Owen

If this game is indeed as good as its said to be I can't believe I haven't played it. Personally, I would play America's army simply to get a good competitive rush off of it, easily ignoring the proganada. If it's paramount goal is indeed recruitment it wouldn't phase me nor the mass majority of gamers either, I imagine. Halter describes the transformation of military theory for the 21st century in Sun Tzu to Xbox, to then illustrate: "Quick-thinking individuals who effortlessly operated inside high-tech communications systems? Sounds like your average video game player might be a match." Reaction time, spacial awarness, the use of intutation to guess enemy movements, and most importantly fluid team work are what makes the best Counter-strike player. Sounds like a good soldier, also. But would anyone want to do it for real?
The only area that threatens me is the sublimial. The subject switch from completely fantastical, historical, or fabricated subject matter to the intensily real and contemporary is unnerving. Like Halter's mention of "Bad guy" termonology. He see's an easy transposition of the term bad guy from aliens to Iraqis as "natural, even subliminally comforting, in its simplicity, and puts a new spin on the concept of "demonizing" the enemy." Later in the article, when he discusses the seriousness of a war game durning a time of war, he writes: "creating or even playing a game that promises a realistic experience of war verges on an inconsiderate lack of respect at best, or a manipulative attempt at propaganda at worst." The army is giving you its best shot at a peachy and heroic simulation of being a soldier(i.e. the hero biographys on the website). A video game can't possibily be an acurate representation of such an experience and if one is subconciouslly mislead to think so I suppose that would be bad.