The game has been downloaded more than 42 million times, has more than 8 million registered users, and a virtual Army comprised of 519,472 "soldiers." This dissertation examines the online website of the video game America's Army -its last version was updated in July 2010-and the consequences of government-created media through a three-part analysis (Kellner, 1995) that focuses on its production, the text itself, and audience's ideological engagement with the text through an analysis of comments posted to the official gaming website. Army launched America's Army on July 4, 2002, and since that time the game has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for its popularity.
America's Army is a first-person shooter video game available for free online that has military recruitment as its core mission. This dissertation uses a political economic analysis (Bettig & Hall, 2003 Bagdikian, 2004 McChesney, 2000 2004 2008 Mosco, 2009 Wasko, 2005) combined with a cultural studies lens to study the website associated with the government-produced video game America's Army. Using the America’s Army and Call of Duty franchises as case studies, the results show that, while there exists notable procedural differences between serious and entertainment videogames, both categories effectively contribute to the military’s mission of fostering potential recruits among the young male demographic. I also demonstrate how the videogame industry is both theoretically and aesthetically intertwined with that of the film industry. I apply theories of game/play, procedural rhetoric, and discourse analysis to videogames to determine the precise mechanisms behind the medium’s effectiveness as an implement for neomilitarism.
In particular, I explore how recruitment, training, and ideology are promoted by the military through the design and production of both educational and recreational games. In this thesis, I investigate the relationship between the military and videogame culture. Although this topic has been previously examined using official military serious games, largely absent in the literature is the study of entertainment-based videogames. military’s substantial investment in both the development and consultation of such games, there exist very pertinent questions regarding the effects that this particular media has over its consumers.
In light of the increasing popularity of military-themed videogames, as well as the U.S.
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