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Marketing to Potential Soldiers Through Video Games 
 
Reviewer: Kyle S. Bikowski 
 
Allen, Robertson. 2017, America’s Digital Army: Games at Work and War. University of 
Nebraska Press. 
 
Keywords: 
Play, Marketing, Institutions, U.S. Military, Video Games 
 
Video games, the military, and marketing might seem like disparate sections of society, but 
anthropologist Robertson Allen’s book, America’s Digital Army, aims to connect the dots and 
demonstrate ways in which persuasive technology has been used to change the methods of 
military soldier recruitment. Through an examination of both military history and the history of 
commercial war games, Allen discusses the blurring of the virtual and real worlds that occurred 
during the mid-2000s. At the time, the U.S. Army attempted to recruit new soldiers by marketing 
military careers through the development of the video game, America’s Army, the purpose of 
which was “the persuasion of players and users to enlist in the army or, failing that, to accept it 
more willingly as a legitimate, commonplace institution” (61). 
 
Allen opens his introduction with a vignette from a typical round of the video game America’s 
Army, the game that serves as the focal point for his ethnography. He then provides a brief 
history of the Army Game Project (AGP), before positioning himself as an avid player of the 
First-Person Shooter (FPS) genre of video games. After describing his ethnographic approach to 
this project, he provides the social context of his research in relation to the rise in popularity and 
use of video games since the 1980s. Next, Allen discusses the various dichotomies he engages 
with and troubles in his book: war and game, soldier and civilian, and work and play. Finally, he 
discusses how the diffusion of institutional power into a broader society of control has helped 
shape the use of games like America’s Army for use in pervasive cultural militarization. 

 
Allen’s second chapter focuses on the way America’s Army serves as a marketing tool for the 
U.S. Military. Following a brief description of the office in charge of the game development, the 
Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA) at West Point, Allen discusses how the 
game was conceptualized as a way to tap into an existing market of the military FPS genre and 
target technologically competent and talented young men for recruitment. The remainder of the 
chapter is largely comprised of conversations between Allen and Dr. Casey Wardynski, the 
colonel who served as director of the Army Game Project. One topic of conversation was 
ineffective marketing methods, such as unidirectional television advertisements, that only have a 
slight chance of being seen by the target demographic of young men, particularly in the age of 



video streaming. The chapter ends with a discussion about the frequent moral panic arguments 
surrounding violence in video games, as America’s Army is often derided by the public as both 
glorifying violence and for not being realistic enough in depictions of the consequences of killing 
or being killed in combat. Allen notes that Wardynski claims America’s Army is different than 
most military FPS genre games because they add realistic consequences for violating army 
protocol.  
 
Chapter 3 discusses ways in which the developers of America’s Army tried to discourage racist 
messaging. They achieved this through randomizing the appearance of all characters so that there 
was no one race involved and used nondescript locations. At the same time, the AGP allows 
oblique references to real conflicts and enemies because “the construction of an anonymous but 
proximal enemy, complete with its own ambiguous language, is one institutionalized effort at 
achieving a symbolic supremacy over potential enemies” (73). Allen notes how all of these 
design choices mirror actual world training practices that the Military conducts in ROTC and 
military academy programs. Further extending into the real, America’s Army includes 
biographies and stories of actual world non-commissioned officers, referred to as “Real Heroes,” 
whom players are encouraged to see as role models. The chapter ends with a discussion between 
Allen and one of the “Real Heroes,” Tommy Rieman, and his struggles with PTSD, an element 
sanitized out of the America’s Army biography. 
 
The primary focus of Chapter 4 is the Virtual Army Experience (VAE), a mobile mission 
simulator used by the AGP at various events from 2007 to 2010. Attendees of the events first fill 
out various questionnaires and speak with army recruiters, before entering either a mockup of a 
jeep or helicopter, rigged to vibrate and shake along with the simulation elements. Participants 
also man light guns and then participate in a virtual simulation of a battle. While the stated goal 
is to provide a realistic experience for those considering a career in the military, Allen notes that 
unlike America’s Army, there is no way to fail the mission and all participants receive identical 
feedback.  
 
In Chapter 5, Allen discusses how academics have traditionally written about the military 
institution as a top down structure of inevitable progress through technology, rather than 
acknowledging that it also changes through bottom up and horizontal interactions. In an effort to 
change this, he examines the history of war themed commercial games, beginning in the 
nineteenth century, followed by the history of military training simulations. Allen closes the 
chapter with a highly detailed account of the history of the development team who worked on 
America’s Army.  
 
Allen uses his final chapter to describe how the game developers blur the line between civilian 
and soldier, because they had “expert military knowledge” and “worked within a liminal space 
between so-called military and nonmilitary spheres to translate this knowledge to video gamers 
and the larger public” (149). Although civilians, the development team were brought under the 
military umbrella and often thought of themselves as a squad, and many underwent a shortened 
version of bootcamp and wore fatigues to the office.  
 
In America’s Digital Army, Allen seamlessly blends together elements of both military and 
gaming history with his own ethnographic work and interviews with members of the Army 



Games Project to illuminate decision making processes and developments within the institution 
of the military that are rarely seen by the public. That being said, I was left wanting more 
engagement with the game itself and those who play it. By focusing almost entirely on the 
military and civilian developer side of the game, Allen somewhat misses the mark in exploring 
one of his central arguments, that of the institutionalization of society, and he may have been 
more accurately exploring the corporatization of the military. Considering his primary focus on 
virtual soldiers, those who are not yet soldiers but have the potential to be recruited, and only 
brief discussion of the digital, perhaps America’s Virtual Army would have been a more accurate 
title.  
 
In sum, portions of this book should appeal to those with an interest in video games or classes on 
virtual worlds, while the book as a whole should serve as a great resource to anyone with an 
interest in studying persuasive technology, the military, and business, specifically marketing. 
Further, Allen’s clear explanation of his methods and easy to understand writing style would 
make this book a great addition to any upper level or graduate class on those topics.  
 
Kyle Bikowski, Ph.D. student at The University of Iowa, studies the anthropology of video 
games, gender, science and technology, social media, and geek culture. His most recent research 
examined how the interplay between virtual and actual worlds has helped shape the Gaymer 
identity. 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 
 
© Kyle Bikowski 2020 
 


