top of page
VGL_Banner_wLogo.png

AMERICA'S DIGITAL ARMY: GAMES AT WORK AND WAR

Robertson Allen



 

America’s Digital Army is an ethnographic study of the link between interactive entertainment and military power, drawing on Robertson Allen’s fieldwork observing video game developers, military strategists, U.S. Army marketing agencies, and an array of defense contracting companies that worked to produce the official U.S. Army video game, America’s Army. Allen uncovers the methods by which gaming technologies such as America’s Army, with military funding and themes, engage in a militarization of American society that constructs everyone, even nonplayers of games, as virtual soldiers available for deployment.


America’s Digital Army examines the army’s desire for “talented” soldiers capable of high-tech work; beliefs about America’s enemies as reflected in the game’s virtual combatants; tensions over best practices in military recruiting; and the sometimes overlapping cultures of gamers, game developers, and soldiers.


Allen reveals how binary categorizations such as soldier versus civilian, war versus game, work versus play, and virtual versus real become blurred—if not broken down entirely—through games and interactive media that reflect the U.S. military’s ludic imagination of future wars, enemies, and soldiers.

 

PUBLICATION DETAILS

LANGUAGE

BINDING

EDITION

ISBN

YEAR

PAGES

English

Hardcover


9780803285293

2017

228

English

Paperback


9781496201911

2017

228

English

eBook


N/A

2017

228

 

TAGS


Publishers: #UniversityOfNebraskaPress (University of Nebraska Press)

Languages: #English

Year: #Year2017


Companies:

N/A


Public Figures:

N/A


Games:

#AmericasArmy (America's Army)

#CallOfDuty (Call of Duty)


Misc:

N/A

Comments


bottom of page