Water Cooler Games - Shock and AWE

Shock and AWE
April 26, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to Gamespot (found via Terra Nova) for their article on the Asymmetric Warfare Environment (AWE), the military training tool built by virtual world company There. According to the article, " the massively multiplayer simulation will be used by military personnel to train troops in urban situations before they are airlifted to a battle zone."

Project director Dr. Michael Macedonia describes some of the goals of the game:

What’s a soldier’s experience in Iraq or Afghanistan? Who’s the enemy? How do I get these people to not [necessarily] like me, but to relate to me? How can I keep a riot from starting when the food runs out?

I'm afraid I feel compelled to point out some of the disturbing inconsistencies in Macedonia's depiction of the game. I've picked three bones to pick here.

(1) Explaining the inspiration of AWE, he says,

I’ll give you the vision, OK? If I went back 3,000 years, we’ve got guys like Homer, finally writing down for the first time the history of the Greeks and the wars against Troy through the story of Ulysses. It was at that moment in time that we went from a verbal culture to a written culture...[Homer] wrote it down and it became literature. Really, what Homer was trying to do was more than entertainment. He was relaying history; he was teaching. And now we have this medium, the game, where we can take people through those experiences much like [Homer] was telling people of the experiences of soldiers in that war. We can do that today in the military and share those stories and save lives because of it.

I hate to break the news to Dr. Macedonia, but Homer didn't write anything down. In fact, the Homeric epic remains the most common example of the oral tradition. The Homeric epics were not written down until many centuries later, primarily because writing had not yet been developed to do much more than record how many sheep one person owed another. A center of political power, with an agenda to disseminate and maintain, is a prerequisite to the kind of "relaying" Macedonia refers to. Is this not something they teach at West Point?

Moreover, the highly uncertain relationship between myth and history in the story of the Trojan war and (duh?) the incredible travails of Odysseus exemplifies the fundamental differences between oral epic and modern warfare: the former consciously participates in numerous, more open cultural registers (history, myth, theater, performance, tradition) while the latter participates in fewer, more closed cultural registers (democracy, empire, capitalism, etc.).

Perhaps AWE could change that, but for my part, I can only read Macedonia's blatant misunderstanding of the primary source of inspiration for his project as a terrifying example of the delusion of the American military.

(2) Asked if one wouldn't "have to simulate the true fear or discomfort a soldier would face and then test them?" in a military game, Macedonia responds,

I don’t think so. Not in a commercial game. ... America’s Army is not really to transfer skills. I don’t think that was ever the intention, and I don’t think they ever wanted to do that. What they’re trying to do is give you a taste.

Macedonia appears to deny a major kind of responsibility in representations of military action. Furthermore, this statement seems to directly contradict the phenomenon described in a recent Salon article (also discussed here on WCG), which convincingly shows that American youths' understanding of the US Army are materially changed by their experiences with games like America's Army.

(3) Speaking about the differences between military and other kinds of games, Macedonia argues,

I think the difference between that game, what we’re doing, and what the commercial games industry is doing in general is that these are purposeful games. I’ve been to E3 where General Foods has a booth and they’re making games to sell cereal. That’s purposeful, but it’s generally pretty lame.

Is Macedonia claiming that the propagation of military aggression is the only valid or "not lame" application of "purposeful games?" Could this be any more offensive?

Comments (4) | Post a Comment | TrackBack (0)

Comment from A friend of Homer on May 1, 2004

The Homer issue is constantly debated.

See http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/context.html

It was at least around the time of Homer (if he existed) that the oral traditions were written down.

Comment from Another friend of Homer on May 1, 2004

The Dean game is lame.

Comment from Ian Bogost on May 1, 2004

There is indeed debate about the existence of Homer the man, with many respected classical authorities falling on both sides of the issue. However, the epics we ascribe to "Homer" are generally agreed to have been transcribed around the late 6th century. Even these transcriptions were unstable, since they relied on many poets' oral retellings, later amassed into one text, definitive by invention rather than fact. The epics themselves (no matter whether they were authored or amalgamated) date from at least the 8th or 9th century.

The main point I was making is that Dr. Macedonia seems to have a less than nuanced mastery of an example critical to his argument.

I'm sorry to hear you didn't like the Dean game. Perhaps you would prefer the Cliffs Notes version?

Comment from Online Poker on February 16, 2005

Best site for Poker

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