The Defense Deparment's Virtual Army Experience game continues to make waves as it tours air shows and summer festivals.

In the latest flap, the Ohio chapter of Veterans for Peace agreed to drop its planned protest after Army officials agreed not to admit players under 17 to the interactive game, which depict a firefight between U.S. soldiers and virtual insurgents. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

The Army recruiting video game originally targeted teens as young as 13 to use simulated machine guns to kill virtual enemies in a projected Middle East war setting. Show-goers sit in a replica of a Humvee, virtually speed through desert terrain and shoot fake machine guns at life-size pictures of people projected on a wraparound screen.

The Army utilizes the simulator as a recruitment tool.

When we think of marathon video games, it's usually some 100-hour RPG.

So how does a 14-year-long game sound?

It's a spoof, of course. the Onion Radio News serves up an audio report on Middle East Meltdown, a new game based on the Iraq War. The fanciful title includes fun activities like building and re-building the same infrastructure, beheadings, and spending time in rat-infested V.A. hospitals.

A new YouTube video spoofs Republican presidential contender John McCain with a Mario Bros. flair.

In John McCain - POW Bros. video game journalist Jared Rea depicts McCain as exploiting his five years spent as a prisoner of war to counter just about every issue.

Jared, clearly not a McCain fan, writes:

John McCain uses his prisoner of war status as both sword and shield. It’s the entirety of his foreign policy experience and ultimate defense against legitimate questions and concerns rolled into a single onomatopoeia.

A number of GamePolitics readers have suggested that Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, a 2001 first-person shooter, foreshadowed the current hostilities between Russia and Georgia.

The Bulletin serves up a detailed analysis:

Sometimes life imitates art, rather than the other way around, and the 2001 video game "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" stands as a prime example. The game... accurately predicted the eruption of hostilities between an expansionist Russia and Georgia... the player takes on obstacles posed by South Ossetian rebels intent on creating a pretext for a Russian invasion.

 

The game's opening sequence features a Russian leadership intent on bringing the former Soviet republics back under its control. The narrator describes a Russian leader eerily similar to Vladimir Putin... As the game's intro opens, a lone 2008 flashes on the screen before the narrator reads the following words: "The year is 2008, and the world teeters on the brink of war. Radical ultranationalists have seized power in Moscow - their goal, the reestablishment of the old Soviet empire... The world holds its breath, and waits."

The Bulletin also points out that the National Review Online has noticed the eerie similarity between game and real-life events in McCain, Obama Respond to Scenario Out of First Level of 'Ghost Recon.
 

In this Associated Press photo by Maya Alleruzzo, U.S. Army Capt. Charles Ford plays an unknown video game with Wa'ad, a seven-year-old Iraqi boy who lost an arm and leg to an IED near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. From the AP report:

Soldiers from Hammer Company, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment are arranging for the child to be fitted with prosthetic limbs.

Via: Franklin Now

Yesterday GamePolitics reported on a planned protest march outside Ubisoft's San Francisco office.

Peace group Direct Action to Stop the War hoped to persuade Ubisoft to drop its support of the America's Army franchise, which the organization claims violates U.N. protocols against recruiting children into the military.

Two representatives of the group apparently scored some face time with Ubi's U.S. CEO Laurent Detoc. MTV Multiplayer has a response statement from Ubisoft:

Ubisoft is a leading publisher that strives to create the best entertainment experiences possible. Ubisoft worked with the U.S. Army to create America’s Army games for the Xbox and Xbox 360 in order to deliver a compelling experience for our customers. As we discussed with the Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) organization, our games are created to meet a diverse range of interests and not to express or endorse any political view. We respect DASW's First Amendment rights, and would hope they also respect and recognize ours.

Wired Game|Life's Chris Kohler has a lengthy (if slightly snarky) running commentary on the protest.

Does the America's Army game franchise violate United Nations protocols regarding military recruitment of children?

GameDaily reports on a group called Direct Action to Stop the War which says that it does and has taken Ubisoft, which publishes console versions of America's Arm, to task. On its website, the San Francisco-based Direct Action writes:

"America’s Army” ...is the property and brainchild of the US Army, which admit freely, and with pride, that it is one of their principal recruitment tools...
 
The military recruitment of children under the age of 17, however, is a clear violation of international law (the U.N. Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict). No attempt to recruit children 13-16 is allowed in the United States, pursuant to treaty.  In May, the [ACLU] published a report that found the armed services regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment.  The report highlighted the role of “America’s Army...”

 

The game is having an effect.  An informal study showed that 4 out of 100 new recruits in Ft. Benning, Georgia credit America’s Army as the primary factor in convincing them to join the military... 

Direct Action will be staging a protest today at noon near the San Francisco office of Ubisoft as well as two other local companies, GameLoft and Secret Level:

Ubisoft is not the only South Park neighbor engaged in the development of the game, Gameloft is working on the cell phone application and Secret Level was a designer on the 2005 Xbox version...  This August 6, on the 63rd Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, come out and ask the producers and developers of America’s Army to stop helping the Army recruit children. 

Last month Direct Action sent a letter of protest to Ubisoft CEO Laurent Detoc. The group claims that it has heard back from Detoc, who said:

Ubisoft has already planned not to make any further games of America's Army, that they may announce that decision in the future and he discouraged us from continuing our Hiroshima Day action... If Ubisoft's claims are true, why have they not publicly announced the end of the work for the Army's recruitment videogame, and why have they not ended their contract with Army, set to expire in 2015?

A few weeks back GamePolitics covered the so-called PlayStation War raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The issue revolves around Congo's supply of the mineral coltan, used in PlayStation 2's and many other consumer electronic devices.

In the latest development, a press release issued by the Panafrican Press Association charges that U.S. presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama just doesn't get it when it comes to the relationship between coltan and the ongoing conflict in Congo. Claiming that Obama has mistakenly portrayed the strife as ethnic, the PPA writes:

Statements... attributed to Obama, explains in part why there is such silence around the tragic situation in the Congo. The conflict is unfortunately and wrongly presented as ethnic bloodletting. The ethnic rationale... plays into long-held stereotypes that Africans are interminably trapped in "tribal bloodletting," hence, nothing can be done...

 

The central reason for the nearly six million dead in the Congo since 1996 is not "ethnic strife" but rather the scramble for Congo's enormous treasure trove of diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, coltan, tin, timber and more...

 

Beneficiaries of Congo's resource war include foreign corporations and consumers... Coltan is a key mineral that drives the conflict in the Congo and is found in our cell phones, laptop computers, digital cameras, video game consoles and many other devices. Congo has anywhere from 64% - 80% of the world's reserve of coltan.
 

GP: We were surprised to learn that conservative Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) is taking an active interest in the Congo coltan situation. Indeed, however, Brownback and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the Conflict Coltan and Casserite Act in the Senate on May 23rd. Of the legislative proposal, Brownback said:

We are witnessing a grave humanitarian crisis in Congo, and we must act now to put an end to the death and suffering. Everyday, Americans use products that have been manufactured using inhumanely mined minerals. The legislation introduced by Senator Durbin and I will bring accountability and transparency to the supply chain of minerals used in the manufacturing of many electronic devices.

Sen. Durbin added:

Without knowing it, tens of millions of people in the United States may be putting money in the pockets of some of the worst human rights violators in the world, simply by using a cell phone or laptop computer. We ought to do all we can to make sure that the products we use and the minerals we import, in no way support those who violate human rights abroad.

Recruiters for controversial Blackwater Worldwide, which provides "paid contractors" (i.e. - mercenaries) to supplement United States forces in Iraq, apparently distribute consoles and popular video games to spread good will among American forces.

That's likely because former military personnel make up the bulk of Blackwater employees. An Associated Press profile on the company notes:

[Blackwater exec] Bill Mathews... said during a recent interview with The Associated Press. "This is sort of the quintessential veteran-owned, -operated and -managed company. Almost everybody is a former U.S. serviceman..."

 

Blackwater recruiter James Overton is working on packing a Microsoft Xbox video-game console, modem, TV projector and "Guitar Hero" video game into a kit that can be kicked out of a Blackwater cargo plane and dropped to troops in Afghanistan.

 

"When I was in Baghdad, we'd bring soldiers over to our camp over there, and we'd play this thing for hours on end," Overton said. "Every (military) place I've ever been to overseas, they've got like backgammon and Parcheesi and chess, and they're all gathering dust. But this is the stuff they play at home. And any semblance of home we can give them is best."

U.S. and British military forces are increasingly utilizing video game technology, according to Wired's Danger Room blog.

By way of example, arms manufacturer Raytheon displayed its Universal Control System for drone aircraft at an air show last week. Company exec Mark Bigham commented on the system, which employs video game-like controls:

Gaming companies have spent millions to develop user-friendly graphic interfaces, so why not put them to work on UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]? The video-game industry always will outspend the military on improving human-computer interaction.

In another application, the Wiimote is being used in place of traditional joypads to control the robots used to disarm roadside bombs in Iraq. Paul Marks writes in New Scientist:

The problem with the joypad is that it takes a lot of concentration and can monopolize the attention of the soldier using it… The Wiimote is far more intuitive because movements of the hand directly translate into movements of the robot.

Meanwhile, UK blogger Paul Mander noticed that a modified Xbox controller is being used to fly a drone in the British Army recruiting video at left.

Via: Hard OCP

The Tacoma News-Tribune reports that a former technical advisor on the original Metal Gear Solid has been charged by federal officials with attempting to ship sophisticated holographic night vision gunsights to Japan.

Capt. Tomoaki Iishiba left Japan in 1993 to join the U.S. Army. Iishiba served in Afghanistan and wrote A Japanese Lieutenant from the 82nd Airborne, a Japanese language book about his military experience.

More recently he has been stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington as an intelligence officer. From the report:

In a two-paragraph charging document filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, prosecutors wrote that Tomoaki Iishiba bought 60 of the EoTech 553... then mailed them to coconspirators in Japan without obtaining an export license. The company’s Web site lists the sights at $639 apiece...

 

He faces one count of conspiracy to smuggle goods from the United States and is scheduled to enter a guilty plea at the end of the month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg said...

Iishiba has also endorsed a line of knives.

Last week GamePolitics reported on a peace group's protest that forced changes to the America's Army exhibit at Wisconsin's Summerfest.

Huntsville, Alabama's WAFF-48 now reports that a similar protest is planned at an Air Show in Duluth, Minnesota. Michele Naar-Obed of a group called Loaves and Fishes criticized the game, in which players seated in a Humvee shoot at virtual enemy combatants:

I'm very upset over this. I think this is just insane that they would use this kind of venue to train our youth to kill people.

An Army recruiter dismissed the criticism, however. SFC John Haymond told WAFF:

It's kind of curious that some people would object to a virtual army experience game when the central draw to the Duluth Air Show is the Blue Angels who are flying F-18 Super Hornet strike aircraft, which last time I checked, was a military weapon.

Haymond added that no one under 17 is permitted into the exhibit. The air show is setting up a separate area for protesters of the game.
 

The U.S. Army has removed a combat simulator from its display tent at Wisconsin's Summerfest music festival following complaints that the exhibit glorified war.

As reported by Milwaukee's Fox-6, the original display, which allowed players to sit in a HumVee and fire simulated weapons at realistic human combatants, has been replaced by one in which players shoot at inanimate targets.

Protests over the Army display began with a pair of groups, Veterans for Peace and Peace Action Wisconsin. Julie Enslow, a spokesperson for Peace Action Wisconsin, told Fox-6: 

[War] is not a game... and it should not be presented as such. Especially at Summerfest.

 The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has more:

Under the combat scenario initially presented in the game, fest-goers as young as 13 could hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at near life-size human likenesses on a computer screen.

 

According to a description of the game on the Army’s Web site, an Army ground task force attempts to rescue trapped aid workers and refugees in the imaginary city of “Nradreg” from a “well-armed genocidal faction.”

Is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots designer Hideo Kojima's treatise on the war in Iraq? America's Neo-cons? Stateless combatants? Nuclear war?

All of the above?

Reporter David Itzkoff probes the issue for the New York Times:

Is [MGS4]... a critique of America’s domination of the global stage? A metaphor for the struggle between determinism and free will? ...The original Metal Gear Solid... called attention to the scourge of nuclear proliferation...

 

[MGS2]... introduced a shadowy supernational group called the Patriots, so powerful that even the president of the United States answers to it. (A commentary on the disputed 2000 election? The cabal theories of post-9/11 politics?) And [MGS3]... explored the cold war origins of its characters... intertwined with the rise of the military-industrial complex...

 

[In MGS4]... the forces [Solid Snake] battles are... the mercenaries on the payroll of private military companies... an allegory of war in the era of Blackwater Worldwide and stateless enemy combatants?...

Brand Week reports that the US Army plans to wage a game-oriented attack on subpar recruiting efforts.

In August the Army will unveil the first of a new wave of recruitment centers in which prospective soldiers will play America's Army and fly missions in Apache and Blackhawk helicopter sims.

Apple's retail stores and venues like the ESPN Zone are said to be the inspirations behind the new approach. Army official Edward Walters told Brand Week:

In the past we've focused on traditional media vehicles. [But] the millennial generation is used to engaging in interactive assets and we need to adapt to them.
 

From the description, the days of handing would-be recruits a brochure will soon be over:

The first new recruitment center is designed to be less intimidating and more "like walking into a NASA center," said Walters. It will consist of three large simulators with full-scale mock-ups of Army equipment and wrap-around 270-degree video screens...

 

The Apache simulator allows a pilot and co-pilot to experience the aircraft and its weapons systems. The Black Hawk helicopter simulator provides four door gunner positions. And, the armored HMMWV vehicle simulator has positions for a driver and several gunners. The centers also will include an area where visitors can compete in America's Army, a videogame...
 

Via: Gizmodo

An airman assigned to guard a North Dakota base for US nuclear bombers was found to be playing a video game on his mobile phone, according to a recent inspection.

As reported by the Associated Press, the guard's inattention to duty was one of just a number of violations which caused Minot AFB to receive sub-par marks on the inspection, which must now be repeated in 90 days.

From the AP report:

The Air Force Times, citing a copy of the [inspection] report, said the base received an unsatisfactory grade and inspectors found security breakdowns during mock attacks at the base.

 

The Air Force Times said inspectors saw a security forces airman playing video games on his cell phone while standing guard at a restricted area. Another airman nearby was "unaware of her duties and responsibilities" during the exercise, the newspaper said.

Last year, an aging B-52 bomber leaving from Minot was mistakenly armed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles for a routine flight to Louisiana.