key feature of service by people who are referred to as heroes.

Another way in which Adams’ biography serves as a tool to engage adolescents is in his description of world travel. Adams’ personal stories of travel because of the Army and work in the military read like a young man off in search of dreams that only get more fulfilled as his time in the military goes on. In Korea he had “an adventure” and at his next deployment in Germany he lived in the “lovely German countryside” (para. 11). And once in Iraq “there was always action and excitement” (para. 12). That excitement, it seems, never has a human cost, either to the solider himself or to those affected by his presence overseas. The biography of his time in Iraq mentions nothing of injuries or casualties sustained by American soldiers or civilians who may have been on the wrong end of those “marvels.”

The section which describes his close encounter with “Anti-Iraqi forces [AIF]” that had been shooting at Adams and his unit is meant to elevate Adams’ position as a brave soldier who was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions. It reveals, however, nothing about real risks of war. In fact, his biography explains that after a bullet nearly penetrated his windshield, he was able to return fire, killing an Iraqi. “Exchanging fire with enemy. One AIF down!” (para. 21). If anything, the stories provided under Adams’ Real Heroes page only serve to make it seem like killing the enemy is just another part of the joy of war; killing enemies in the video game is rewarded with points. Carnagey and Anderson (2005) showed that participants in a study who were rewarded for violence in FPS games exhibited greater aggressive cognitions. The authors wrote: “Results suggest that games that reward violent actions can increase aggressive behavior by increasing aggressive thinking” (p. 882). Such inclusion of these violent messages on Adams’ 94

web pages then are likely meant to contribute to the consciousness of enemy death but also may seek to reward players for that behavior.

The detail about Adams’ life provided in the Real Heroes biography is telling for several reasons and ties back to production. His portion of the Real Heroes section provides details related to military service in lieu of college, weapons usage, and stories about demonizing the enemy. His biography is 2,131 words long. He refers to his military career as “exciting” three times and four times he refers to the Army giving him “excitement.” He refers to his “mission” six times; twice to “teamwork”; and to his “tank” eight times. His “pistol” is referred to four times, his “weapon” is referred to five times, and eight times Adams’ biography refers to the “enemy.” “Insurgents” are mentioned five times. His explanation of getting to use “technological marvels” is meant to further the idea that a career in the military is no different than playing with high-powered and high-priced toys, toys that become normalized in actual political economic ways including in Congressional defense budgets.

Adams decided to join the Army before he had reached the legal age to enlis. This story is offered on the Real Heroes page of the America’s Army website to offer the idea to adolescents and young people that a career in the military is not just a great idea, but one that they should consider before they are of the legal age to join. His page is filled with references to how a child from Illinois ended up seeing the world and lived a life of excitement and heroism while fighting with pistols and tanks against enemies.

John Adams was listed as an honored guest at the October 30, 2010, opening of the Noblesville, Indiana Army recruiting center (“Noblesville Recruiting Station,” 2010). He is now a military recruiter. His biography ends by explaining his role as a recruiter who was influenced by his experience with the man who helped him join the Army in 1993: “Adams provides young men and women in Indiana the same straightforward and honest explanation of the benefits to an Army career” (para. 28). It hardly seems that way.

Major Jason Amerine—“Well smoke ‘em.”

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Like Adams, Major Jason Amerine6 has become a well-respected and award-winning face of the Real Heroes and the U.S. Army. He has been awarded the Bronze Star with Valor, the Purple Heart, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. His participation in Army events has made him a public relations face of the Army as well. In October 2011, he appeared on the popular Comedy Central show The Colbert Report. When host Stephen Colbert asked Amerine if he believed that the United States belonged in Iraq fighting, Amerine responded that after the United States left the Afghans to fight on their own in the 1980s, the Taliban took over therefore implying that the U.S. has a political and military rationale to stay in that region today. Amerine also has appeared in news publications talking about his participation in the Real Heroes program, mediated conversations that then reinforce and strengthen his credibility on matters of international affairs. Kellner (1995) explained that such textual analysis readings must address the current socio-political and economic realities at play. Therefore, Amerine’s discussion of military participation serves a function for the public who watch that programming and play the video game that U.S. participation in that region is necessary no matter the cost.

Major Jason Amerine is now an international relations instructor at West Point and a special forces officer. A graduate of West Point and also Army Ranger School, Amerine, too, has an action figure made in his likeness. He served as inspiration and became a spokesperson for the dolls after their release. A U.S. News and World Report article from 2005 talked to Amerine about the action figures and the Army video game. Amerine as quoted saying: “We didn’t want this to appear propagandist” (“The Making of a Toy Soldier,” 2005, para. 2). The article says later:

Amerine himself feels it is important not to sanitize the stories. The toys are meant to help with recruiting, of course, but Amerine notes that potential soldiers should not join without considering the risks. The power of the project, he says, lies in the fact that the heroes being portrayed in the game and in the toys are real people. ‘These weren’t superheroes who had bullets bouncing off of them,’ he says. ‘Some of us died. Some of us were crippled. You see real human beings who fought for their country and suffered. (para. 4) But his Real Heroes biography provides a much different story.

6 Material from this section is taken from Major Jason Amerine’s biography on the America’s Army Real Heroes web page found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=1&view=bio. For specific citations, paragraph numbers have been inserted. 96

Although Amerine’s biography does not say that bullets bounced off of people, it does not refer to risk or death in combat. It refers repeatedly to defeating the enemy and to teamwork, and in doing so creates a story of intense heroism but also one of fiction that makes it seem, like the video game and the action figure, that war is meant to be enjoyed. In his biography, the word “team” is used 19 times. The effect is both immediate and long lasting, meant to suggest to adolescents that participation in the Army makes them a part of something bigger, something that only participation in the Army can provide.

Amerine has served in Panama, Kazakhstan, and Korea. After September 11, 2001, Amerine is described as being a part of a mission to Afghanistan. Although his military service began years before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Amerine’s biography largely deals with the missions that came after that day and is meant to normalize and celebrate the American participation in the war. His biography on the America’s Army website says: “Amerine and his Soldiers [sic] would enter Afghanistan not as elements of a foreign army, but rather, as allies of indigenous freedom fighters” (para. 13). Amerine is fluent in Arabic, a skill the website says helped him join the special forces, which he calls his life’s “greatest privilege.” During a November 2001 mission in Afghanistan, the Army biography explains that Amerine gave his team an order when they saw Taliban fighters coming their way. That order was: “Well, smoke ‘em” (para. 15). A few sentences later, the biography continues of the airstrikes: “The effect was immediate and devastating” (para. 16). The biography says further: Amerine and his men “had engaged the Taliban with their light weapons as well as countless air strikes, decimating the enemy force so that not even the few remaining trucks attempting to flee back to Kandahar escaped” (para. 22).

These scenes purposively recreated by the government for an adolescent audience serve then as a means to demonize enemies and to justify state-sanctioned violence. They also create and reinforce U.S. hegemonic power for young people who may be unfamiliar with foreign policy or, even, domestic policy for that matter. In the words of Herman and Chomsky (2002), this language about the Taliban then serves to “manufacture consent” about the role of American government and the American military in foreign affairs. It does little, too, to explain the precarious positions of civilians who are mere background characters in the video game and the heroes’ biographies.

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In Amerine’s biography, there is no mention of civilian deaths, common in U.S. military airstrikes. A Reuters news report (2011) said that just from June to August 2011, 1,841 civilian deaths were reported due to allied fighting in Afghanistan. A United Nations report from 2011 said airstrikes caused most of those deaths (“Afghan civilian deaths rise,” 2011). The inclusion of this information here is not meant to suggest that Amerine ordered air strikes that killed civilians in Afghanistan. The Army does not provide that information to the public. While the profile of Amerine is meant to demonize the enemy and, at the same time, to create and to reflect his heroism, the biography reveals no real description of death other than to refer to enemy death, which is heralded, celebrated, and rewarded and meant to elevate Amerine’s own status as a war hero. The enemies are not just celebrated for their deaths, they are treated as trophies of war, no different than a prize received on the battlefield.

Amerine’s biography presents the enemy in a way that is easy for readers to identify against and suggests that participation in foreign wars is not a threat to sovereign nations. His biography is 2,342 words. He mentions the “Taliban” 36 times with another three mentions of the word “enemy.” Garbo (2009) explains why demonizing the enemy matters: “Groups who oppose the US in Afghanistan or Iraq are regularly called Taliban or al-Quaida [sic]. These groups are seen as outlaws and free game” (p. 61). Five times Amerine’s biography uses the word “war,” and two references are given to “guns” and another two more to “weapons.” The word “freedom” is used 11 times, often to describe it as the primary goal of U.S.-led aggression in Afghanistan. The biography explains: “However, Amerine and his Soldiers [sic] would enter Afghanistan not as elements of a foreign army, but rather, as allies of indigenous freedom fighters” (para. 13). Furthermore, any mention of those “freedom fighters” or Afghan troops that are loyal to American forces is positioned in such a way to make these troops seem inferior to Amerine and U.S. forces. Often Amerine’s biography is used as a way to explain that the Afghan soldiers were “led” (para. 16), or the Afghan soldiers left key points of battles because they were “unnerved” (para. 19). He is described as “leading” and “organizing” the Afghan president into a discussion of creating a new government. The text is presented in such a way that is meant to show the power of the U.S. military to fight enemies but also meant to suggest that involvement in foreign politics and foreign nations is not just acceptable but also accepted.

Sergeant Monica Brown—“I was so excited about the bonus money!”

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Monica Brown, the second woman in Army history to receive the Silver Star, is no longer afraid of blood or heights thanks to her military service. Her work as an Army medic has freed her from fears she had as a child and also helped the former high school cheerleader and track star secure a free college education at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke to study nursing. Her heroism in Afghanistan made her a Real Hero7 and she has been profiled in major U.S. news outlets including 60 Minutes, the Associated Press, The Miami Herald, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Houston Chronicle. As the only woman among the group of nine soldiers, textual analysis reveals that Brown’s profile serves two very different yet equally important purposes for the Army’s recruitment mission and propaganda mission. But before those two purposes can be explicated from the textual analysis of her biography, Brown’s gender must be noted and more thoroughly explained in the context of her use on the America’s Army website and her use by the government as a Real Hero.

As of the writing of this dissertation, women still may not serve in combat. That may explain why Brown does not serve as an in-game mentor and why, perhaps, she does not have an action figure. But, as a medic, Brown’s biography does show that she was put in harm’s way by her role in the military. However, one must consider the use of her gender and story to support a misogynistic and eroticized view of war as forwarded by Carroll (2009). She wrote: “The association of aggressive fighting behavior with manliness and of more peaceable behaviors with effeminacy is centuries old and persists today” (Carroll, 2009, p. 68). Brown’s role as a nurse, one who both aids foreigners as well as combat heroes, serves a primary textual function to marginalize women’s voices and to show that their traditional roles in the U.S. Army and in society remain.

Such a representation may also be viewed through Stuart Hall’s (1997) concept of how language serves a purpose to normalize roles and cultural identities in society, a society that is built upon a “representational system.” He wrote: “Meanings can only be shared through our common access to language. So language is central to meaning and culture and has always been regarded as the key repository or cultural values and meanings” (Hall, 1997, p. 1). Brown’s meaning on the website then is a representation of the female form, of the female nurturing

7 Throughout this section, the citations are taken from Monica Brown’s Real Heroes Web page found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=10&view=bio.Where appropriate, paragraph numbers are given from direct citations from this page. 99 nurse; and she therefore is transformed into a kind of modern-day Florence Nightingale in Afghanistan to help the wounded warrior. Textual analysis reveals her role then is special when related to the men she served for—not with--and as a way to explain to other women the potential military careers that they, too, can have.

First, Brown’s biography shows her as a nurturing medic at the scene of an intense battle with the Taliban who was able to save soldiers’ lives and to work as a humanitarian caring for civilians in Afghanistan. Her biography says of her time in Afghanistan working as a medic: “Female health care workers were needed in these situations as local cultural norms did not allow males to examine female patients” (para. 25). The first casualty she treated during her duty tour was a wounded Afghan man. Treating him, the biography says, took her from Army student to full-fledged soldier and showed her how much she loved her job. These stories are meant to reveal both elements of nurturing and injury repair while showing the good will the Army has toward Afghan civilians. In her 3,021-word biography, “care” is referred to seven times, her “aid bag” is referred to three times, and “help” is referred to four times. Brown’s biography linked from the Real Heroes page shows her as a caring woman who helped both injured Afghan civilians and U.S. servicemen.

Second, her biography is meant to tell how she used the Army to pay for college and expand on the physical and emotional benefits of Army service and to highlight how young women may serve in the military. Her Real Hero biography ends this way:

Sergeant Brown’s personal experience underscores the evolving history of women in the Army. Women began serving in the military as nurses in World War II. And today, they are still making history around the world. They are driving trucks, patrolling the streets as military police, and are attached to Infantry and line units. They are heroes in the face of their fears. And, like Monica Brown, they are accomplishing great deeds as Soldiers. Brown, who enlisted at age 18, is quoted saying: “I was so excited about the bonus money. But more importantly, I was going to go to college, and the Army was going to pay for it!” (para. 11). Her biography refers twice to “bonus money,” once to her “independence,” twice to her “courage” and four times to the “career” she is building with the help of the Army. She launched a nursing career thanks to the Army, a career her brother, who is one year older than her and referred to as “the man of the house,” always had considered but that she had not thought about

100 until the option for free tuition was given to her. After college she will become an enlisted officer.

The elements of her biography are meant to provide young people, men and women, with the idea that college can be paid for and that service in the Army has other benefits, some physical and others emotional. After basic training she was “in the best shape of her life” (para. 20), another way to target young women and another reinforcement of typical representations of body-conscious women. And after surviving a firefight and helping wounded soldiers to safety, she says that she remembers most not the enemy fire or the mortar attacks but the camaraderie she shared with the men. Her biography writes: “When I got back to the trucks the guys were all hugging me and thanking me” (para. 44). Brown is just one of the guys, an appeal to women who may be apprehensive about sexual violence against female enlistees called “jaw-dropping” by one politician. In 2008, California Representative Jane Harman told CNN that military physicians had told her “four in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military” (“Sexual assault,” 2008, para. 1).

Further analysis of her biography, however, reveals little about the dangers of enlisting. There is no risk. Heroism and friendship become the ultimate rewards for joining. Other parts of her biography describe being on a mission to find Taliban fighters and make Brown’s service there out to be no more dangerous than a weekend camping trip. Once she joins the Army her “adventure” (para. 15) begins. On a mission with an Army unit she was sent to be the medic. Her biography described her excitement: “She would be sleeping on the ground under the stars, like one of the guys” (para. 27). In another line, as they rode in HMMWVs she: “looked out her window at the mountains in the distance” (para. 31). But on that mission, Brown’s unit was hit by enemy fire. And in this next section of her biography, both her nurturing—and her ability to avoid being hit by bullets--are highlighted.

Browns’ biography (and numerous news reports that followed) also explains how she helped wounded American servicemen in their greatest time of need, a section of text that reveals both the lack of explanation of risk but also highlights a job that is a critical shortage area of the military; jobs that the Army wants women to consider. After an improvised explosive device [IED] hits a HMMWV in her caravan, Brown immediately jumped into action despite the sound of machine gun fire hitting the vehicle she was riding in. The biography says: “Private Brown

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opened the armored door [of the HMMWV] and stepped out into a hail of enemy fire….And she ran” (para. 35). After the attack, Brown runs toward the wounded. “I thought about every guy in that truck. Are they okay? I need to get to them now. I was the medic. It was my job to help them” she is quoted saying (para. 37), further emphasizing this female-as-nurse rescue myth.

Brown reached the wounded men. The biography describes enemies sending bullets within inches of her head and launching mortar rounds at her and the wounded soldiers, who she dragged dozens of yards to safety. Her biography says: “Holding one man by the hand while applying pressure to the other man’s head wound, she continually reassured them that they were all going to get out of there alive” (para. 42). Although the men had extensive burns and injuries, she applied “gauze” and soon had the wounded soldiers “stabilized” (para. 43). The biography continues: “the two men wounded that day were delivered from the battlefield and survived their injuries” (para. 44). The injured men are not named nor are they described. Their injuries are glossed over in an effort to recreate Brown’s heroism and to highlight her nurturing abilities, a job for women. In this case, the men’s injuries serve as ways to glorify and enhance Brown’s story but also are meant to glamorize the life of Army medics, considered by a key government agency to be a top priority for recruitment. The impression one is left with after reading Brown’s story, is that the injured have a fighting chance. In the unfortunate circumstance that an enlisted soldier is wounded in battle, someone will be there to help. And the impression is given that even in the most treacherous firefights on foreign soil, someone like Brown, a nurturing, Army-trained female medic, will be there to save their life.

The statements here directly contradict most reports of the Army being understaffed both in medical equipment as well as trained medics in the field. The Center for Public Integrity in 2011 (Adams, 2011) wrote:

Medical personnel, mostly from the Army Reserves, were in increasingly short supply due to restrictions on the length and frequency of deployments. This is coupled with other disadvantages: military medical personnel usually receive lower pay than those in the private sector, the high stress, and demands of deployment. Medical personnel in a war zone bear an unusual burden, since they are usually the first to arrive and the last to leave. (para. 3). A Government Accountability Office report (“Military Personnel,” 2011) about medical personnel working in conflict areas states that the Department of Defense (DOD) “has noted that, increasingly, deployed civilians also face dangerous circumstances in ongoing contingency

102 operations” (p. 20) due to the lack of medical personnel. The DOD acknowledged the report saying in an official response it “indicated the need for additional medical personnel” (“Military Personnel,” 2011, p. 22). The America’s Army Real Heroes serve a governmental function to help with typically underserved areas of military recruitment as well.

Here, Brown’s story serves as dual role. It glamorizes her service as a way to entice the recruitment of young people who may excited by the chance to serve in a capacity like Brown. (So does Jason Mike’s as will later be described.) And it also is meant to create a level of comfort for young men and women who may be reluctant to serve are assured someone like Brown will be there to save them. For women especially, Brown’s story suggests that women will not face sexual violence; it glosses over these problems and forces the audience to dismiss them as viable or even possible, another successful public relations stunt by the military.

Like other Real Heroes, who had not considered a career in the Army, Brown happened to visit a recruiting office with her older brother, Justin, who had planned to join that day. The biography describes Justin and his service. It says:

A few years later, he took his love for ‘playing Soldier’ one step further when he became an avid player of the America’s Army computer game. He learned about Army Values and the Warrior Ethos by which each Soldier abides. The more he learned, the more certain he became that the Army was right for him” (para. 3). The Army also was right for her. As her brother talked to a recruiter, a different one approached Monica Brown and explained that her interest becoming an X-Ray technician could be realized if she joined. The Army offered her “an attractive signing bonus and the opportunity to see the world” (para. 9). The biography explains further:

By the time she and Justin left the recruiting station that day, they had both enlisted, much to Monica’s surprise. The Recruiters [sic] had been friendly and forthright and had told them both that chances were good that they would be deployed overseas to either Afghanistan or Iraq. But all Monica could think about as she chided Justin on their way home was why he had never told her about all the great benefits the Army offered. (para. 10) The brief suggestion that serving overseas may have some danger is never referred to again.

Sergeant First Class Robert Groff—College wasn’t his calling

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Robert Groff’s 2,095-word Real Hero biography8 serves multiple purposes. It is meant to share information about using the military to pay for college, expressly using the Army Reserve program. It also functions as a way to interact with young people about the “excitement” of serving overseas, and it also serves a specific political economic purpose in the way that it explains and celebrates militarized technology produced by global defense contractors with ties to the U.S. State Department. Each of these features derived from interpretive textual analysis will be explained.

Once again, a biography of one of the Real Heroes is used to highlight using the Army to pay for college even though Groff left community college because he wanted to enlist. In this case, however, he has served both as an enlisted soldier and an Army Reservist, planting a new idea or option for young people using the video game website. When he was 18, Groff enlisted in the Army because college “wasn’t his calling” (para. 5). The biography explains:

In high school, the idea of joining the Army began to interest him. Two of his cousins had enlisted and were stationed in Germany. Home on leave, they would tell Robert colorful stories of their travels through Europe. And when his best friend entered the Army and began jumping out of airplanes, Robert decided to talk to an Army Recruiter. (para. 5) After service in the Middle East and his enlistment ended, Groff became an Army Reservist.

Groff’s “duty” is referred to four times in the piece and reveals, once again, larger issues at stake for the United States military and when studied through textual analysis, explain why these soldiers’ biographies have been included on the website. The biography explains that his Reservist duty provided Groff with the benefits of having someone pay for college, and he had the opportunity to stay connected with the Army just as he was able, like Adams, to have a life of excitement and foreign travel because of that service. Throughout the U.S. Army’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, news reports illuminated growing problems with the number of key personnel recruited through the Army Reserve programs (Schmitt, 2005), a staffing problem that Bennett (2011) explained was necessary to continue missions during and after foreign wars. Groff’s biography does not reference that need but, instead, it weaves a high- technology, high-excitement story meant to help adolescents feel that they should be a part of the military.

8 The material included in this section is taken from Robert Groff’s Real Heroes page that is part of the America’s Army website. His page can be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=8&view=bio. Where appropriate, paragraph numbers are included in his citations used from this page. 104

The excitement of battle is complemented by the references in Groff’s biography, like those provided in Adams’, to world travel that provides another kind of idea of fun for young people interested in joining the military. Not long after his enlistment and after basic training, Groff was stationed in Germany. The biography explains: “Groff was seeing the world and he couldn’t have been happier” (para. 7). On his first deployment to Iraq in 1990, he is described as “nervous” but “he would soon get to see an even more unique part of the world” (para. 8). The first Gulf War ended quickly. And Groff is described as having the opportunity to use his time in the military to travel throughout Germany, France, and Spain.

Like Adams, Groff is now an Army recruiter, able to share his story repeatedly in an effort to convince young men and women to join the military and a signal to adolescents using the gaming website that recruiters are easily accessible and friendly. His biography ends with these words: “Instead, he [Groff] tells prospective Recruits [sic] what the Army has given to him: a college education, a chance to see the world, a future, and, when he least expected it, an opportunity to prove himself...to himself” (para. 31). His tale on the Real Heroes website, where he can share his story and experience to millions of teenagers and adolescents, is also meant to show how young people can earn a college degree and prove themselves.

Groff is one of the Bronze Star recipients on the Real Heroes team, and his biographical sketch is meant to show the glory of battle as much as it is meant to highlight how soldiers use the Army to pay for a college or university education. The Army awarded Groff with this medal after the 23-vehicle convoy he was in while serving in the current Iraq war faced enemy attack. The “enemy” is referred to four times throughout his biography. As Groff moved along toward the rear of the convoy he began seeing evidence of IED attacks along the road. The biography describes concrete and guardrails blown up. When he tried to connect with soldiers who had been at the front of the convoy, the radios were silent. Then, he saw wounded drivers along the route. What happened next is meant to highlight Groff’s heroism as it simultaneously whitewashes any real danger from being under enemy fire outside of Baghdad.

Death and devastation are not meant to show the horrors of war; they are alluded to as a means of conveying excitement and bravery as they also provide the fiction that these soldiers somehow are able to avoid being hit by bullets thanks to the safety of defense machinery that has been noted in the real world to have considerable flaws that put soldiers’ lives at risk. The

105 biography explains: “Groff jumped into the crossfire and assisted the driver to the relative safety of his HMMWV” (para. 25). After assisting that man, “Groff picked up three more drivers seeking cover from the hail of bullets” (para. 26). He picked up three more men and weighed what to do next as the enemy closed in. They fired shots. They remained calm. And they finally made a radio connection to men who had reached a safe area, men who were sending help. “The Calvary was on the way,” the biography explains (para. 27). In the meantime, “drivers with prior military experience were using combat lifesaving techniques to treat the wounded men” (para. 28). The “M1 tank” that was sent to help Groff and the men he had rescued appeared, and it was “a beautiful sight” (para. 28). “The Bradleys [tanks] laid down fire from their .50 caliber machine guns. Groff and his men transferred the wounded from the sturdy shell of Vehicle 21 to the two HMMWVs for extraction from the kill zone” (para. 29). In this section, the evidence of such explanation and celebration of the machinery resembles what Stahl (2010) referred to as “technofetishism” (p. 44). He wrote: “The interactive war also intensifies trends toward s weaponization of the civic gaze” (p. 44). Once again, the military might of the machinery is highlighted and serves to both legitimize action as it simultaneously creates a fiction that the war is survivable. The “extraction” sounds like language taken directly from the video game itself, meant to suggest an area of game play that exists only on screen.

The men in Groff’s unit were able to get out of the precarious and dangerous situation through the use of the machinery like the Bradley tank, manufactured by BAE Systems, formerly United Defense, a global company with annual sales of $25 billion (“United Defense,” 2011). [BAE Systems was more recently in the news for its agreement to apparently sell high- technology sniper scopes to the Pakistani military (Barnes, 2011)]. A military blogger (Meyer, n.d.) described the Bradley tank as the “Bradley Exploding Coffin,” calling it a “huge target with little armor slope.” A separate report by the University of Maryland School of Engineering said this of the Bradley tank:

The origins of the modern Bradley span decades of troubled development; the involvement of many stakeholders; inflexible and questionable requirements; a failure of contractors to make design tradeoffs for fear of losing capability; billions of dollars in R&D costs; and numerous Congressional interventions, including House Armed Service Committee hearings investigating Bradley testing protocol. The Bradley has been described at different times, by military officers and historians, as a weapon that means ‘all things to all people,’ a ‘quintessential

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hybrid,’ and ‘a proverbial camel…that does nothing well.’ (“The Bradley,” n.d., p. 1)

But, the Real Heroes soldiers through the use of such machinery made sure the wounded received treatment and were able to survive battle. Near the end of Groff’s biography, it explains: “The losses were heavy but could have been much worse” (para. 30). No mention is made about how many soldiers were wounded or killed that day. Just as in the stories presented on the other Real Heroes’ web pages, Groff’s heroism is elevated by the loss around him. Although his biography mentions briefly the “losses,” it goes no deeper into the issue of military casualties in Iraq or in Afghanistan nor is any failure of machinery mentioned.

The technological marveling most clearly evident in Groff’s biography is reminiscent of the military’s use, reliance, and distribution of images and machinery during the first Gulf War to convey military power and authority to both an American and global audience. Kellner (1995) explained that that emphasis on militarism in the early 1990s was directly rooted in political economy, that is, the images had roots in the links between mega-media and defense corporation General Electric, a company noted for its ties to both media and defense in the literature review of this dissertation. Kellner (1995) wrote:

It was claimed that GE produced parts of every major weapon system used in the war, so that the file footage of U.S. weapons and the gushingly positive reports of their technological wonder were in effect free advertisements for products produced by GE/NBC--indeed, desire to promote U.S. weapons for sales was one of the major purposes of the war in the first place. (p. 213) The use of these military tanks and other mechanized weapons in the biography of the Real Heroes serves a dual function. It legitimizes U.S. military force by portraying military defense properties, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. It also is meant to serve as a way to describe to the Army’s key recruiting demographic, adolescent boys, that this machinery is no different than the toys they may have grown up playing in living rooms and back yards nationwide. Those toys are revealed to have features that can save their lives in battle.

This biography reinforces how young people can pay for college with their wartime service just as it makes that service seem as peaceful as a drive down the highway. Once again, the messages revealed through textual analysis here show how the military machinery revealed in the playing of the video game and reinforced on other parts of the America’s Army website

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become a crucial part of the government-gaming nexus even if they do little to suggest problems with machinery or actual risk of going to battle.

Sergeant Jason Mike—“This fight will be over in ten minutes.”

Real Hero Jason Mike, described as half Korean and half African-American, has a presence on the America’s Army Real Heroes9 website that is unique because of his minority status. Of the nine soldiers, Mike is the only one who is a soldier of color.

Since 2003, the U.S. Army has been aggressively trying to lure minorities to join its ranks often with questionable tactics (Morales, 2004; Shahshahani & Franzen, 2010). Shahshahani and Franzen wrote: “The ACLU also found that U.S. military recruitment tactics disproportionately target low-income youth and students of color” (2010, para. 7). The Army population is over- represented by minorities when compared to their numbers in the population overall. However, in 2006, the year the Real Heroes program began, the number of African Americans joining the military began dropping and experts believed their numbers in the military would steady and better reflect their numbers in the population (Peachey, n.d.). But the Army had a different plan to increase the numbers of minorities in its ranks.

A 2009 RAND report prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense about recruiting minorities explained the issue this way: “The decline in black enlistments is of concern both because black youth have traditionally been a key market segment for the Army” (Asch, Heaton, & Savych, 2009, p. iii). With this minority segment, offers of college tuition being paid and pay increases did not boost recruitment numbers although white and Hispanic soldiers found those incentives enticing. In 2008, Colonel Jeremy M. Martin (2008) wrote about 21st Century recruiting challenges during war time. He said: “No greater is that negative impact felt than among African American enlistees. This is a trend that has to be reversed in order to restore the Department to a more rich and quality recruiting environment. (p. 19). The RAND report continued by saying that African-Americans believed that the Iraq war was not worth fighting (Asch, Heaton, & Savych, 2009). Furthermore, the report said: “Blacks respond more to recruiters” (Asch, Heaton, & Savych, 2009, p. 70). As a way to address this, the RAND report suggests the military highlight the importance of recruiters to target African-Americans. The

9 For this section, Jason Mike’s Real Heroes page is presented for textual analysis. It can be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=5&view=bio. His blog also is presented for analysis. It may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=5&view=blogs. 108 report said: “To the extent that the Army wants to increase black representation, increases in recruiters may be a wiser choice” (Asch, Heaton, & Savych, 2009, p. 87). The recent economic downturn further hurts minorities, especially African-Americans, who according to a 2010 study faced bigger problems from the recession (Reidenback, 2010). During hard economic times, military enlistment increases (“Bad economy,” 2009). This is a fact that the U.S. Department of Defense knows, studies, and reports. It surveys teenagers twice annually to gauge how the economy influences their decision to enlist in the military (Carvalho et.al., 2010).

Mike’s status as a minority makes him a key figure on the America’s Army page and in real life because he networks with teenagers at Army events nationwide, an opportunity to put into action the recruiting that many from the minority demographic respond to best. Oyersman, Grant, and Ager (1995) explained that African-American teenage boys socially contextualized identity through relating to group norms. More recently, Sze (2007) showed that Army recruiting had used hip hop and the Hummer, a vehicle glamorized in hip hop culture, to target minorities. Given the research record related to African American identity, collectivism, and representations of other minorities as essential to positive behavior, Mike’s presence on the Real Heroes page and at other Army events reflects the military’s position of trying to revive minority recruitment.

Once he had enlisted, Mike’s biography explains, he felt his platoon represented the diversity of the Army overall. It reads: “The diverse team included two females, four Caucasians, one Latino and another Soldier of Korean-Puerto Rican descent. The bond was instant, and permanent” (para. 14). It is the only one of the Real Heroes biographies to describe diversity. Because of his use as a way to target minorities, other elements that Mike shares with other soldiers take on new importance revealed through textual analysis. These reasons are linked to militarism, recruitment, and participation by youth in the U.S. Army experience.

Recruitment—as the RAND report helps explain--is a key feature of Jason Mike’s Real Heroes profile. Like Monica Brown, Mike is a medic, one of the underserved areas in the Army. He also is a Silver Star recipient. Although Brown’s biography—like all nine of the soldiers— provides key textual details linked to these aforementioned themes, Mike’s America’s Army presence further is revealed and reinforced through a blog and through his 2,728-word biographical sketch. His participation in the Real Heroes program with ties to Army recruitment is exposed not just through his Army service—his father also is described as a lifelong soldier—

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but through textual analysis of his blog posts, which started in January 2008 and ended in October 2009.

Targeting adolescents and teenagers was a central theme of Mike’s six blog entries. In one of Mike’s longest blog posts titled “Ocean City Senior Week,” Mike explained how he talked to teenagers celebrating graduation. He wrote:

The Virtual Army Experience was set up as part of the fun and festivities to showcase the Army to these young men and women. I was able to tell my personal story and the great story of the Army to everyone who came through the VAE. (para. 1) The Army also set up for two days at the beach to interact with teenagers. During another event called the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, Mike said that the military works with young people developing skills, including leadership. According to Mike’s blog post from August 26, 2009, the Army also works with the Black Coaches and Administrators to develop “young people for success and leadership” (para. 1). In his last blog post from October 2009, Mike is shown in a photograph hugging an adolescent boy, who is holding a Real Heroes action figure likeness of Mike. The caption reads: “SGT. Jason Mike with a new friend.” A 2009 blog post talks about Mike’s visit to a Virtual Army Experience event in Battle Creek, Michigan, home of Kellogg’s cereal. The day’s events featured a “Tony the Tiger” hot air balloon. His “new friend” and the cartoon balloon again reveal elements of the soldiers’ participation in the Real Heroes program meant to target adolescents in decision-making stages of their lives.

Another theme that wraps in targeting adolescents—and even younger boys—on Mike’s Real Heroes section suggests similarities between playing football and serving in the military, Such references also are meant to boost minority recruitment. Stahl (2010) wrote: “In many ways, the hybrid of war and sports should not be surprising. In many ways, the two have always been connected in intimate ways, existing for much of human history on a continuum of gradations” (p. 52). In high school, Mike is described as having been a part of Junior ROTC but “football was now his passion” (para. 5). He weighed numerous college offers to play football and ended up at Jacksonville University, in north Florida, where he was “one step closer to his dream of playing pro football” (para. 7). But, that first semester of his college career also marked a turning point in American history. It was also a turning point for the teenaged Mike.

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The September 11, 2001 attacks shocked Mike, the biography explained. The weekend after, as he suited up to play football, Mike stood on the field and listened to the national anthem. At once: “Jason Mike was overcome with a sense of purpose. He had never been so sure about anything” (para. 9). He “traded cleats for combat boots” (para. 7). His mother was, at first, concerned about her son’s enlistment. But his father, an Army veteran who had served abroad, encouraged Mike to stay in the military. His father is quoted as having said: “’Son, if you feel the calling, you need to answer it,’ he said. ‘Go and make the Mike family proud’” (para. 11). Once he enlisted, Mike is described as having an easy transition to military life because of his football past. Two of Mike’s blog posts and much of his biography are devoted to discussion of football. In his biography, “football” is mentioned nine times. Only the word “enemy” (12 times) appears more frequently.

Football is used as an allegory of the war. After he first arrives in Iraq, Mike is described as having been surprised by the relative calm. The biography explains: “He expected flying bullets and exploding RPGs, but it was relatively quiet. Staff Sergeant Nein continued to train and prepare his platoon relentlessly” (para. 17). Under the heading, “THIS FIGHT WILL BE OVER IN TEN MINUTES” Mike’s experience in battle is explained. It reads: “Specialist Mike felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. It was Game Day all over again” (para. 26). Thanks to the teamwork of Mike and his fellow soldiers, the men who were wounded that day survived and the intake of enemy fire is described as a success. His biography says:

Even after the gunfire stopped, Specialist Mike’s job was far from over. As the squad medic, he treated each of his wounded comrades until they were medevaced [sic] out of the area. All three men recovered from their wounds. For Specialist Jason Mike, he still looks at the success of Raven 42 that day in the context of a football game. (para. 36)

By creating this metaphor that football-as-war, the effect is two-fold.

First, the representation of the sole minority Real Hero as a football player is meant to create and foster some camaraderie with African-Americans for them to enlist. The suggestion that sports can be used to achieve some success in the military is meant to further that representation. Second, the metaphor can be extended to suggest to young people that war and battles are no different than playing on the grid iron. Here again, the illusion is created that war is always survivable. Just as Mike’s biography creates the idea that war is like a football game, it

111 also suggests that casualties can be treated and survived. Virtual war is a game. And for those reading Mike’s section, actual war is a game, too. Holmes (2009) wrote:

The current recruiting tactics aimed at America’s youth are especially concerning. Not only do the very tactics that have been boosting recruitment sanitize war and create false expectations, they prey upon vulnerable imaginations of children. (para. 6) The consequences of such representations are chilling.

Staff Sergeant Timothy Nein—“I knew we had to fight them.”

Real Hero Timothy Nein10, like Jason Mike, grew up in a military family. And, with Mike, Nein fought in Iraq and was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross and a Bronze Star. He is, therefore, an accomplished soldier, one who serves as both a mentor and a hero for adolescents eager to find a mediated presence to admire. Like Mike, Nein, too, started college but did not finish, the pull of an Army career was too much to pass up. His 2,422-word biography uses the word “soldier” 10 times and uses the word “enemy” 18 times, both efforts to juxtaposition the righteous American hero against the demonized Iraqi enemy. His biography also is meant to serve as assurance that war and the intensity of battle is survivable, a feature revealed through textual analysis that will be explained later. And, his biography on the Real Heroes website also over-emphasizes the military personnel’s training, a textual feature that is not supported by internal military reports. First, his reliance on this creation of the enemy and its political economic purposes must be explained.

Constructions of terrorism and evil force the U.S. public to embrace state authority. Cole (2006), in his book about the creation of a secular evil and exploration of human constructs of evil, examined how the U.S. government in a post-9/11 world was able to construct through political appearances and repeated mentions in the mainstream media, conceptions of evil, specifically President George W. Bush’s references to the “Axis of Evil.” After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, the U.S. political elite were able to establish quickly the perceptions of good and bad. Cole (2006) wrote: “The United States’ leadership has created a new understanding of the global order, in which the world is divided into good and evil, something international relations theorists would not have thought possible only a few years

10 For this section, Timothy Nein’s biography will be cited. His Real Heroes biography may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=6&view=bio. Citations taken from this site are noted with specific paragraph numbers. 112

ago” (p. 2). America’s Army is yet another way the U.S. political system, through its military, is able to construct the “evil” in the world.

Through such constructs, the political economic power structure—first through the government and then through the corporate media possibly to benefit its transindustrial partners—shows an unknowing public one way in which such evil can be ameliorated. For some in the U.S. audience, this conception of the evil—of the good and the bad—helps one to see how the U.S. involvement overseas can be justified through military participation. Ivie (2003) explained of the “Axis of Evil” that it and the rhetoric created by the Bush administration “haunts America’s post-war sensibilities” (p. 181). Ivie (2003) said further:

It behooves us, given the deteriorating state of political discourse, to scrutinize the rhetoric of the evil enemy for its deleterious effect on democratic values and aspirations. Terrorism trumps democracy in the prevailing hierarchy of political aims and measures when demagogues play the rhetorical card of evil. (pp. 181- 182) As this government and corporate nexus produces texts—one of them the America’s Army website and video game--the creation and reinforcement of enemies in the game, creates other perceptions for those interested in participation in the spectacle. For some, such a mediated construction also may serve as a flashpoint for service, a way to answer the call to help become a part of the solution to end evil before it strikes again. And when the government and corporate media with private industry define and create messages for this generation, the enemy always will strike again.

The panic becomes a part of the mediated conversation and is meant to influence the audience in specific ways (Altheide, 2006; Compton, 2004). Compton (2004) explained:

But the spectacle of war, and its corollary fear, does not simply intimidate and pacify citizens. At the heart of the spectacle is a promise to reunite what has been sundered, to return what is feared to have been lost; and this promise is resolved at the level of myth. (p. 13) The author suggests that such construction of fear lies with the government and with reports about terrorism in corporately-produced media articles. As Altheide (2006) suggested: “The terms crime, victim, and fear are joined with news reports about terrorism to construct public discourse that reflects symbolic relationships about order, danger, and threat that may be exploited by political decision makers” (p. 416). Such exploitation serves a political economic

113 interest; it benefits the government, corporate media, and defense contractors who have an economic interest in maintaining fear. The level of myth is fostered by America’s Army, which creates a spectacle of war just as it provides mediated, virtual access to a sanitized version of war. It serves both as a way to create fear and help a playing audience wipe out that fear through militarized game play and through the creation of heroes like Nein.

In reinforcing this perception of the enemy and exploiting fear, Nein’s biography also avoids handling the issue of military casualties. When faced with enemy fire, Nein said: “There’s only one thing to do, and that’s charge the enemy. So we did” (para. 17). Nein’s biography also sets about de-humanizing the enemy while it also provides a justification for killing. Facing 28 enemy insurgents, Nein and his unit called for air support to help finalize the mission. While waiting for the powerful backup, Nein is quoted saying, “I knew we had to fight them” (para. 24), one of four mentions to “fight” or “fighting” in Nein’s biography. As he assessed the situation and saw two U.S. soldiers wounded and enemy combatants firing at the unit, Nein is described as facing the most important decision of his Army life. His biography explains: “Seeing his men wounded on the road and the others in the team valiantly returning fire, the small-town boy who wanted to lead decided to take the fight to the enemy in the trenches. ‘We needed to go on the super-offensive. We needed to be aggressive’” (paras. 26-27). Men on Nein’s team “eliminated” (para. 30) enemy soldiers. Eventually, Nein would see “the road littered with the bodies of insurgents” (para. 31). His biography explains that 26 enemy soldiers were killed in fighting that was “a huge blow to the insurgency” (para. 32). As Iraqi enemies’ deaths are glorified, the battle makes no further reference to the two wounded men only to describe that the men in his unit fought and won the battle.

Just like other Real Heroes’ profiles, Nein’s biography suggests not just the heroics of American soldiers but creates the idea that war is not lethal for anyone other than the enemies, whose kills are celebrated and become a part of the American military mythology of war as described by Cole (2006) and Ivie (2003). Groff’s biography says:

Rounds were whipping past the two MPs and kicking up sand in front of them. In the heat of battle it occurred to Nein that he miraculously wasn’t getting shot. And soon their methodical and disciplined charge into withering fire eliminated the enemy threat from the trenches. Due to their decisive action, determination and execution of their preplanned battle drills, the Palm Sunday ambush was over. (para. 30)

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For Nein, and all of the Real Heroes, it seems the ability to dodge bullets really is a miracle just as the elimination of the enemy is quick, painless, and efficient.

But Nein’s biography serves a different and equally disturbing purpose when one considers how the government has produced the video game and corresponding website to target adolescents through this government-gaming nexus. Throughout Nein’s biography, it refers to the “training” that he and his fellow soldiers had done preparing for such attacks. His biography says:

Just two days earlier the team had performed a reconnaissance mission at the very spot where they were now engaging the enemy. An access road intersected the highway from the west and on both sides of the access road were ideal areas of cover and concealment for an ambush: trees in an orchard, irrigation trenches, earthen berms as high as 10 feet in places, dry canals, and several outbuildings. The location had been identified by the team as a choice spot for an enemy ambush. (para. 18) Once they faced the 45 to 50 “well-armed insurgents,” they were prepared because they had trained there. Nein is quoted in his biography saying: “We had talked about this, practiced this” (para. 29). And he was able to get out of that situation thanks to his “military heritage, dreams and hard work,” not the least of which was the practice he and his soldiers had done.

The problem with that story is that internal military reports contradict Nein’s biography’s emphasis on military preparedness. A RAND report titled, “After Saddam,” declassified in 2008, explained that: “The U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps are increasingly taxed by the demands of the continuing insurgency” (p. xvii). Furthermore, an Army magazine focused on logistics explained in 2006 that a key issue for enlisted soldiers “is security” and “a trained presence” (p. 5). The article written by an Army major (Foster, 2006) explained that: “Some combat training centers are using TTP [abbreviation of tactics, techniques, and procedures] that are outdated for the Iraqi theatre” (p. 6). He continued: “Priorities and limited equipment in theater render training for security platoons nearly impossible” (p. 6).

When combined with the analysis of other soldiers, young men and women reading and interacting with the Real Heroes in the America’s Army website and game would by now come to the conclusion that they would be entering a war adequately trained for any situation that could face, with trained medics and nurturing nurses by their sides, as they defied all odds by surviving attacks in tanks that faced no problems. The fiction created by the website would be

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almost sustainable if it just were a game claiming some realism of its features and not, as it actually is, a military recruitment strategy asking these young people to actually join a version of the military that exists only on screen.

Sergeant Tommy Rieman—“I get to do some really cool stuff.”

Sgt. Tommy Rieman, a Purple Heart winner, has one of the shortest biographies of the Real Heroes but he has the most blog posts, written between 2007 and 2009. Through textual analysis of both of these parts of his Real Heroes11 page on the America’s Army website, themes of recruitment and targeting adolescents are revealed. Like Jason Mike, Rieman attends military events and civilian functions nationwide to promote the America’s Army game, to promote the Army video game’s corporate sponsors including Ubisoft-controlled Red Storm Game Development, and to help celebrate a military career.

During a two-year period, Rieman tracked through his blog many of his events ranging from appearances at hockey games to NASCAR events and Army-sponsored publicity tours. As was previously described, this link between NASCAR and the youth demographic is considered a key one. Rieman’s presence, then, at such an event only serves to boost that connection even further. In one post, he described getting ready to visit Los Angeles to talk to the Army marketing agency and in another he described media training. He wrote:

Last week, I was in Atlanta, Georgia where Christina Mee from the U.S. Army’s Public Affairs office in Washington, D.C. gave us a Media Training 101. We learned how to better answer questions and handle interviews. Several Real Heroes and a large group from the America’s Army staff took part in this great training. After that media training, the group visited a go-cart track. He wrote: “I am pretty lucky—I get to do some really cool stuff. And I’m glad I get to share it with all of you! America’s Army Rules!”

In other blogs, Rieman seems to write as if he is a child, emphasizing important phrases with exclamation points and talking about expensive, “really cool!” weapons. Even the language he uses clearly is meant to target the game’s younger fans. He wrote: “I love to blow stuff up and have fun!” In another blog post he wrote: “Next week I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio to speak to

11 For this section, Tommy Rieman’s Real Heroes biography and blog posts will be cited. His biography may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=4&view=bio. His blogs may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=4&view=blogs. 116 students about America’s Army!” Once he arrived at that location, another blog said this: “Our goal for the visit was to educate students about the America’s Army game, the Real Heroes Program, the Army, Special Forces, and the impressive technology Soldiers [sic] get to use in today’s Army.” The emphasis and use of such language is meant to seem relatable to adolescent and children still in high school; it infantilizes the horrors of war for adolescents and teenagers in a period of storm and stress. Rieman said later in the same post:

Our high school sessions took place on Thursday and Friday. The students were blown away. They couldn’t believe they got to play with such high-tech Army equipment. Several students had already signed up to join the Army. At a Michigan recruiting effort, Rieman talked about speaking to a group of 90 young people there. “I was very proud to be a part of this because these young men and women took the next step to be a part of something so much bigger than themselves.” What appears in his blog is reinforced in his biography on the America’s Army website.

His biography also targets young people with the idea that battle is both exciting and provides an adrenaline-pumping chance to be hero. Twice in his biography, Rieman refers to the “adrenaline” of being a soldier while talking about fighting enemies, a construction of the “other” and “the enemy” that serves the identical purpose of that in Nein’s biography described above. Enemy appears in Rieman’s 1,720-word biography 14 times. Only the word “soldier” appeared more (15 times) in his biographical sketch.

At first read, Rieman’s biography seems to differ from the other eight soldiers’ profiles in one key way. It describes him being shot. The biography reads:

While shielding the gunner’s lower body, Rieman began to return fire with his rifle and 40mm grenade launcher. During the firefight, Rieman took enemy fire, sustaining a severe bullet wound in his chest and a bullet wound in the arm. Though gravely injured, Rieman returned fire, fending off the enemy attack until his unit was safely out of the enemy kill zone. After describing Rieman as a person who then refused medical care, the biography extends no further details about his injury or harm done to others. His wounds do not become evidence of the harms that can be sustained in battle, but become part of some larger Army mythology similar to that of WWII’s Audie Murphy. Similar to Murphy, Rieman’s valor on the battlefield is done at the expense of killing the enemy, a faceless person at the other end of a highly- specialized weapon.

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Rieman’s biography discusses several touch points relevant to both political economic and cultural studies with ties to major media corporations and the defense industry embedded in the text. The biography creates further points of reverence for adolescents—especially males—in discussing how Rieman’s heroic acts were a ticket for him to attend the 2009 Super Bowl and how he was used to create mediated likenesses of himself in the video game. He also attended the presidential inauguration that year. During Super Bowl events, Rieman did a series of interviews to promote America’s Army and the Real Heroes. At the 2009 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, Rieman served as the grand marshal of the parade. He had the chance to meet a legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback. Rieman gave the football player a signed action figure, yet another sign of the celebration of his status as a hero. It is Rieman who autographs his action figure; Rieman does not ask the football legend for an autograph, thus elevating his position in society, especially a position that would be revered by adolescent boys. To further create such an illusion, Rieman’s biography explains that he said: “I always wanted to be G.I. Joe,” a reference to the toy action figure sold by Hasbro that also has been the subject of a comic book, a cartoon, and several video games (Fletcher, 2009). In 2009, Paramount Pictures released G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which grossed $302 million worldwide (“G.I. Joe,” 2011). The film used Army Apache helicopters, actual soldiers, and uniforms provided by the U.S. Defense Department (Sheftick & Pritchartt, 2009). An Army spokesperson was quoted in a U.S. Defense Department public relations piece: “I was asked to look over the script, and the director was very receptive to all of the changes I suggested to ensure a more authentic portrayal of an Apache combat flight” (as quoted in Sheftick & Pritchartt, 2009, para. 6). The spokesperson continued: “The Army is the good guy in this movie” (Sheftick & Pritchartt, 2009, para. 11). Rieman’s biography provides a link to the fantasy of sports, toys, and film, and attempts to attract adolescents and win over audiences with a storyline approved by the government. In fact, the film was rated PG-13, meaning its target demographic was the same as America’s Army. As was discussed in the Literature Review such use by the government of corporate media to cultivate pro-military messages in film dates back to the earliest days of the medium. Here, the inclusion on the Real Heroes biography of G.I. Joe, the subject of a blockbuster-budget Hollywood release, continues the trend and seeks to militarize entertainment for an adolescent audience.

The use of games and sports in this blog post provides some insight into creating further mythology. It presents to adolescents who may look up to football players that soldiers, who live

118 without risk, can become as famous as sports stars. For a young adolescent--seeking out role models from society--that allusion to sports and heroism may seem extremely appealing. Just as the public during WWII sought escape and entertainment and information from film, today’s youth more and more, turns to video games. Rieman discusses how video game makers and simulators use his movements and actions to create video characters. Through these stories, he is able to elevate himself to a level many adolescents and teenagers would put on a pedestal. Rieman joined the Army right after high school graduation. His biography ends this way: “The Army has shown me there is nothing that I can’t do.” The emphasis of his recruiting and stories targeting adolescents then further reveal the targets of the video game and serve as a stark reminder of exactly what the U.S. Army is trying to do with these Real Heroes and their biographies and blogs.

Sergeant First Class Gerald Wolford—“I always wanted to jump out of airplanes.”

Purple Heart and Silver Star recipient Gerald Wolford’s Real Heroes profile12 describes him as a child of blue-collar parents who wanted the opportunity to “see the world, find excitement, and serve our country” (para. 5), narratives similar to those presented in Adams’, Groff’s, and Brown’s Real Heroes biographies. To further this idea of using the Army in lieu of a college career to achieve economic success, Wolford is described as joining the Army five days after graduating from high school, a decision he had made as a high school junior, when most are aged 16 or 17. Now, he appears as a mentor in the America’s Army game in his dress uniform, his medals filling his chest, a representation of what the U.S. Army wants potential recruits to believe that some young people could become.

Like Adams, Brown, Groff, and Mike, he joined the military years before his Real Heroes service while still a teenager. Like other soldiers mentioned above, his position on the Real Heroes site suggests both an Army career in lieu of college as it also glosses over risks of participation in war. Here, his status as the blue collar son of a waitress and a logger also affords the potentials of an Army career to teenagers in the audience who may be concerned about the economy or jobs. The Army: “provided him the means to provide for his wife and daughter while securing opportunities for more education” (para. 8). The idea of “opportunities” and “opportunity” are referred to separately five times.

12 For this section, Gerald Wolford’s Real Heroes biography is cited. His biography on the Real Heroes page of the America’s Army Website may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=4&view=bio 119

Wolford, described as being from a rural Oregon town, has a place as a Real Hero to serve as a mentor and gateway to the Army for people from rural communities. Tyson (2005) in a Washington Post article said: “As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder than ever to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, newly released Pentagon demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on economically depressed, rural areas where youths’ need for jobs may outweigh the risks of going to war” (Tyson, 2005, para. 1). She continued: “Many of today’s recruits are financially strapped, with nearly half coming from lower-middle-class to poor households” (para. 3). Six years after that story ran President Barack Obama created a Rural Council, which generated a report (“Jobs and Economic,” 2011) about rural America including the economic climate there. That report stated: “Rural Americans are also an integral part of our military. Although rural residents account for 17% of the population they make up 44% of the men and women who serve in uniform” (“Jobs and Economic,” 2011, p. 9). The rural character that Wolford represents then carries out the political economic reality of war that is, of who serves in war, often when they have no other economic opportunities.

Wolford’s story, too, is notable for a continuation of enemy demonization and an emphasis on the weaponry used in battle. His 1,558-word biography uses the word “enemy” 17 different times. His unit is described as firing the first gun shots of the war but that the enemy was persistent, it required Wolford and his team to rely on a Mark-19 grenade launcher to kill the enemy described on his biography as “hostile” as it encountered the “friendly” American military (paras. 22, 23). Wolford’s is described as engaging “enemy positions and vehicles, exposed himself to hostile fire while bringing casualties to safety” (para. 1). A war scene with Wolford as the star explains that he and other men were in a HMMWV when a rocket-propelled grenade [RPG] hit a bridge above their position. The hit wounded two soldiers who were with Wolford. The biography explained:

Wolford was knocked down by the blast, but quickly got back to his feet and checked on his men. Both were responsive, so he helped them up. In the meantime, his machine-gunner had returned fire, silencing the position from which the RPG had been launched. (para. 31) Like Rieman, Wolford also refused medical care. And like Rieman’s story and the others analyzed here, there also is no mention of death, further placing the story of these soldiers as Army lore and emphasizing for those unwilling or unable to learn more about the real threats of battle that war is survivable.

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Staff Sergeant Matthew Zedwick—“I wanted adventure.”

Real Hero Staff Sergeant Matthew Zedwick13 grew up in Oregon where his official America’s Army biography explains that he had “an early interest in Soldiering” (para. 2). Zedwick joined the Army during his senior year of high school. He is quoted in his biography about the decision saying: “I wanted adventure and something of my own, something I did myself without mom or dad helping me. At the same time, I wanted do something patriotic and serve my country” ( para. 5). At basic training camp in Ft. Benning, Georgia, Zedwick was described as learning skills like teamwork and goal orientation, both skill developments that he is was very proud of and that he credits the Army with providing him with.

In April 2004, Zedwick and his unit left for Iraq. A little more than a month into his service in Iraq, Zedwick is described as being with other National Guardsmen on patrol. The men were needed to “confront and dominate the chaos of battle” (para. 11). The biography goes on to explain that the armored HWWMV the men travelled in was attacked and erupted in flames. A soldier, the gunner, riding with Zedwick was killed on impact; it is the first real mention of death in any biography. He could see his squad leader injured inside the HWWMV and was able to rescue the man “just seconds before it exploded” (para. 23). Zedwick realized later that he had performed these acts with a piece of shrapnel in his wrist.

The Army awarded Zedwick with a Silver Star for his “disregard for his own personal safety to ensure the safety of his comrades and the completion of the mission. Zedwick is described today as an active member of the Army National Guard “ready to answer the call to service” (para. 30). There is no mention of the name of the soldier killed in the battle. His death only is referred to as an element to elevate Zedwick’s position of heroism.

Like other Real Heroes, Zedwick also is described as using the military to secure financing for his college education. He attended Oregon State University where his military performance is celebrated in an official university admission blog post (“OSU Admissions Blog,” 2008). A 2008 press release written by a university public relations staff member described Zedwick as the first Oregon soldier to receive the Silver Star since World War II. The

13 For this section, Matthew Zedwick’s biography will be cited. His Real Heroes biography may be found at http://www.americasarmy.com/realheroes/index.php?id=3&view=bio. Direct citations will be taken from this site and noted with the appropriate paragraph number.

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Army also awarded Zedwick the Purple Heart. A link from the press release invites readers to learn more about the school’s ROTC program of which Zedwick was a member.

His service also has been used by politicians who re-tell Zedwick’s story. Greg Walden, a U.S. House of Representatives member from Oregon, mentioned Zedwick in a May 26, 2005, address to his chamber (Congressional Record, 2005, p. 11631). Walden with Zedwick were appearing at a June 2005 Real Heroes event. Walden told the House of Representatives about that day: “The individuals being honored on June 1 demonstrate that each of us can be a hero in our community and we are grateful for all that they’ve done and continue to do” (Congressional Record, 2005, p. 11631). His name would later be known outside of Oregon.

In 2008, Zedwick won $227,000 on the prime-time NBC game show “Deal or No Deal.” The special two-hour episode aired on Christmas Day. A news article about his appearance said that Zedwick was “endorsed as a military hero on the show” (Seitz, 2009). In a photo on the news website, Zedwick posed in front of the American flag and held the America’s Army Real Heroes action figure made in his honor. In fact, his appearance on Deal or No Deal is a direct result of his work as a Real Hero. An Oregon news story (Seitz, 2009) after the Christmas episode aired explained:

Zedwick’s war hero status was what landed him on the path toward competing on the show. Producers of the show were looking for war heroes, and the Military Office of Public Affairs recommended Zedwick….Although Zedwick doesn’t think of himself as a hero, he was flattered to be depicted in the online game, America’s Army, and Xbox 360 game, True Soldier. Zedwick was also turned into an action figure, available online and at Toys ‘R’ Us. (paras. 25-27) An official Army blog post from Soldiers Magazine shows a photo of Zedwick with “Deal or No Deal” host, Howie Mandel. The post titled, “Grateful Amazement,” explains of Zedwick: “His bravery secured him participation in the America’s Army Real Heroes program, complete with action figure, and eventually led to a spot on the game show” (para. 1). His appearance on the show also was promoted by other military groups including the State of Oregon Military Department. That press release stated: “Matt will provide media interviews following the airing of the show and can be contacted through the Oregon Military Department Public Affairs Office” (para. 7). The same photo of Zedwick and Mandel is repeated in numerous TV listings including one for AOL TV’s “What to Watch” guide which explains the show is a must see item that features “Purple Heart war hero Matt Zedwick.” The local newspaper from Zedwick’s hometown

122 profiled him in a story called “Everyday people” (“New Astorian,” 2011). That newspaper ran a similar photo of Zedwick with Mandel and a copy of his America’s Army playing card. Another Oregon newspaper, the Gazette-Times, explained the 2009 version of the America’s Army video game would feature Zedwick on the cover. The story of his heroism is repeated in the alumni magazine of Oregon State University. The magazine also ran a story of a photo of his action figure. Such media representations—and re-representations—continue the conversation about Zedwick, the U.S. Army, and the Real Heroes outside the traditional gaming audience. It further normalizes both military service and the need for military service and war in American society.

This illustrates the large reach of the Army public relations machine. It also demonstrates how a system dominated by media corporations is capable of circulating and re-circulating the story of Zedwick’s military heroism through its numerous media holdings, a key subject of political economic analysis (Bagdikian, 2003; Bettig & Hall, 2003; McChesney, 2000; 2004). Put in terms of militainment (Stahl, 2010) or the military-entertainment network (Andersen, 2006; Andersen & Kurti, 2009; Lenoir, 2003; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003; Leonard, 2004), such representations in mainstream media reinforce and reinvent militarism for a civilian audience. NBC, the network that creates, distributes, and exhibits “Deal or No Deal” also is owned in part by General Electric, which has a financial stake in the defense industry, further suggesting, as several authors (Andersen, 2006; Andersen & Kurti, 2009; Der Derian, 2001; Lenoir, 2003; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003; Leonard, 2004; Nash, 2009; Stahl, 2010) do, that the appearance of the soldier on the show is a part of the dyad between the military industry and the entertainment corporations. The audience for a show like “Deal or No Deal” celebrates Zedwick. His military service masked as game show entertainment blurs the line between civilian and military space. However, that the audience does not know about the links between Zedwick and military public relations, or between GE and defense spending, or, perhaps, even between NBC and GE, offers yet another snapshot of the extensive and effective America’s Army propaganda machine. Rampton and Stauber (2003) explained that the best public relations is invisible.

What the Analysis Reveals about Real Heroes

Zedwick winning the “Deal or No Deal” prize became big news nationally through an appearance on NBC. Monica Brown receiving the Silver Star became big news on CBS’ 60 Minutes. Rieman became big news after visits to the Super Bowl and mentions in the president’s

123 inaugural address. The stories of the Real Heroes became national news not because of their heroism in battle, but because of an Army public relations machine poised to exploit those stories, just a few years after the government was exposed twisting the facts related to the Jessica Lynch story. The foreign press, not the American “free” media, investigated the Jessica Lynch tale. But the media coverage of America’s Army is not the real subject of analysis here, although it is worth extensive review, especially in light of the current corporate media structure.

The Real Heroes biographies and blogs—for those who have them—are the subject of this analysis, and this analysis reveals troubling links to the staffing needs of the American military but also shows the need to cultivate attitudes about militarism for an unknowing public as it attempts to recruit adolescents to join a war it sanitizes and celebrates through a video game and various narratives related to that video game. A Navy magazine article (Woolley, 2009) explained the use of the Army game and the Real Heroes this way:

There has been a tertiary purpose as well: as a public affairs tool it allows the general public to tap into Army life, and it provides a conduit for the Army to tell its story through postings on the game’s Website and links to Army sites. For example, some scripted avatars in the game are based on real Soldiers, and players can learn more about the jobs and heroics of actual individuals. (p. 2)

The Real Heroes’ backgrounds and biographies available on the America’s Army website create the idea of regional and ethnic diversity as they share stories of people who used the Army to attain different goals.

Of the nine Real Heroes, there are eight men and one woman. Most are Caucasian; one is African-American. In some cases they are the third generation of their families to serve in the military; others are new to the Army experience. The soldiers represent diverse backgrounds and geographic differences coming from small towns like Hillsboro, Illinois and big cities like Honolulu, Hawaii. Nein is described as coming from: “The heartland of rural America,” a reference which can be viewed as a way to further target the rural demographic the U.S. military so depends on for its service. Some came from broken homes; others are the children of couples who still are married. One of the soldiers joined the Army when he was just 17, still a minor. Another started basic training five days after he graduated from high school. Still another graduated from West Point. The sole female hero enlisted at age 18 and used the Army to pay for college. She also is meant to serve as a model for women’s new roles in the military and to

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promote the idea of nurturing medics fighting side by side with soldiers in harm’s way. Despite the differences in their gender, backgrounds, and upbringing, the Army makes clear through this section of the website that these military personnel are united by their love of country, mission, freedom, and the Army and their hatred of the enemy and ability to kill him. Death in the game—and death if and when it is referred to related to the America’s Army Real Heroes profiles and biographies--is not meant to reveal the dangers of war. It is, instead, meant to elevate the heroism of the soldiers who lived.

The heroes share another important characteristic: They have been honored with numerous personal awards and medals, which are displayed on their individual Real Heroes web pages. Six of the nine heroes have been awarded the Silver Star for their work in Iraq. The remaining three have been honored with the Bronze Star for participation in military operations in Afghanistan or Iraq. Brown, the female soldier, is only the second woman in Army history to win the Silver Star, which she was awarded by former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. The Silver Star medal inscription reads “FOR GALLANTRY IN ACTION” (“Silver Star,” para. 1). The Bronze Star inscription reads: “HEROIC OR MERITORIOUS ACHIEVEMENT” (“Bronze Star Medal,” para. 1). As some of the military’s most decorated personnel, these soldiers are meant to show that service is automatically rewarded. An Army fact sheet (“Virtual Army Experience,” n.d., p. 2) about the Real Heroes reads: “The Real Heroes program highlights Soldiers who have exhibited courage under fire and whose military occupation fits well within the realm of the America’s Army brand” (p. 2). In this telling and re-telling of the branded soldiers the Army creates the ultimate fiction, that joining its ranks will be as fun as a day with an action hero and rewarded with a red, white, and blue medal.

Engaging the Audience: Messages from the Government

On July 10, 2009, “Phoenix” posted to the America’s Army community forum a link to the new America’s Army NASCAR vehicle driven by Ryan Newman. Phoenix wrote: “Be sure to tune into TNT, Saturday Jul 11th at 7:30 PM EDT as America’s Army 3 and the U.S. Army race for the checkered flag” (“AA3&NASCAR,” 2009, para. 3). That is just one of the nearly 2,000 posts that “Phoenix,” identified as an Army Project Game Developer, has created on the America’s Army community forum. Phoenix, in his/her role as a game developer, is a military employee acting on behalf of the government. In their work tracing the public relations

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industry’s role in the post-September 11, 2001, Iraq war, Rampton and Stauber (2003) described such public relations workers as “perception managers” (p. 6). Compton (2004) suggested further that the government attempts to control narratives as part of the maintenance of the war spectacle. He wrote: “The performance of politics and the narratives and cultural texts employed by political actors are part of a struggle to narrate the social” (p. 4). For this section of textual analysis, I have treated Phoenix’s posts as part of this perception management beset on narrating the social and exposing an adolescent audience to narratives of war, commodification, and military recruitment. Therefore, this analysis includes 100 of Phoenix’s online posts in an attempt to gauge how the government is interacting with its online audience beyond just the Real Heroes.

The video game website also allows the government to post its own messages onto online fan portions of the website, including posts about NASCAR and the Real Heroes, further offering evidence of how it uses the website to target adolescents for its own government goals. Granted, some of these posts are meant to communicate information about servers and support information to an online gaming audience, but many of them, when studied according to this interpretive textual analysis, reveal information about how the government attempts to target adolescents for its recruitment goals. And, how that same targeting reveals ways in which corporate partners receive information about players as they brand themselves in the game.

Phoenix posts to the community forum as a way to engage the audience, especially the youth audience. For example, in May 2009, Phoenix posted to the America’s Army website a message that Rieman and Adams, both Real Heroes described above, posted new information to their blogs. Phoenix’s post in the thread titled, “New Additions to the Real Heroes Blogs,” described that both Rieman and Adams had attended events, events that targeted youth. At a Detroit Pistons game, Rieman was described at a “Future Soldiers” event and Adams was at an Air Force event that featured the Virtual Army Experience. Phoenix wrote: “Read all of these great blogs in their entirety in our Real Heroes blog section now!” Furthermore, Phoenix wrote in April 2011 about a new website forum: “Everything you will want, or need to know about America’s Army as we move forward will be found here.” This information offers the online audience a place to engage with the themes that the Army most wants its audience to see, feel, and hear. These themes include recruitment by highlighting Army jobs and work to keep the America’s Army audience playing longer. 126

Phoenix’s posts are meant to reflect on national events that instill patriotism into the audience including the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Veteran’s Day while they simultaneously are meant to act as evidence of the need for war the and justification for state action. Phoenix wrote on September 9, 2011:

Over the past ten years, many of us on the America’s Army team have gotten to know quite a few Soldiers. We’ve been privileged to work alongside our Real Heroes, Subject Matter Experts and others who have helped on the project by offering their first-hand experiences and expert advice. As America reflects on the past ten years, please join us in thanking our nation’s heroes. The post contains a photograph of what is known commonly in New York City as “ground zero” the site of the World Trade Center, further blending the War on Terror and events of September 11, 2001, with game play, and attempting to legitimize state action and war for the online audience. On Friday, November 11, 2011, Phoenix wrote:

We are honored that we’ve been able to work hand in hand with many of America’s Heroes. To the many America’s Army players who proudly display the military icon in our game, we thank you for your courage, honor, sacrifice and dedication to service on behalf of all Americans. The post ends with an invitation to visit the Veterans Affairs website.

Those posts, and the invitation to engage the players, are yet another way that the Army attempts to have the audience show its patriotism, an outward reflection of American hegemony. Nash (2009) wrote:

Since the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Washington has become the control center of a ‘War on Terrorism’ modeled on private corporate capitalism where the divisions between industry and government are erased and national and international rules are ignored. The militarization of society brings home to the United States the violations of human rights there were an export to the Asian perimeter during the Korean and Vietnam wars, and to Central America during Reagan’s presidency. The priority given to war as a means of countering terrorism serves to advance the growing imperial power of the United States while threatening the domestic polity and society. (pp. 30-31) These contributions by Phoenix to the text are intentional and meant to rationalize state action for an audience that receives the call to state action in the form of a FPS video game.

Furthermore, the use of Phoenix’s posts throughout the game website extend themes related to military recruitment. A Phoenix post from April 2011 said: “Keep watch for more news about the upcoming America’s Army 3: ES2 update and remember, while technology will

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impact the future of the United States Army, its success will continue to be determined by its most important asset, weapon, and sensor: the Soldier.” This is another example of Phoenix acting as an agent of the military, suggesting to an online gaming audience that game play is no different than war.

In other posts, Phoenix has written questions meant to engage the online audience. These questions may ask players to spend more time in the game looking for a specific part of a map. Or these questions may ask players to reveal some personal details to other fans using the America’s Army website. The posts are meant to build camaraderie between players and the Army, not to mention players and other players, as it also fosters longer game play for people. As an example, one such post includes a photograph, a snapshot of a place in the game in a thread titled, “Where in AA3 is this?” Phoenix then asked gamers to identify where in the game the terrain had come from. Phoenix wrote:

In the Army a 35G, or a Geospatial Intelligence Imagery Analyst, is responsible for providing Intelligence based on imagery analysis. The 35G uses overhead and aerial imagery, geospatial data, full motion video, and other electronic monitoring in order to collect and analyze information required to design defense plans, support combat operations, and disaster relief. So, when was the last time you had a good look around the America’s Army 3 maps? I mean…a really good look? Do you fancy yourself an America’s Army map expert> Do you think you know everything there is to know about Bridge [one of the America’s Army maps where game play occurs], or every nook and cranny of Stronghold [another in- game map]? Here’s your chance to prove it! Starting today, the America’s Army team will be posting screenshots from various America’s Army 3 maps. Your mission is to tell us which map the image comes from, exactly where it is located and describe what it is…Correctly identify the mystery object and you win! Win what you say? Well, we’d like to say you’ll win your very own brand new HMMWV, but we all know that’s not gonna happen. What you will win though is the respect of your peers and the AA3 Dev Team, plus we’ll all have some fun competing to see who can ID the image first. So, with all of that said, we’ll start things off with an easy one. Here’s your first image, HOOAH! Although the exercise is framed as game play for the audience, what textual analysis of such a post shows is that it actually is meant as a way for players to hear about yet another potential military career option, this one related to image analysis. Once again, just as with the Real Heroes section of the website, this makes it sound as if the game play is directly analogous to actual military work. And, such militarization is described as being rewarded by peers and the game developers, who are elevated to the status of icons in the game play. A 2011 article by the

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RAND corporation contributed to Armed Forces & Society (Yeung & Gifford, 2011) suggested that potential military recruits were the most interested in “recruiting processes and what to expect from a military lifestyle, seeking opinions and details about job functions, duty stations, and benefits” (p. 534). Once again, the military has taken its own research and translated it onto the video game platform to target adolescents, without these adolescents knowing the intent.

Militarization is revealed in other posts by Phoenix, especially posts that are meant to provide tutorials and “news” updates about in-game features or new game versions that have become publicly available. For example, Phoenix posted on December 8, 2011, to the forum a new release from Redstone Arsenal, an Alabama military base that is described as the center of the Army’s “missile and rocket programs,” (“Redstone Arsenal,” 2011, para. 2). The release14 said:

Today the U.S. Army released America’s Army 3.2, which introduces the M106 Fast Obscurant Grenade (FOG) into game-play. With its short fuse, the M106 has the ability to air-burst, so players must throw it immediately. This fast exploding grenade creates a cloud of smoke to cover players’ actions, opening up many new strategies in the America’s Army game. Similar to the militarization and weapons-fascination created and discussed by the Real Heroes, this post by Phoenix reveals political economic goals of the military and its industrial partners. Such inclusion of this news release—and of this grenade in the game—normalizes weaponry in society. In an older post, “Satellite Photos from Czervenian Region,” Phoenix posted a map of a region called “Mitrojvac, Nordazhia.”15 The instructions for players included that: “Intelligence reports a high probability of NME activity in these areas. Memorize these photos, then destroy them. All troops are ordered to begin preparations for deployment.” By using a foreign-sounding name and the construction of the “NME,” video game code for “enemy,” America’s Army is able to construct perceptions of otherness similar to the construction of enemies done on the Real Heroes websites. A June 2011 post started this way: “Listen up soldier. An uptick in NME activity has been reported in two new areas codenamed Stronghold and ShantyTown and once again the U.S. Army has been called upon to spearhead the effort to diffuse these situations.” The website further addresses not just who the enemies are,

14 This section of the forum may be found at http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php? f=15&t=3252&p=21552#p21552 15 These posts may be found at http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=408 129 but that the American soldiers are responsible to find them. The FPS format provides further training not only on how to conceptualize who the enemies are but it also provides technical training on how to kill those enemies. Grossman and Degaetano (1999) wrote:

There are three things you need in order to shoot and kill effectively and efficiently. From a soldier in Vietnam to an eleven-year-old in Jonesboro, anyone who does not have all three will essentially fail in any endeavor to kill. First, you need a gun. Next you need the skill to hit a target with a gun. And finally you need the will to use that gun. The gun, the skill, and the will. Of these three factors, the military knows that the killing simulators take care of two out of three by nurturing both the skill and the will to kill a fellow human being. (p. 73) This provides even further evidence of how the government construction of another part of its America’s Army franchise is able to cultivate ideologies with its text.

Government posts like one in June 2008 titled, “Where should we advertise AA3? Need comments,” in the “General Discussion” portion of the website forum, also reveal how the government commodifies its audience and asks website users to become laborers in its system. The goal of the post is to gain information from a young, technologically-savvy audience about how to penetrate youth culture to gain more users. More game users likely means more diffusion of military messages and, as Wardynski explained to Huntemann (2010), more recruits. In that June 2009 thread, 238 posts were made and the posts were viewed 8,936 times. A military recruiter wrote the following on the community forum:

First off I am a Station Commander for the Army Recruiting command, I work closely planning locally to advertise in Colorado around my area. I want some ideas as I also work with some of the folks within the AA Community that help advertise the game and sponsor the events that we do with the game. With that said, I am a bit of a marketing expert when it comes to Army stuff, so I don't need info on what you think it might cost etc but just simply where. Ok the questions for you all. This recruiter goes on to list the questions. They are: If we were to get the AA community heads to advertise the release of AA3 where would you most likely see that commercial or advertisement? So what I am looking for is, what TV channels you watch, what shows on those channels do you watch? What movies would you most likely watch at the theater and how often do you go? What genre of radio stations do you listen to (i.e. Rock, heavy metal, rap etc...) and when do you most listen to the radio (timeframe) where do you get your gaming news (magazines or online websites) what websites would you most likely see a placed ad you pay attention too? Any other specifics about

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where and when you would most likely see a commercial for the game if they have one? And finally, the developer wrote the most important question: “Have any of you joined the Army solely because of AA?” The responses to this post have been included in the next chapter because they deal with audience reception to the messages and production of such a text. Clearly, this thread shows how the military attempts to make the audience a part of its overall recruitment strategy, thus using invisible tactics to turn the audience into laborers. However, the audience may have little information about how the military intends to exploit that labor. Kellner and Durham (2006) wrote: “Ideologies appear natural, they seem to be common sense, and are often invisible and elude criticism” (p. xiv). Just as Jhally and Livant (1986) conceptualized the labor of television audiences as doing “work,” these video game website users also are working on behalf of the government. When the structure is a combination of private-public interest, the text attempts to engage these “workers” to become a part of its capitalist system and to help extend U.S. hegemonic authority.

Discussion

Kellner (1995) explained that media texts that hold certain political and ideological positions must cast a wide net in order to reach and influence as many people as possible. He wrote of these texts:

They attempt to provide something for everyone to attract a wide range of ideological positions…certain media cultural texts advance specific ideological positions which can be ascertained by relating the texts to the political discourses and debates of their era, to other artifacts concerned with similar themes, and to ideological motifs in the culture that are active in a given text. (p. 93) As this analysis demonstrates, the text of the America’s Army website, although it claims to highlight the forces of democracy and freedom, it is less concerned with those ideals than it is with a subjective reading of what it means to be free and to be just in a society—in this case, what it means is to have a U.S. perspective of justice against a faceless enemy in a battle that always can be won. In essence, this text becomes an extension of the hegemonic state. The text also is meant to relay to an adolescent audience key factors of such state action that include themes of recruitment, enemy relations, war culture, violence, and death. However, these representations exist far from reality.

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Viewed through Kellner’s perspective, the video game attempts to recruit men and women, black and white, and focuses on soldiers from rural communities around the country to attract that wide range of ideological positions necessary to place itself prominently in U.S. culture generally, and American youth culture specifically. Kellner (1995; 2003) also says that critical cultural studies must understand mediated texts in terms of their representations of class, race, and gender. A reading of the America’s Army text reveals key issue related to the recruitment of minorities and women, as was explained through the textual analysis of Mike and Brown’s biographies and blog posts. When viewed through a political economic lens, as Garnham (2006) suggested, these soldiers who are portrayed and who are meant to target specific populations of inner-city or rural men and women are commodities in a capitalist exchange. They become, in effect, raw capital and labor in a system that looks to force competition of labor onto the workforce.

Such economic hooks especially threaten adolescents, who are eager to find social systems that accept them during tumultuous periods of cognitive and physical development. These adolescents may turn to the video game franchise to help themselves find meaning. Once online, they may find that the textual representations, which skew the realities of war, offer similar chances to engage and become a part of a social system; in this case that social system that they could become a part of is the U.S. Army. Such textual representations also must be considered for ways that they target adolescents, who also exhibit tendencies for risk behavior as a result of cognitive immaturity (Hall, 1904). The website messages are flush with stories about adventure and travel, meant to provide for young people an outlet for such periods of storm and stress. Once hooked by these opportunities to explore violence on a free video game, young people are further immersed in violent video game play and propagandistic messages by the U.S. Army. Arnett (1995) suggested that male adolescents may prefer “high sensation” (p. 523) media use as ways to channel their feelings of invulnerability and egocentrism. Furthermore, Klein et. al. (1993) showed that in the 14-16 age group, risky behaviors were correlated to higher media usage. For these reason, the video game website readily and expressly offers adolescent players ways to engage these feelings of identity, power, control, and thrill-seeking. What many of these players may not realize, however, is that the government means very specifically to keep them playing longer as a way to continue branding war and recruitment to the very audience it most needs to maintain military staffing levels.

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A key factor that may lead adolescents to relate to and engage with America’s Army lies in the characters that are built into the website and the video game. The U.S. Army has transformed the stories of actual enlisted soldiers into entertainment caricatures meant to target young people. In fact, these heroes also became action figures that players could buy and play with—yet another attempt to commodify this impressionable audience. The presentation of the Real Heroes on the website is done in several ways, ways that are directly linked to their suitability to tell the Army story, but also their suitability to draw young people in to them and, subsequently, to the military and its supporters, including NASCAR. The representation of the soldiers on the website and through merchandising deals related to them shows the targeting to adolescents. This is revealed both in how the soldiers are presented on the website and in their presentation as toy action figures; all of the action heroes carry weapons. In all but one case, the Real Heroes joined the Army when they were teenagers, a public relations strategy meant to influence an adolescent audience uncertain about future economic possibilities and wowed by the soldiers’ stories of heroism, bravery, and survival. In any other industrial society, these portrayals--active public relations and branding strategies based on advertising--such representations would be banned.

In the telling of the soldiers’ stories, the Army represents them on their own web pages through the gaming website not just with photographs, but with playing cards. The female soldier is the only one who does not have her own playing card, presumably because women cannot fight in battle. These playing cards are available in each Real Heroes toy box, further evidence of how the soldiers and their compelling militaristic stories are meant to be commodified and sold to a young adolescent audience. These are not baseball cards meant to be traded and statistics of the players discussed in neighborhoods all over the United States. Instead, these are cards of war meant to exhibit an Army hero and elevate his status in culture to win over a skeptical public and recruit young men to join. The use of military-themed toys, as Cook (2004) explained, is rooted in attempts to commodify young males and exploit their fascination with military machinery and feelings of male power in U.S. society. In this way, the ancillary products related to America’s Army may have a two-pronged effect. First, such military-themed products are meant to target young boys and engage them with the America’s Army brand from a young age. Furthermore, these toys and the video game consoles that benefit corporate game maker Ubisoft also are meant to harness the spending power of males. Either way, consumption of the ancillary products

133 related to America’s Army is meant to socially construct youth identities. Such identities then run the risk of fostering violence as they simultaneously fail to provide true information about war and U.S. military actions.

There have been two “releases” of the cards. In the first release, on the cards the name of the soldier is written in gold, the words “Real Heroes” is written in the upper left corner and the America’s Army video game logo runs along the bottom. Both releases show the Army’s current logo: “Army strong.” It is in the details of these stories revealed through textual analysis that one sees how the production of the messages is directly linked to the textual elements and that these elements are troubling when one considers how the soldiers’ profiles are used to recruit young people to enlist in the military and fight an overseas war now entering its second decade. That war represented on the game website is a complete fiction, created to seem as if bullets are deflected and explosions are survived. Also, these Army-created stories are meant to serve a propagandistic goal similar to the government’s use of film during WWII. They demonize an enemy while providing stories that are meant to target young people eager to help fight that enemy for their country--to defend against this enemy.

The contradiction that adds to the propagandistic representations is that the government partners with private game developers to supposedly enhance the game’s realism and representations of battlefields. Yet, the game’s Real Heroes website offers technological marvels and weaponry linked to military contractors and meant to elevate the heroes on the website that does little to emphasize the risk of war. Bacevich (2005) wrote:

Today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys— and is bent on perpetuating—has become central to our national identity. More than America’s matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture the nation’s arsenal of high-tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for. (p. 3). The reasons are deliberate.

The need is great to create a game that will both engage and occupy teenagers’ time as it works to cultivate in them a desire to demonize enemies and manipulate feelings about war and militarism in society. And it creates these heroes to help adolescents and players feel connected to people in the military, people who purposely have been chosen because of their background and to target key themes of the U.S. Army. Those themes are: the need for soldiers of color, the

134 need for more women, and the desirability of military careers for people from rural areas. War becomes a perfect land, one of adventure and freedom and a kind of Shangri-La for people who may have grown up in the hardscrabble towns that offer little economic incentive to stay.

Furthermore, the inclusion of part of the analysis of the posts created by “Phoenix,” the Army game developer, are even more telling about the government and private purposes related to the video game uses. Yeung and Gifford (2011) wrote: “The U.S. Army in particular appears to have recognized the importance of an online presence, with an official recruiting website, discussion forums, professionally shot YouTube videos, and a popular online video game” (p. 535). Clearly, the posts are meant to convey information about the game. But, an analysis of just some of those posts includes themes related to weapons fascination, part of the military- industrial complex, military recruitment, patriotism, and militarism. By asking questions of the players, in both the “General Discussion” forum and the “News & Announcements” forum, Phoenix and the Army build more time for these players online, and, therefore, more exposure to the Army messages and recruitment pitches in the video game. Yeung and Gifford (2011) wrote: “Unsurprisingly, recruits who spend more time online were more likely to report exposure to Internet advertising and military websites and more likely to rate these sources of information as important to their enlistment decisions that were recruits who spent less time online” (p. 541). The more time young people are immersed in video game play and website discussions, the longer they are being exposed to militaristic storylines, key parts of the U.S. Army’s advertising strategies. Yet, nowhere do these stories explain what they actually are: advertising meant to promote and influence.

The use of the Real Heroes is one way that the U.S. Army is attempting to create for a Millennial audience a new hero for the 21st Century. As the Army attempts to mold from its public relations campaigns and Real Heroes blogs and tours the next Audie Murphy perhaps it also should heed his words. Murphy was quoted in an undated Los Angeles Times article about his experience fighting and killing. After three years in the Army, Murphy said: “War is a nasty business, to be avoided if possible and to be gotten over with as soon as possible. It’s not the sort of job that deserves medals” (“Like War,” n.d., para. 23). The Real Heroes all have won medals, medals meant to elevate their position in society and the military’s position in the world. However, there is no caution in their messages. There is no horror. Nor is there a sense of urgency about ending war. On the America’s Army website, such stories that offered truth would 135 inevitably serve as cautionary tales for those interested in military recruitment and would, therefore, be less successful advertising strategies.

I do not mean to suggest that these stories, if accurate, are not worthy of attention from the government or the mainstream media. Nor am I suggesting that these soldiers did not participate in the stories shared on the Real Heroes pages of the America’s Army website. But, in this section of the website, the text shows adolescents that war should not just be fought, but it should be celebrated, enemies demonized, countries invaded, tanks driven, guns shot, and bullets dodged. Of course, these are all scenarios presented to a teenage audience through the representations of these heroes, whose stories are glamorized and who are available as in-game mentors for players. The point here is that in any other industrialized country in the world, these representations—and other war recruitment advertising that targets minors--would be banned. To truly stop the threat of military recruitment campaigns targeted at minors, the U.S. government, too, should end its use of America’s Army as a military recruiter. If it is not willing to do so, at a minimum it should include age verification software and contain appropriate labels explaining its use as advertising targeted at children.

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CHAPTER SIX AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

I don’t kill people all the time…but when I do I kill Czervenians. Stay classy my friends.

--A tag line from an America’s Army player’s profile, a phrase apparently adopted from a popular Dos Equis beer commercial.

I shoot downed people and will continue to do it. I do it when the person I shoot is in an area that would take me too long to get to (such as vents in pipeline..etc), or if I am in a big firefight and I’m about to bleed out (I’ll shoot any downed enemies around me). This ensures that they will not be able to be revived and can possibly give my team the upper hand. The ROE points lost from this is very small and hardly effects your overall score/integrity. –A player explaining his/her America’s Army gaming philosophy

The analysis through this point has explained the production of the America’s Army video game and demonstrated how that production leads to certain elements being visually and textually represented on the website of America’s Army, the Army’s “official” video game that has military recruitment as its primary goal. Chapters four and five have addressed structural conditions at work to produce the America’s Army video game and have explained a textual analysis of key website features including Army-generated forum posts and web features like the Real Heroes that revealed narratives linked to war, militarism, commodification, and recruitment of adolescents. These features have been explained as a result of the partnership between the U.S. government and several media and non-media transnational corporations that have as their goals commodification and consciousness cultivation of an impressionable adolescent audience.

The final piece to better understand America’s Army and its links to public consumption is to address the audience analysis, the third part of Kellner’s three-part framework, and a key component in expanding political economic analysis of texts (Mosco, 2009). Bettig and Hall (2003) explained of audience studies: “Interpretive studies of audiences focus on how meaning is produced by receivers” (p. 11). This chapter, therefore, addresses the seventh and final research question presented in this dissertation and analyzes online comments of the video game website’s

137 community forum page to address audience responses to government ideologies related to militarism, recruitment, violence, and commodification, the messages that are a key feature of the production and text of the America’s Army video game website described in chapters four and five. The research question is: What does an analysis of online comments by players of America’s Army reveal about game users’ responses to the ideologies presented by the Army and its corporate partners?

Studying Online Audiences

Preece and Maloney-Krichmar (2006) explained that the work studying online communities is often complicated for lack of standardized definitions and explanations in the emerging field. Moreover, the authors suggested divisions in agreement over how to identify and study such sites and subsequent comments. Often, the authors said, the application of existing theories to emerging media offers lenses by which to study online communities and their various social and personal contexts. In the search to find ways to better understand such a vast online audience, online game researchers (Meredith, Hussain, & Griffiths, 2009) explained that in massively multiplayer environments, gamers appear heterogeneous. They conclude that more study of the industry and players is needed to understand both responses to video games and interactions with them because of such a diverse audience.

Sieckenius and Preece (2004) revealed that the online community interaction is dependent often on the structure of the designers of the site, an interesting perspective if one applies it to the study of government-created online posts. Stahl (2010) said: “Rather than simply presenting war as a spectacular event, this new militarism increasingly invited the citizen into the drama” (p. 35). As Li (2004) suggested: “The America’s Army project is an especially rich site to consider the question of gamer culture as public sphere due to its unique situation within a matrix of state authority, military expertise, entertainment technology, and consumer marketing practices” (p. 13). Such a collision within that public sphere is not meant to suggest that the video game audience—specifically the audience that uses the government-generated America’s Army message boards and/or its video game—is homogenous or is influenced in the same ways, if at all. But the audience must be studied to look at what themes do emerge and to place those concerns within the larger contexts of production and textual analysis already reviewed. This

138 chapter uses interpretive textual analysis (Bettig & Hall, 2003) to seek out the multiple representations and viewpoints that are shared on message boards within the forum pages.

Audiences, whether they are online or whether they are not, however, must be considered in relation to the social and political systems that they are a part of (Kellner, 1995; 2003; Kellner & Durham, 2006; Fairclough, 2003; Lehtonen, 2000; Smythe, 1981). Gerbner (1985) wrote this about the public reception of mass mediated messages:

They are supplied with selections of information and entertainment, fact and fiction, news and fantasy or ‘escape’ materials which are considered important or interesting or entertaining, and profitable (or all of these) in terms of the perspectives to be cultivated. (p. 14) Jenkins (2006) suggested that gamers are active parts of the online audience and that they can and do negotiate meanings from that participation. They communicate in networks and in networked environments to make meaning from their experiences, experiences that they might not have had in their home geographic and social environments. Both Jenkins (2006) and Thomas (2006) conceived of those networked fans as influencing and, in some cases, controlling the media production in a participatory environment allowed by digital media through repurposing or redirecting those messages, an idea that suggests the influence of that media ultimately is primarily positive.

The government controlled media, however, means that the audience is interacting with a text that the government means to control, controlling not just the play but the ideas of the player. As such, it seems less likely that such control by the player results in such repurposed game play that the meaning is anything but what the government actually intended for it to be. Stahl (2010): “If the spectacle had worked to deactivate the citizen through the opiate of distraction, the new war worked to channel civic energy through the amphetamine of interactivity” (p. 35). The messages studied to this point then must also be considered in ways that specifically target an adolescent audience in a networked environment, one that includes violence as a major theme. Understanding the audience as the third part of study also helps to determine other praxis strategies. Lewis and Jhally (1998) explored media literacy that recognizes the production-text-audience circuit before it develops strategies to educate people about media content.

Of course, public education is a key goal of this dissertation—documenting the

139 production-text-audience relationship with America’s Army is meant to fulfill the need to learn more about the video game and franchise’s position in culture as a branding strategy, recruiter, and commercial conduit to the youth audience. However, in this chapter the link to adolescence is somewhat murkier. In some cases on other parts of the website, as it will be explained, participants have provided their age or they have suggested their age (e.g. by explaining their high school or college enrollment status) through their comments. These references, where appropriate, were included in this chapter’s analysis. But, without such age descriptors, it must be noted that there is no guarantee that the usage of these message boards is done exclusively by adolescents, which should be considered a limitation of this chapter. However, the fact that the game has a “T” rating, which was explained in chapter four, suggests that the Army uses techniques to engage a youth audience, a youth audience that is likely to appear on forum message boards.

For the America’s Army audience, the images that they see, interact with, and play with, often are of violence framed in the name of patriotism and entertainment in a massively multi- player environment. Li (2004) explained that America’s Army players that he interviewed in the game’s early days were drawn to the game for its violence and realism—one player he interviewed enlisted in the Army. Keeping the military’s goals in mind, messages on the community forum have been selected related to violence and death and capitalizing off the years of social science work studying media violence and its effects on the adolescent audience. Furthermore, threads have been chosen for how they reveal themes of militarism, violence, commodification, or possess specific examples of interactions with the Real Heroes, a primary point of analysis in chapters four and five.

Threads Chosen for Analysis

The forums may be accessed from the main America’s Army website by clicking on “Community” and then clicking on the “forum” tab on the left side.16 “Community,” like “Real Heroes,” is one of the seven main tabs on the gaming website. At the forum point, a free registration is required and users must choose a login name and a password. Once at the forum page, users may visit one of several places to engage in online dialogue with other players or with official Army game developers, like “Phoenix,” described in chapter five. These headings

16 http://forum.americasarmy.com/ 140

for the America’s Army main page include: “News & Announcements,” a support link, “Squad Recruiting,” “R&R,” and a place to post forum errors. Under headings specific to America’s Army 3, the most recent version available on the website, the headings include: “General Discussion,” “Authentication & Account Support,” “Game Support,” “Server Support,” “New Players,” and “Bugs.”

This chapter analyzes roughly 9,610 comments associated with the community forum on the America’s Army website; most of these threads were found under the two headings, “News & Announcements” or “General Discussion.” As was discussed in chapter three, these threads and posts were chosen to uncover themes using interpretive textual analysis (Bettig & Hall, 2003) relevant to the political economic and cultural studies goals of this dissertation and are a part of a much larger reading I conducted of the posts and threads that are active on the America’s Army web page. Some posts begin in 2002 and correspond to the game and website’s launch. Other posts studied here were created as recently as December 2011. Posts, which I reviewed between July 2010 and December 2011, were analyzed according to themes relevant to the political economic and cultural studies goals. I looked for themes that reflect the ideologies represented in the text, described in chapter five. These themes included militarism, recruitment, enlistment, violence, death, killing, discussions of enemies, and commodification. Because the central goal of this chapter is to chart how audiences interact with these ideologies—ideologies that are purposely contributed by the government and its private partners—I chose to search for threads that included terms including the Real Heroes, NASCAR, and Ubisoft.

Analysis of Online Comments

The Real Heroes

As was discussed in chapter five, part of the America’s Army online community forum is made up of posts created by Army game developers. These posts offer players and web users the opportunity to hear more about Army careers, and when coupled with the Real Heroes profiles offer powerful propagandistic tools by the government, especially when geared toward an adolescent audience. This first section of the analysis of the gaming website’s audience comments provides a textual analysis of part of the response to those government generated posts with a specific focus on recruitment through the use of the Real Heroes on the forum pages. (Grammar and spelling errors made by the former users are included in these citations to provide

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authenticity.)

But, these posts also offer an opportunity to see how criticism of militarism is deflected and may be transformed into opportunities that justify U.S. hegemonic authority and promote recruitment. Even though these posts may not be the most commented on the forum website, they are viewed by tens of thousands of web users, potentially extending the influence of the government-created posts and the user-generated posts within the forum. Forum members need not necessarily comment on posts to be influenced by what they say.

On May 18, 2009, Phoenix created a web post about the Real Heroes Tommy Rieman and John Adams. The post asks people to visit the new blog posts that were created by the two heroes. “Read all of these great blogs in their entirety in our Real Heroes blog section now!” reads one of the lines of the post. A response from “Franzuu” who describes him/herself as a “first sergeant” said: “Heh…they (some of them) are becoming kinda like superstars…:S.” Rieman and other Real Heroes are positioned on the message boards as both experts and neutralizers if any commenters do ask questions critical of the video game or, more generally, American involvement in the war. For example, in response to an October 2010 post by Phoenix that shared an interview with Rieman, a community member identified by a German flag with the user name “gxzp6” wrote:

1. I read much about the tortures in Iraq. What do you think, why there are so many cases of torturing soldiers? 2. Friends of me came back from fighting in Afghanistan and it took a long time to see them all right after their return. Has there been a change or improvement in the psycho-social care of the returning american soldiers in the last years? 3. Germany wasn’t active involved in the Iraq-war. What do you think about that? Have you been disappointed? 4. In the last few years we go to know, that the main reason for the Iraq-war (possessing or reserarh of nucleur weapons) was a bit faked by intelligence apparatus. Do you think about the reasons brought you to Iraq? The question posed by a forum participant identified as a “recruit” revealed a rare moment of questioning the U.S. authority or how the U.S. military and government have behaved, perhaps because the poster identified him/herself as of German heritage. That gxzp6 is a “recruit” means that s/he is likely new to the game and has not yet reached play time making him/her eligible to move up in rank in the game, perhaps suggesting further that this player has not been subjected

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to the ideologies related to the game for an extended period.

Within a few hours, someone identified as “Silent^Reaper” who has an American flag as a part of their profile wrote in direct response to gxzp6: “All of my question’s got answered on his bio page :-/.” The statement is meant to deflect any criticism away from Rieman, the other heroes, the soldiers, and the military by another website user, this one who uses dog tags, the official U.S. Army logo, a bald eagle, and a POW/MIA flag as a part of his/her online profile. It shows how the forum users are able to rather effectively police themselves related to ideologies that the government promotes or wants promoted by their own unique posts. The audience then is able to position itself as a function of the government, an extension of policies first encountered with anti-Vietnam protesters. Stahl (2010) said of such government directives to thwart criticism: “Such an orientation somewhat absurdly implied that those who opposed the policy bore more responsibility for endangering the soldier than those who ordered them to war” (p. 29). The audience of America’s Army becomes, then, an extension of the production, a way to minimize dissent in a system produced by the government with capitalist interests in mind. Hall (1980) wrote:

In speaking of dominant meanings, then, we are not talking about a one-sided process which governs how all events will be signified. It consists of ‘work’ required to enforce, win plausibility for and command as legitimate a decoding of the event within the limit of dominant definitions in which it has been connotatively signified. (p. 170) Such an affront to dissent is meant to stop challenges to the military’s dominant ideologies, especially when the messages are created in a system dominated by government with corporations gaining financial benefits from that system.

Even when other players do not defend the heroes or potentially questionable actions by the “real” military, the Real Heroes appear on the community forum and take action on the matters themselves. About two weeks after “Silent^Reapers’s” post, Rieman went on to the community forum to reply to gxpz6. Rieman wrote:

The need to take care of our returning Soldiers’ and Vets has become a major issue. The Army, Department of Defense, and organizations like VA have drastically improved. Due to the improvement of technology, we as a Country have learned more about PTSD TBI and Concussions. We are learning and teaching new ways everyday how address the issues of the Soldiers’ once they have returned back to society.

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He continued to answer gxpz6’s fourth question:

I believe there are several myths about why we started Operation Iraqi Freedom. I believe the faked intelligence apparatus is one of them. None of us know the complete fax. What we do know is we as a Country entrust our Government with those decisions, and our job as Soldiers is to follow their guidance. gxpz6 responded: “Thanks for your open and above board answers.” Rieman, however, did not provide accurate information about how much soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan still were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or how badly the Army and other military branches had treated soldiers suffering from the disorder.

National Public Radio (“For Soldiers,” 2011) reported in June 2011 that between 10% and 18% of veterans were returning with PTSD, a condition marked by “sleeplessness, anger, anxiety and a sense of isolation” that pose “tremendous challenges for veterans and their families” (para. 2). An investigation (Kors, 2010) by The Nation found that the Army has unfairly and systematically discharged military veterans with a different diagnosis to save billions of dollars in disability payments. What happens when Rieman, a hero and well respected and highly visible member of the America’s Army franchise, interacts with community forum members about such a topic? Any legitimate claim or question about military problems or the use of military force is stopped. The debate about any potential issues with soldiers’ care or, as in the case of the second of Rieman’s comments about military intelligence, is stifled. The forum users are exposed to Rieman as a hero, however, he is acting as an official source of Army information and part of its invisible public relations machine. Due to users’ interactions with him, forum users are taught and encouraged, then, to take as fact such Army propaganda.

Like his biography page included in the chapter five analysis, Rieman and his position as an elite member of the Armed Forces is used as a way to sway the online audience to believe a position or to rethink a political or economic position. The conversations between the different sections of the website, then, serve as resonance. Messages related to the government and the political positions of the Army and corporate partners are introduced in sections of the web forum or the website and then reappear on the community forum blogs by the government and then are reinforced and defended by fans. More than three quarters (76%) of teenagers (Lenhart et. al., 2008) play games in a social context. Roberts and Foehr (2008) explained that adolescents are using mixed media, playing video games while listening to music and chatting online, for

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example, that may increase potential message exposure, messages like these then may carry through an online community beyond the original post.

In October 2010, Phoenix posted a message about Rieman returning home from Iraq. The post said: “Over the next few months, we will post interviews with SGT Rieman to learn more about his deployment, how he kept in touch with his friends and family, and what it was like to come home.” The forum was posted under the thread, “Welcome Home Sgt. Rieman!” and it included 40 responses from community forum members. Responses ranged from one word answers like, “Hooah,” by someone identified as “Storm” to others that said, “The Nation is proud of you son, welcome back!” posted by “Ssgt.Lupo.” Analysis of these comments provides evidence of the support Rieman receives as a Real Hero and prominent member of the America’s Army website. Ideologically, his online presence and the responses that it generates would make it difficult for someone to criticize military intervention or the military.

Years before, Rieman’s presence on the forum pages began to be cultivated. In 2007, one year after the creation of the Real Heroes program, Rieman was the guest of then-President George W. Bush at the State of the Union address. The thread called, “Real Hero Recognized by the President,” in 2007 was included under the heading, “News & Announcements.” Phoenix posted an Army press release on the forum. The press release said: “In his address, Bush emphasized the importance of the war in Iraq to the global struggle against terrorism and called on members of Congress to support the troops who have served and will serve in the Middle East.” It said further:

Rieman was honored in a unique way in 2006 by being selected to one to be one of the first participants in the ‘America’s Army: Real Heroes” program, which aims to honor Soldiers who have shown heroism in the war on terror. Participants will have their lives and military stories recounted in ‘America’s Army,’ the Army video game for personal computers and console systems. The Soldiers’ likenesses are also being made into plastic action figures. The post was viewed 1,720 times by community members and included four responses. Those posts included one by someone identifying themselves as a sergeant major who said “I thank Sgt. Tommy Rieman for his service.” The next response said, “I’ll second that!” posted by someone called “The Saint,” also identified as a forum moderator. A person with the identifier of “d33rhunt3r” wrote, “A brave soldier, an example for all of us, military or civilian. My deepest consideration, Sgt. Rieman!” A fourth post by “lady therese” said: “My felicitations! Truly

145 inspiring to young kids.” These posts provide some evidence of what the Army website hopes to promote: That people see that service as something to be celebrated and honored while that service also is seen as a way to inspire future generations, generations that the Army itself is trying to recruit.

In November 2007, in a show of more efforts to make these Heroes into prominent parts of the website and sell their action figures, Phoenix wrote: “America’s Army Project Director and Originator, Colonel Casey Wardynski and Real Hero Sergeant Tommy Rieman were featured on CNN yesterday talking about the Real Heroes action figures and America’s Army: True Soldiers.” True Soldiers is the game version created by Ubisoft for sale on the Xbox 360 console. The response was immediate and positive. Forum user “Coe,” who identifies him/herself as a volunteer community manager, wrote: “Very interesting to the see the process for making them into Action Figures.” “GhostfromTexas” posted, “That’s really awesome…thanks for the post.” The posts are not necessarily evidence of some overwhelming effect of game play, but they do show that the audience is engaging with and responding to posts created by the government about its key game mentors, Real Heroes, whose stories are meant to influence the audience.

Rieman is not the only Real Hero to have a presence on the community forum. John Adams, Jason Mike, and Matthew Zedwick have had threads dedicated to something they have done or to encourage participation and interaction with these soldiers in the game or on their blogs. In the thread, “Real Heroes Video: SSG Matthew Zedwick,” which includes 11 posts, Phoenix wrote:

For incredible heroism in the face of the enemy on 13 June 2004, Staff Sergeant Matthew W. Zedwick was awarded the Silver Star. SSG Zedwick’s bravery and selfless sacrifice in never leaving a fallen comrade were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflected greatly upon himself, his unit and the U.S. Army. You can learn how SSG Zedwick went from an Oregon town to the battlefields of Iraq as he tells his story in an all new Real Heroes video. A few minutes later, the responses began. “FueGo357” wrote: “cool! gonna watch now. and add some more real heroes to this game please!!!” A few minutes later someone named “Skyracer” wrote: “Hooah!” The next comment came the next day, March 6, 2007, from someone identifying themself as “eXit^”: “HOOAH. Nice to see some appreciation for those guys.” And the next person to post, sgtcasey, wrote: “Outstanding job, sergeant.” And then, on March 7, 2007, “WhoopWeasel” wrote:

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There is no thanks great enough for anyone who chooses to put their life on the line to protect the values and lifestyle I am able to enjoy. Hail to the men and women who have sacrificed and served to make this country as great as it truly is. Hooah! The next comment came from “-Ren-“ who wrote: “man, can’t wait until I join. im gunna make mama proud…and ofcourse, you guys lol.” Finally, “*Scorpio_247” responded: “Does He have an account for amercas army…? If so Awsome.”

These posts reflect the ideologies present in the text of the website. But, other themes also are at play within the Real Heroes comments; comments from users like –Ren- reveal that there is a context at work that sees them considering an Army career. His/Her reading of the video game post about Zedwick and responding that s/he cannot wait to join, reveal that there are people in the America’s Army audience who are considering an Army career, the ultimate influence and purpose of the video game’s and website’s messages and a function of the structure that has produced the video game. Another person is TexasPride 91, who posted in August 2011 that s/he wanted to join one of the established gaming clans. TexasPride91 wrote: “I just picked this game up. But I have a large background in games like this. I am an actual soldier or at least will be. I leave for BCT in Feb,” a reference to Basic Training. These comments are tied to the theme of “recruitment” because they deal specifically with the use of the video game website and its ties to military recruitment as an aim of the military’s real-world strategy. Other posts related to recruitment have been included in a separate section of this chapter.

These themes—of violence and militarism especially--present themselves in blog posts that were created about Jason Mike, too. On August 19, 2009, Phoenix wrote: “Visit our Real Heroes blogs section for the latest addition from SGT Jason Mike. Read what this Soldier has been up to lately, and check out his inspiring video which shows why SGT Mike was awarded the Silver Star for heroism.” “borba72,” who identifies himself as a sergeant in the video game, wrote: “Tough guy, shooting with 2 weapons at the same time.” And then, someone named “Razorback718” responded: “I am pretty sure it is a story of an act of heroism.” Players engage with not just these characters as parts of the game but engage in their stories to help them form narratives about the war, the military, and potential service. The Real Heroes heroism reaches a mythical status for some game players and users of the website, players like one who identifies himself as “EagleReid.”

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EagleReid17 describes himself as a “military brat” and includes as his interests “aviation, helping, and being a sniper.” He has listed his occupation as a “pilot in training,” and “Eagle Scout” suggesting his age is likely a teenager and puts him in a key part of the Army’s target demographic. Players of America’s Army and users of its website choose to customize their profiles. EagleReid has chosen to use a bald eagle on an American flag background and includes two key elements as a part of this online signature. He has written, “HOOAH!” He also wrote, “I’ve met Staff Sergeant Adams!” and “I’ve been to the Virtual Army Experience.” He also responded to a post made by a friend this way: “Frank—since you giggled, I will have to throw a M67 [grenade] next time I see you.” Further, he has said, “I’ll shoot anything that doesn’t have an ACU [Army Combat Uniform].” Not all of his posts are related to the Real Heroes or using and talking about weaponry, but this sample from his 115 posts on the America’s Army forum suggest the influence of militarization of game play as they furthermore show how young people relate to America’s Army’s Real Heroes. Of course, the Real Heroes are only one part of the vast community forums. Analysis of other posts included in this chapter show further issues related to militarism, violence, recruitment, and commodification of the audience.

Militarism

They join clans with names like Elite Contract Killers, The Butcher Battalion, Battlefield Predators, Black Hawk Legends, Strategic Assault Warriors, Snipers Battalion, Strike Force Viper, and Trained to Kill. Some give themselves unique identifiers on their web pages that include bald eagles, American flags, soldiers firing weapons, or refer directly to military weaponry and killing in the game, called “fragging” and identified by the clan “Fragweiser.” These clan names and online identifiers reveal part of the militarism that is associated with America’s Army. A player identifying himself/herself as “PDdyScott213” wrote as his/her tagline in August 2002: “It’s better to die with bullets in your chest………..than ones in your back.” The tagline appeared in the thread: “when people die you should be able to take their nades.” It suggests a kind of inflated heroism; that is, fighters should run toward the enemy rather than away from it, similar themes to those presented in the Real Heroes biographies of soldiers apparently able to dodge bullets. Militarism also is revealed through individual posts and questions players ask each other on the forum page about subjects that range from those

17 EagleReid’s profile may be found at http://forum.americasarmy.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=283663 148 involving everyday play to others about historic international events like the death of Osama bin Laden.

Within the discussion of militarism, posts often included references to enemies. In May 2006, a player named “Shadow_Justice” wrote in the thread, “A Great Thanks to the AA3 Makers!” under the “General Feedback” heading about the use of a fictional country that had been created by the America’s Army developers as a place for the video game setting. A debate began on the message boards about why the United States could not have fought an actual enemy in the game because that would be perceived as bad politically and would be written about unfavorably in the media. S/he wrote:

Who cares about the media, the Russians are our enemy anyway. Always have been and always will be. Nuclear subs patrolling our shores right now, it was in the news. China wants to own us because of our national debt. The muslims hate us, North Korea...... Who cares!

The responses came quickly.

This one by someone who identified him/herself as a staff sergeant named “PapaBear=VX9=” who has a roaring grizzly bear as part of his/her game signature posted on September 1, 2009:

Wow. Just wow. I think this has to be the most naive post I’ve seen in a while. You know what? I care. Because it’s people like you with your “We’re America; We can do what we want.” Mentality that make these other nations distrust us so much. Our previous administration thought just like you do, and look where it’s got us. Guess what happens when you scare enough other countries and you make too many enemies (even if they are less powerfull than you). Just ask Greece, ask Rome, ask England. They can tell you. And as far as people thinking that fighting the OpForians is unrealistic; it’s been pointed out multiple times now that this is EXACTLY how our military trains. I’m sorry that you don’t like it, lcdarkwraith. But I’m really not sure how it affects your gameplay by one iota. Why NOT have a backstory as to why our American soldiers are in this place? Every other game out there has a storyline. And as the US Army, we should have a legitimate reason for being there. Otherwise we’re just wandering around again looking for WMDs in the desert.

A person named “xxBacchusxx” replied to PapaBear=VX9= that s/he agreed with that statement; that the lack of a discernible enemy in the game is a good point for the American political

149 system. But, in doing so, this poster revealed that his/her sentiments for not having an enemy are related to his/her feelings of the game’s superiority as a more realistic first person shooter. S/he wrote: “i think as time goes by and the game gets better players will be glad to be able to play the BEST FREE online,realistic,cooperative fps out!!!”

Under the current version of America’s Army, known as America’s Army 3.2, players may fight in a country called “Czervenia,” and the video game developers provide maps of the “Czervenian Region.” Phoenix on April 2, 2011, posted satellite photos from this region with the message to the online community:

Headquarters has released two infra-red photos. These images were captured using a low orbit reconnaissance satellite that was redirected to fly-over the Czervenian region three weeks ago. Intelligence reports a high probability of NME activity in these areas. Memorize these photos, then destroy them. All troops are ordered to begin preparations for deployment. Sixty five people responded to that post, and these responses reveal the audience’s interactions with ideologies of militarism and violence. EagleReid was one of the first to respond, writing, “We’ll take them out,” a reference to engaging in the killing of enemies in this fictional—albeit a country meant to be realistic—setting created by the government. Another respondent named “JoseyWales” requested better in-game “gear” to fight in the region, a reference to military machinery. Both posts show elements of American military hegemony and a complete dissociation from any concept other than that of U.S. dominance.

Furthermore, for all the discussion of the enemies and the in-game geographies, the posters do not explain nor do they address what the possibilities might be for the government production of a video game like America’s Army to include an enemy or a fictional country where fighting takes place other than to suggest that politically the game makers could not have Iraq or Afghanistan as an in-game foe. Militarism, then, becomes normalized in the game for the audience just as the enemy is created as potentially anywhere; such an enemy always serves as an immediate threat to U.S. national security. The immersion in the game linked to such militarism—the want to be a warrior in a violent society--becomes a key feature, whether that country exists or not appears to help further the immersion in the game by the players. Allen (2011) wrote: “I conclude by asserting that the unreal enemy of America’s Army is, ultimately, an enemy that is not exclusive to a video game, but one that exists as an anonymous specter, ever

150 present in the militarized American cultural imaginary” (p. 1). By not needing to identify with a specific place or enemy, for example if they game actually was set in Iraq, the game developers appear to create an online environment that allows players to have a greater sense of escapism while they simultaneously claim to offer realism, the juxtaposition seeming to boost players’ immersion.

Immersion (McMahan, 2003) refers to the players’ feelings of both love of the game and the players’ beliefs that they have become a part of the game. Greater immersion makes video games feel more like virtual reality (McMahan, 2003). That immersion and virtual war (Der Derian, 2001) allow for players’ feelings about possible human rights abuses or other enemy treatment to be disconnected from the actual human costs. Li (2004) wrote: “From the perspective of the media militarization critiques, the advance of ever more sophisticated media technologies allow a displacement or obfuscation of the reality of suffering bodies from the public communication of war” (p. 81). Of course, for some such obfuscation may be a part of their actual lives but the game play and the forum allow for the resonance and reinforcement of those messages.

For example, “Rob2112,” who identified as a recruit when he posted on June 24, 2009, wrote this in response to questions about the U.S. military killing civilians:

Don’t ever accuse our armed forces of being uncourageous you whiny sissy. You tell my buddy or any of his brothers in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq right now that they don’t have balls enough to engage the enemy. Tell me, or any of my sailors who maintain E-2C’s, that we wouldn’t fight tooth and nail alongside any of our Marine Corps, Army, or Air Force brothers on the ground while serving as boots on the ground in an Individual Augmentee billet. I’ll cut you a deal, find a place better than the US and I’ll buy you a one-way ticket, anywhere you want to go. All you have to do is never come back. Players also relate to militarism through the express interest in enemies, known as “opfor,” which stands for “opposing forces,” or “NME.”

U.S. enemies, or the construction of the enemy, have remained stable since the start of the video game in 2002, in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Searches were conducted both for “NME” and “opfor” to find data for this section but also I searched specifically for references to Osama bin Laden, who was an enemy in the early days of the video game but who in 2011 died at the hands of American forces. In 2002, in the early days of game

151 play, a thread was started called “Fun things to do when you cannot play.” In that thread a person identifying himself/herself as a recruit named “Kakapoo” wrote, “We will edit the Arab Opposing Forces skin to look like Osama Yo Mamma,” a reference to Osama bin Laden, the reported Taliban leader. Kakapoo responded later that same day that: “I would love to make my opposing forces skin…to look like Osama…” After players interacted with Kakapoo s/he wrote: “yeah I am talking about just some slight modifications to the facial hair region ;) Just to make it a little more enjoyable.” The enjoyment, in this case, was not just about killing. But it was about killing enemies identified as men with beards, an apparent reference to men who would look like Osama bin Laden, or those who are Muslim.

In May 2011, in the weeks after the United States government announced Navy Seals had killed Osama bin Laden in a surprise mission in Pakistan, America’s Army users addressed his death and representations of the other in different ways. On May 18, 2011, a player named “wrath_of_grunge_” wrote in a thread titled “It’s time for everyone’s favorite game show,” that one of Osama bin Laden’s children had criticized the American government for a lack of fairness and justice. “wrath” wrote that “3,000+ Americans dead. Two 9mm rounds arent’ justice, but it’s definitely a start.” Of the fact that Osama bin Laden was denied a proper burial, “wrath” continued with a one-word response: “score.” In one of the responses to “wrath,” this one by a poster named “Viking_from_norway,” even those who believed that the Americans may have violated a nation’s sovereign status or may have killed him unfairly, still showed on the posts that they received satisfaction from Osama bin Laden’s death. “Viking” wrote:

Either way, there is neither right nor wrong here. Tough war is war, legitimate or not. He’s death is proberbly for the best, tough he mighty serve more of a leader in his death than in is recent life. Personally His death gave me grin. The death of Osama bin Laden served as a point of celebration but it also became normalized into the language of game play in the days following the raid. Players experiencing problems with the game, or bugs, wrote that since the Osama bin Laden mission had been completed, game developers should have more time to work out problems, an apparent nod to the interwoven connections the players believed the video game has to the actual military. Video game play and the use of the community forum become intertwined with the military violence in the actual world, fans repurposed and repositioned the death as a way to both legitimize military violence as they also celebrate it.

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Others took to the forum as a way to celebrate. Someone identified as “warworks,” wrote on May 6, 2011: “I would like 2 thank all people in amercias army for the death of osama bin larden .Also like 2 say i dacnce on his grave thanks to all . ps.hooha all.” EagleReid wrote: “Hooah! Good work, troops!” a reference to the work of the common soldier. A poster named “Lilith” wrote under the thread “Bin laden dead,” which was started on May 1 and included 2,006 views and 91 posts:

My point is, it’s good that we took out the head guy, but we need to keep focused on eliminating the entire threat. In my opinion this is how it is: Terrorists from the middle east attacked us. This shows that there is a threat to our nation near one of our nations essential resources... Oil. If the terrorists had taken control of these countries then gas prices would go from 4 dollars a gallon to no gas for the public at all. I don’t care about Iraqi freedom or any of that freedom, revenge BS. We are there to protect a major investment and to eliminate a severe threat. We would do the same to North Korea if they attacked us on our soil. That is how our country is nowadays. We are neutral until something messes with us or presents a threat to us. Others were interested not just in the death itself, but in how Osama bin Laden had been killed, asking questions about the death and when—and whether—they would be able to see photos of the dead body, the ultimate war trophy. A player named “Octavius_Generalista” wrote: “year, hearing it was navy seals, a 40 min firefight, looks like some of heroes have been made.” Heroism, like militarism, results from the death of the enemy in the world of the video game fan. Here, the violence of military game play and its potential effects on the audience seem woven into the ideologies embedded in the text by the military.

The creation and the perception of the enemies throughout the early versions of the America’s Army game and its website—references to the Taliban and al Queda discussed in chapter five—reflect part of the political economic apparatus and how it seeks to cultivate in the audience the perception that the entire Muslim world is made up of terrorists, terrorists whose killing becomes a player’s enjoyment. In a study of more than 90 video games, some produced in the United States including America’s Army and others in European countries, Sisler (2008) found that “the Middle East is a favourite virtual battleground” and wrote that “action games and especially first-person shooters present the Middle East in a contemporary and decidedly conflictual framework, schematization Arabs and Muslims as enemies” (p. 215) Often the monolithic representation of this Arab enemy confuses “Arab” for “Muslim” and vice versa. In the current America’s Army version, enemies are not represented by any type of physical or

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religious markers. They wear black masks. But even still, the creation and constant reinforcement of the enemy for the game playing audience reinforces stereotypes of foreign enemies and justification for war. As Li (2004) wrote:

As the gamer generation expands and grows older, the likely effect of such recruiting and strategic communication projects as America’s Army is that the military gamer groups will rapidly grow in size, and their particular political positioning will be increasingly influential in shaping the civilian-military public interest discourse potential in the gamespace. (p. 83) As America’s Army enters its second decade of play and free dissemination, this militarism may have potentially profound effects related to future wars, military spending, xenophobia, racism, and perceptions of American involvement in foreign affairs. In dealing with enemies, the military has ROE, rules of engagement, or protocols that explain how combatants should be handled. Within these threads, the codes turn not just from militarism but to violence, as will be explained in part of the next section.

Violence: Realism, Under-realism, Resurrection, Desensitization

Across numerous threads, many website users in discussions of themes as diverse as how to hold a weapon ranging to how to treat an enemy begin their posts this way: “In real life.” In real life, you would have your legs blown off and still throw a grenade at an enemy. In real life, you would kill the enemy, get the glory, and then you would die a hero on the battlefield. In real life, you would have honor. In real life, the medics would come to get you. And then you would get a medal. Players even use the tag to justify violence, including violence performed against in- game enemies.

On September 22, 2009, a player who self-identified as a “private first class” named “=Max=Machete” wrote on the thread, “Roe for shooting a down enemy”: “In real life you cant revive people to be combat ready again. From this point of view an incapacitated enemy is better than a dead one.” These comments, which interact with state textual themes of “violence,” reveal what these players believe happens or could happen on the battlefield. Their interactions with the website messages offer little reality as to what may happen on an actual battlefield. Hundreds of players’ posts show people seem to believe wildly inaccurate things about what happens when soldiers are injured, what happens when enemies approach the soldiers, what happens when they use military equipment, and what happens, sadly, when a soldier nears death or dies on the

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battlefield. Posters believe that soldiers who have been injured still are capable of wildly heroic actions, like those images of Real Hero Jason Mike firing off two weapons at once in the heat of battle. For example, a player named “Zell65” wrote on September 19, 2004, on the thread “picking up hot frags,” a reference to hand grenades, “Why the h e l l can’t you pick it up and throw it back in real life? If it lands RIGHT in front of you, it probably take half a second to scoop it up, and 1 second to throw it back hard in any direction away from you. Shouldn’t be too hard...”

These misunderstandings are not shocking or surprising considering how survival and death are depicted by the video game website, in places like the Real Heroes biographies and in the video game itself. The video game is reported by the military public relations staff to provide a sense of realism about military service and, as a result, players believe that the game and the situations are similar to what might happen or does happen in a real life battlefield like Iraq or Afghanistan. For example, in a different thread started in October 2004 and titled, “About the hand grenades,” players exchanged information about the best ways to use—and avoid—hand grenades used in the game and how long it takes them to explode. Understanding such time frames helps players to know how long they have to escape or, and more regularly, how much time they need before they can kill an enemy in the video game. One player said that grenades take nine to 10 seconds to explode. A person describing himself/herself as “[USMC] Pendragon” wrote: “No they don’t. They blow up between 4 to 5 seconds in real life.” Stahl (2010) suggested that America’s Army provides a point of intersection between training, war, and recruitment. In such a place, he wrote: “war games function as a primary conduit for the military assimiliation of the civic mind” (p. 93). It is helpful to view, as Stahl did, the creation of a place where video game culture intersects with state violence and state power, however, we must move beyond such a characterization when viewing issues of violence and realism. More than just what Stahl suggested is the creation of the clean war for the citizenry for the purpose of asking them to join. What a sample of these comments suggests through the use of their terms about “in real life,” is that such a cleaning is not just underway but is complete.

When players are injured in the video game by gun shot or by grenade, they are able to call for a medic, one of the key service areas highlighted by the Real Heroes and one of the occupations that the America’s Army players may have in the game. For example, under the “General Discussion” heading, a post titled “medic,” started in July 2009 reveals some of the 155 misperceptions of unrealities off ththe game’s ability to call for a medic, not entirely unlike how the biographies of Brown and Mikee wwere created on the Real Heroes web pages. A personp identifying himself/herself as “RSRS-Makk” and as a recruit, which means he or she is likely a new player, wrote: “what’s the benefitefit of calling for a medic?” Other players respondndede that such a call can help you if you are injureured although some agree that players are not consnsistently helping other players when they hear thathat in-game sound for a medic or that it may takee toot long for a medic to arrive. A person identifitified as a private first class named “{DA} Sgt.Tsasavo” wrote:

I love being a medic, thereere’s just something about reviving a fallen heroo anda then having them help completlete the mission. When that happens, it’s worth all the other times of me gettingng shot while trying to revive, or them screwing up my 1- time-use IFAK. It’s all woworth it. And if someone does just run by you, keep in mind they may have alreaready used their IFAK. Although, I’ll still stop andnd treat you so you don’t bleed ouout (which is good for spotting NME). And a player named “[OGG-A]H]HAZ,” a private, wrote: oh god I know that feelinging,lol. I to run and medic ppl, as I thought the gamegam was a replica of what youd do in real comba, to an extent. in real life if you wereer deployed and say an 8-10 man squad out to patroll the last thing you wouould do is let a brother lay and die.. HHell wouldnt you be bound by a bond a frienshiphip as deep as familliy? Thats the guyuy know is covering your back who gave you hisis lastl ciggerett, this morning bfr going out on patroll. ppl lets do your med jobb,, to wounded when call for memed report e while waiting and at time of med reportrep position as well. leys bondond up on the team become a unit and get it done. While the use of medics in the gagame may be linked to service areas and recruitmetment, its inclusion in the video game also reveals thethemes of violence for the perception of how violeolence may be solved for the audience. That is,s, lliterally, medics in the game give the impressioionn of healing and that wounds or death are somehowhow not permanent.

The discussions of deathth aand injury in the game lead to other themes thatat have been included under the theme of “violiolence” but that include other key themes relateded to FPS video games including death, being vioiolent, and desensitization to violence. For exampple, in July 2009, a player identifying himself/herserself as a sergeant named “Dark Hussard” wrote:: “Today I was surrounded by 6 teammates andd I was badly hit. I called for medic and nobody came.ca Finally I died 3 minutes later. It was a huguge temptation to drop a nade in the middle of thishis bunch of idiots .” Others have expressed theirir opinions about medics and their in-game death, and such characterizations help to positionon the game’s under-realism as a key issue for itsts targetedt

156 demographic. For example, on August 19, 2009, “parlourbeatflexf” wrote this in response to the, “New thought for the game,” thread:

Martydom is automatic, so the idea of nades being pulled would at least bring an element of skill into it. PLUS imagine if your about to confirm when the almost dead dude pulls a nade...... split seconds to decide whether to shoot and risk ROE or run..... real real cool in my opinion. You should at least be able to crawl away when your downed (up until a certain level of injury)...... Its absolutely stupid you can somehow report in/enemy spot and yet do nothing else. Its like u suddenly turn into a spaz that can only work a radio. This is supposed to be a realistic game.... im sure if a real soldier gets shot in the legs he would at least try and crawl out of the line of fire.... it would make a meds job a little bit easier... seen as smost people tend to not bother about actually problem solving there way to healing. Such a discussion on the community forum by a player about death and survivability is linked to America’s Army’s position as a function of militainment and the military-entertainment complex. Stahl (2010) described the game’s reliance on under-representing death on the battlefield as a key point of the game’s use as a recruiter. Were the game to include gory violence, it could be more controversial and a less successful piece of the Army’s recruitment efforts.

The audience’s responses to death reveal this disconnect between fighting and death. In the August 2009 thread titled, “Come Back Stories…,” under the “General Discussion” section, death becomes a normalized part of play that serves to both celebrate violence as it works to politically distance players from those kills they make in game. Player “bl4nkm4n” wrote: “I got 8 kills in a round (with m16) ☺ my 248th hawkeye ☺.” A player named “Masada” responded 18 minutes later: “HOLY CRAP!!! What’s your frag rate like?” a reference to the points that player had been awarded based on the number of people killed in the game. A third person named “MadforTrad” responded:

I was looking after our sniper & after he got chopped up pretty bad I rushed over to heal him. He had about 5 injuries so I saw there for a while healing him as he thanked me profusely over the voip [voice over internet]. I was about to heal his last injury and pressed what I thought was ‘V’ but press both ‘F’ and ‘V’, which happens to be my bind for melee. As I’m saying ‘No problem man’ my character wacks him over the head with my m16 & he dies. Similar characterizations fill the game community forum pages. A player named “-cap!tal!sm” wrote: “Best series I had was I killed with guys in one round.” Another named “101_Proof” said, “The first 10 kills all came from my trusty M16. However since then M16 and M249 I have 3.6

157 kd ration with only 1.6 kd with M4.” In interactions with other players, people on the forums often regard their best round ever playing as the ones that they have killed the most other people. Often, those kills are discussed infused with humor, which is represented on the message boards as a desensitization to violence while it simultaneously fails to address the actual threats or risks associated with violence.

Such characteristics are part of the clean war that seeks to sanitize war. Stahl (2010) wrote: “The disappearance of death represents the primary method of neutralizing the citizen’s moral culpability in the decision to unleash state violence,” (p. 27). As an example of this in the audience analysis, a person named “M.Carter,” has as his or her tag line: “Shooting Opfor since 2006!” This tagline was discovered in April 2011 in response to the Phoenix post about a satellite photo from the enemy region Czervenia. A player who called himself/herself “Copperhead6” posted a message on March 8, 2011, in the thread,“Bug in the Marksmanship Position of Basic Combat Training,” found under the “General Discussion” section of the forum. Copperhead6 wrote:

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but there’s some kind of bug in the marksmanship portion of Basic Combat Training. Every time I hold my breath before a shot, I still miss no matter what position I’m shooing in because the gunsight rocks from side to side and bounces up and down when I shoot. I hope this problem can be corrected as soon as possible because I’d like to finish marksmanship training and U.S. weapons familiarization as well. I play FPS games similar to AA3 and I can assure you I shoot MUCH BETTER in those than I have in here thus far. In another FPS game called Project Blackout, for example, I once shot 126 men in 10 minutes in a firefight in a subway with a PSG-1 sniper rifle, right before I shot 128 more in other 10-minute firefight. Anyway, I just thought I’d run this issue by the folks at AA3. Have a good one!

Such characterizations of violence and desensitization to violence are revealed in player posts asking about other players’ most memorable moments in the game or reflecting fondly on past in-game fights.

The violence becomes so normalized as to appear as something that is there for the everyday consumption and use, as much a part of the game and game play that it is as basic as logging on to the video game server. For example, “-dissolution-“ wrote in the thread, “POST YOUR MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS OF AMERICA’s ARMY,” started in May 2004,

158 that his/her most memorable momoment was when “I killed 5 people with the pistoltol in a roe with only shot ☺. 3 of lined up for mee as I shot them in the back from south stairs .” Another in that thread named “woogle” wrote: “A guy jumped off the midtower from the top afterafte a granade was thrown there and he died midairir aand it looked like a bootleg version of ‘ragdoll’ phychics, and i forgot to screencap it ,” a referference to not having a still shot of it to use later. OthersO have posted about how game veteransns prefer killing enemies in the game as in the thrreade , “Head or Chest?,” started in May 2006. SoSomeone named “Guerilla_Fighter” wrote:

Hi guys. I’m asking the prpros here…Now, do you guys in most general situationssit in close combat, say anythything from point blank to 20metres maybe, do youyo guys aim for head or chest? CoCos a head shot is one hit kill but it’s much harderer to hit than chest. And chest takeakes about 6 bullets max. but is a lot easier to hit. So,S what do the pros have to say? Twenty-two players responded to the thread, which was read 1,149 times. Suggesgestions included this one from a “staff seargeant”t” nnamed “ETE_Ed”: “Aim for upper torso: if allll bulletsb hits it will only take 0.3 sec to kill him..m... ;)..If you get the first hit you are more likelyy to be victorious then if you aim for head and mississ..” Players discussed the benefits—saving ammmunition and time, for example—of using one killing method over the other.

Players develop their ownwn language for violence and of violence in orderer to be more violent in the video game. Someoeone who identifies himself as “_fish_” posted in the, “About the hand grenades,” thread on the AmAmerica’s Army website how he refers to the weapeaponry and actions of the weaponry that hee hhas access to. He posted that when he is referringing to fragmentation grenades he askss fefellow players: “anyone got any frags left?” but whenw he talks to players about being killed he saysays to them, “you got fragged.” When he is commumunicating with an online player he wants to killll hhe says, “nade him,” but may say, “smoke him,” if he wants to use a different type of grenade avavailable in the weapons selection of the video game.ga A player identifying him/herself as “dgodfdfather” uses as her/his in-game identification the tagline: “Can YOU handle the frag?” showingg tthat players also co-opt the phrase for their ownn personal use.

A player named “GoGuapuapsy” started in June 2009 a thread titled, “Guys,ys, understand that u CANT SHOOT AN INCAPACCITATED PERSON,” under the General Discussussion section of the forum. He wrote:

ok, so one more game tododay. I was playing, got killed next to a bunch off friendlies. I was incapacitcitaded. Just as my team finished killing the enemymy on the 159

hay bales (were I died), an enemy shot me (on purpouse) killing me (not just incapped, cuz i already was incapped). Ok, guys, if u don’t realize, doing that is against the laws of war (as far as I am concerned) and the soldier’s values (u lose ROE when do that). So DONT shoot incapped ppl, arrest them, or leave’m alone, just don’t shoot’em.

He continued:

ok, what im saying is, yes, its just a game, but its suppose to be a serious game, a game to recruit ppl to join the army, a game to give civilians an experience of the army life. IRL, as far as I know, u could get sent to court marcial for shooting a wounded (incapped) person. So guys, don’t do that in game, ok?

The 115 responses that followed addressed several of “GoGuapsy’s” points and provide some interesting evidence of recruitment, militarism, violence, and a counterpoint to those themes of violence and militarism by players who were concerned about in-game strikes against enemy players who could no longer get away from the violence. Some posters, like “oinkage1,” a private first class, said: “I shoot downed people and will continue to do it.”

Often issues of appropriate rules of engagement are addressed by players with non- American flags as their profiles. An Australian, who identified himself as a veteran named, “FecKIEStHug” wrote: “We, meaning the Western Democracies, aren’t like that. ‘We’ give quarter and succor to our enemies.” Two immediate responses followed “FecKIEStHug’s”: Both wrote “LOL,” a term meaning “laugh out loud.” A third person responded to his post this way:

We in the Western Democracies train our soldiers to execute failure drill – two shots to the body followed by a single shot through the head – to ensure the total incapacitation of the enemy, reducing the number of times we actually have to give quarter to anyone... We’re no nicer than anyone else really. Others, this one named and identified by an American flag wrote:

I don’t think the penalty is nearly harsh enough. It should be an instant trip to Leavonworth along with a massive ROE hit or even a loss of 1 honor. That would stop all this BS from happening. The punks would think twice about killing an incapicatated NME then. A player who identified himself with a Canadian flag named “F.Angel” wrote in response to the original post that killing incapacitated enemies was a “war crime” and a “violation” of the laws of war. But s/he continued in the next sentence: “And if you really don’t want an enemy to be incapped, then don’t stop firing. If you kill them before their incapped body hits the floor then

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they die without violation.” That comment suggests that even when players attempt to demonstrate the proper rules of engagement and war, still the overwhelming sentiment is that killing is possible, permissible, and justified. Other players, however, are un-phased by violence, by brutally killing enemies, or justifying such killing in the name of American patriotism. A player identified as a private first class named “Espi” wrote that he “euthanized” enemies to save himself and his teammates, a term that a fellow player named “benning” addressed: “I do so love the term euthanize.”

Regarding the recruitment part of that post: A player identified as “Remis” wrote: “I like shooting wounded enemys. I don’t care about real army and i don’t want to join army to waste my time.. Its a game, i’m playing it for fun.” Another player named “[hwy]SD” responded:

HAHAHA ‘join army to waste my time’.... Yeah my career that allows me to retire at 38 years old is a waste of time!! LOL I love it. Check out some of the Recruiting aspects of the game and perhaps become somewhat educated before claiming Soldiers time is a waste. You do know this game is provided by the Army right?? Love the logic! Other players in the thread refer to what they say the Army video game has taught them. A post by “Defiant47,” who identifies himself/herself with a Canadian flag and as a private first class, explained:

I’m sorry, but one of the main things that the Army values has taught me (shown throughout the game) is that you should put the mission and your team first. I am willing to lose and lose points in order to claim victory for my team and keep as many of them alive as possible. I am not willing to let a silly rule like ‘you can’t shoot enemies’ get in the way of that. It would be dishonourable. Violence done in the name of patriotism is seen as honorable. This raises real questions about what would happened if these players actually did join the Army. Would such ideas cultivated through virtual war play translate onto an actual battlefield?

Recruitment

Stahl (2010) suggested that the military branding strategies of the 1990s and 2000s entered a new phase taking potential recruits from the idea of joining the military to the idea of cultivating a lifestyle. He wrote: “Rather than sell a specific career path, the military is increasingly presented to the entire social spectrum as an identity to be vicariously consumed”

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(p. 71). The government, which has recruitment as its chief goal, uses America’s Army to target adolescents and create a brand that they both can use and aspire to.

Already discussed, as a limitation of this analysis, it is difficult to pinpoint which of the website users are adolescents and even more difficult to know which of the players actually have used the video game and then thought about and joined the military as a result of video game play. But, one can see based on an analysis of nearly 10,000 comments within the threads on the forum page how the video game has normalized the mere act of recruitment. Players are able to join “clans,” and these clans play against others worldwide. In different sections of the forum, people can post their information and say that they are looking to join different clans and wish to become a part of existing clans. The language becomes normalized such that the idea of recruitment in real life seems as simple as it does in the game.

In May 2008, a self-identified 15-year-old player with the user name “mvpbball” wrote to the thread, “Players looking for clans only,” “I am a great all around players….no only can I handle a sniper, AR, grenadier, rifleman, but I am a great objective man.” Another player on that thread identified himself as “jemery07” wrote: “Just email me if you’d like to recruit.” Another person identified as “oceanicbeach1” wrote: “I have played all of these games at least a month long, wich explains why im 12, i have been playing since i was 10 and have started making real progress since 11, I will be a dedicated member of your squad and will consider ALL recruitments!” Others like “-SOI-musclepunch” was aged 14 when s/he looked for a clan to join and posted about trying to be recruited on the website forum. Another named “Sheraton68” posted in December 2009 when s/he was 13. Another player identified as “Koyuk” wrote in June 2010 that he was looking for a clan. He was, at that time, a 14-year-old member of the Boy Scouts who said that “he can take orders” and was a qualified sniper. A 17-year-old player identified as “unsuperab1e” wrote that he was looking to become active in America’s Army before he went to Basic Training. His online presence describes him as a “future soldier.”

The government posts also suggest other recruiting strategies, and an analysis of more than 200 comments posted to the June 2008 thread called, “Where should we advertise AA3? Need comments,” described in chapter five, reveals how the Army attempted to engage with gamers to seek advice about the game play and ways to target its adolescent demographic. Smythe (1981) said: “Because audience power is produced, sold, purchased and consumed, it

162 commands a price and is a commodity” (p. 256). Here, this shows that the audience is a commodity for its power as a pool of potential military recruits but also as its power of networking with other gamers and as adopters of culture that the Army management can utilize and exploit for the adolescent demographic that it most needs.

Within 20 minutes of the June 2008 thread’s posting, the players were ready to help and provide information to their wants and desires to help the military essentially better propagandize them. Someone named “Sparta—Commander” wrote: “i think you should put the commercial or advertisement on a sports channel (ex. ESPN) cause like I mean who doesn’t watch sports. Also a lot of young-mid aged guys watch ESPN (like i mean 15-25) and this is like the prime age group for AA players.” A person named “[FILO]_Seiran” wrote: Also, think about partnerships (Or at the very least renting out ad space) on popular sites like Youtube, myspace, and places like that.” Other players suggested creating a Facebook page; at that time Facebook still was in its early stages but starting to see tremendous growth (Smith, 2008). The next person to respond named “madmax369” suggested posting billboards and cable advertising run after 3 p.m. when teenagers get home from school. He then said: “I am a big fan of AA and its one of my most favorite games, but it did somewhat get me interested in the army, im more into joining the airforce though, sorry.” A few minutes later another player named “W@@dy” wrote:

I haven’t joined the Army because of AA (I’m only 16), but it did get me into thinking about Army/Airforce benefits for college and stuff. I joined CAP (Civil Air Patrol, it's an Airforce Auxillary) and am still in it, but I'm starting to pull away from that now. If you do advertise the game, you need to make it sound like it's not just an Army recruiting station, but fun. I think you should say something like ‘Made by the Army, so you get the real deal. Here, the themes of recruitment may be directly linked back to the textual analysis of the game’s key recruitment aims tied to the profiles of the Real Heroes who suggest free college and the benefits of a military career. Clearly, the audience is responding to these ideologies in ways that suggest that game play and interacting with the website text are solidifying in them the idea of military service. Responses such as these then suggest users are acting within what Hall (1980) called the “dominant code” (p. 171) of decoding messages. It leaves little room for debate on the part of the audience to reject such messages. In these cases, messages are inherent in the text and repeated through

163 interactions with other members of the online community, members who may be parts of the public relations machine.

Players attempt to negotiate their game play on a FPS that also is a military recruiter in various ways. In a thread called, “Will the OPFOR actually be OPFOR this time??” started in March 2009, a player who identified himself/herself as a private first class named “Panades” wrote:

Nobody is being forced to nothing and that’s the crucial question... If they boys out there don’t like the game they will play another one, so the army intent to get recruits with the game will the ruined. You are absolutly right - nobody is forced to play AAO - Think about that! Entire threads have been devoted to players attempting to begin discussions on the forum about the fact that the game is being used primarily as a recruitment tool. A thread started in August 2009, titled, “For those who think AA3 is a game,” received 63 responses and was viewed 2,299 times. Responses included those by “{UEF}PunXt3rr0r” who wrote:

It still is a game, it’s virtual and you/I get fun playing to it so it is a game, If you want those side effect like you call them than go to war for real and not from your computer. War is not game, AA3 is. A player who told the forum that he spent four years as an active duty Marine wrote: “Although fun to play, anyone who thinks this is how it will be in the military I feel sorry for you.” This player, based on his own military service, brings personal experience into the decoding process that younger players not have.

But others show that they do not understand that this is the game’s primary focus, and included in this group are players like “digital.braVo” who wrote: “If americas army is a recruitment tool. Then why are the maps not set in places like the mid east, iraq, iran ,afganistan.”Another poster named “arglock” wrote: “America’s Army is a game,” quoting from an Army newsletter, apparently convinced by that public relations presentation alone that the game was not meant to be a recruiter but merely entertainment. As Nieborg (2010) wrote: “Entertainment has long been an indispensable instrument in the propagandist’s toolbox” (p. 63). A person in the online audience named “[VET]Bud” articulated a popular sentiment across this thread and others:

No matter how you slice and dice AA, this game will continue to be a center piece for the US Army. It continues to be the only FPS ‘adventure’ that is by definition,

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the US Army game. No other title on the market has this calling, let alone reputation. The Army will continue this market position by giving out the game for free and setting up its virtual Armies nationwide, which some on the forum will discuss at length. It also is able to partner with Ubisoft, a leading video game producer and distributer, to mark its spot as the leading maker of FPS technology. A poster identified as “arifreddom” wrote: “I remember, I got the game on disc. The army had a tent set up at a fair and computers out to try the game. I got the discs for free.” That dissemination aided by its reputation is used by both the Army and by its corporate partners, including Ubisoft, which produces versions of the game for the Xbox and other gaming consoles, and NASCAR to extend the purchasing power of adolescents immersed in game play. Immersion may influence another key component of the production; that is, an attempt to draw business to corporate partners.

Commodification

Players are commodified in several different ways and react to this commodification in ways that appear more homogenous than in other parts of the forum. That is, the responses to threads that discuss products or corporate sponsors offer little criticism of a system that is overly commercialized. For the purposes of this discussion of commodification, I draw on Mosco’s (2009) definition of commercialization in which he claims that it deals with the link between sculpting an audience for an advertiser. Here, commodification and commercialization is a two- pronged concept. The goal of commodifying the youth audience is meant to offer corporations some financial benefit for their products, products that include the Xbox or the chat function Xfire. More serious is the idea that the Army is trying to brand itself as use America’s Army as an advertising vehicle to sell war enlistment as a product to an online audience.

Online, when corporate brands are introduced on the forums, the audience seems more willing to entertain the idea of buying, especially buying other FPS games or console versions of America’s Army. Of course, there are places where the audience reacts to such messages but, even in these reactions, the audience does, as Smythe (1981) suggested, the work of the branders by continuing the messages in a public forum. During audience analysis looking at other themes related to RQ7, I noticed numerous posts where players sought to interact with each other by Xfire, the in-game chat feature that was discussed in chapter four as a reference to the production and targeting of adolescents by corporations in partnership with the video game. While this

165 section is meant to reflect on the audience reception and participation with the corporate branders and Army brand itself, it is worth noting that elements of popular culture are revealed in other places throughout the site, which further reflects the audience’s active part of meaning making in a pop culture-based society. For example, the clan Fragweiser repurposed the Budweiser logo for use as its in-game signature, a sign, like the player included at the beginning of this chapter who repurposed the Dos Equis commercial, of the influence of popular culture on the game users.

In July 2009, Phoenix posted a new thread titled, “AA3&NASCAR,”18 under the “News & Announcements” page of the America’s Army website including a photograph of the newly- sponsored vehicle. Phoenix wrote: “Watch as the Army’s #39 Chevrolet Impala SS races for glory with the America’s Army 3 logo proudly displayed on its hood. The U.S. Army team races with a dedication, teamwork and passion which is inspired by the Soldiers who defend our freedom.” The thread generated 48 posts and was viewed 5,891 times. The NASCAR team based on the video game was created as a recruitment tool, but this section also reveals details about the commodification of the audience. The audience responded, at first, overwhelmingly in favor of the car. For example, a poster named “[1-9Cav]DesertRat” wrote: “Oh this is so cool guys! Recognition at last! HooAhh! Car looks great!” Such positive reinforcement showed the existence of a mutually beneficial relationship between the video game and the corporation. A player named “Neuenhoff” wrote: “I might have to watch NASCAR for once.” Another named “Maj.Woody” wrote: “Sweet now that is REAL advertisement!!!!!!!!!!” Soon, comments turned to merchandising. A player named “Hernandez” wrote: “I like that nascar shirt they using ☺” About 3.5 hours later, someone named “DS]-Darknezz” wrote: “They should make a jacket for this car it would be cool. Or do they have one? I’d definitely check it out. Just found out, I might buy later on before winter looks hot,” and then s/he posted a link to the NASCAR store where other members of the audience could review the jacket. The next person identified as “F@ta1iTy” wrote:

been a nascar fan myself for about 11 years and I see no better way to promote the game...nascar has a HUGE fanbase and im not suprised they decided to put it on the car. As for them jackets I Have a couple and I can vouch for them they are A grand choice for winter/really whenever you want to wear it, durable long lasting

18 This thread may be found at http://archive.forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php? t=309264&highlight=%22Army%22+%22tent%22 166

and the way it’s designed with some of the drivers sponsors and signature is awesome. Such an extension by the audience of the brands presented by the government and corporations who have serious stakes in commercializing the audience of America’s Army reveals that the audience is interacting with consumerist ideologies. Smythe (1981) wrote: “Much of the work that audience power does for advertisers takes place in the heads of audience members” (p. 254). The benefits of having the audience do the work is that it becomes an investment in both the Army, the video game, and the ideals of patriotism and action, which Stahl (2010) claimed are easily packaged together.

Several hours after the initial post about “AA3&NASCAR,” someone identified as “Razorback718” wrote: “Not only does NASCAR have a large fan base, but its fan base is not cynical about advertisement. So, the potential return on investment from advertising on the hood of a NASCAR vehicle is likely greater than in a commercial.” Fans of NASCAR interpret corporate sponsorship as almost inevitable, which would not be nearly as troubling were it not for a corporate environment that favors advertising also delegitimizes many fans—in labor, as an example--within the target demographic (Newman & Giardina, 2010). Razorback’s recognition of the advertising and the thread were posted one year after another player identified as “[Nick]” posted a thread with the same name, “AA3&NASCAR,” critical of the government’s decision to sponsor a race car. Others disagreed. A player named, “RangeFinder,” wrote: “Happy to see AA3 being advertised like this…Advertising is sorely needed in this project.” These players see the game’s advertising, therefore, as a positive extension of the video game that they believe will create more revenue that may be reinvested back into the game. Such is the work of the audience in the consciousness industry (Enzensberger, 1974; Jhally, 1989) that seeks to legitimize capitalism and the ideas of the ruling elite. Bettig (2004) wrote: “The coercive nature of capitalism alone cannot guarantee its hegemony; it requires ideological work to convince subordinate classes that the system is fair, just, and ‘natural’” (p. 89). The audience receives messages about branding—both of the Army, war, and commercial enterprises linked to the video game—that serve as ideological functions in the consciousness industry. Many responses, analyzed here, show that the audience is, indeed, along for the ride.

Some dissenters who believe the advertising is not meant to attract them, understand that the decision to target NASCAR fans is rooted in the game’s real motives of recruitment. For

167 example, a post from “privateangel” said: “The Nascar thing is so they can attract 14 year old red necks into the Army simple as that. This is a recruitment tool after all, so who do u think they are targeting with Nascar advertising. Mainstream gamers? I dont think so.” What seems interesting about this post is that the contributor believes that s/he may not face the effects that others in the audience could. Such is the power of the brand that it appears to allow for criticism even though players still participate in the work and production. As Kellner and Share (2005) suggested:

These biases become especially pernicious when two factors exist: (1) limited and dominant groups do the majority of the representing, as in the case of the multinational corporate mass media; (2) messages are naturalized, such that people seldom question the transparent social construction of the representations. (p. 370) Li (2004) further described the America’s Army audience as one that becomes transformed into an online fan community for the military and its ideologies whilst it also commodifies players as members of the government-private audience; that is, players become fans but also become advertising mouthpieces to other game members who use the community forums on the site. Even when players like privateagnel seem to pull back the veil on the true mission, the posts are rare and encourage players who do support the mission or the race care to vehemently defend the actions of the corporations and the Army. This is especially relevant to the America’s Army threads under review here.

As was also discussed in chapter four, the video game is produced and available for free on the America’s Army website. The government also has increased distribution possibilities worldwide by partnering with multinational corporate game company, Ubisoft, to license versions for consoles including the Xbox. This feature also has been discussed on the community forum. Players often discuss amongst themselves the benefits of the console game and help each other find links to the updated versions. In one such thread started in May 2009, titled, “A new Americas Army consle game?,” a player named “wiengo” wrote in June 2009: “I would love to see a new console game put out! It would be great to see some of the new features put into the console game! Come on UbiSoft let’s do it!!” Players even suggest that the game should expand further into the console gaming market. A player named “NOLB=Kratos” wrote in October 2008 in the thread, “Where should we advertise AA3? Need comments,” in relation to Army recruitment: “but all in all im pretty conifident that army will make its name known beside the pc

168 and xbox edtion’s. if the game actually pick up on other system’s where every one can play the game, army would be far more bigger in the gaming world, thats my thoughts on it.”

Even when players understand the expansion and the licensing to benefit the mutually beneficial relationship of the video game industry and the Army, they are hardly ever critical of it. Most are like “shizoku24” who wrote in November 2008, in the discussion about how the Army should best target young people that they video game should not use television commercials. S/he wrote: “i see an ad, click goes the remote.” Nowhere does that player mention the game website that they are using is an example of advertising. By creating an entire gaming experience that is an advertisement, the military creators and corporate video game makers have achieved success of quote a spectacular level.

Discussion

Related to America’s Army, the public is supplied with messages of war and entertainment coddled together which are reinforced and repeated by ancillary product deals that result from the partnership between the government and gaming giants. The production of a militarized entertainment game is meant to affect the audience in very specific and serious ways, ways that can have extraordinary consequences when one considers military recruitment as a potential effect of game play. Penney (2010) wrote about the audience of militarized WWII video games: “Historical war-themed games produced for the commercial market enjoy complex ideological relationships with their audiences” (p. 203). Although this analysis includes a review solely of posts that have been written, it must be noted that a forum post created by the government, for example, about Sgt. Tommy Rieman coming home safely from Iraq, might only have five replies, but it has 1,289 views, meaning those people clicked on that post and, perhaps, read it and became a part of the audience.

This chapter has examined more than 9,610 posts within a diverse number of threads across nine years since the America’s Army video game and its community forum started. The themes that these posters—and players—respond to include messages about realism, which is misappropriated by many in the audience as the way that military service and real war actually must be like. When issues of military recruitment then come into play, the idea that such realism has been achieved by the game—which it has not—become key fictions created by the government. The real threat is not that the video game is not representing the horrors of war for

169 its audience, but that adolescents who play the game believe that the video game is the way that war actually is complete with a re-set button.

Adolescent boys especially face risks from their participation playing violent video games and engaging in message board usage that reinforces violent messages, recruitment messages, and others related to the political-economic goals of the state and its corporate, profit- motivated partners. Adolescents are far more impressionable than adults. Linn (2004) explained that the culture’s stories sometimes have profound impacts on adolescent development—these stories help shape attitudes, values, and behaviors during a period of high impressionability. Acuff (1997) suggested that adolescents wish to gain power and status as they experiment with rebellion during a period of storm and stress (Hall, 1904). As adolescents negotiate right and wrong, disruptions with parents, and dramatic changes in physical and cognitive development, they are playing a violent video game that clearly demonstrates and provides outlets for these feelings and may increase their engagement and, as a result, their susceptibility to the government’s and corporations’ messages. This chapter’s analysis has shown that for those in the audience, messages related to the political-economic themes are resonating. These players and website users have repurposed language to normalize violence, death, and murder into their everyday exchanges. Also, when given opportunities to discuss products associated with these themes, website users express overwhelming commercial desires.

Furthermore, messages include themes about militarism, technofetishism, machinery, and actions against enemy combatants, all functions of militainment, the military-entertainment complex, and the military-industrial-media-entertainment network. Violence also is overwhelmingly a part of the audience of America’s Army; not surprising considering that the video game follows a FPS format and borrows its playing mechanics from military-inspired FPS games created by the private game company Ubisoft. To say that the video game website includes violence, however, would oversimplify the issue. Here, violence is included in these online posts related to the act of in-game behavioral violence, desensitization to violence, and acceptance of violence. One post seems to sum such community forum discussion: “Ive killed like 4000 and died nearly 2000... so im not good at all. Its just lately the headshots seem to be appearing more thats all.” Posts like this one seem to normalize that violence as they also create an environment to discuss violence as an everyday occurrence.

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Related to media effects and violence, researchers (Anderson et. al., 2003; Bandura, 1978; Bushman & Anderson, 2002; Gerbner, 1969; 1970; 1972; Lazarsfeld, 1955) have attempted to understand how audiences--and to what extent if at all—have been affected for decades, first by television and, now, more and more by digital technologies that signify convergence culture. Grossman and Degaetano (1999) explained FPS video game violence and its effects this way:

Every day children of all ages and in all stages of brain and ego development watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death for fun and come to associate horror with their favorite soft drink, candy, girlfriend’s perfume, birthday party celebrations, or comfort…Once the brain solidifies the link between pleasure and violence, it is difficult to convince it that it isn’t normal to do so. Endorphins remember. (p. 63) Such identification especially with military FPS games has shown that players who relate more strongly with the video game experience may be more affected by it (Klimmt, Hefner, Vorderer, Roth & Blake, 2010). Moreover, Engelhardt, Bartholow, Kerr, and Bushman (2011) revealed in what they believed was the first experimental study of its kind, that players with low violent media exposure prior to participation in the study who have been desensitized to violence may actually behave more aggressively. The authors reported that for high exposure players, there was no effect. They wrote:

First, it could be that they individuals are already so desensitized that an acute exposure to violent media was insufficient to bring about further changes in their neural responses to violence. Second, it could be that some unmeasured factor causes both an affinity for violent media…and a reduced response to violent imager in violent gamers. (p.1036) As a result then it must be considered that the America’s Army audience that plays more, identifies with in-game features (like the Real Heroes mentors), and builds greater team identities could potentially be more affected by these associations. Adolescent development researchers (Arnett, 1995; 1999; Larsen & LeFleur, 1954) have shown that identity formation is a key marker of this age group; children at this age are far more susceptible to propagandistic messages and are far more willing to remember such messages and pass these messages through larger social networks.

This chapter does not suggest a cause-effect relationship between America’s Army website use or video game play and aggression in the audience. Certainly the issue of media

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effects is far more complicated than that. Moreover, it is also important to note that this dissertation chapter examines the participation of an online audience with the video game website but does not attempt to measure other media these people use; whether they already are a part of the military; or if they have been exposed to other violent media that may resonate militarism or aggression messages.

It is worth noting, too, that as a limitation of the analysis presented in this chapter, the message boards do not provide the ages of the participants. On one part of the website forum, under the heading, “Players looking for clans,” which is a separate heading on the America’s Army website, players do include age identifiers. There, players provide their age, username, location, and contact information when they look for other gamers to join in the massively multiplayer game environment. Between April 2011 and December 2011, 24 new game players contributed to that part of the website. Of those, roughly one-third (29%) were minors. Once at the website, seven of 24 identified themselves as minors; one was aged 12, another aged 14, and three were aged 15. Two others were aged 16 and 17. The rest of the participants ranged in age from 18 to 39. This suggests that America’s Army players are, like video gamers in general, from a wide range of age groups. But, it also suggests that players in the Army-targeted demographic-- and some who are even younger--are signing up to play. An Adults-Only age rating would help parents to understand that the content in the video game is not meant for young people. Certainly, an overall ban of the video game would be appropriate considering its far-reaching ideological reach and potential consequences for the youth audience.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

CONCLUSION

“Becoming aware of mass-produced sources of consciousness can also be a liberating experience” (Gerbner, 1985, p. 13).

As I finish this dissertation, it should be noted that the United States military operations in Iraq ended in December 2011, more than eight years after they began. To mark the end, the New York Times wrote this: “History’s final judgment on the war, which claimed nearly 4,500 American lives and cost almost $1 trillion, may not be determined for decades” (Arango & Schmidt, 2011, para. 28). As the U.S. public, politicians, and military ponder the legacy of the war in Iraq, the withdrawal is not without an opportunity for reflection.

Days after the U.S.-led war ended in Iraq, American soldiers still were dying in Afghanistan, including Mikayla Bragg, a 21-year-old from Washington, killed December 21, and Staff Sgt. Joseph J. Altmann, who died on Christmas day (“U.S. Military deaths,” 2011). The inclusion of these soldiers’ names here is in no way meant to suggest that their deaths are in some way connected to the video game America’s Army or to its website. But I include them here as a reminder of what war is and what it is not. In war, death is real. And it is forever. In America’s Army, one of the military’s chief recruiters since 2002, neither of these facts is accurately represented for a worldwide audience of more than 10 million. America’s Army is not what war is. Even if it claims that it is.

America’s Army functions as an arm of government propaganda and becomes a way to influence the masses in a media system that often includes themes of violence. Trend (2003) posited that structure affects the types of content produced and that content has resulting ideological consequences. He explained:

The problem isn’t that we have too much violence in movies and TV. The problem is that the kind of violence portrayed is so limited. Due to the consolidation of production into the hands of a few giant multinational corporations, decision-making is conducted by a small number of executives who are mostly White, mostly male, and who are driven by the need to make a profit….The reduction of the nation’s media discourse to a redundant series of violent spectacle does something much worse than teaching people to become aggressive. It tells them to do nothing. (p. 305)

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In the case of America’s Army, such discourses are reduced only to ones that support the military, or others that ask young people to join the military. Leonard (2004) further argued that the structure of media conglomerates and unchecked government creating its own media results in the notion that the state is crucially important to one’s safety and security. He explained that the video game industry’s explosion corresponds to a wave of patriotism after the attacks of September 11, 2001. These games have created greater support for the U.S. government’s War on Terror as they have simultaneously justified U.S. military interactions overseas. Leonard (2004) wrote:

In general, there is a marked failure to recognize video games as sophisticated vehicles inhabiting and disseminating ideologies of hegemony. 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. (p. 2) Video games that are produced by and for the government have the opportunity, therefore, to inhabit and disseminate these ideologies in ways that we are just starting to fully understand.

The ideological function of the state, working with private industry, to disseminate virtual war, acts to engage the civilian public. Such engagement as a piece of military public relations and advertising limits dissent and asks that public to become workers in its system of ideological myth. It also shapes how and what people think about military power, state authority, and the role of corporations just as it seeks to demonize a faceless enemy for an audience that is immersed in violent game play. Those words could have been written about the use of film as propaganda during WWII. Seven decades later, the government is actively engaging an audience using state-funded and state-sponsored entertainment to achieve similar ideological goals. Of course, the enemy today is not the Axis powers, but the Axis of Evil, and America’s Army, through its textual representations and community forum interaction, helps the audience understand this construction. These tactics become a part of the military and corporate consciousness industry and function to legitimize military force, military spending, and the use of high-technology military machinery. Such legitimization is a result of the government and private structure that produced America’s Army and its website, a portal to game play for many in the audience.

When that audience is adolescents, the use of such ideological manipulation is even more troubling as youth have yet to develop strategies to fully understand the messages or how to

174 understand the context that they have been presented in. Adolescents facing tumultuous physical, social, cognitive and development undergo dramatic changes during the early teenage years. The family and peers offer adolescents key ways to engage a social system and change with it but researchers also have examined ways that media may serve as both a role model and method of self-socialization. That the U.S. Army with its America’s Army franchise purposely targets this demographic with promises of social systems, excitement, thrills overseas, and the opportunity to explore violence on the edge of moral sanctions, has direct roots in adolescent development. Players and website users looking for this socialization and attempting to make meaning from the media that they use are bound to find it on the America’s Army website, which is overtly described as a military branding strategy and advertising campaign meant to target potential recruits from the age of 13.

The text of the website includes Real Heroes, who act to engage youth and to serve as mentors for military service. Furthermore, the text of the community forum pages deliberately include messages about advertising to a youth audience and include posts meant to increase playing time. Analysis of nearly 10,000 online posts on the America’s Army community forum reveal that many in the audience are either unaware of these conditions or believe they cannot be affected by them. That is a public relations victory of unlimited scope; the government engages people who believe they are not a part of a system while they are using the very technology that is a primary piece of that system meant to sway their ideologies and perceptions. The government is able to do this because it violates U.S. advertising regulations that require disclosure of advertising and intended purposes—especially when that audience includes minors.

As political economists (Macek, 2006; Wasko, 2005) have suggested, the ultimate goal of studying these cultural products and the structure that produces them is to develop praxis strategies that help create resistance to the messages. Authors (Bettig, 2004; Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson, 1992; Kellner, 1995; Kellner & Durham, 2006; Lewis & Jhally, 1998) have suggested that an audience may regain control of the mediated sphere with appropriate media literacy. And, yet, inquiry still surfaces about how best to achieve these literacy goals, especially when the structure that produces the messages is dominated by private interests with capital goals. To create praxis strategies for America’s Army seems even more daunting when one considers the structure as a public-private hybrid producing a FPS game, a key component of adolescents’ 21st Century media diets. When the messages are seemingly ubiquitous, questions 175

arise about how best to reverse these trends. Ivie (2003) wrote: “Can a people’s conscience be restored enough to make war less easy, less automatic, and more difficult to justify?” (p. 204). In order to develop these strategies, one must understand the cultural and ideological products that exist in such a system, one that is marked by militarism and corporately-controlled media.

To document these products and the structure that produces them, I first turn to a review of the research questions. These seven questions seek to help increase the understanding of what these militarized messages say, understand how they have been produced, and dissect how some in the audience have responded before providing suggestions that satisfy the criteria for praxis. Then, I provide what I believe is this dissertation’s largest contribution: the creation of a model called the “government-gaming nexus,” which seeks to further the academic methods of inquiry reviewed in this dissertation including militainment (Stahl, 2010), the military-entertainment complex (Andersen, 2006; Andersen & Kurti, 2009; Lenoir, 2000; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003; Leonard, 2004), and the military-industrial-media-entertainment network (Der Derian, 2001). At the end of this section, I will discuss limitations of the study and, finally, provide suggestions for future research.

Review of Research Questions

Chapter Four

To better understand the production of the video game America’s Army, I addressed three research questions in chapter four. Those questions will be restated next and the significance of findings will be presented as answers to these questions.

RQ1: Why are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game, America’s Army?

RQ2: How are adolescents the targets of the government’s first-person shooter video game, America’s Army?

RQ3: How does the partnership between the federal government and its corporate sponsors target adolescents?

The Army turned to the popular FPS genre to increase its military recruiting goals after years of below-target recruiting. These goals have outpaced recruitment expectations for several years despite taking place during ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (“Army Gaming,” 2011).

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An analysis presented in chapter four has found through a review of government documents, trade publications, corporate records, and news stories, the ways in which the adolescents have been these targets, including through the exploitation of the “T” for “Teen” ESRB rating. Also, this analysis has revealed how the adolescents are targets; that is, the video game and its website are a prime way to brand the U.S. Army and help improve recruitment. Of course, this recruitment is known because the Army is upfront in media interviews that the game is a recruiter. It does not, however, contain such a statement on the video game website. Koppes and Black (1987) defined propaganda as: “The expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations” (pp. 49- 50). America’s Army has deliberate goals to recruit and to commodify and the lack of a disclaimer on the website serves a propagandistic function. Here, this analysis adds to the literature by specifically explaining the recruitment and commodification strategies that target adolescents, part of the impressionable Millennial generation, which prefers Internet communication and high-technology environments (Drago, 2006).

As the U.S. military hopes to improve its recruitment and lower its recruiting costs, the military has turned over part of the production of the video game to private game company Ubisoft, which stands to make billions of dollars off console versions of the game, and partnered with extreme sports companies like NASCAR, which includes as its fan base some of the same demographics that the Army also craves. The government has received the most cutting-edge technology, like Ubisoft’s Unreal game engine, which savvy Millennials have come to expect from their FPS game play. The government is after all, competing against popular commercial titles like, Call of Duty and Half-Life, which also allow players to inflict FPS violence. By partnering with one of the world’s largest video game makers, it stands to win favor in the eyes of video gamers.

The Army is able to also partner with NASCAR to target a demographic that seeks thrills and may already be geographically pre-disposed to consider a military career. The America’s Army video game brand becomes tied with these others to reach the widest, most impressionable teen audience to help cultivate loyalty, and perhaps recruitment, among the Millennial generation. Marx (1904) explained that the capitalist system attempts to create wants in a system where profit motivations are a key goal. In such a system, the wants for the generation are 177

fostered by a partnership between the government and private corporations. By helping adolescents explore if they want to join the military through the use of a video game, the government through the use of America’s Army has abused the very system of democracy that it says its soldiers fight and die for.

Such targeting of adolescents with the game that serves a propagandistic function helps to explain why we still fight much in the same way that Frank Capra films during WWII shaped American propaganda and the resulting public reception of war messages then. Ivie (2003) wrote: “War is now nearly automatic….Propaganda normalizes war, rendering it habitual, seemingly rational, and largely immune to challenge, especially in the beginning before the ugly consequences of the killing fields become too obvious to ignore entirely” (p. 204). Both the military and the private corporations involved have a financial stake in keeping the adolescents as prime targets for their mediated messages. Political economy (Bagdikian, 2004; Bettig & Hall, 2003; McChesney, 2000; 2004; 2008; Mosco, 2009; Wasko, 2005) helps us to understand why and how that partnership is fostered and becomes an accepted part of state and corporate domination. This social relationship forms the backbone for Mosco’s (2009) claim that political economy aids in the study of how this power is organized and how the ability to maintain that power remains.

Chapter Five

While the study of the production of the video game America’s Army helps to better understand why and how adolescents are targets of the message, to further understand the video game and to develop praxis strategies, a more complete review of its text was proposed with the four, fifth, and sixth research questions of this dissertation. These three questions were:

RQ4: How are the themes of consumerism presented on the official America’s Army website?

RQ5: How are the themes of militarism and violence presented on the official America’s Army website?

RQ6: How does the Army use the Real Heroes to promote militarism and recruitment?

In searching to create stories of heroism like those from WWII, the Army with the introduction of its Real Heroes characters sought to target adolescents with stories of war

178 embellished and oversimplified. The text presents these stories—stories of soldiers surviving epic firefights in the heat of battle—as tales that give the suggestion that war is not just survivable but glamorous and honorable. Furthermore, these stories reveal the militaristic nature of the text, which is associated with a FPS video game that celebrates violence as a way to be patriotic just as it demonizes the enemy. Such representations of militarism are best represented as ways to legitimize state action and to attempt to justify American hegemony, both goals of the American military and military contractors that are such an important part of the military- industrial-media-entertainment network. Bacevich (2005) wrote:

Today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys— and is bent on perpetuating—has become central to our national identity. More than America’s matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture the nation’s arsenal of high-tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for. (p. 3) Such representations—of machinery, of soldiers liberating oppressed peoples abroad, of a public that needs protection from faceless enemies, of the glory of war--in America’s Army make sense from the perspective of helping to foster and to further U.S. national identity as one wrapped in war. This is because of the military-industrial-media-entertainment network (Der Derian, 2001) that works to legitimize military actions to profit corporate defense contractors. These contractors may, like GE, also have a stake in the media system. Furthermore, the Army through its video game website uses other tactics to target adolescents and create themes related to commodification and violence. It does this through the use of its posts on the community forum pages.

To complement its recruitment goals, the text studied here reveals that the stories of the Real Heroes and other posts on the community forum pages are meant to engage adolescents, to keep them playing longer as ways to increase message exposure and immersion, and to target areas that it most needs in recruitment, like medics, represented on the website by Monica Brown and Jason Mike. Also, it uses the text as a way to engage women, people from rural areas, and African-Americans, which internal military documents show respond differently to military recruitment campaigns; these recruitment strategies specifically target adolescents to make them a part of the military working class. Marx and Engles (cited in Mattelard & Siegelaub, 1979) reflected on the marginalization of the working class in a system that is run by elites. I can think

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of no greater division of labor than the one that attempts to more strongly recruit people of color and from rural areas to fight in a war because they have no other economic opportunity.

Moreover, the use of sports as a key part of the text related to recruitment, in Jason Mike’s stories for example, mean to show adolescents that war is no different than a game. The military even creates a scoreboard in the video game where players can track kills. Kellner (2003) explained: “Males use sports as a terrain of fantasy identification, in which they feel empowered as ‘their’ team or star triumphs” (p. 16). Playing war video games furthers this empowerment as it provides players with the ultimate triumph: the ability to kill. To commodify adolescents, the website text offers places where players may engage with toy action figures, Ubisoft products, and NASCAR memorabilia to further the reach into young people’s consciousness. Political economy, which outlines the powerful structure of industry and ties to audience commodification, helps us to understand that such texts have a way to continue the subordination of youth as it further legitimizes the use of these youth to join wars with capitalist aims.

Chapter Six

Finally, the seventh research question addressed the audience response to the ideologies represented in the text, which is a specific byproduct of production. Kellner (2003) wrote: “Media culture provides materials for individuals to create identities and meanings and cultural studies detects specific ways that individuals use cultural forms” (p. 16). To better understand these identities, the final research question stated:

RQ7: What does an analysis of online comments by players of America’s Army reveal about game users’ responses to the ideologies presented by the Army and its corporate partners?

Related to America’s Army, the public is supplied with those messages of war and entertainment that are reinforced and repeated by ancillary product deals that result from the partnership between the government and gaming giant, Ubisoft. The production of a militarized entertainment game is meant to affect the audience in very specific and serious ways; recruitment to the military and the opportunity to serve and potentially be killed in wartime are the most severe consequence of the audience being affected or influenced by these messages. Li (2004) further described the America’s Army audience as one that becomes transformed into an online fan community for the military and its ideologies whilst it also commodifies players as members

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of the government-private audience; that is, players become fans but also become advertising mouthpieces to other game members who use the community forums on the site. As Kimball and Rheingold (2000) wrote in a piece about branding and advertising research:

The great advantage of new media is not how much information they can put at disposal of individuals and organizations but the kind of conversations they make possible. The technology for sharing knowledge and cementing powerful social networks is no longer rarely accessible or expensive. The knowledge of how to use the technology, not the software or the physical means of transporting it, will be the strategic advantage of those who possess it and diffuse it. (pp. 14-15) Posts, therefore, that may only attract a dozen respondents, may be seen by thousands more players. The power in America’s Army lies in the government and private industry, which create and disseminate the technology.

Still, the audience analysis of more than 9,610 posts revealed key themes related to militarism, violence, recruitment, desensitization, and commodification. Often the violence in the video game offers some meaning-making for the online audience about violence and militarism; this meaning is discussed in the online community forum. This creation of meaning for the audience serves a purpose different than merely entertainment. The presence of violence alone goes beyond the game having a FPS format like other popular titles available commercially. The structure of the game’s production and the text of the gaming website are meant to offer these FPS interactions as ways to cultivate violence and to demonstrate violence. As a result, these networked players become a part of the America’s Army’s and government’s social network which legitimizes violence in society. The game is as much as advertisement for violence as it is for the Army. Advertising researchers (Blakeman & Brown, 2009; Kunz & Hackworth, 2011) explained that social networks online can be a part of a successful branding strategy, allowing business and industry to cultivate a presence while online users and participants help to spread the ideals and reputation of the organization. A piece in PR News (“How to,” 2008) described the trend this way:

Social networks have become a mainstay of many successful PR campaigns based on their ability to host interactive communications among audiences. Now, marketers are increasingly tapping these platforms to help them ‘hook up’ with their target audiences, thus integrating their discipline and PR even further. (para. 1)

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Meanings are negotiated and presented online in vastly different ways. Even for an audience that may be heterogeneous the ideologies present are largely homogenous and show how effective this government public relations strategy has been since the start of the game in 2002. The government text turns a heterogeneous audience into one that receives and interprets homogenous messages. Even these different and unique representations still fall within these themes of militarism, violence, recruitment, and commodification.

Video game players have a wide variety of online identities and share a variety of skills and techniques on these community forums. They search. They destroy. They shoot. They kill. They choose weapons from a U.S. Defense Department arsenal. They load. They unload. They invade countries. They create online profiles with American flags, eagles carrying arrows, soldiers carrying rifles, and statements about how the government and military should function in a global society. They aspire. They violate rules of engagement in the name of U.S. power and to aid comrades, themes that also are present in the text. As long as players are age 13 or older— although a search of the website forum produced players who were even younger--the government wants them to do all of these things, whether to influence participation in the real Army or to cultivate brand loyalties for corporate partners. Some website users claim that they are in the Army. Others explain that they have been players for several years and are about to leave for “BCT,” basic training. This provides evidence that the video game may be either creating in these players a desire to join the military—clearly based on the Army’s own suggestions that the game is a successful recruiter would give credibility to this claim—or that these players may be more drawn to the military games based on their recruitment. Unfortunately, this study does not address the distinction. This textual analysis does lend support to the ways that the audience is responding to military ideologies and consumerist ideologies with little evidence of dissent. Participation amounts to democratic indolence.

Political economy and Kellner’s (1995) cultural studies model help position how the America’s Army online community through these posts and views mean: Not only do they spread the ideologies of those who have created the game, but they commodify the audience itself, making them workers in the ideological system. Jhally (1989), in his interpretation of Enzensberger’s (1974) work on the consciousness industry, explained that the state with the mainstream media help to shape how Americans think and act; military action is considered legitimate and often goes unchallenged by a population accustomed to seeing messages of war 182

and stories of heroism. Viewed this way, the America’s Army audience then becomes a worker en masse in the process to maintain such legitimization and to extend the influence of the military-entertainment complex to include adolescents’ entertainment products.

But, the political economic tradition mixed with a cultural studies lens can help us to better understand how the ideologies already represented online--and documented in the analysis chapters of this dissertation--by the government video game may influence the audience in similar ways to propaganda films of WWII. That influence and effects, then, should be considered as a type of consciousness cultivation envisioned as a relationship of players and web users positioned as members of a larger social structure, one that has the media as a central socializing figure. Cultural studies authors including Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson (1992) argued that audiences read and decode messages differently and may be able to deflect the range of ideologies that a corporate or hegemonic media structure favors. The authors explained:

Texts may have a preferred meaning and point of view which the reader is invited to accept. But many readers decline the invitation, either entering into some negotiation with the dominant meaning or rejecting it outright with an op- positional reading. (p. 388) However, in the case of the text of America’s Army and appearances by Real Heroes and Phoenix online, those posts are monitored for dissent and provide a type of double-barreled public relations strategy that may influence the audience’s outright rejection of the text. Smythe (1981) wrote: “In order to analyze our largely commoditized society, we must beware thinking of people and commodities as disconnected things and see them as relationships in a social process” (p. 253). Within that range of potential responses and when studying such a large mediated audience as the one that uses the America’s Army website, one must consider this complex social and personal system. Kellner and Durham (2006) explained audience analysis when conducted in a system of complex media this way: “Various individuals and audiences respond to these texts disparately, negotiating their meanings in complex and often paradoxical ways” (p. ix). Kellner (1995; 2003), Kellner and Durham (2006), and Jenkins (1999) believed that understanding audience responses must be carried out in relation to the social and political climates of the time.

When that media audience is adolescents, researchers (Arnett, 1995; Jenkins, 1999; Klein et. al., 1993) have suggested that complex social factors and personal variables also are at work

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although admit discerning ideological impacts from use of cultural texts is difficult. Henry Jenkins, in 1999 testimony before Congress provided after the Columbine High School shootings, explained these complex factors this way:

Cultural artifacts are not simple chemical agents like carcinogens that produce predictable results upon those who consume them. They are complex bundles of often contradictory meanings that can yield an enormous range of different responses from the people who consume them. (para. 6) Jenkins explained to Congress that a better way to approach violent video games and the study of other violent cultural products is to understand their context. Hopefully, at this point and at the audience analysis stage, such a context has been well established. It is a context that seeks to control the messages of adolescent media usage just as it seeks to shape participation in war and feelings about war; the government produces a video game that private companies seek to profit from in various ways and adolescents become workers in the process. In sharing his views on the subject of more fully exploring the audience reaction, Jenkins (1999) explained:

We are going to be most effective in confronting the root causes of youth violence if we seriously attempt to understand contemporary popular culture and why it is meaningful to the youth who consume it. This understanding is going to come from listening to and taking seriously what young people have to say. (para. 54) Just as Jenkins would not lay blame on violent video games as the sole (or even contributing) reason behind the motivations of the Columbine High School shooters, the sixth chapter addressed what people have to say about the violence and other matters they encounter in the video game America’s Army to better help map what it is the forum users are saying and how that relates to their reception of the government- and corporately-created ideologies that form the backbone of the America’s Army website sections reviewed here. Without in-depth interviews and ethnographic study, this audience analysis provides a first step in studying audience comments on a government-run, government-monitored website, but it is certainly difficult to make claims about ideological effects. There does seem to be early evidence that the political- economic goals of the corporate-government producers, and the text which is linked to those goals, are provided ideological springboards for youth eager to express themselves on matters of violence, war, foreign policy, and military recruitment.

Lewis and Jhally (1994) writing in response to criticism of work they did examining the ideologies of the audience, explained that pinpointing these consequences is complex. They

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wrote: “Our desire was simply to redress that balance, to point out that although there is ambiguity there is also widespread compliance” (p. 115). Lewis and Jhally (1994) wrote that evidence of such compliance comes not only from theory but also from data. The America’s Army audience is vast, heterogeneous, and complex but this textual analysis of audience comments reveals that there is compliance related to the goals of the production and key interactions with the text, which have very clear goals: commodification, militarizing civilian space, and recruitment.

Contributions: The Government-Gaming Nexus

Analysis of the government-created video game viewed through a political economic lens reveals that the public-private structural factors at work, conceptualized here as the “government-gaming nexus,” are meant to target an adolescent audience, to cultivate support for war and ancillary consumer products, and to stifle dissent in players and website users. 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.

This dissertation hopes to add to the literature on America’s Army and the political economy of media by addressing how and why adolescents are the key targets of both the government and private gaming companies through a synthesis of private and public documents revealing a government-gaming nexus, which is a partnership between the government and billion-dollar video game makers with adolescents as the prime targets. Through an analysis of internal government and corporate reports combined with an analysis of two key parts of the video game website community forum, this dissertation reveals that both the government and the gaming companies have powerful interests in targeting this vulnerable and valuable demographic, and as such, I believe that it requires a new lens by which to view the issue for future research.

The government-gaming nexus has as its foundation the work of political economy but also is rooted in the study of militainment (Stahl, 2010); the military-entertainment complex (Andersen, 2006; Andersen & Kurti, 2009; Lenoir, 2003; Lenoir & Lowood, 2003; Leonard, 2004); and the military-industrial-media-entertainment network (Der Derian, 2001), which were

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discussed in the second chapter of this dissertation. I cannot begin to express my appreciation to these authors for the work that they have done related to these topics. Stahl (2010) examined the blending of military ideology with entertainment across platforms and through various media. His work on America’s Army as a military recruiter was crucial to this project. The military- entertainment network also revealed power in better understanding the relationships between state actors and private media, including television, film, and video game companies. Andersen (2006) explained: “Video games create virtual worlds of action and combat that engage players as participants. The movement from narrative, either fictional or documentary, to interaction has created new spaces for war” (p. 254). Leonard (2004), using Baudrillard as a theoretical lens, recognized the powerful ideological function that video games have on young people. He wrote: “As virtual culture becomes a central source of information about the world for students, it is more important than ever that they clearly grasp the ways in which video war games construct images of race, nationality, and military prowess” (p. 6). Der Derian’s work (2001) on the military-industrial-media-entertainment network has examined the video game as simulation while it also has looked at how the military functions closely with Hollywood entertainment industries to shape war narratives for an unassuming public. His work showed that profit motivations by corporate industry and global media conglomerates attempt to influence the audience. Adolescent play becomes a central function in the government-gaming nexus as advertisers and media companies try to shape perceptions and build brand loyalty from a young age.

However, what these approaches have not addressed specifically that this dissertation does address is the way and the manner in which the video game industry, specifically, works in conjunction with the government to target adolescents. No other framework studying the blend of war video games and government power has specifically limited its analysis to adolescents or to video games in particular. Recognizing adolescents are the targets is crucial to develop praxis strategies, to craft legislation recognizing minors are the target audience, and to develop media literacy campaigns related to virtual war and recruitment. In the case of America’s Army, the reason adolescent are the targets of the mass mediated messages is twofold. First, the government targets the youth market as a way to establish its messages about war and violence in society as it simultaneously attempts to recruit soldiers to join. Second, the corporate partners of the government also seek to cultivate both violent and consumerist ideologies in the youth

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demographic, to establish brand loyalty early, to continue sales of military-themed toys and games, and to harness the power of this demographic’s spending ability through government deals with private entities like NASCAR.

What further distinguishes the “government-gaming nexus” is its recognition of the quantitative research on violent video games and aggression. The distinction between paradigms, that is, between the liberal tradition which examines media effects and the Marxist, critical traditions that critique neoliberalism and look at the structure of the system as a way to legitimize existing power, can be maintained. This model should be conceived as drawing from both. For the structure that produces the game is meant to reflect, maintain, and spread the dominant hegemonic ideology of the American political and military state. But, it also is meant to desensitize a teen audience to violence while it creates for them the images of the epic American hero and demonizes an enemy. The government and game industry want both.

That is not to say, again, that this work is suggesting a cause-effect relationship between the use of America’s Army and an audience that is affected. But, it does suggest that more research in both paradigms is necessary; and that this research must take into account the key developmental and social issues that adolescent gamers are facing. These issues reflect on adolescents’ propensities for invulnerability, personal fable, egocentrism, and mood disruptions (Arnett, 1995; 1999; 2000; Elkind, 1967). Outside of potential cognitive or behavioral effects, the game play normalizes war in society, the use of military machinery, and demonizes enemies so that many participants are left with no options other than to rationalize state violence. They are led to believe that state violence by hegemonic forces is accepted and expected.

A final key point related to the creation of America’s Army for an adolescent audience and the government-gaming nexus must consider that the government is actively researching the effects of game play. Army researchers (Belanich, Orvis, & Mullin, 2004; Belanich, Orvis, & Sibley, 2004; Orvis, Horn, & Belanich, 2008; Orvis, Orvis, Belanich, & Mullin, 2005) study audience reaction to America’s Army game play: to examine ways to improve training, to study the effects of immersion, to understand how prior game play affects knowledge and teamwork, to learn how audiences comprehend in-game text and visuals, to see how audiences react to reality perception, and to learn marksmanship. The same government that shapes perception actively

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works each year to better understand the effects of play and to make changes necessary to affect motivation to play and immersion tactics.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court—itself a government body--in 2011 failed to agree with decades of social science research that violent video games should be regulated because of potential effects. The distinction also reveals the political economic power of the industry. It gains knowledge and capital from the study of the video game by Army and university researchers that document clear effects of game play. However, the Supreme Court majority in the case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association et. al. disagreed that children may be affected. Not recognizing the potential effects of violent game play, especially when those messages are tied to ideologies documented here, will have dire consequences for the audience.

Government game developers invite people to participate in mediated killing—in mediated war—so that it may cultivate in them a desire for these actions that will eventually be played out in actual military participation. A recent annual military report provided to Congress in early 2011, in a section on “Army Gaming,” said: “The ‘America’s Army’ gaming project is a long-term commitment, focusing on the development of future products that will further the integration of CRM [risk management] and safety throughout America’s Army gaming, simulation, training, and outreach products” (“Army Gaming,” 2011, para. 3). The government- gaming nexus treats the video game industry as a powerful, consolidated group of for-profit, private corporations similar to other media conglomerates that have received such worthy attention from political economists. The game and the market for FPS military simulators seems to be part of the military strategy—and therefore the corporate gaming and branding strategy--for years to come. And as such, it requires its own foundation for future areas of inquiry.

Limitations and Future Research

This study has revealed key details about a link between the U.S. military and private gaming companies using a political economic lens combined with Kellner’s (1995) three-part cultural studies approach. But, limitations exist and will be addressed here as will directions for future research. Future research in both quantitative and qualitative paradigms will enhance the understanding of America’s Army as a function of government propaganda and private capitalism and chart audience participation in the media spectacle and possible media effects.

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First, political economy approaches media from a critical perspective. Political economists pose a normative function of government and media, one that should uphold foundations of democracy and open access. Some of the threads chosen for analysis were picked specifically looking for issues of commodification, militarism, violence, and recruitment, based on an understanding of the structural factors that created—and continue maintaining—the video game. These decisions were rooted in political economic and cultural studies work that states that the audience is a part of the production-text cycle and must be understood in relationship to such a cycle.

Total, I analyzed more than 9,610 individual posts by video game players that spanned thousands of threads. More than 268,700 registered members have contributed more than 2 million unique online posts to the game’s online forums, which are web-based discussions that range in topics. When cases that countered my research goals were discovered, they were included in this analysis. More often than not, posts and threads revealed key themes linked to the political economic and cultural studies analyses presented in earlier chapters. The audience seems to respond to the ideological messages provided by the text, but this interpretive textual analysis offers no opportunity for generalizability. Some may consider this a limitation. I do not. Using political economy and cultural studies as a lens has allowed me to judge the environment that has created, maintained, and expanded this website and its accompanying ideologies. As such, it is far more important to understand the game’s position in society and culture and to chart the ways that some users are interacting with that text. Just as WWII propaganda films served an important role in cultivating national identities related to war and foreign affairs, the America’s Army website has extended that type of U.S. propaganda into the 21st Century through its use of violent video games. Still, there is a vast part of the online audience that was not studied here and researchers working to perfect a study of online audiences may want to re-visit the America’s Army’s audience using ethnographic methods, in-depth interviews, and discourse analysis frameworks to better map players’ online usage and to chart how the government’s messages may be reaching its target audience.

The America’s Army community is vast. But this dissertation also did not study participants during game play or during community forum usage. Furthermore, this study did not interview players or web users to extrapolate exact meanings from their website posts. What does EagleReid actually mean when he writes “HOOAH!” on nearly every post? Certainly, these 189

types of answers revealed through in-depth interviews and, perhaps, participant observation, would yield fascinating results that could only help to better understand the audience and the audience’s interactions with ideologies present on the text. Such an understanding could lead to direct media literacy strategies related not just to website usage but also targeted at game players.

Other suggestions for future research include the treatment by the mainstream media of America’s Army to examine how stories have been framed about the video game and its place as a military recruitment as well as to determine who the dominant voices are that justify its use as a military recruitment tool. This media analysis could yield more evidence of the corporate media conditions that promote militarism and neoliberal ideologies. Furthermore, researchers also may wish to address other parts of the gaming website that were not addressed in this dissertation. These texts built into the website that could be subjects of analysis include portions that explain in-game weapons technology, map geographies of places where virtual soldiers “fight,” and graphic novels and videos that in recent years have sought to complement the written text and game play. One of the graphic novels, released in May 2011 and available for download from the main page of the America’s Army website, shows a soldier rescuing a young Muslim child escaping “enemy” fire. Future study should focus on these representations of race and ethnicity in the game and on the website.

Future study should consider the quantitative research on FPS games and aggression to see if, how, and to what extent America’s Army players are affected by game play. Most of the literature on America’s Army, explained in chapter two, is produced from the qualitative paradigm, especially from critical scholars. Content analysis, drawing on Gerbner’s Cultural Indicators project, of in-game play could determine how much violence the game includes and how those portrayals are glamorized and sanitized. In searching the literature on the video game, government researchers seem to be the only ones documenting quantitative work. That leaves an opportunity for objective quantitative scholars to address potential effects including those that may be cognitive, affective, and behavioral that are documented in decades of social science research on violent video games. Experimental research drawing on the General Aggression Model and Bandura’s work on moral disengagement may lead to an even greater understanding from the media effects paradigm that can help to document how the video game is received and potentially affecting an adolescent audience.

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Also, I do not in any way mean to suggest, even with my inclusion of quantitative research in the literature review and recognized by the government-gaming nexus, that there is any causal effect of America’s Army play and violence, or that players log on to the website and immediately seek out a career in the Army. Clearly, more research needs to be done to determine why teenagers exposed to the messages of the game considering enlisting and then choose to join. Future study should seek out those players who did join the Army based on their game play either of the free versions provided online or at a Virtual Army Experience site or the paid version available on consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 produced by corporate game company, Ubisoft. Finally, I did not interview employees of the U.S. Army who maintain the site, post to the community forum, or who created the Real Heroes biographies to gain their perspective on meanings in the website. Future study could use public records to determine the public relations function of the “players” and staff online interacting with fans and interview these staff members to determine their intentions. Wardynski, the game’s creator, of course is very clear about his intentions.

Praxis

The goal of this dissertation is to educate about how the military uses audiovisual media as a way to ask young people to join a war that the government and private industry glamorize, sanitize, and celebrate through the use of products targeted directly at adolescents. Praxis strategies should include education of children, adolescents, and adults as well as create mechanisms for activists to demand that the government uphold the fundamentals of its own regulatory system related to advertising and media ratings. This study has shown that the U.S. government uses the video game website of America’s Army to offer the military as a career option as it fictionalizes the work of those already in the military including the Real Heroes to build a consciousness of militarism for an impressionable audience. The structure of the government with private industry that benefits from the game’s widest possible distribution means that praxis strategies may be difficult but not impossible. An ultimate praxis victory would be a flat-out ban on the video game; such a ban would bring the United States in line with other Western cultures that refuse to allow military advertising targeted at youth. But, now that corporate partners are involved in the success of the America’s Army brand, it seems even more difficult to imagine a time when such a video game would be banned. Praxis, then, should focus on three key areas: Forcing the government to comply with current self-regulatory mechanisms 191 to rate its video game appropriately, forcing the government to adhere to current advertising regulations about Internet marketing, and creating education and media literacy campaigns.

First, properly rating the video game according to the standards of the ESRB is one way to work toward educating parents about the content. Jenkins, himself a video game fan, (1999) wrote:

We need to provide fuller information to parents about the content of media products so that they can make meaningful and informed choices about what forms of popular culture they want to allow into their homes. They need to know what their children are consuming and why it appeals to them. The ratings system introduced by the game industry goes a long way towards addressing this concern, establishing a consistent base-line against which to measure the content of video games. But the ratings system for games and for television needs to be more nuanced, needs to provide more specific information. We also need to create more websites where parents respond to the games and other media products they have purchased and share their insights and reactions with other parents. (para. 58) As Jenkins suggested, the ESRB ratings system can help users determine content of the video game. The rating for the video game needs to be changed to better reflect not just the content that it includes but the motives that it serves. Following Jenkins’ suggestion to better inform the audience, America’s Army, at a minimum should be rated “M” for “Mature,” meaning that the content had been deemed unsuitable for children age 16 and younger. A best case scenario would be to provide an “AO,” or “Adults Only” rating to clearly show that the content of the video game and its related social media sites and website should not be viewed by children. Such a rating would help to alter the target audience to one that actually is of age to enlist in the military. The rating change would help parents make more informed decisions about the content in America’s Army. It should not just be rated “M” or “AO” for its first-person shooter violence, but because it has recruitment as chief goal. Eliminating the “T” rating is one way to help stop the targeting of the adolescent audience.

Of course, social scientists have documented issues with the ESRB. Researchers (Garry & Spurlin, 2007; Gentile, 2008; Thompson & Haninger, 2001) have studied industry voluntary ratings and documented problems with its categorization and enforcement. Garry and Spurlin (2007) wrote: “Children are indeed being exposed to various media products that, according to the rating system, are inappropriate for those children,” (p. 235). A change to the rating by appropriately judging the video game with “M” rating under the current U.S. self-regulatory

192 scheme could help to keep the game from reaching adolescents. Or, as Jenkins suggested, the video game rating system, in general, could provide a more nuanced look at violence and content. Keeping this idea in mind, the U.S. regulatory system related to audiovisual content including video games could follow the Dutch Kijkwijzer model (Valkenburg, Beentjes, Nikken, & Tan, 2002), which provides both age ratings and content descriptions to better inform parents about content based on potential harms.

Still, such a rating may do little to stop minors from viewing the game when it is available for free online. The video game website, then, should be required to prominently display its intention as a military recruiter to better inform parents and players of its intended goals. In December 2011, the home website page of America’s Army prominently advertises a new grenade that can be used for in-game play. The home page says of this grenade that it is: “A new weapon for the arsenal.” The home page also includes a virtual likeness of Matthew Zedwick, one of the Real Heroes, poised for battle, carrying a rifle. Rather than navigating to the America’s Army website and finding Zedwick and messages about grenades, the website should open with a disclaimer about its true intention as a military recruiter. Cigarette packs carry warnings. So, too, should America’s Army. Further, the military should stop its use of Real Heroes to target adolescents. Those stories, which clearly target minors, should be prohibited because of international rules that prohibit the recruitment of child soldiers. Furthermore, targeting adolescents with military stories that offer anything except realism should be illegal. If the video game website and game did represent the horror of war, would players like –Ren- and madmax369 still consider joining?

Furthermore, related to the potential legal and regulatory remedies currently available related to stopping the spread of America’s Army, the game should be treated as advertising and, as such, should be regulated according to the standards provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This would require America’s Army to carry a disclaimer and to fully represent the potential effects of its product, in this case, war. These regulatory goals are especially important because of the adolescent target audience. The U.S. Army is clear in stating its goals that the video game and its corresponding multi-media franchise work as an advertisement and branding strategy to lure potential recruits. As such, the government should be forced to comply with the rules on advertising; these rules are even stricter when children are potentially part of the audience. 193

America’s Army’s text qualifies as both deceptive and fails to provide adequate information about its intended use. The FTC rules on advertising state: “The Commission has determined that a representation, omission or practice is deceptive if it is likely to: mislead consumers and affect consumers’ behavior or decisions about the product or service” (“Federal Trade Commission, 2011, para. 2). Furthermore, the FTC requires truth in advertising and disclosure of advertising, in print, television, and online advertisements. Advertisers must be truthful, accurate, and include information that is free of deception. The FTC rulemaking says that advertising must include a disclaimer but also demonstrate how a product “will perform under normal use” (“Federal Trade Commission, 2011, para. 8). Demonstrating this product and showing the actual effects of war could work to help the audience resist messages and ideologies. And, of course, that could help to stop enlistment based on game play.

Opportunities related to media education and audience reception of the America’s Army messages further can create praxis and work to overturn the dominant ideologies at work in the video game and website text. Leonard (2004) suggested actually turning the structure and video games’ war ideologies around to teach students how and why government and manufacturers create the products they create. To educators, he makes the claim that such war themes in violent video games may be repurposed and deconstructed to show how governments and industries are attempting to create and foster militaristic and violent ideologies. Media literacy campaigns should address the institutional structure that produced and fostered the expansion of the game, examine the text related to military and corporate goals, and seek out an understanding of how audiences work with texts to create meaning in society (Lewis & Jhally, 1998). These strategies could come from the very audience the military and corporations are trying to target. Media- savvy Millennials could use social media sites to create their own responses to the production and text of the game and produce counter-representations. Sharing and re-sharing these messages of dissent could become viral antidotes to the messages that are such a key part of the gaming website. I am hopeful.

A Final Note

I do not in any way mean to take away from the service of the Real Heroes or of other service members or military veterans. Related to the Real Heroes, each of them did serve in either Iraq or Afghanistan and, I can only imagine, witnessed unspeakable tragedy and horror. I

194 only wish that the government-created stories presented on the website reflected a more accurate view of war, death, and devastation. More than anything, this dissertation is about the use of government media and private capital interests trying to sell a war to adolescents, who may be affected by game play either psychologically, cognitively, or behaviorally. It is about a government that seeks to sway an unassuming public to accept war not just at any cost but tries to demonstrate that war is worth all costs. Supporters of video games may claim that I am fearful of video games. That is false. I do not fear video games. I fear a government that uses them to target children.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Margot Susca was born and raised in Connecticut. In 2000, she received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She earned her master’s degree in 2002 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. Her research interests include the political economy of media; children’s responses to media; violent video games and culture; and media policy and regulation.

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