New World Newsfeed: US Military Recruits in Second Life (But for the Wrong Reasons and the Wrong Audience)

Recent dispatches from the outside world...

Among President Elect Obama's key national defense platforms (.pdf link here) is to recruit 65,000 new soldiers and 27,000 Marines, with an emphasis on rebuilding "our special operations forces, civil affairs, information operations, engineers, foreign area officers", educated in "foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence".  So it was strange to read about the US Army's plans to set up a recruiting information island in Second Life, developed to resemble the America's Army online videogame.  It'll include, the commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command explains, "virtual experiences like jumping out of airplanes, and rappelling off of towers and using a weapon," with an explicit aim of reaching "young people who we're trying to encourage to join the military".  The US Air Force already has an education site in SL, where Residents can "fly a virtual P51C Mustang, try a challenge course and shooting range".

This seems off for several reasons.  At the moment, Second Life's server lag will confound any attempt to create consistently satisfying physics-enabled simulations, for one thing; for the other, in Second Life the users' median age is 32, and it actually seems to discomfort most people in their teens and 20s. 

More than that, as a platform, Second Life is actually better suited to national defense priorities of the incoming Obama administration:

There's already foreign language training in SL, for example, and for "cultural awareness", areas in SL created and hosted by various international Muslim groups.  Another Obama priority is "to build a 21st-century Department of Veterans Affairs", and here again, Second Life already has veterans' support networks.  (Pictured above is Gwill Brickworks, head of the 500+ "U.S. Military Veteran" group.)  All this points to Second Life as a recruitment tool not for young enlistees, but older, officer-track recruits-- not the trigger pullers, in other words, but what Democratic foreign policy expert Thomas Barnett calls the "sysadmin force": older, experienced, college educated, Web 2.0-literate personnel skilled in civil affairs and reconstruction.  (Back in 2005, by the way, Barnett gave a lecture in Second Life.)

So my guess is the US military's first forays into Second Life will be disappointing in both directions.  But given the technocratic bent of the Obama administration, my guess is we'll see more virtual world/game-based recruiting in the coming years.  So maybe his advisors with SL experience (as here and here) will help push the US armed forces in a better direction.

Comments

[Iggy O]

hmmmmm...P-51 Mustang = Cadillac of the Sky.

Though given some recent performance hits I've been experiencing, on Wednesdays a P-26 "Peashooter" might be a more appropriate SL Warbird.

Sign me up!

[Doubledown Tandino]

First off, the US military is coming into SL for one reason and one reason only, recruiting.
They do NOT care about SL or the community. They care about recruiting through promotion as they always have.

"running simulations" is just an ideal fantasy of what they'd like to do. america's army was a disguised recruitment ad... US Military in SL will be the same.

Be all that you can be... NOW you can even go to a far off virtual land, and discover exotic pixelated residents from across the world... and kill them.

[Hamlet Au]

America's Army wasn't "disguised", DD, it was explicitly characterized as a recruitment tool. Far as SL, there are other US military projects that are not recruiting; the Navy is using is a development platform, for example.

[Ann Otoole]

If the US military wants to recruit more people then all they have to do is raise the maximum entry age to 55. No need for fancy recruiting. A lot of veterans would walk away from the misery of a failed American dream economy to get back to a life where they can do something real for one or 2 enlistment terms.

[Paisley Beebe]

Gwill Brickworks will be on Tonight Live on the 21st Dec to talk about the veterans support Network, Second Life is a great platform for Vets with disabilities brought on by Service.

[rikomatic]

yeah I don't see it working as a recruitment strategy for the US military. But for service oriented organizations like the Peace Corps or Americorp, I could see it being quite useful for targetting the 20-something and middle-aged demographics.

More on this on my blog .

[Ananda]

Care to speculate that "gamers" as a general demographic is exciting for the military? Lots of people pre-trained in electronic communications, hand-eye coordination, etc... Setting up in SL is probably just slightly missing the target audience, but then they couldn't get a recruiting station into WoW or Warhammer or AoC I bet, where their real demographic of fast-talking fast-twitching kids tend to be.