Clicking and Shooting for Hearts and Minds Soft Power and Military Serious Games

Abstract

This thesis seeks to build a relation between the fields of international relations, military studies and games studies in order to examine tactical military serious games, both used for strategic communication purposes and military training and education in terms of their persuasiveness as expressive media. Building on Joseph S. Nye's concepts of hard-, soft- and smart power, this thesis examines both the ability of military serious games to persuade and attract players to see military activities as legitimate and military policy goals as credible, as the ability to train soldiers to acquire smart power awareness and competencies which may aid them in making hard decisions in actual complex 21st century conflict situations. It starts out by examining the concepts of hard, soft and smart power and the consequences of the increasingly soft-power oriented global affairs climate. It then examines the ability of games to persuade and attract and subsequently links these theories to soft power concepts. Based on both game and international political concepts, the thesis follows with the examinations of a military serious game that is used for strategic communication purposes, The U.S. Army's official game America's Army, and of a military serious game that is used for military training and education purposes, Bohemia Interactive's Virtual Battlespace 2. The goal of these examinations is to show how these games try to persuade and attract the players in seeing specific military activities and policies as credible and legitimate.