Together we brand: America's Army

Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any forms or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, filming, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holders. 2 Against the perceived economic interests of the commercial culture producers and providers, like Napster. 3 Not considered by producers or providers but also not perceived as harmful, a la Star Trek fan fiction. ABSTRACT This paper signals the aesthetic and socioeconomic implications of a new generation of commercial media culture in an age of computer network-facilitated participation. It explores the cultural status of the online game America's Army: Operations (US Army, 2002) that has commerce at the core of its brand identity. The game exemplifies the linkage of commercial goals with cultural texts through creating engaging experiences, initiated by commercial corporations for reasons of promotion and profit, enabled by computer networks, and – to a lesser extent-given form by various members of the public.ture, marketing aesthetics " America's Army is the first game to make recruitment an explicit goal, but it snugly fits into a subgenre of games already in vogue: the " tactical shooter, " a first-person shooter that emphasizes realistic, squad-based combat ". INTRODUCTION The recent proliferation of digital technologies has reactivated debates regarding the aesthetic status of new, technologically enabled expressive forms, and challenges regarding the role of commerce in the production of culture have been mounted. Digital technologies have made questions regarding originality and reproducibility particularly difficult, and they have blurred the lines among producer, distributor, and consumer to a far greater extent than previous media forms. Computer games, digital audio and video production equipment, and the Internet have enabled new forms of production, distribution , facilitating what has been termed participatory culture. Since the late-1990s researchers have shown an increasing interest in this linkage between new technologies and publics, looking in particular at the formation of new social collectivities and 'bottom-up' redefinitions of cultural practices. These studies have tended to recover aesthetic status and social power by casting the work of participating publics as transgressive 2 or as at least unin