Digitized Virtuosity: Video War Games and Post-9/11 Cyber-Deterrence

Abstract

In post-9/11 America, digital war games have increasingly come to provide a space of cyber-deterrence where Americans are able to `play through' the anxieties that attend uncertain times and new configurations of power. This article seeks to examine the increasingly close relationship between the US military and the digital-game industry, along with the geographies of militarism that this has produced. Focusing on the contribution that digital war games make to a culture of perpetual war and in the manufacture of consent for US domestic and foreign policy, the Pentagon's mobilization and deployment of digital games as an attempt to create a modern version of the noble war fantasy is critically examined. With particular reference to America's Army, the official US Army game, the article seeks to examine the influence of digital war games in the militarization of popular culture and in shaping popular understandings of geopolitics.