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If it was just a game, the Military would not be in the business of creating it.
From the game's site: "The America's Army Real Heroes program will allow you to enter a Virtual Recruiting Station (VRS) and have the opportunity to meet and interact with several Combat Veterans of the Global War on Terrorism."
I attended E3 and saw the first demonstrations of this game. It was originally created on the Doom engine and was used internally for training purposes. Now it has been repurposed as a recruiting tool.
Everyone is easily influenced, including myself. In this particular instance I would suggest the influence of the game is the back message. War is a job. War is fun. War is about team spirit. War is about soldiers shooting at other soldiers. War is about jobs, tasks and missions and achieving them.
In reality war is about 9 innocent civilians getting killed for every combatant. It is about indiscriminate bombing. It is napalm soaked children with their skin burned from their flesh. It is about rape and the burning of villages. It is about the theft property and land. You won't see any of these true depictions of real war in this game because that would not serve the recruitment purposes of the creators.
Can gamers understand the difference between game violence and reality? Sure. Are the gamers able to see the real back message that is being applied? In most cases, no.
