Philly columnist defends FPS-infused Army Recruitment Center

You can go to bed if you're bored you know.

Anyways, I do agree. I think protesting went a bit far and I don't think someone is going to make the decision to join the army based on a video game. If anything we all know how many times we get shot in video games, I wouldn't personally want to try to do that in real life. That's exactly WHY I play video games.

I'm not sure how you got the impression that I was bored. I was just checking if comments worked and was more curious as to what was going on.

Well I guess your definition of the word "so" is a bit different that what I'm used to.

Engadget did it too, I thought I went back in time for a second. I hope I wasn't the only person to seriously think that.

Or maybe we're all dying and our lives flashed before our eyes? But then we got saved and.. yeah I don't know where I'm going with this.

Personally, I believe the literal Joystiq website had somehow gained sentience,become hyper intelligent, gained the power to travel through multiple dimensions of time and space, traveled said time and space into what seemed like few hours to us; learning of this and of all univeres beauty and majesty, and its horrors and terrors. It had seen the beginning and the end, and everything in between.

Fufilling it's purpose, the website created a perfect copy of it's original form as a simple binary code. Joystiq, Knowing it's power and knowledge, to great for any other to understand, decided the only answer to his existence was like any others; beginning to end. And like that, the great Joystiq, watcher of all, ended; a mere light on the horizon, blinking out of existence, nothing more then a speck, a flicker, a piece of dust streaming past our. Yet it was more beautiful than any could have imagined. For that is the nature of all, for that is how it shall always be.

What's a Joystiq? Never heard of it.

The whole group was down.. Autoblog was not working either

yeah, that was weird as hell. what's up joystiq?

you happened

It was you, you are insane in the membrane, if I were you I'd get myself locked up in an asylum for the benefit of others.

They were testing the new apple web server. Everytime they make a new post, the entire server now goes off-line and displays 'coming soon'.

war isn't a game, shame on the largest VOLUNTARY military on the planet to use popular culture to promote warfare.

instead they should show returning vets talk about how cool it was to see their leaders face blown off, or their friends killed by some type of incendiary device.

no. instead they use games, which we identify with 'fun times'.

i also agree with Ventura, world leaders need to pick an immediate family memeber to go serve in whatever war they push for.

nook you're really contradicting yourself. You acknowledge in no uncertain terms that is a volunteer military. So you should know that they have use stuff like this to recruit. If they actually did do all the stuff you described, you and I both know recruitment numbers would plummet. The military needs soldiers, and there's nothing deceitful or evil about using video games to recruit people, same as it wasn't evil when Donald Duck joined the military or Captain America was created.
Also Iroquois, if anyone joins the military expecting it to be fun and cool like the arcade or CoD, then they're probably really stupid. You have to go waaaaay out of your way to avoid seeing what war really is like, even the fucking 6 o clock news has dead bodies on the screen.

Reading comprehension FTW!

I don't agree with Flower's comment about a video game hiding what the army experience is really like but I also don't see the issue with putting the video game in a recruitment center.

Bah, I mean the game hides some of what the army experience is, he says it doesn't.

I was trying to skim through past posts on the recent subject but couldn't find the one I was looking for. In one of the last posts on this very topic someone chimed in a number of times who had actually been to this place before and gotten a feel for how things went there. All in all, it came off as rather innocuous. Recruiters weren't pressuring anyone at all, and it came off as more of a community organizing place.

It's a somewhat unrelated point you bring up, but the military is a decent paying job, killer benefits, and often times can really help people find a quality career path. Hate to see people flip out about the government or the military anytime they get involved with something.

What the hell is your new avatar from?

Indeed Markez. The military was my fallback plan if I wasn't going to receive enough scholarships to pay for college and books. It's a great route to go, you have zero living expenses, they pay for your room/food/clothes and there are malls/pools/etc near or on the base, you get paid while you are receiving all the free amenities and you get free insurance and college. Sure you are risking your life potentially BUT other than that you have a job with absolute security (provided you don’t break the rules).

that should be a medal in Halo 3. Just imagine the announcer saying it, "KILLADELPHIA!"

It's easy for folks to fall back and think of a recruitment center as a brain washing center and complain about it. It's an easy, and brainless conclusion to come to and react about. As I pointed out above, somebody who had been there said it was anything but that.

Funny point about if interviewers advertised the truth about the company they're hiring for, it'd be ridiculous. "Wellllll you're not going to be happy with the middle-management, or your actual manager, or the way promotions are actually awarded" etc. Every actual commercial company in America is an absolute clown show in some way or another.

Thanks for being a vet, pretty much agree with everything you put up there. First few years are a crappy wage, but the benefits really kinda offset it.

Had a handful of friends in the military, different branches, all with service in Iraq. They've all had some issues with what they've done, some more serious than others. But they've all re-enlisted and believe in what they do.

Definitely props to you. I hope to read some other comments from our service men and women on this post. And happy belated Memorial Day.

Awesome post. :)

The problem isn't knowing that the military is gonna use whatever it can to recruit. The problem is if it's RIGHT for them to use certain methods. This is one method that isn't, because it's associating the military(and all it entails) with an escapist past time.

So, I'm going to keep being concerned with how my military recruits, thank you very much. If your job is to get people to sign up for a job where they're going to kill and possibly be killed, AND your salary is payed by my taxes, then goddammit, I want a full disclosure before you get that 18 year old to sign on the dotted line. Anything else is deceit. But, you know, higher standard of duty and honor and all that.

@rowd149: And you think they DON'T disclose this information before they sign on the dotted line? What the heck do people think they're signing up for, a trip to Disney Land?

Sometimes I wonder if personal responsibility has completely gone out the window at this point...

I think they downplay it as much as possible so they can meet their quotas. It's all so much bullshit. However much you think I'm insulting peoples' intelligence, the recruiters are doing it more. If you really believed in a recruits sense of duty, you'd tell him straight-up what he was in for, instead of luring him in with games and promises of money. When our army has to "market" itself, you know shit's hit the fan.

I'm also a vet of the first Gulf War and completely agree with Tracy's comments. How is having video games at a recruitment center any worse than waving a financial incentive in their faces. College funds and signing bonuses are financial incentives.

On a humorous note, they should definitely let them know that all spawn points and restarts are turned off in the game of "Military."

Damn, now we are getting somewhere:

@Sarge: Dude, it IS getting rediculous. You'd think we had something apocryphal like WW2 to get people to sign up and hit the road to good justice, but no... Again that's the "what our military is used for" being a better cause to take up than video games in recruiting. If the mission was awesome and inspiring you'd have tons of people signing up. Right now the sense of duty is taxed to the maximum.

@Singular: I'd always hoped it would be like a game of tribes, *bounce *bounce *pew pew pew! Sadly there was a lot more grit and sweat. And hot. And drinking smelly water.

The problem here is associating games with war and having that association be validated by those who would send you to war. I can only HOPE these Army "Experience" centers do less recruiting than traditional money scam centers.

I had it pressured into my head from Junior to Senior year in HS that the military was just a great option. The military came into my elective class to show me a video of happy peppy people running with guns, jumping out of airplanes, and generally doing everything in the military EXCEPT the traumatizing experiences and the possible death.

The military recruiters shouldn't be allowed to dupe the gullible into thinking that the war will clear up soon, the pay is spectacular, the chances of seeing combat are slim, and more that I've seen used. But they do. And I guess you're ok with that.

You want to talk about better use of military power? How about the military themselves start questioning the grounds on which they are fighting? How about potential recruits get full disclosure on what they're getting themselves into with suicide rates, PTS syndrome rates, etc.? Nah that wouldn't sell the military very well.

I've never served and will never serve, and I comend you for being able to do something I find completely impossible. But I cannot agree with you on this. A friend of mine was over in Iraq and he took down a terrorist with a bomb strapped to herself. He got a medal for it. The terrorist was an 8 year old girl with a teddy bear.

You really think so? Damn you've got a twisted world perspective.