Review of the Video Game "America's Army". Brainwashing Your Children in the Comfort of Home. Programming Them To Become Killers for Corporate Profit and then Throwaway PTSD Victims...

full text of the newspaper article I wrote for The Lumberjack Newspaper: 

US Army designs "shoot 'em up" VIDEO GAME.

I was outraged to see that the Taxpayers paid the US Army to create a Video Game that teaches teenagers about war and gives them an opportunity to explore careers in the military. www.americasarmy.com is the home of a game that lets people experience virtually the art of war using a military simulator

that teaches tactics and strategies to civilians. Blow stuff up too. This game is rated "T" for teen by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

Players may join virtual teams to compete online with others across the internet. A headset microphone is recommended for shouting orders to your teammates. The marketing strategy is brilliant. A teenager might make the intellectual leap from "Gee, It's a lot of FUN to blow up people in this Video Game " to "Gee, if I enlist, I can blow up people FOR REAL". A player may get a copy of the game on CD by visiting their US ARMY recruiter. The talents of a Video Game player would be very useful to an army that uses complex computer controlled weapons. I remember that the CNN broadcast of the bombing of Baghdad looked eerily familiar. The surrealistic green color scheme of the night-vision cameras and the trails left by the bombs seemed to be identical to the Video Game "Missile Command". However, unlike a game, when a player kills a person in reality they stay dead, no replays. The graphics in this game are superb, a typical scene shows oil wells and a "Escher-like" tile floor. The action appears to take place in a Middle Eastern city.

A link to shopping lets you purchase dolls to play with offline. Handy to have when your kid sister wants to serve tea to her dollies. You can have your action figures shoot up the tea room and blast all the bad guys. One doll is an Indigenous Soldier. "Special Forces teams have a proud history of training

indigenous forces to fight to liberate their countrymen from oppression". Another doll is a Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant. "The Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant is responsible for collecting and providing essential intelligence during missions, conducting and handling agent reports,

analyzing risks associated with friendly and enemy courses of action, and acts to counter or neutralize identified intelligence threats". Of course, the intelligent Sergeant needs a machine gun to fill out those reports. OOPS, I typed intelligent when I meant Intelligence... A slip that anyone could make... Assuming the Sergeant to BE SMART, not collect rumors.

A basic concept in mind-control is to saturate the subject with virtual blood and gore to allow them to become used to seeing horrible sights. When faced with actual blood and gore, the person is not offended due to familiarity. The actual US Military has been using motion pictures to train soldiers for

years. The first time a new recruit sees a "sucking chest wound" they are disgusted and often vomit. Upon repeated exposure, the new recruit becomes comfortable with the images. Training soldiers often uses the concepts of Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. This style of training is effective, a soldier should

not question a command but execute it instantly for the Army to function properly. If a soldier has lingering doubts about the wisdom of invading a foreign country that has no WMDs, no ties to Al-Qaeda and nothing at all to do with the mass murder on 9/11/2001, then they will hesitate when the time comes to pull the trigger. Just like practicing flying an airplane using

a flight simulator, a "shoot 'em up" Video Game can be used to speed up reaction times. This opportunity to program your own mind is now available to any teenager with a computer and an Internet connection. Playstation and XBOX versions are available too.

SEE, they learned a lot from project MKULTRA.

www.riseofasoldier.com is the website for the new version of the game created by UBISOFT. Epic Games designed the underlying architecture for these games. The U.S. Army announced that it has licensed Unreal Engine 3 for the next generation versions of America's Army. In addition

to serving over 5 million registered users playing more than 1.34 billion missions "a wide variety of agencies from the U.S. Navy to national laboratories have re purposed America’s Army for applications ranging from appended training devices for weapon systems to adaptive thinking and leadership training simulations".

 ~~~end of article by gregvanderlaan ~~~

~~~and now, years later... more thoughts~~~

Farmville is a completely different video game that is played by 1% of the world's population. It teaches cooperation and working together with your neighbors. If you help each

other, everyone benefits... quite a different message... Hopefully, this concept will spread. What if?

A friend of mine has intentionally selected people that live on different CONTINENTS to be her Farmville Neighbors. Some of the websites are written in different Alphabets and different Languages. Fortunately, we have auto translate built into the computer system. Babblefish and Google both will give a machine translation... Often that is  close enough for her to understand people a world away... If the internet can connect  us all, war will become a quaint historical memory... Why Not?

http://www.babblefish.com/ 

http://translate.google.com/

The game teaches scheduling and keeping appointments. Important life skills often overlooked in this ADHD world. A player plows and plants crops that are to be harvested in a specific time. If you plant a crop of strawberries, they are ready to harvest in 4 hours. If a player fails to harvest them in a timely manner, they wither and are not sell able. In my game, on the weekend I plant short time crops and during the work week I plant crops that take 2,3 or 4 days to mature. 

Animals never need attention... go figure... One would think that slopping the hogs would be required. However, it's just a game. I "harvested" my pigs yet got no bacon.

Two thumbs UP for Farmville. Both my friend and I feel it is a good game for KIDS of all ages.

Here is what my farm looks like. I found GOD on Farmville... Actually, CROP CIRCLES are a popular pastime on Farmville. People engineer beautiful farms and on the ZYNGA message board they enter their creations in a contest. With virtual coins as a prize.

This style of game has become so very popular that there are now MANY similar games. Fishville, Cafe World, Frontierville, Farm TOWN... all based on SIM. Simulating a real world scenario and letting multiple players interact on the same game. For example: I just sent my friend a Surfboard and now her gameboard has it proudly displayed. Another friend sent my the PINK COW that is the center of the "G" shown above. Without a little help from my friends, my farm would not be as fun...

and now ZYNGA, the parent company, has decided to borrow a billion dollars by having a Stock Market IPO. What could they do with all that money? Have they already built their good idea?  Will everyone who invests simply lose their money? 

I plan to buy some stock, for amusement purposes only.  Maybe they will give stockholders some cute virtual animals...

~~~~~~the IPO has happened~~~~~~~

Stock prices have mostly remained the same as the $10 they started it at. and the quality of the game has gone down...