SemioNerd

Be (more than) Yourself.

The advertising war between EA and the French Army.

Four years ago I used to live in Paris. Living in Paris – along with all the romance – involves a lot of time spent in the Metro the Parisian subway. It is natural, than, that when the Armée de Terre (the French Army) decided to launch a new recruitment campaign they chose the Metro as privileged location for their advertisements. The result was the “devenezvousmemes.com” (become yourself) campaign

“Since when you didn't push your limits?” Ask the posters to any French teenager waiting for his or her train. With us you'll have the possibility to do it.

The image has strongly material features: it looks like drawn onto an uniform, with buttons and badges. The message is that this is a serious call, if you enlist you will become a real man, you will be challenged every day and you will reach the best that you can achieve trough sweat and effort. The campaign (still active today) its reported to have had a certain amount of success and the military were quite pleased.

Since it happened the unthinkable. I remember laughing ten minutes when I fist saw it, astonished by the bravery and smartness that brought to this:

Electronic Arts with two simple words “more than” had just destroyed the military rhetoric. Why do I have to suffer and work to reach my zenith, when I can be far beyond it comfortably sitting at my computer?

The image follow this antithetical discourse: it is an immaterial picture, without any background, but far more bad-ass than the previous one. It seems to say “Do you think that they will allow you to pilot an helicopter and a tank?”.

The military weren't pleased at all, far from it. They asked and obtained that the new announcements were retired within a week and they paused their campaign too. The général Philippe Pontiès explained that this double advertising was dangerous because it was confusing: “war is not a game” he said “In a video-game, even if rules exist, most of the time you can transgress them without harsh consequences. Our project is to explain that we have to avoid this video-games logic if we want to enter in the real life. In the Army we have codes and rules. If we ignore them we put the life of civilians and soldiers in peril, we can fail the mission”.

It is very interesting to see how the two discourses, the military and the playful, compete in today's society.

On the one hand we have the military that, with its materialistic image, says that the real life is not the digital life. That to accomplish ourselves we have to be trained, fit and strong. Our true self lives in the real world and it is not granted, it is an achievement. What would be better, then, that the soldier life to achieve your true self? You will learn that the world is out there, that you have responsibilities, and we would not pamper you. You will live among the others and according to them. This is reality.

The ludic discourse is exactly the opposite. It propose a model in which the digital world can be your reality, a much better reality, if you want it. Why should you be yourself if you can be better? If you can be an hundred of different selves, living adventures in every historic period and every nation or planet without risking anything? Your true self is in your mind, and if you believe it you can be everyone. What would be better, than, that video-games to be who you want to be? We can sell you perfect illusions, and you can be safely and comfortably home. You can live by yourself and still meet a lot of digital (and nice) people. This is better than reality.

Both discourses, as usual, don't let any space for a middle ground: you can be either a jar-head either a nerd, no other choices. But it is fascinating that games, that so often have been accused to raise violence in teenagers, are, in fact, in open opposition against the military. You can like both, but you can't live according to the two different realities that they propose you.

Professor Ortoleva has written a small but awesome book on gamification entitled “From sex to play: an obsession for the 21^th century?”. In his book he reconstruct the history of the perception of sex in modern and post-modern culture, showing how it gained more and more relevance in Western culture. A sort of sexyfication of society that, after reaching is azimuth, is now fading leaving space to the incipient gamification.

If in the sex-centered '70s pacifist's motto was: “Make love, not war”, in the gamificated 21^th century it has been replaced by a new motto: “don't make war, play games!”