Video: War of the Mind Ketchum, a scientist with a propagandist's eye, documented many of his more ambitious experiments in order to advertise the program within the military.
That video war games, with ever-greater verisimilitude, provoke such a physical reaction makes the thought that some people might play at killing American soldiers all the more disturbing for some.
The atrocity itself is not shown this time: viewers see only the events leading up to it, as filmed by a Hispanic army recruit who expects that his video war diary will earn him admission to a prestigious film school.
The shadow of the Betamax/VHS video war looms large: half the game is about to spend a tidy sum on a system that will be subsumed by the other.
In the 1980s, when the video war raged over two rival video-cassette standards, the decision by America's video-rental chains to stock only one format tipped the balance in favour of Matsushita's cheaper and longer-recording VHS standard.
But as video war games gain popularity throughout the armed forces, some military trainers worry that the more the games seem like war, the more war may start to seem like a game.
