An Army of Fun: Video Arcade to Lure Recruits

An Army of Fun: Video Arcade to Lure Recruits

www.nypost.com

Rumored to becoming to Times Square, it'll be like the Disney Store, except with guns and camouflage.

The 14,500-square-foot center will be a multimedia extravaganza with high-tech gadgetry, including flight simulators and life-size soldier video games.

That person greeting you at the door? That's an actual Army of ficer.

While the Army will sell a small amount of merchandise at the venue, the focus is on building "brand experiences" that give potential recruits a taste of military service.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 18-6-2008 by SystemiK]

Times must be getting tough for recruiters.

Walters said the Army store is a prototype for a new kind of recruitment office and is the latest example of the military's increasing use of marketing tools to attract the next generation of soldiers.

"We're moving away from normal recruiting offices and desks to places where men and women can experience military service," he said.

"We've been doing that with innovative techniques like interaction with real soldiers and high-tech virtual experiences."

It bothers me to see the army going to such extremes to lure kids into the fold. This IS war after all, not some video game. Obviously this is preferable to a draft but it seems like they are distorting the reality of the situation a bit here.



www.nypost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I disagree.
The military is just showing the younger generation what they are about.
If you join the military and don't expect to go to a warzone your a retard.
Any way i see no problem as being in the miltary is a far beter life than being a civilian, in the military every one helps each other out.
This site is full of far left dip [snip] any way who 9/11 was a set-up, that to me says that these peoples opinions are worth [snip] and in no way do they represent the majority.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by SKUNK2]


Mod Edit: Profanity/Circumvention Of Censors – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 18-6-2008 by elevatedone]

playing a video game dosent let you experiance real miliatary life, you arent realy being shot at, you arent realy watching your friends die in front of you, you arent realy killing a fellow human being. you arent realy isolated from your loved ones and the comforting familiarity of home. you work out a game that can effectivly simulate those conditions and experiances and then you can claim your video game imitates miliatary life.

So the US military have decided to recruit new soldiers by going down the 'its like a game , only real' route.
Thats fine as long as they (sorry for the pun coming up) DRILL the FACT that if you go to war you ONLY GET ONE LIFE. There are no save points and no amount of hacking or haxor skills will help you get infinite life or maximum armour.
At least with a game you can switch off or restart a level when you make a mistake , but in a real warzone there's no such luxury , There's no backing out when you find out that you don't like the life that they issue you with.
Mind you saying that I DO play a lot of online shooters and the majority are kids who are like ' man , your such a noob. I got leet skills.'
God help the next generation of soldiers. You watch one of them get their legs blown off or get shot and watch them cry for their mama's.

Suppose it's better than the French training, All they do is train you to put your hands up.

In these video games you aren't firing at living human being with families, just pixels on the screen. The reality of military life couldn't be more different.

The Army are trying to distort the reality of military service as a good laugh with the lads.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by dodgygeeza]

it would be nice that they show live simulations of your friend dying in front of you, loosing legs from landmines, finding them slaugthered, looking at mass graves knowing that someone you know is in there.maybe use of poisons... also simulation of concentration camp should be nice.

this is what you see in war, not some stupid games. you all forgot what is war really about. ask your Vietnam vets what they think, they had real ground fights, not that funny 5-day iraq war.

Hmmm... maybe they should pump the smell of burning flesh through the building, have a puppy throwing range and encourage new recruits to scream and guffaw like children whilst representing democracy and all that is 'true' in america...

A few unexploded cluster bombs, maybe some child limbs and depleted uranium keyrings to take home as memorabilia would polish it all off very nicely...

[snip]

This is war... This kid doesn't have an extra life at the end of the game... This kid won't magically regrow his limbs... He's maimed until the day he dies. I bet they won't show this to the new recruits will they?




Mod Edit - removed uncessesary graphic pic.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by elevatedone]

Originally posted by SKUNK2
I disagree.
The military is just showing the younger generation what they are about.
If you join the military and don't expect to go to a warzone your a retard.
Any way i see no problem as being in the miltary is a far beter life than being a civilian, in the military every one helps each other out.
This site is full of far left dip [snip] any way who 9/11 was a set-up, that to me says that these peoples opinions are worth [snip] and in no way do they represent the majority.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by SKUNK2]

if the site if full of far left DIP [snip] and their opinions worth [snip] then "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE". i think posters like yourself who slag off other peoples opinions with profanity should be BANNED!!! The site is here for the SOLE purpose of users to express their opinions on such subjects, but with a degree of intelligent debate and seriousness. If the above post is the best you can manage i suggest you go onto the TELETUBBIES forum, or any other forum for the under fives for that matter! I would recommend that the mods remove this members disturbing post!!!!


Mod Edit: Profanity/Circumvention Of Censors – Please Review This Link.

Mod Note: General ATS Discussion Etiquette – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 18-6-2008 by elevatedone]

I work, part time, at a GameStop.

It's partnership with the military is disgusting, and I refuse to keep their signs up in the store. I also fast forward through their ad's or sponsored events on the GameStop DVD we have to play every second of every day that store is open.

Many kids, many young kids, are in the store buying games, and there are signs advertising the army, and how awesome it is. This is right above where we keep our Gameboy Advanced games...a system which is traditionally for young children.

There was also a contest to make a machinima clip for the game "Skate"; it was sponsored by the Navy, if I remember correctly. The advert ran for over two or three months in our store...unless I was working.

I guess they got tired of paying GameStop and decided a one-stop, super store of propaganda is cheaper.

[edit on 6/18/0808 by spines]

[edit on 6/18/0808 by spines]

Originally posted by SKUNK2
I disagree.
The military is just showing the younger generation what they are about.
If you join the military and don't expect to go to a warzone your a retard.
Any way i see no problem as being in the miltary is a far beter life than being a civilian, in the military every one helps each other out.
This site is full of far left dip [snip]any way who 9/11 was a set-up, that to me says that these peoples opinions are worth [snip] and in no way do they represent the majority.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by SKUNK2]

Mate, if you're the majority then i say just kill me now and have done with it, rather than face a world full of loonies and backward mentalists like you.

Go back to licking your flag or whatever it is you do...


Mod Edit - removed quoted profanity

[edit on 18-6-2008 by elevatedone]

one normal person at last. not showing army ads to kids.

kids and army - what's this world going to...

Reminder :

Civility and Decorum


Thank You.

reply to post by spines


They have a partnership with Gamestop? Wow, I'm in there from time to time and never even noticed the connection. Next time I drop in there I'll pay more attention.

I really have no problem with the recruiting in general, though I often disagree with their tactics.

reply to post by SystemiK


Agreed on their tactics being shady.

When I was living on campus, my dad got a call from someone pretending to be one of my buddies. When my dad asked who the guy was so he could relay the message the guy gave him his name, number and told my dad we were friends.

My dad asked if this was a recruiter and it was. From the Army.

Hell, when I was of college application age, I recieved over twenty different letters from different branches of the millitary.

When I was in high school we had some fund raiser, and in order to get a week of tag day (my school had uniforms; tag days are days when you don't have to wear the uniform), you had to send out a bunch of postcards that begged for magazine subscriptions. I mailed three to a man I invented, who lived at my house, named 'Bird Pat'.

The armed forces, especially the marines, want Bird Pat's military talent...enough for him to have his own 20+ pile of letters.

[edit on 6/18/0808 by spines]

This is like the amusement park in Pinocchio that they used to lure the kids in with before turning them into donkeys and shipping them off the diamond mines, only instead of diamond mines these kids will be shipped off to the oil fields.

Does eveyone realixe the number of CHILDREN SOLDIERS aroung the globe is on the rise? Yes the subject in question is no doubt propoganda and some Gaming skills do translate over to real war but younger people dont get how not fun it is when you really go 2 war. War Video Games=FUN . Real war=Hell. In other countries children are forced to fight and their families are slaughtered so it can always be worse.

I think this is far more an indication of what "fires up" today's generation rather than a representation of shady new recruitment tactics by our millitary. Think about it, for decades this country sent millitary recruiters into schools with the mantra of "Are you a patriot, son? Your father and uncles probably fought and maybe some of them even died to keep this country free, son... you don't want to let them down by not doing your patriotic duty, do you?" and in those Leave it to Beaver times of God, mom, and apple pie many young men headed straight to the millitary. Don't be fooled, either, the millitary propaganda was just as prevalent then, just in different forms. Instead of video games glamorizing millitary life, it was movies, cartoons, comic books, and graphic novels. Watch any old 40's or 50's movie that involves the millitary and watch young men dancing close with cute chicks wearing bullet cone bras under tight sweaters at millitary social events covered in the movies as if they happened every weekend. Watch any old Warner Bros. cartoon where Buggs Bunny emphasizes patriotism and encourages national pride. Pick up an old Captain America comic (or any other superhero comic from back then) in which the superhero frequently made a comment near the end of the book when kids would swarm them and heap praise on them like "Now kids, the real heros are our brave boys off fighting for freedom and the American way of life!" They used the constant threat of communism to get young men to believe if they didn't serve, their entire family could be eating Borscht and calling each other 'comrade' or even be completely anhilated in a nuclear strike that was believed to be hanging over America like the sword of Damocles.

The past couple of generations (including my own, I'm 32), issues like patriotism, nationalism, and outside threats to American sovreignity don't hold the same weight as they once did. The world is too intertwined and our kids learn too much about the world outside our borders compared with generations past. Our enemies are no longer shrouded in clouds of our own ignorance. In some ways the movie The 13th Warrior is an appropos comparison to how the average American viewed our enemies... we saw a firey dragon consuming in flames everything in it's path, never realizing that there was no real dragon, just fear of the unknown. That no longer exists, so the millitary cannot use it to get our youth to enlist. Same goes for the movie glamorization of millitary life... of what use is the promise of occassional slow dancing at a chapparoned event to a kid that gets more tail than a public toilet seat? Cartoons and comics cannot be used anymore because of public outcry over any scent of racial or culturally motivated claims of American superiority. Hell, most of the old WB cartoons that dealt with patriotism can't even be showed on TV anymore due to network policies about such things.

Today's generation is all about instant gratification and fast action. Enter the video game... If you actually sat most of them down and laid out an educated program designed to show them millitary life, what we're fighting for, who we're fighting against, etc their recruitment numbers wouldn't improve. Also attitudes towards warfare for any reason have changed dramatically, and not for the better, IMO. Compare the 4,000+ losses we've suffered in the past 5 years to the astronomical number of losses suffered in almost any war we've previously fought in and then compare the number of protests and the magnitude of the outcry of this war vs those. From an American casuality standpoint, this war has been a drop in the bucket compared to past wars. However, these kids have been bombarded with media that would lead the uninformed to draw the conclusion that it has been far more costly than any war we've ever fought. I think that plays a huge role in this as the millitary recruiter is already fighting against a force that has used propaganda against service to its fullest, thus the millitary has turned to propaganda of its own.

Looks like a fun time after a few beers.

I'm no promoter of war, but the Army is doing the same thing any corporate company does...promos, so what's the big deal? Like test driving a car...I can't afford a corvette, but chevy will let me test drive one.

It's all well and good 'glamourising' the miltiary but I still think they should show not only the 'gung ho lets go' attitude showing the victory dancing of winning a battle, the cameraderie of fellow troops, the joy of freedom on civilians faces as the troops liberate their homes.
But also the downside of any battle or war, the troops injured with limbs missing , the bodies lying in the streets as the battle rages around them, the dying troops calling for help.
That would sort out the men from the boys and the ones who want to just fire off a gun, to the ones who genuinely will risk all life , limb and liberty in the name of freedom and security for the families back home.

[edit on 19/6/2008 by DataWraith]