Islamic State Recruiting Through a ‘Video Game’? Whatever, America Already Does That

Grand Theft Auto V is many things. Fun, exciting, crude, sexist, sexy, violent, beautiful – appropriate adjectives spill out like crude oil from a reef-torn tanker. But it’s taken a full year since the game’s release for all the regular adjectives to be scattered by a truly surreal turn, a new way of framing the GTA experience: as terrorist recruitment propaganda.

Britain and America’s military sights are trained, again, on the unrest in the Middle East, where the Islamic State (a.k.a IS, formerly ISIS) militant group has seized territory in Syria and Iraq as its own caliphate. UK Parliament was relatively unanimous in sanctioning action: this is a brutal, dangerous group of growing capabilities, hostile to the West and to local non-Sunni people alike. On the most basic humanitarian level, IS is something that should be stopped, whatever your thoughts may be on the way to achieve that.

IS has been fighting on several fronts – and their virtual battles have attracted a great deal of attention to date. The Guardian reported on the 22nd of September that IS’s online efforts, its social media activity, are “outpacing US counter-efforts”. They have released beheading videos into the mass media, meme-savvy snaps of cats, and have attempted to piggyback popular hashtags) on Twitter to further their reach. There is a sophistication at play here – IS is net-fluent and capable of exploiting most closely monitored networks for its own gain.

September 16th saw IS reveal a “recruitment and training” video game trailer – Polygon’s words – that immediately piqued the attentions of Westerners, gamers and non-gamers alike. Beginning with white words against a black backdrop – “Your games which are producing from you, we do the same actions in the battelfields (sic) !!” – the video goes on to depict vehicles being destroyed and people, including a police officer, murdered. The footage is obviously from GTAV, an edit of Online and solo modes to best represent a campaign against the West – rather than a bunch of freaks running about the desert in their smalls, looking for meth-heads to pick fights with. Take a look: clearly a Rockstar production.

IS “recruitment and training” video game trailer

YouTube comments are far more predictable than IS’s move to co-opt GTAV for its cause. “IS is a bag of dicks” is my favourite from a selection that ranges from the standard knuckle-draggers shouting about how all Muslims are terrorists to others cracking questionable-taste gags about in-game characters’ connections to 9/11.

The Daily Mail inevitably used the video to comment on gamers themselves: “This appears to be a way of saying that if you’re playing Grand Theft Auto, you’re already part way to being an IS fighter.” Or, maybe, they simply turned to one of the biggest-selling video games of all time to get their message across, knowing that the vessel in question would be immediately recognised by millions. These smart arses were hardly going to use a modified version of MadWorld.

Now, for the hundredth time, there is no proven connection between adult-market video games like GTAV and real-life violence. Indeed, some studies even show that playing the bloodbath that is Mortal Kombat can be a calming influence on those of an aggressive temperament. Yet Shahid Butt, “who travelled abroad in the 1990s, prompted by Muslims suffering in Bosnia”, and obviously an expert on the influence of video games, was quoted by Sky News, and subsequently Forbes:

“You got an eight or nine-year-old child playing those… violent games… what kind of mentality is that kid going to have? You dehumanise that person. To go and fight in Syria is as easy as going on holiday to Disneyland. Because you’ve made it easy.”

If you’re a dick of a parent who lets their eight-year-old play Manhunt, maybe. But I haven’t seen any IS video yet feature a tweenie in command of an M60. The simple truth: the IS GTAV trailer is unlikely to turn any floating voters to the terrorists’ side, which is why Rockstar hasn’t (at the time of writing) deemed its release worthy of an official statement. It’s great publicity for IS, as it highlights their other, more effective means of recruiting followers, but as a standalone piece of media, it’s entirely inert. Which can’t be said for America’s Army.

America’s Army, trailer.

Developed with the help of US Army sponsorship and first released for Windows in 2002, America’s Army is a first-person shooter designed specifically to attract impressionable gamers into the military. It is both entertainment and training simulator, running real-life tactics to, said the Boston Globe (of 2003’s version 2.0), “prepare a new generation of potential recruits”. Its popularity led to friction between the US Army and Navy, with the latter “pissed… because there was never any mention that the game was built within a Naval think-tank”.

On Windows, the game has received some acclaim – less so on console, where 2007’s America’s Army: True Soldiers for the Xbox 360 took such a kicking it might as well have done a Private Pyleand put itself out of its misery before entering active service. America’s Army is currently on its Proving Grounds iteration, playable for free from the title’s official website. It is a widely supported element of the Army recruitment system – those who would decry IS for using GTAV to attract followers may well be the same people who feel that America’s Army is just fine to, essentially, do the same thing – and in schools, no less.

Love it or hate it, America’s Army works. It has made young men sign up to ship themselves overseas to fight for rights they don’t always fully understand. In 2008, a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed that the game “had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined”. In 2009, the game set five Guinness World Records – it was, and probably still is, the most-downloaded) war video game, with over 42 million people clicking their way to its effective brand of "militainment". And video games are great tools for teaching, far beyond the confines of combat circumstances.

Flight simulators have long been used to train pilots, with the first using computers appearing in the 1960s. Games can be used to aid the training of surgeons, as a report from 2007 proved: participants with previous gaming experience, totalling three hours per week or more, produced 37 percent fewer errors than those who didn’t game. Conclusion: “video game skill corresponds with laparoscopic surgical skills”. In other words: that kid playing Tearaway on your commute every morning might one day be removing your gallbladder.

You might think that the most obvious connection between today’s gaming culture and military service was in the drone area – emotions distanced by a screen, not to mention many thousands of miles. But Air Force pilots in command of UAVs have countered this assumption several times. In 2012, The New York Times interviewed servicemen flying drones over Afghanistan from control stations in the States. All dismissed the games comparison. These guys are not, as Sky phrases it, “video gaming warrior geeks”.

“I don’t have any video games that ask me to sit in one seat for six hours and look at the same target,” is how one interviewee, a sensor operator who worked out of Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base, responded, “We try to beat into our crews that this is a real aircraft with a real human component, and whatever decisions you make, good or bad, there’s going to be actual consequences.”

Grand Theft Auto V, PS4 trailer

There are no obvious consequences coming the way of Rockstar, in the wake of IS using their biggest game to spread its message. The developer is far too busy finishing up the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of GTAV, scheduled for November 18th – a PC port is coming in 2015. Promised: more perspectives (in-car views, for those who want them), more guns and ammo, and even more music, with all of the game’s radio stations set to carry more songs – and you can expect some exclusives among the 100-or-so additions. It doesn’t need any propaganda of its own – 34 million units sold says more than Rockstar’s PR department ever could. That’s still fewer sales than American’s Army has had downloads, granted – but then, why suffer dull realism when you could be doing this)?

Grand Theft Auto V is released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on November 18th. America’s Army is here, for the curious amongst you. Isis, the band, were awesome.

@MikeDiver