Maybe no one talks about it because no one plays it?

Sounds like you're saying at least in part...
"If you don't think you'll be affected you are more likely to be affected" which is something that was debunked back when "games made people violent" attack

Wasn't meaning to go off topic, the 'double standards' pic with Anita made me think of Sandra, so thought i'd ask...

Alright, let's give this a whirl.
1. Featureless protagonists are nothing new.
2. Fiction in general will almost always feature some core ideas. As usually is the case - this is because they WORK and are necessary. To have a plot, you need to have "conflict". Without a problem to solve, there can be no effort to solve it.
3. "If you want to send a message, use Western Union.", said Samuel Goldwyn. There is a difference between an Autor Tract and its opposite. It's not a clear-cut one. The most basic intution is this: if a person neutral on the subject cannot reasonably be expected to enjoy the work of art without enjoying the message, it's probably an Autor Tract.
4. What "messages"? Here's an exercise for you:
I've played Takenoko with a group of friends recently. Name me the messages and possible influences.
A difference in quantity isn't meaningless. You can argue that ALL mushrooms are edible, though some only once. That "only once" does make a difference. You can paint a beautiful picture with words, sounds, colors... You can construct a wonderful plot, you can arrange circumstances. What is BEYOND your control is how the audience interprets these things and how they react to them. You can make a series of games where the sky is always green - this is unlikely to instill in people the belief that the sky in their world is green as well.
You can write the most passionate speech (or even forum post), and yet not everyone will think "truly, he is a prophet!". Some will conclude "That guy is a nutjob" and move on. Is it ALL in the message? Is it JUST the person interpreting it? Relationism would say - it's a bit of both... but that's an axiological story for another time.
5. I honestly don't know about these gamers who don't want messages and just want fun. As such - I'll speak for myself:
I want fun. I like fun. Want to make games that are fun? Go for it! I might even throw a decent sum your way.
Want to make games that are not fun? Go ahead! I might check out what they are about, they might be interesting experiences... and they, of course, may end up being Dinner Date x_x.
Want to make a game with the singular purpose of spreading your beliefs? Might not be the best of ideas, but - hey - go for it.
Want to make a game that shows things and makes me think, gives me choices? Hooray! Make one!
Want to make a game that tries to avoid all "messages"? DO IT.
See a pattern here? I want people to make stuff they want to make. This gives art the best shot at greatness. Making something you DO NOT want to make doesn't sound promising. Sure - I have vested interest in people making stuff I will like, but I like almost everything, so that shouldn't be an issue.
6. For America's Army to make a person want to join the army, the person in question would have to make an effort to install the game, play the game, enjoy the game, find the real-life thing to their liking, make an effort to enlist, pass the qualification.
Shorter version: "the guys sitting in front of screens all day, playing violent video games? These are not the people I'm afraid would mug me in a dark alley". Hardcore gamers would be too busy playing games to mug people ;).
7. The more experience you have as a gamer, Kasper, the less reasonable your "mind control" argument becomes. I've mentioned this in another thread, I think, but if you've played all these games and they haven't (as I assume) warped your perception of reality the same way they (presumably) do everyone else's... Well then - what makes you special? Why can't other people also play stuff, read stuff... and distinguish it from reality properly?
8. Your use of the terms "progressive" and "reactionary" sounds straight out of stalinist Soviet Union. The sad thing about this is that you probably wouldn't be shot for phrasing things otherwise, but are acting out of your own accord. YOU DON'T REALLY CONVEY INFORMATION WITH THESE WORDS. I could replace "reactionary" with "degenerate" a'la /pol/ and your statements would make as much (and as little) sense. The way you use them is as shorthands for "good" and "bad", which is a connotation people who read you are unlikely to share.
Match the lexicon to the audience.
9. I'll be explicit about this one: stop throwing everyone into the same basket. If someone disagrees with you, it doesn't mean they have to be part of all the factions that you disagree with.
Lacan. Scapegoat mechanism. It sure can be convenient to have these "Jews, Masons, Communists, and Cyclists" to blame for all bad things in life. Life's not that simple.
10. A man playing a woman playing a man ranks very low on my scale of "crazy".
11. tl;dr: Everything affects everyone, but people have sanity (to distinguish reality from fiction), intelligence (to tell apart strawmen from enlightenment), and their own discretion (to choose what they want to expose their minds to in the first place). We play games, not the other way around.

Some interesting points Kasper. +1
The thing is, you seem confused about propaganda. Seems to me you're thinking more of some sort of propagation of ideas. Ergo persuasive communication, advertisement. Propaganda is always advertisement, but advertisement is not always propaganda.

Now I won't argue AA is free of propaganda, most shooters have some, yet guess what, so does Gone Home. That's rather cultural context tbh.

What AA is and very explicitly so is a recruitment tool and somewhat of a training aid. This does not make it automatically into propaganda, anymore than EHS or cultural sensitivity trainings in corps are propaganda. Well that last one rather crosses the line though, in that it's trying to change your behavior in the name of values alone, and some of its tenets are debatable (or would be, but taboo).

So you see, it's not hypocrisy. AA is no more propaganda than most other games. You're just biased against any neutral reference to conflict. And I'd suspect some anti capitalism is in the mix.

Tl;dr
Join us, we're cool =/= propaganda
Join us, we're the best = propaganda
I'm sure AA has some of the second, but it's not as black n white as you make it. Hence why your post strikes me as more propaganda than AA itself. ;)

Someone appears to be bored.

LOL NICE! Way to work both Sarkesian and Quinn into a post that just, basically boils down to Splinter Cell vs. Deus Ex

(seriously though, try playing the 1st in each series back-to-back and then tell me that you're not concerned about messages in computer games, whether you're in camp SC or camp DE (DX?))

Incidentally I recently watched 'Gone Girl' with my girlfriend, she loved it but I was put off by the way it seemed to pander to the fears of these people
https://j4mb.wordpress.com/
But then that's a film and not a game and saying that sort of thing about films is fair while saying it about games makes people go mental - remember that Sarkesian's first 6 'Feminist Frequency' videos were mainly focused on films and TV and despite hitting the geek heartland (Star Trek: TGN, Species etc.) everyone who even noticed just shrugged and said 'OK, That's nice' it was only when she picked on Mario that the whole thing blew up!
Seriously - what's up with that? Computer games and those who play them REALLY need to learn how to take criticism, it's like zealotry around here!

IMO a message is only a message if we perceive it as such. Lets not forget what a lot of us take to be ''messages'' weren't even put into games intentionally ITFP by developers (the tropes vs women BS is basically that; and not ''the patriarchy trying to assert male dominance to children from a young age'' or some other BS). So IMO, there are two kinds of messages in gamse:
1.Messages where the developers didn't intend to put any in and we make them up as there is a pattern we perceive
2.Messages the devs put in; for good or bad reasons

I consider most military shooters to have the first type, where it doesn't even occurs to the devs that they're putting across a quite noticeable pattern. So in essence, they're not trying to reinforce any opinion at all but they seem to be doing so. I also believe most critics of games fall into this category where the radicals put in messages of their own where there was originally none conveyed.

I consider games like AA something dedicated to spreading a particular message. I'd be fine with games spreading a message as long as they're positive. Personally;from what little I know of AA, I think I'll not enjoy it at all since I'm not really person who encourages blind patriotism.

A nice EC video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP4_bMhZ4gA

I cite Metro 2033 where its almost always up to you whether you want to kill any humans at all; no matter if they're Nazi, bandit or anyone else. I've always found that whenever you put stealth mechanics into a game, most poeple try to avoid killing the enemy as much as they can; even if they're portrayed as evil. #goodnessofthehumanrace XD

After reading his constant feminist propaganda threads and his love for gender changing characters,
I think Kasper wants to be a snail.

Let's also not forget that America's Army is not the first (and will surely not be the last) video game developed by the military for training and/or recruitment. In fact, if we look at the history of video games, the earliest video games were hacked radar screens going back to the late 1950s. I even remember reading an article back in the 90s talking about how the Army was using Doom as a teaching device to train and score hand/eye coordination for soldiers.

So I wouldn't discount the point about America's Army, only that if we look specifically at games as forms of 'propaganda', damn near all of them could be seen by someone or another as forms of it. That's why it's good to keep a healthy level of objective detachment... in order for us to enjoy them for their entertainment value, which I hope is why we're all here. If we're not playing video games for fun, then I think many of us need to reexamine what we're doing with this hobby.

TB makes an argument with This War of Mine that games don't have to be fun, as much as they are thoughtful and engaging (i think that's right). There are games that just aren't fun, but you play because you aren't after the fun factor, you are after something entirely different, to feel regret from bad decisions and satisfaction from good ones.

As for an FPS why you'd play for anything other than training or fun, i wouldn't know, stressing yourself with PTSD or something seems like a stupid thing to do.

Which games with messages in particular have people been complaining about? GTA V? Because it is just one game, and there is no one shouting out that "more games should have pro-US army propaganda!", and damning people who play games which don't have US army propaganda.

The feminist nutcases like that Sarkeesian and whatever, they keep demanding that games overall should be changed to suit their agenda. I don't care if Sarkeesian makes her own feminist propaganda game, but if she is condemning me for playing Mario because I save a princess in it, pfffffft.

For the record, I also played and liked Mirror's Edge. It was pretty fun overall, regardless of the gender of the protagonist.

No, games don't have to be fun. Many aren't for many different reasons. But to me they should be. If you play video games only to dissect and analyze content and interpret social/political issues, then IN MY OPINION you have mistaken this industry for something it is clearly not.

The people who make and sell video games do so for one big reason... profit. Profit is made from selling vast amounts of video games to people who want to play them in order to be distracted from the stresses of the real world. When you eliminate that detachment ability from the mind, then the video game world constructs become just more facsimiles of the real world. This is just more subjective interpretation. And when people end up over analyzing video games the way they do the actual real world, I believe something is lost that's just as important as the data that's gained. You don't have to have fun playing video games, or really anything for that matter. But I hope you do. If you're not having fun in life, there's not much reason to live it. There's plenty of horrible things that are going to happen to us all in life. Might as well also try and have a little fun in between the divorces, lost jobs, and dying pets.

I never in a million years thought I'd have to try and be an advocate for fun with my fellow gamers. That's a sad sign of the times. I don't know about you guys, but back in the day I often ditched school so I could play video games with my friends. Games should be fun, not homework.

I pay attention to messages in games all the time, especially when they deal directly with my current quests!

I wonder - was AA anywhere near as popular as COD? Without doing any research, I would doubt it. Trying to influence people in a certain way with a certain thing doesn't necessarily mean it happens.

And no, I didn't join the Army because of video games. That's like saying "People watched that racing movie with the dude from SNL and they all wanted to become racecar drivers." :-)

No argument there. I almost never play games i don't have fun with. Quite often if they aren't fun i lose interest.

Some popular games have never been fun, but are a puzzle and challenge. Chess comes immediately to mind; However in the end you know it's a game and you don't treat it as anything more than that. Fun for some people can be variations of chess, or maybe just the challenge itself can be fun like Sudoku.

But honestly they aren't the first games i'll be wanting to play if there's another option; I'd probably enjoy Bloodrayne or Bayonetta first :P