“The US Army has teamed up with CTA Digital to launch its own brand of gaming peripherals,” tgdaily.com reveals, studiously avoiding the “g” word. “The range includes rifle controllers, backpacks and headsets – all with ‘an authentic US Army design’. They’ll be available for a range of platforms, including the PlayStation, Xbox, PC and Wii.” Specifically . . .

There are three different rifles, three headsets and even a backpack for carting your console around.

“New products will include two Assault Rifle controllers for PS3 that can operate like DualShock controllers. These controllers will have all the functions of the Dualshock mapped out on them, including the R1 button linked to the trigger,” says CTA.

“Both these rifles will be compatible with all popular PS3 first-person-shooters, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Battlefield 3.”

For Move players only, there’s the US Army Sniper Action Rifle, allowing players to closely match their in-game weapons by removing the detachable scope, rear stock or muzzle. It’ll be compatible with all Move titles, including Resistance 3, Killzone 3, Socom 4.

There are three ways to look at this. First, Army-branded peripherals are bound to be an excellent recruitment tool aimed straight at the military’s target market (so to speak), well worth the time, money (ours) and effort. Second, commercializing the U.S. Armed Forces puts us on a slippery slope towards corporate control. How long before we deploy special ops to create a suitable videogame scenario? And third, how dare the U.S. Army glamorize violence for impressionable children and teens?

You pay your taxes, you takes your chances.

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9 COMMENTS

  1. Second, commercializing the U.S. Armed Forces puts us on a slippery slope towards corporate control.

    We’re pretty much there already. How much of our operational support is actually corporate run? The military used to do almost everything for itself, now it contracts out huge portions of the work. It’s only a matter of time before most of the fighting is for hire as well. At that point, we’ll really have lost control.

  2. I recall when the US Army came out with the “Army of One” commercials; that in itself seemed completely counter intuitive to any branch of DoD (I served in the Navy, 9 years active).

    TEAMWORK. So I see this as a foolish mistake for the US Army to take: an attempt to commercialize upon…..something.

    I can only conjecture that the young 20-something crowd is either: a) former military, who know what serving in-theater actually means and knows the value of life/has carried a rifle -or- b) raised on video games and sees the world through said rose-colored-glasses (may or may not have….. thinking the latter, actually ever fired a gun) and are full of bravado/testosterone when thinking of ‘battle.’ Zombies or not.

    then again, I can really only speak for myself; I am absolutely sure that my opinion may not be a prevailing one (YMMV).

  3. “Hey kids, have a plastic gun. Now when you turn 18 sign here so you can go die in Bumfuckistan.”

    God Bless Amerikwa

  4. eh. If you fall for that kind of crap you deserve it. The peripheral is on par with a cheap chinese POS. Orange tip, tacky (if not ridiculous) digital camo. What, no multicam? It looks like a squirt gun. I would rather have a 1:1 replica. airsoft anyone?

  5. I don’t think this can make things any worse than they have been for a long time. Unfortunately, the USG often uses our military as a violent instrument of what is frequently an imperialist foreign policy. America is far more of an elitist-run empire than we are a democratic-republic. The politically influential business partnership commonly called the military-industrial-complex has been developed and matured for many decades. This latest development is simply more icing on the cake.

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