The Army’s Most Effective Recruiting Tool? A Videogame

Americas Army game

The America’s Army line of games has been used to recruit youths into military service. While I imagine that some impressionable teens would get caught up in the game and think the Army is “cool”, the effectiveness of the game is much higher than that. According to a study conducted by two M.I.T. researchers:

30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined.

I’m just greatly amused that the Army stole The Last Starfighter’s gimmick and turned it into a highly effective recruiting tool.

Is anyone else surprised by the M.I.T. findings? Are young people so impressionable that a game can lead them to a major lifestyle choice?

Source via Game Politics

Author: RPadTV

https://rpad.tv

9 thoughts on “The Army’s Most Effective Recruiting Tool? A Videogame”

  1. The answer is NO. Video games are popular with the demographic that the Army recruits, so any "evidence" is circumstantial at best. Given the number of people in the military that play that game, you can say it can cause people to have a better opinion of the military because they are coming into closer contact with the people who are serving. Seriously, not many people join who don't actually want to serve these days.

  2. This is an unethical marketing tool and borders on the line of just plain wrong. Death and killing of real people should never be glorified or taken a back seat to "the coolness of getting to fire sweet guns."

    At an early enough age, impressionable youths are just that; impressionable. What they don't show you is the post-traumatic stress disorder that comes from killing your first human being or watching a close friend of yours have his body mangled by an IED. They don't show you the deplorable conditions of our VA hospitals and less than sub-par assistance for disabled veterans who literally gave their limbs and then some for the country they love so much.

    If you are an rational adult, you can make your own (hopefully informed) choices based on all the facts, but to use a game as a marketing ploy and fool those that can be fooled into thinking that war and real killing is acceptable, then that is just wrong. I do not think that any adult here would allow their children to play an "M" rated game if they feel that their kid(s) were not mature enough to handle it or at least know the difference between right and wrong and life and death.

    Obviously, if you are attacked, then you fight back… maybe even until death and I understand that is the way of the world. But I also believe that deep down inside (on a genetic level), human beings do not want to kill each other. I think that mental conditioning, a certain amount of brainwashing, and possibly a twisted mind are all likely candidates for people killing people (or hunger, if you happen to be a cannibal). After all, if humans were genetically inherent on killing each other, I think we would have a lot less people in the world or possibly never have evolved to the point where we are now.

    If you want to serve your country, it should be because of an unyielding sense of pride, patriotism and love of your country, not because it is cool to fire guns at people. If the army wanted to recruit more people, they should remind people of why this country is so great and implore them to help defend it physically.

    -M

  4. I don't think this game is really swaying peoples' opinions. I'm pretty sure most of the people playing America's Army are there because they have an interest in the Army in the first place.

    It's no surprise that people who play The Beatles:Rock Band are going to like the Beatles or that people who play Madden happen to like football. So I don't know why M.I.T. researchers are wasting time studying the obvious.

  6. @Empyu The examples aren't the same. It's not like MTV is trying to actively recruit musicians with Rock Band or EA is trying to create NFL players with Madden. America's Army is a recruiting tool.

  7. @Rpad

    My main point was that people who play America's Army probably already had a positive opinion of the Army beforehand. What makes it an effective recruiting tool isn't that it shines the Army in a good light. It's the fact that it has such a massive reach. The game is free, so anyone with an internet connection can get it. But it only really appeals to people who feel they can stick around and really join the Army.

    I feel the M.I.T. research is faulty because they imply the game gave the players a positive outlook on the Army.

    If NASA was using a game to get recruits, I'd be all over that.

  9. @Sandrock323

    Yeah, I guess it depends on what you'd get recruited for. I'm not all that interested in going out into space – although that'd be cool as hell. NASA has awesome labs with wind tunnels, robots, and vacuum chambers. That's closer to my pace.

    But I don't know if it would be a very compelling game. What would be the primary gameplay type? At 1600 do a maintanence check on the engines?

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