We are told real special operations warriors consulted on the game. It features an interview with one such warrior consultant who, of course, must remain anonymous "for security reasons," which make it all the more exciting and real. The man's voice is altered and sounds very strange.
He actually says he likes to lead people who are "troubled" and "trouble makers" because he wants to "lead someone who needs leadership." It seems an flat-out call for screwed-up, violent kids; "Tier One" combat is a context that will give them purpose.
"There are no utopias," the consultant says in his strange, voice-altered basso. "And there are evil people in the world who need to be dealt with handily,"
Without putting too fine a point on it, what this high-tech video game seems to be doing is exercising kids' adrenaline system with fantasy killing and mayhem that is given a legitimate and patriotic gloss because it takes place in Afghanistan.
The Army even uses this kind of game itself, as it did in the experimental Army Experience Center in a mall in northeast Philadelphia, the subject of numerous demonstrations before it was closed down.
It's a natural progression from these video games to the highly computerized military system that now features drones piloted by former teen computer-game geeks. Start out blasting fictional video images is training for blasting video images that happen to be real thousands of miles away.
Cyberspace cowboys looking for adventure
Leafing through the 900 page book The Best Of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey you quickly get a glimmer what the hacker world of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange is all about.
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