America’s Army has always courted controversy, but protesters in San Francisco yesterday declared that it was in violation of international law. Gathering outside UbiSoft’s SF headquarters, a not really very impressive throng of about twenty turned up to wave banners and sing impromtu protest songs (although none so clever as mine above) against the Teen rating of America’s Army in the US. Game Videos were there, their video of the event below.
The key issue is that America’s Army, designed as a recruitment tool for the US Army and funded by the Department of Defence, is allowed to be sold to 13 year olds and above, which the protesters, and ACLU, say is a deliberate attempt to recruit underage Americans into the armed forces.
If you watch past the slightly frightening angry ladies, there’s an interview with someone who explains why the game violates UN law, and explains the motivations behind the protests.
The protesters made it clear they are not against violent video games, but purely the recruiting nature of America’s Army. According to Xtaster, the campaigners wish for a sticker to be on all boxes, reading:
Warning: The video game America’s Army has been developed by the United States Army to recruit children under the age of 17 in violation of the U.N. Optional Protocol and international law. Combat service has been known to cause death, irreparable injuries, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and lifelong feelings of overwhelming guilt.
Xtaster go on to say, stating that it might be pure fiction, that two protesters managed to speak to Ubisoft bossman, Laurent Detoc, and report the following:
They say [he] told them that Ubisoft’s publishing of the America’s Army game actually did lead to an “internal conflict” within the company, and that an ethics committee was established to deal with these issues.
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@Donald Duck: Thanks for this reasonable and well thought out response. May I applaud you? With people like you, I’m sure we can convince everybody that war is a bad thing.
hands up if you have been to war……………………
i have twice afgan and iraq, yay squadies
opps forgot kosovo aswell (not war but i think stoping ethnic cleansing counts)
Deuteronomy wrote:
And the locals are just thrilled to be able to give the American tourist the holiday experience of a lifetime! Bring your kids!
Little Jimmy says: “Oh, boy! I can’t wait to tell my friends about it!”
-Swell, you do that, Little Jimmy!
You’re more likely to die in an automobile wreck in the USA over the same time it takes to complete a tour of duty in Iraq. If the locals are really that unfriendly they aren’t doing a very good job of showing it.
i thought they were very nice chaps who were keen to sell me whiskey and ice lollys.
true story
Good for them! Games should not be used to promote wars, let alone recruit!
@cullnean:
They didn’t offer you tickets for the Mossad Magical Ride? You should have tried those.
@Deuteronomy: Well, obviously. Americans are lousy drivers and when they go to war, they make sure they don’t get shot.
However, I don’t think your statement is true for the Iraqi’s. Unless you count roadside IED’s as an automobile accident. They’re also people, see?
@Diogo Ribeiro:
nope the Israeli spy’s didnt offer, but i did get a jaunty trip in a puma helicopter
So you think if the Americans withdraw now the Iraqi death rate is going to go up or down? I have a feeling bombs hidden in markets that take out 100+ Iraqis are worse than the roadside ones targeted at Americans in that respect.
Cullnean, I assume you’re an Englander, are you guys allowed to drink in theater?
@Deuteronomy:
yes i am, and no we cant (offically)but i may have or maybe i didnt (offical secrets act and all that)
The Wired blog post on this is pretty good.
Also, @Flint, this is a protest against specifically the Xbox 360 version of the game, which is new (?). Doesn’t make much more sense, but there you go.
EDITED
Meh what’s the point. I’m sure its all achieving the aim of bringing freedom and democracy to the middle east…
The real problem with using wargames as a recruitment tool on kids is that the kids tend get the wrong message. They take tactical positions that leave their flanks and train exposed, have a combat posture and comms discipline that practically invites engagement, and have such a poor lack of situational awareness that they interpret immediate and decisive threats as nuisances, trying to press forward even after it’s too late.This is best illustrated in the instructive video that’s been circulating for a while now, but has recently been revived by the fail blog folks.
Maximum Fish:
Being Swedish, I feel I should point out the fact that the mandatory military service we do have is only basic training and you’ll never get called into service for anything other than defending Swedish borders. The professional military is far more voluntary than the American army in that we don’t have recruiters running around nor do we have a socio-economic situation that excludes a large chunk of the population from any other means of a career or government and media which glorify war and calls for blind support of politics and troops.
Also our actual “mandatory” military service is more or less voluntary these days considering the tiny armed forces we have, and even if you do get called in you have the right to refuse any kind of armed service.
In what way does pointing out the fact that both the Israeli government and Palestinian terrorists are doing some atrocious things constitute anti-Semitism?
@Dinger
You may find that makes them more acceptable for recruitment in the army. ;)
AA is crap. We have reached a consensus on that, but what about the tactical FPSs that aren’t? They should be recognised for what they are.
I name True Combat: Elite.
The US army playing the peacekeeping role by providing an alternative target? Interesting idea. But it’s unlikely Iraq would descend into chaos if the US and UK pulled out. If there was a concerted effort to emplace a democratic regime (as opposed to a US sockpuppet) supported by a non-partisan peacekeeping force, there’d be little problem I’d reckon. Unfortunately, that means the US authorities admitting that their strong-arm tactics are ruinous…
Anyway, I’d take ‘empty’ cynicism over blinkered propaganda any day. But is that calls of deviation and repettition I hear?
Wow these comments are giving me a headache. I want to jump in and yell at some of you really loudly, but I’ll save myself the trouble. Stupid people will be stupid and believe whatever they want to believe, some comments at RPS won’t change anything.
That is the best part about being an american, if your not being lambasted by a bunch of right wing facists your being screamed at by a bunch of left wing ones that smell allot worse. I live in Eugene Oregon (considered the second biggest hippy mecha in the west), and I can tell you without a ounce of doubt: These people really dont care about what there protesting about, they just want there 15 minutes of fame. Just once try and have a intelligent conversation with any extremist and you will learn how closely related we still are to apes.
Having lived in one of the most protest happy places I have ever been I have learned that very few actually care about what they protest. A big chunk is self gratification with the remainder being wanting to belong to something, anything, that makes them feel wanted and important.
Here we commonly refer to it as “Masterbation with a megaphone”
All I can say is that I remember going over to Plymouth and being creeped out by how in-your-face the British army was, it’s a very different culture to Ireland, despite the fact that here it was relatively normal for the army to have roadblocks and provide security for money vans. Things like the British Army Cadets seem strange and slightly unwholesome, as a school-endorsed concept, although I know people who treated joining the Reserves (equivalent to the TA, I guess) as a normal thing while in school. I guess there’s a mix of a firm belief in self defense and a complete lack of desire to project power, at least currently. (Considering the Irish government in the 70’s made plans to invade Norn Ireland)
I think they’re right. Though I’m not sure it’s as evil-intent as is being said.
The game was created as a recruitment tool, we know that. It’s made for people who are teenagers, we know that. Put them together, and you have recruitment of young teenagers for the army, which is forbidden.
Ok you are under a misconception here Erlam. Recruitment does not mean advertising or any other form of contact. It actually means bringing young teens into warzones and giving them guns and telling them to shoot people. Exposing someone who can’t be recuited to a recruitment tool is not forbidden.
@Skalpadda
“In what way does pointing out the fact that both the Israeli government and Palestinian terrorists are doing some atrocious things constitute anti-Semitism?”
It doesn’t. It’s a bunch of apologist morally-convenient over-simplifying bullshit, and though decidely untrue, it alone does not constitute anti-semitism. No, the anti-semitism part comes in when the human rights commission, chaired by fucking Sudan, (formerly Libya, under Gaddafi) becomes a forum for holocaust denial, continual condemnation of Israeli Jews under the guise of “Zionism”, and an unprecendented and unrivalled number of condemnations against one country, while dozens of far worse rights abusers are left unchallenged.
The UN openly condemns Israel for reprisal attacks, and yet fails to condemn the insitgating attacks on Israeli civilians; they deny Israels right to defend itself by classifying palestinian combatants as “civilian resistance”, and greenlight terrorism against Israel via a 1982 resolution that says armed struggle is a legitimate tool for fighting against foreign occupation, naming Israel specifically, they failed to condemn or even note the recent partisan bloodshed following the Palestinian elections; Kofi Annan personally condemned Israel for the “extra judicial killing” of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and yet made no mention of the over 3,000 actual extra-judicial killings in Brazil; they are required to produce 25 accusations of rights violations by Israel every year, and yet stand silent when regarding Iran’s stoning, burning and crucifixtion of women by state-sanctioned murder squads (”morality police”) for crimes such as being seen in public with an unmarried man, silent when Saudi Arabia condemns a teenage girl with down syndrome to death by stoning for the crime of having been raped, and waited until 1991 before they finally repealed a resolution equating Zionism with racism, even though state run Palestinian television to this day (funded in part by UNICEF) promotes suicide bombings against Israel.
Israel has been the target of nearly 60 percent of the commissions decsisions and condemnations, has been the subject of more resolutions than any other country in the world, and hopefully we can all recognize this is a disproportionate figure.
This may be a total tangent, but it’s one i feel fairly strongly about…
Apologies all round! Bad day at work. Yeah, more than a little juvenile, but Paul Moloneys smug correction didn’t really help my mood. Anyway, sorry, won’t happen again. I think I’ll leave a long wellrounded rant about AA for another day, it’ll be boring and full of facts and writing it will be like work. You know my stance and you know why -I don’t think it’s necessary to say I’m on the left end of the spectrum when it comes to politics.
I don’t get it. In what way does your recounting the various barbarities of all sides and the hypocrisy of the UN construct an argument against the Skalpadda quote you started your post with?
But I admit, the idea that there might be something such as a Military Industrial Complex where the old money and the old power get together and organize their getting a lot richer is of course a halliburton, yes a hallucination.
San Francisco should just fall off the face of the earth. The US Government should stop funding the City of San Francisco until people think. Its the parents fault for letting their children play Mature rated games.
Maximum Fish: I won’t go into this much further because the Palestine/Israel conflict is not what this site nor article is about, but it’s worth noting that during the past 20 years the UN attitude towards Israel has changed quite a lot, and while I agree that there are plenty of other issues that should have equal importance, two wrongs still don’t make one right.
I’ll stop adding to the derailing the comments thread now. *hides*
I think we should let the residents of San Francisco get some first hand knowledge of cluster munitions. You know. So the survivors could protest a bit more authentically.
@Skalpadda
Yeah, sorry. PC gaming website. No more tangents, i promise.
Ok, I’ll jump on the rerailing train.
I always found AA sobering. There’s no happy lives to save, all you do is kill/be killed. Bleeding to near death (a feature no other big FPS has) isn’t exactly the most appealing way to sell the army.
What AA did was educate me and increase the respect I have for the professionalism and exposure to danger the US army does exhibit.
I always find things like this incredibly painful. It’s like watching one of those movies where the main character is just constantly embarrassed or made a fool of… and you don’t even like the main character because he’s just an annoying weaselly guy so you’re supposed to be entertained by his blunders but it just hurts it hurts
@Deuteronomy – I have always felt anyone willing to join the army in any form must be a little bit wrong in the head. In the end it’s that they are willing to take someone else’s life. I don’t want to sound like a hippy, I’m not a pacifist but to join the army you do have to be a wee bit fucked up.
Oh and a recruitment tool. Or a tool for recruitment, in other words a way of getting people recruited. I don’t understand, Erlam was right.
Its the parents fault for letting their children play Mature rated games.
It’s rated teen, though.
Well, let it be known that I did not support the war in Iraq. How ever, I do not automatically take some moral high horse opposing war and military in general. Because, frankly, the more people you convince to become pacifist, the easier it will be to gut them later–just common sense, try it in EVE. Call me a cynic, sure. I opposed the war in Iraq not because of left-wing sentiments, but because I took a look at the long-term threats, and wagered: “I think we have better things to do than depose Saddam.” It was a strategic and politic assessment, and I was accused of a good deal of Machiavellian detachment from morality when my more “convinced” friends went on and on about how it was apparently our moral duty to depose this cruel tyrant (as opposed to many others) or that he posed a threat to the safety of my fellow Americans. Though it didn’t help that I said, flat outright, that the only way we could get away with a war in Iraq was if 1) Everything went according to plan or 2)We had a proper, irrefutable casus belli.
Since the other Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then-Secretary Rumsfeld were incompetent and utterly convinced that Iraq would not need a large occupation force to keep the peace, they ignored General Shinseki’s minority opinion. Though, many years later, they’ve discovered the hard way that he was right.
Considering they didn’t bring in enough troops to pacify the region until long after it was too late to paint a happy media picture, I’d say that they didn’t have the strategic sense to carry operations out well enough to satisfy the whims of politics.
And, yes, only when they got more troops in Iraq was there a turnaround in the rate of violence. Also, getting the help of Iraqi local militias to smoke out Al Qaeda militants (who, as it turned out, didn’t care how many Iraqis they killed, so long as they hit one or two Americans in the process, which convinced the locals to help) improved the situation.
And the fact that the instigators of the Iraq war couldn’t hide their avaricious intentions under the propaganda didn’t help. Great job making everyone hate our troops, Mr. Bush.
Now!
These protesters aren’t here to actually make a difference. Any difference. They just want attention. They’re assuming that any and all games automatically “hook” and “brainwash” kids, so they’re also operating on underlying assumptions that insult the very people they claim to protect (the children).
Which is a fault that any moral guardians are liable to find themselves guilty of.
This is also a bit of self-aggrandizement on their part, seeing as how they just want to make a “point” on Iraq but through a new angle–one that could get them more press because it’s more interesting.
Having to listen to idiocy from Democrats and Republicans on the issue of Iraq, and even on war in general, has generally soured my outlook on any and all discussion I happen to stumble upon regarding the matter.
The left-wing is more interested in posturing on a ground of moral superiority to look better than the people who don’t agree with them. And they’re less interested in actually doing things, or taking actions knowing that good will come of them, than they are interested in making a fuss and feeling good about themselves. Also, tossing around insults that diminish others’ intelligence as a form of intellectual bullying doesn’t help their case.
The right-wing is still deluded by a national myth of invincibility and feel-good posturing of another sort–patriotic, my-country-is-stronger-than-your-country, dick-waggling. The sort that does no good, and throws away the lives of the men and women brave enough to fight for their country and duty-bound to die for their choice. That, and the right-wing is motivated largely by greed. This is obvious to all observers, and wasn’t sure this needed mentioning.
(If you’re wondering why I have more vitriol saved for liberals than conservatives, it’s because I’m a moderate Democrat who’s sick of seeing his own party losing itself to elitism, posturing, and hypocrisy. But if you need me to vote Dem in the general election, you can likely count on my vote. If I don’t decide to abstain altogether.)
On the issue of the invincibility of the US military:
No conventional threat can, at this point, defeat the US military. However, the military will never defeat politics. Or bureaucracy. Oh, lordy, the bureaucracy.
So!
Considering I’ve probably offended all parties involved, with liberals calling me a fascist for not having a knee-jerk moral-superiority perspective on the issue of war, and conservatives calling me a hippy for not buying into the propaganda and being unwilling to abide by their avarice, I should probably close with something to brighten the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCImrmR63JE&feature=related
Have some Barenaked Ladies: If I Had A Million Dollars.
Well, that explains the bizarre idea of what constitutes ‘left wing’.
Yes.
Indeed. It seems Americans have a big thing against being ‘left wing’(which I believe they generally misunderstand anyway). Which is strange to me as I have been brought up in a household where if I had voted conservative I would be shunned. Personally I don’t like to think of myself as ‘left wing’, I don’t think you can put a label on your views that easily. I’m a little from column A, a little from column B etc.
That’s what the term “moderate” is supposed to mean.
But I find that nobody’s taking me to task for my unflattering description of the right wing. Consider that I’ve had to live with the American left and right for years. And, thus, have developed a special place in my heart for both. Next to a furnace.
Most of my fellow Americans, especially in these parts, are self-proclaimed liberals. So there’s no anti-left bias amongst them. Instead, they’re walking billboards for the blog Stuff White People Like, minus the irony and satire.
Not sure about what it’s like across the big pond, but over here liberals are just as exasperating, and bound to fits of illogic, as conservatives. And many are so smug as to be unbearable to talk to, and condescend towards anyone not “Leftier than thou.”
And before anyone takes that as a dig against other Americans, I should point out that this is a problem I find inherent in the human condition. No country is immune to idiocy. It’s just easier to point out in the loudest group of the bunch.
It’s that idiocy, in American politics, likes to spread itself all across the spectrum. Equal opportunity, as it were.
Wow… yeah I agree with Diablo in the whole junior recruitment thing.. isn’t that the whole deal with the RLTC and various other things they subject kids to in if i can remember as early as middleschool, if not just highschool.. which would consist of the whole being under 17 deal… what a silly load of crap. :=)… kids may slightly be losing thier minds but in the end they’ll still not be able to join until they are 18 as is… so it’ll be thier choice. done deal.
(but yeah there’s alot of messed up stuff with kids and various video games but this doesn’t seem to be about bad parenting, or maybe just simply being oblivious now…. go build a fort and shoot fellow kids with sling-shots imo.. now if you exscuse me it’s to late for me, i must return to WOW O_o’
Are u kidding?? if we play war we will go down in afghanistan and kill bad guys… War is a not a shooting game… if they should be scared of something they should think of BF2 and Counter strike not WAR…. By the way War online ROCKS! ;)