[Air-l] arcade games as a political weapon

[ren at aldermangroup.com]

Fank Thomas wrote:
>But is there anything special to the Internet in these 
games? 

As with most things Internet, costs of distribution will be 
low, reach to target audience could be high, and production 
costs could be low (I say could as America's Army is reputed 
to have a huge budget). 

So I’d say were are talking scale effects. Not sure with 
propaganda whether there are any key audience metrics e.g. 
you might be able to reach 60%+ of your target group through 
the net, are there tilt points due to, say, network effects 
which make the adoption of messages that much more 
efficient ? 

On games as conveyers of messages. I’ve asked around about 
whether averages score higher on standard advertising metrics 
for reception of brand message etc – however I have not come 
across any empirical studies and can think of theoretical 
arguments either way. 

Ren
www.renreynolds.com

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 13:35:18 +0200
>From: Frank Thomas <frank.thomasftr at free.fr>  
>Subject: [Air-l] arcade games as a political weapon  
>To: air-l at aoir.org
>
>Today the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel writes about the 
deliberate 
>conception and use of arcade killer games in the Near and 
Middle East 
>conflicts and provides some links to the relevant websites:
>a Syrian game: http://www.underash.net/emessage.htm
>a game produced by (or for) the Hisbollah: 
>http://www.specialforce.net/english/indexeng.htm
>the chase for Talibans as a screen leisure : 
>http://www.novalogic.com/games.asp?GameKey=DFTFD
>the most recent US military "acts of patriotism and bravery" 
as a civic 
>education play : http://www.kumagames.com/kumawar.html
>The author also mentions a pro-Israeli war game "Israeli Air 
Force" 
>without giving a link.
>
>But is there anything special to the Internet in these 
games? I 'd say 
>these are only the most recent developments within a long 
tradition.  I 
>remember tin or plum soldiers in the play boxes of my 
friends decades 
>ago which had survived the war. They were conceived in the 
1930s to 
>mentally prepare the German youth for war.  And I guess, 
there were also 
>glorious British and French tin soldiers refighting past 
victories in 
>the same era. Today's generation of plays to mentally 
prepare the war of 
>the cultures is just a more recent version. Nothing special 
to the 
>Internet, I guess, besides the increased incitives to 
identify with the 
>Good.
>
>Die Hisbollah shootert zurück
>
>Von Christian Stöcker <mailto:dr_stoecker at web.de>
>
>Dass das Pentagon Spielefirmen sponsert, um jungen PC-Fans 
das Militär 
>schmackhaft zu machen, und gar Ego-Shooter für das Training 
nutzt, regt 
>kaum mehr jemanden auf. Mit Ausnahme der Hisbollah, die 
dieser 
>US-Propaganda nicht länger zusehen will: In ihren 
Computerspielen 
>fliegen die Kugeln in die andere Richtung.l
>
>http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzkultur/0,1518,267090,00.ht
ml
>
>
>Cheers
>Frank
>
>
>
>
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