"The killing game" by Gary Webb.... RIP [View All]

[Tinoire]

Chilling. Wish I hadn't had to snip this. The whole article is worth reading.

"Teach your children well..."


October 2004 Cover Story

"The killing game"

For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That’s why the Army’s spent $10 million making one of its own. But there’s a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.

By Gary Webb

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Clan warfare: LANatomas guns down members of a Seattle clan during a round of league play. Carson Loane, foreground, patrols the left flank while clan leader Jeff Muramoto, center, calls out strategies to his squad.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but among young males it’s far and away the most popular genre of computer game. Some psychologists and parents worry that such games are desensitizing a large, impressionable segment of the population to violence and teaching them the wrong things. But that depends on your point of view. If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there’s no better way of finding them. It’s why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit. For anyone who thinks kids aren’t learning playing shooter games, read on.

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In late 1999, after missing their recruiting goals that year, Army officials got together with the civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to discuss ways of luring computer gamers into the military.

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An experimental psychologist from the Navy helped tweak the game’s sound effects to produce heightened blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate. It was released in digital double surround sound, which few games are. In terms of game play, it was designed as a “tactical” shooter, slower-paced, more deliberate, but with Counter-Strike’s demanding squad tactics and communications--a “serious” game for kids who took their war gaming seriously.

After two years of development, America’s Army was released to the public on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. The gaming world gasped and then cheered. Contrary to expectations, the government-made shooter was every bit as good a $50 retail shooter and, in some ways, better. Plus, it was free--downloadable from the Internet at www.americasarmy.com. That, too, was a calculation--one the Army hoped would weed out people who didn’t know much about computers. The game and its distribution system were difficult by design, Zyda said.

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The game does a good job separating the wheat from the chaff. Before you’re allowed to join an online game, you must undergo weapons training and send your firing range scores to the Army. If you’re a lousy shot, you can’t play. Once inside the game, it gets no easier. The virtual battlefield is enormous, and your enemy is often hidden under cover of darkness. “Newbies” are quickly cut to pieces. Unlike Counter-Strike, America’s Army players aren’t allowed to be on the terrorists’ side. Your team always looks like American soldiers, and the other team always looks like terrorists (or “OPFORs” in Army lingo, meaning “opposing forces.”)

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Very creepy. The article goes on about how the army tracks and collects everything so that when they get their hands on these kids recruiters can look up their statistics and how "the gamers’ brains had the same reaction to computerized violence as they would to real violence".


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As the man blasted his way through Tactical Ops, the MRI scanner mapped his brain activities with such precision that the researchers could determine what it was doing at any given point in the game, frame by frame. The scientists focused their attention on a sliver called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a beehive of emotional and problem-solving activity. Feelings such as fear, sadness and aggression originate here and send out marching orders to other parts of the brain. One study, for example, revealed that when Vietnam vets with post-traumatic stress disorder are shown words like “bodybag” and “firefight,” their ACCs react far more aggressively than normal.


http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-10-14/cover.asp