![]() Besides the well-known Call of Duty series, other FPS titles like Medal of Honor, Fallout, and Battlefield series are all fed into the global gamers’ growing appetite for this so-called ‘shoot’em’all’ genre. At the time of writing this thesis, this network community had already attracted more than 10 million fans worldwide. After the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the Facebook COD group became one of the top 20 fastest growing Facebook communities in 2010. Before 2011 the most iconic war-themed first-person-shooter (FPS) digital game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, achieved a new milestone of more than 20 million copies sold globally. ![]() This new form of 'militainment' re-formulates ‘the military-entertainment complex’ industrial model, and by repeatedly simulating historical/present/fictional war events and adopting militaristic stories, creates an adrenaline-pumping interactive gaming experience that the global gamers find very difficult to resist. ![]() 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.ĭuring the post-9/11 era we have witnessed the rise of war-themed digital games, which are increasingly produced and distributed on a massive global scale. 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. The results of the research allow diagnosis of new possible reincarnations of New Patriotism. This explanation includes increasing cathartic violence, the declining credibility of the ideological message provided by New Patriotism, and overutilization of episodes from World War II that are too well-known. Finally, the reasons for the natural atrophy of the movement are explained. Products such as Call of Duty resembled cinematic narratives not only in terms of ideological message, but they also recreated scenes from films as such Saving Private Ryan and employed documentary-like cinematic techniques. Further analysis discusses the hyperrealism of World War II-themed shooters produced in the United States. The main problems with New Patriotism are also raised, including the demonization of enemies and the simultaneous absence of civilians during in-game military actions. Those franchises used the specific setting and stylized antagonists, thus recalling the contemporary events in the Middle East. This political background affected the American gaming industry, as shown with examples of several shooters constituting three important game series: Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and Brothers in Arms. The author later argues that this wave responded to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, when the George Bush government started a crusade against the so-called " axis of evil ". ![]() This study aims to examine the similar trend in the American gaming industry between 19, when a considerable number of first-person shooter games with a World War II setting were released. The following cinematic tendency, which Frank Wetta and Martin Novelli label as New Patriotism, disseminated triumphalist views on the U.S. In the 1980s, American popular culture started to restore its reputation as a dominant political power-weakened after the Vietnam War-by recalling the success of World War II and constructing its mythology.
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