Hi-tech weapons systems often attract criticism from people noting that they turn war into a video game where soldiers are operators and removed from the first-hand consequences of their actions. Now the US Army has taken it one step further and actually commissioned an official army video game for arcades. The game supposedly has missions based on real army training scenarios and encourages players to be competitive, co-operate as teams and abide by the Rules of Engagement (so presumably no fiddling with prisoners then taking pictures). I remember one video game studio trademarking the phrase “shock and awe” for possible future use in a war game while the real war was just beginning and people were dying, which I thought in rather poor taste, but this is something else (especially given the war has dragged on and on and the bodycount higher and higher…). Have the US Army’s recruiters become so desperate for new recruits that they re-watched the SF movie The Last Starfighter from the 1980s which used a similar idea to find space pilots? Does Michael Moore know about this?!?! (link via Boing Boing)
July 27th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Of course, if you lose it blows your legs off.