Army Wants XBox 360 Mallrats

Reuters reported today that:

The U.S. Army, struggling to ensure it has enough manpower as it fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is wooing young Americans with videogames, Google maps and simulated attacks on enemy positions from an Apache helicopter.

Departing from the recruiting environment of metal tables and uniformed soldiers in a drab military building, the Army has invested $12 million in a facility that looks like a cross between a hotel lobby and a video arcade.

The U.S. Army Experience Center at the Franklin Mills shopping mall in northeast Philadelphia has 60 personal computers loaded with military videogames, 19 Xbox 360 video game controllers and a series of interactive screens describing military bases and career options in great detail.

Potential recruits can hang out on couches and listen to rock music that fills the space.

The center is the first of its kind and opened in August as part of a two-year experiment.   So far, it has signed up 33 full-time soldiers and five reservists – roughly matching the performance of five traditional recruiting centers it replaced.

Yahoo News adds this:

There’s even a real Humvee that players can shoot from installed as part of a 15-foot-high projected battle simulation and an Apache helicopter simulator that recruits can fly.

Sounds like a killer gaming setup… but of course there’s a not-so-ulterior motive at work. It’s all part of a plan to get younger kids interested in signing up for service, thinking that shooting terrorists in active combat is all part of a day’s work.

Naturally, critics are out in full force, including a former Army staff sergeant, Jesse Hamltion, who accuses the Army of misleading kids with deceptive, unrealistic scenarios. Hamilton notes that recruits are unlikely to see active combat and that “the only way to simulate the heat is holding a blow dryer to your face.”

Still, the move of course comes at a good time for the Army, which has struggled to fill its ranks for several years thanks to some overwhelmingly bad press. But with civilian unemployment skyrocketing and the situation in Iraq looking better than it has in ages (particularly with the prospect of troops coming home), the Army’s high-tech mall paradise may actually be more than it needs to woo the young and impressionable.

I can only think of two things to say:

1. Back in high school the only thing the Army tried to woo me with was a free pair of gym socks.
2. Having potential recruits play videogames… hmm, wasn’t that the plot of 1984′s The Last Starfighter?  Teenager gets the high score on an arcade game, only to discover that it was the flight sim for an alien race desperate to find quality pilots.  He beats the game and then is abducted by said aliens and then inducted into their fighter squadron.  I don’t remember much else, other than the fact that Catherine Mary Stewart plays the girlfriend.   Some of you might remember that her greatest role came later that year in the classic Night of the Comet.