Saturday, November 27, 2004

"Bang bang! You're dead." Feel the rush!

Is it just me or has it become difficult to distinguish between commercials for kids' video games and those for military recruitment?

[Update: 10:45pm Central time. Just returned from a long day away from the computer and read the comments for the first time.]

Well this post certainly turned into a Rorschach test. In retrospect I should have dropped the word "kids'" from my query. I know adults are a significant segment of the gaming audience and I think its inclusion side tracked too much from my central observation, which I was careful to write as a circular thought so as not to automatically suggest causation over correlation. I've just always had a thing for marketing and advertising and so normally when I see commercials out of habit I always try and guess what type of product is being advertised before it's obvious in the commercial. I've just been noticing lately that it's become more difficult to know if I'm watching the latest ad for the Army or Tom Clancy.

For the record I'm not making a statement that I think kids are being primed to kill by militaristic games any more now than when GI Joe ruled the day. I have no doubt that for the better part of human existence boys have played militaristic games. That mankind has also been in pretty much an ongoing militaristic state of affairs this whole time is probably just a wild coincidence.

Toy soldiers. War. Chicken. Egg.