The Propaganda War

I agree with Delwiche’s argument that video games like America’s Army, Special Force, and Call of Duty are a form of propaganda. According to the article, propaganda is “the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”

Video games are a form of media that can be successfully used as propaganda because of four qualities: immersion, intense engagement, identification and interactivity. These four qualities of War based video games make them an influential form of media.

Immersion refers to the idea that video games provide a profound sensory domination through sight, sound, touch, and the perception of bodily movements. Intense engagement is the quality of video games that allows the player to feel like they are in control of their actions. Because of the physical and psychological attachment to the narrative a video game creates, the player can identify with the fictional character and world. Finally, interactivity is a quality of video games that sets it apart from other forms of media such as cinema or billboards, because “the ongoing interaction between these representations and the embodied behavior of the user… makes such images more than images.”

These four qualities make video games an intriguing form of media that gives it the ability to be more powerful than other forms of media. This power has been recognized by the CIA and other government agencies.

For example, former CIA director William Colby worked for a video game company after retiring, and a former marine confessed to working at a video game company with the goal of gaining support for the war against Iran. The success of this form of media is evident in the release of America’s Army, following the 9/11 attacks. This game was downloaded more than 40 million times, putting it in the Guinness book of world records.

There has been considerable backlash towards these games for being a deceiving recruitment strategy. As discussed in the Juul article, video games blur the lines between fiction and reality, allowing players to fill in the gaps. This can be dangerous because the user can fill in the blanks of the war world however they want, instead of with what happens in reality; the fatigue of going on long missions, the constant feelings of uneasiness, and the fact that people actually die.

Every game has a set of rules and a fictional narrative that work together to create the world depicted in the video game. This combination gives life to video games, but according to U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Brian Gonterman who served a tour in Afghanistan, the enemy in these games isn’t sophisticated enough to behave like humans because they work based entirely on systematic rules programmed by the developers. According to Gonterman, “In a game, you know what to expect; whereas in real life, the situation changes every day and you learn by going out of the wire all the time.”