From GamePolitics:
The image of the hard-bitten soldier grabbing a post-battle smoke may be a cliche, but it’s one that the U.S. Army hopes to change.
To that end, the Texas Medical Center reports that one of its researchers has been awarded $3.7 million grant by the Army to create an anti-smoking video game for military personnel.
Remember this the next time the Army says they don’t have money for soldiers’ body armor or to up-armor HMMWVs. It’s bad enough they’ve been wasting money for almost seven years on “America’s Army” — another video game they created in an attempt to improve recruitment — but this is just ridiculous. And as one commenter on GamePolitics pointed out, if there’s one group that should be able to smoke without being harassed it’s our military personnel.
If you’d played America’s Army back in the day, you wouldn’t be such a hater…that game is mad fun.
That being said, I assume you would be willing to just say all advertising for recruitment purposes is for naught. If America’s Army is too expensive, then paying bands like Trapt to be in ads for the US Navy are also too expensive. Television, posters, billboards–those are all wastes as well. I’m not so sure that these equate to the silliness of a video game that aims to reduce military smoking hah! That just sounds completely frivolous.
I’m not sure many of the things you post are quite as cut-and-dried as you’d like them to be…stay tuned for my comment on the Wittman-Scott co-sponsored gang bill.
Is it possible that Charles R. Lawson is projecting his own feelings? I do not think the mere fact someone dislikes the way American tax dollars are being spent makes them hateful. In fact, I think jumping to such a conclusion is rather difficult to explain.
The U.S. Army has to recruit. So using military funds to purchase an advertising tool is explicable. An anti-smoking video, on the other hand, provides a more dubious proposition. Why should U.S. taxpayers want to pay to be indoctrinated by the U.S. Government?
Thomas Jefferson expressed his feeling on such matters this way.
But I suppose some also think Thomas Jefferson was a hateful man.
I have a problem with the United States Army (or the military as a whole) getting a bunch of recruits to sign up for the military thinking that’s it some kind of game they’re going to be involved in. Further, I have never seen any data showing that “America’s Army” actually resulted in someone signing up for the Army. Once I’ve seen that data, as well as data from other recruitment tools, and am able to do a quick cost-benefit analysis, I might change my mind.
And just so you know Charles, I don’t consider any multiplayer-only game to be “fun”. I have better things to do than shoot at morons as they bunny-hop across a map. In fact, this Penny Arcade comic sums up my feelings pretty well on that particular subject:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/07/