Stahl's reading

I always knew video games were created realisticaly on purpose, so the player can feel like they've just entered the combat world, but I never really thought about using video games to actually train soldiers. I've really only thought of militarization as a one-way road. But now I see that it can go both ways. I never knew that Doom was made into a Marine version to train the soldiers. My best friend's brothers were obsessed with the game and literally would sometimes play for 24 hours. Actually, her oldest brother skipped his HS graduation to attend a Doom national tournament down in Texas. That is crazy to me! It makes me wonder if he had to go into war, would he have the basics down to fight? If they're using the game as military training, then why not?
The other part of the article that intrigued me was his part on Netwars and how the media has produced another kind of citizen, as the subject of Netwar. I am an aspiring journalist and it is really interesting to read about the reporting system of Iraqi Freedom positioned journalists. I am too young to remember any of the coverage of Desert Storm but I am old enough now to hear how journalists who covered both wars on the ground talk about the differences between the two wars and how they participated more covering the war in Iraq. I think that shift of constant TV news coverage of the wars has made it easier for companies to create realistic war video games because everyone can see the war being faught right in front of them. Just how television coverage brought to us the first time in Vietnam the "living room war," I think they too have brought to us these all too realistic war killing video games. The TV coverage of the Iraq War is unprecedented with hours of streaming video posted on the web and seen on 24-hour cable network news programs. It is so much easier for a company to create an eerily realistic video game to sell by the millions and further the playing of the game on terror.