What's intriguing is that this is exactly what senior military games people such as Jeff Wilkinson, a program manager at the US army's Simulation & Training Technology Center, want.
In return for their investment, they want a higher level of cognitive performance.
"We are frequently looking for `first-person thinker' environments and not `first-person shooter' environments," Wilkinson says. "This provides a significant opportunity for gamemakers to focus their resources in new ways."
He says the benefits of investment will accrue mostly to education, not entertainment.
SCIENCE-FICTION VISION
Chaplin quotes Michael Macedonia, a major mover in army simulation circles, recommending the visions of science-fiction writers such as Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, a novel in which six-year-old kids unknowingly fight remote wars through their gaming consoles.
Greg Costikian, a designer who recently left Nokia to start his own company, Manifesto Games, is agnostic about the relationship between games and the military. But unlike many, he has a strong opinion on America's Army.
"Given that we have a volunteer military, the military needs to recruit. And if it's legitimate for them to use TV and print advertising, what's wrong with doing so through a game?" he asks.
This position is shared by Sheldon Pacotti, the scriptwriter for the forthcoming America's Army console game, Rise of a Soldier.
His experience on America's Army, working closely with special forces soldiers, was that their "nuanced ideas about the role of an outside military force" in foreign interventions was much more subtle than the understanding of either US politicians or citizens.
"The truth about terrorism," Pacotti says, "is that it is much more complex than any plot you could dream up for a game or any other type of entertainment. The virtue of Rise of a Soldier is that it doesn't set out to demonize the enemies, their culture, or their worldview."
The gamemakers have a point: We shouldn't automatically damn each product that bears a military title, as the actual gameplay may be subtler than the blood-and-guts marketing.
And it's not as if there isn't a small counter-movement in the game sector.
The same Washington conference sponsored by the US Army featured serious games that were about non-violent conflict resolution in the Middle East, and distribution of food by the UN. And the rise of modding and machinima allows a wider and more subtle range of world view and aesthetics, hopefully similar to independent movies and music.
But Heather Chaplin was inspired to write Smart Bomb from the anthropologists' old saw: Show me the games of your children, and I will show you the next hundred years.
Maybe there are people who are not frightened by the idea of an increasingly militarized culture.
But I am.
Pat Kane is the author of The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living.
RSS