America's Army

Recently in one of my other media classes we've been looking at online gaming and the like. We were shown a free online game that six million people are playing... The game is called "America's Army" and you are only allowed to be a male member of the army, you can only see from their point of view so you are never able to see what your player looks like, and the game takes place in Iraq. The object of the game is to kill everyone that is not American... The Army uses this game as a recuiting device and it has been proven that numbers in the Army have gone up since this game was available to the public in 2000. Our professor told us that one part of the game the player goes into a hosptial and kills the injured people along wiht the doctors and nurses.... I found this game to be extremely disturbing. Sure, it maybe somewhat fun to play, but my biggest concern with the game and the actual war going on is that, in the game when you die you can start it all over again, in real life, you only get one chance. I think this is a sly tool to make the war look 'attactive' and 'fun' to recuit males.