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"The military has used gaming to identify potential recruits for some high value jobs"

Yup! And I have managed to get myself thrown in jail several times for killing sergeants and things like that, so at least I've learned that it's wrong to kill sergeants.

How about America's Army http://www.americasarmy.com/ I haven't played for a while, but it stands up to other games at the $50 price range while being a free download, for the full version.

Of course you can put it on a balance sheet. You call it marketing, companies pay A LOT for marketing, they put out commercials, ads in webpages, magazinges, newpapers, and countless other places.

Look at what most commercials are selling nowadays, how often is the commercial actually on the product? Heck you see computer commercials that are based more on the company image than the computer! People are becoming more and more suspicious of corporations and that affects the bottom line, heck if Microsoft or Nike had kept my Good Will they might both have a few hundred more of my dollars and they know it. Why do you think America's Army exists? They spent what, $10 million getting it made and who knows how much more on maintainance and bandwidth. That's all for good will, get more recruits, more public support because people are now associating the army with this fun free game.

Now google has a service, that tons of people use daily, that is free, high quality, and extrememly useful without getting any real bad will. How many commercials, heck how many sponserships could say that? I don't doubt there's a good pile of companies who would love to spend a big pile of money buying Goole News, keeping it the same, and just renaming it "[Company Name] News" and google or their stockholders would be foolish to want it cancelled.

America's Army, the game, is freeware and has only one minor ad that is well hidden ;-)

For those who don't know, the American Army (the real thing) spend some money to have a game developer create a FPS game including things the army has to offer. From weapons training to shooting the bad guys. The game was spread as freeware with the purpose of getting kids interested in joining the U.S. Army.

Anyway, just wanted to mention this ad with game inside.

What about America's Army? It's one big ad for the Army.

have you seen http://www.americasarmy.com/?

Aren't there Muslims in this one?

Looky Looky!

I forgot about America's Army. Its another nice violent linux game. :)

burnin

So are wars gonna be decided with Unreal Tournament now?

Of course not! Why do you think the Army made their own freely available game!?


(P.S. It does use the Unreal engine)

.....what, you mean America's Army ISN'T political?

With tinfoil hat on, it could certainly be argued that every game based on a real-life situation is political, at least subliminally - think about it, how many games have you seen where you play a US Army / Secret Service / CIA / NSA / whatever operative, on a secret mission to stop those evil nasty gooks who are hell-bent on destroying freedom (aka USA) at all costs?

Couldn't it also be argued that every single one of these games contributes on some level to the message "America is great - it's those foreigners you should fear and hate. Stay at home son, and join the US Army!" ?

Just out of interest, how many games have you heard about where you have to stop domestic terrorists?

I'm not trying to claim a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate, just that if you take a step back and view it from the outside (confession:I'm a Brit) then market forces have dictated an unnerving consensus.

OK, OK, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now. Here, I'll even give you a start : -1 Troll

;)

Congratulations, North Korea. You've finally worked out that America is a warmongering nation with an extensive corporate propaganda system operating through movies, news media and even video games.

This is not news. Many of us noticed this years ago. And picking a French-made video game as an example just makes the whole thing seem ludicrous to the US citizens who could stop the whole process if they really wanted to.

I'm looking forward to support for True Crime now that it's out on PC, as well as Driver 3 when it comes out, though I'm still trying for 100% completion of Vice City between rounds of America's Army, which is a pretty damn good game out on all top three major OS's.

Eventually the plan is to have an actual moving vehicle with realistic physics, as the most recent SITREP indicates (midway down the page, near the graphic).

Now, how much fun is it to play a game where you basically sit back and watch the action, rather than being able to interact with it?

Fun, fun... when you introduce the concept of taking turns.

America's Army works like that, albeit at the squad level rather than the campaign level. Every "turn," i.e. every engagement, one of the players gets elected squad leader, and he's responsible for coming up with the plan of battle and ordering his fire teams around.

Now, the squad leader is basically just a guy with a pair of binocs in addition to his M-16, so it's possible for him to go running off into the fray. Some players, especially inexperienced ones, do just that. At that point, the game devolves into Counterstrike.

But the real fun happens when the squad leader finds a good place to oversee the battle and gives his fire teams orders. Suppress this enemy position, advance under cover to that position, circle around to the rear, lob a smoke grenade, storm the compound.

It's about as realistic as squad-level combat gets, I think. No god's-eye view or anything like that: just a pair of binoculars and some radio channels to communicate with your teams.

It's wicked fun.

"America's Army", the game, is a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army, paid for and run by the U.S. Army. Much of the operation is outsourced, but the whole point is to recruit people into the U.S. Army. "Going to the next level" has a special meaning there.

uhmmmmmmm... on the contrary. try this on for size. I hear it's a decent game.

• Mozilla
• Spybot S&D
• AVG Anti-virus
• Microsoft Visual Studio
• ActiveState Perl
• America's Army (gotta test the graphics card, you know.)
• Winamp 5.0
• Open Office

I install Mozzie first, then I download and run Spybot Search and Destroy and run the cleanup/immunize functions, and then I install AVG. Nothing else is an "absolute" but I usually install them. (I don't install Visual Studio on other people's boxes, of course!)

Americas Army has been around a while now training soldiers of all ages in basic combat. Puts you through basic training and keeps a database on your skills. It is run by the U.S. Army and when you join, they look up your skills in the database to help direct your training. It's a totally free game developed by the Army for your training pleasure.

It scares me somewhat the the U.S. Army is spending $$$ to train 12 yr old kids how to navigate battlefields.

If you really wanted a good sim, why not just use Paintball? It's probually as close as you can get without killing each other.

• UT2004 (Also Unreal - 2003 work as well)
• Neverwinter Nights
• SAVAGE: The Battle for Newerth
• Enemy Territory
• Quake3
• Americas Army

• Forzen Bubble
• Scorched3D
• Legends (Tribes2 Clone)
• Chromium (Space Invaders Clone)

I bet all of you who played the Army's "free game" will be sorry when this happens.

Most Unix systems won't get infected and cannot be infected.

It's rare, but there is such a thing as spyware for Unix. It's produced by Evenbalance.com, and distributed by the Pentagon; it's included free when you install America's Army (for Windows or Linux)

Punkbuster might have somewhat different goals and methods than the majority of spyware, but it still deserves that name. A program which allows a stranger across the internet to scan your RAM for patterns or download periodic screenshots can't be called anything but spyware.

The difference with Punkbuster, of course, is that the developer is quite open about the purpose of the spyware, and it's something the users will agree with. But still, anyone with sensitive files on a PC should be aware there are whole categories of spyware which Ad-Aware will never flag, but which might be subverted to look for passwords and usernames rather than just wallhacks and aimbots.

(Someday the FBI might visit evenbalance.com with a wiretap warrant to inspect the players of those violent, kill-trainer games for hints of terrorist-tendencies...)

I am a hardcore gamer who spends > 40 hours per week on games. Ranging from Dark Age of Camelot (an MMORPG), Call of Duty, America's Army and C&C Generals, depending on what mood I'm in. On top of this I try to get some programming in as well.

Today I have less time to invest 'dedicated' to one particular game, which is frustrating because you develop friends in the online gaming community that you lose when you move on. To me its saddening, and I'm clawing on to keep at the level I used to be at, but it isn't working. :(

Oh well, time to find a girlfriend, get married, and put the money spent on computers and games into a home deposit!

I suggest you make a Knoppix CD with LTP installed. With a little configuration, that will take care of all of all your tests for the memory, disk, IO, and CPU. You might want to install America's Army or something to test the video subsystem.

If you put a little effort into it, you'll have a test suite as good as, and likely better than, anything you could pay money for. If you want to buy something, you can make a donation to the LTP and Knoppix projects.

There are also simpler tools, like Memtest86. I find this tool to be invaluable when I try to salvage old hardwar. I can't begin to tell you how much time it's saved me that I would have spent aimlessly swapping components around.

My suggestion would be nix (no pun intended) the whole linux angle to this. The kids are going to be learning difficult apps, and having to deal with an operating system that functions differently (think stuff like cut/paste) will just be frustrating. You also don't know about the hardware the kids are using at home, so a LiveCD that may or may not detect their hardware correctly could end up being more of a hassle than a bonus.

Second, LiveCDs have very subpar performance compared to a hard-disk install, doing graphical work or trying to model in 3d is going to be a painful experience to say the least; and will leave a poor impression of linux in the campers minds.

You mentioned that the commercial versions of these apps are expensive; they are. In many cases, the company that makes the app offers a much discounted or even free version. For 3d studio max, there is the excellent gmax software that does what most of your campers would likely love to do, create models for computer games. If you aren't content with gmax (which is a truly great program), there is always the Maya Learning Edition which is a learning version of the program the pros are using.

I would contact the software companies that offer learning versions and see if you could distribute those. The companies will be very happy that you want to use their programs, and may throw some free stuff your way (I can't think of anything cooler to win at summer camp than a software t-shirt).

If you are dead set on FOSS, I would make a compilation of those apps(gimp, OO.o, thunderbird/firebird, etc.) for Windows and throw them on a CD. Without Linux, you'll have more space for some killer free apps, and you'll have way more kids that will use Gimp or Open Office or Blender if they can use them without having to install a new, unfamiliar operating system. Remember, gratis will mean more to them than libre . If you want to get them intested in FOSS, download a small game (even something like a solitaire/tetris clone) and show them little snippets and explain what they do ingame.

Lastly, if this is a summer (read fun) camp, there will be some time for gaming. I obviously wouldn't recommend a live CD for this, but if you are looking for free(beer) software that is multiplatform, I'd recommend America's Army and Enemy Territory

I searched around and I came up with a list I think you'd get some good mileage out of, and I promise you'll hook more kids with these than you will a Linux liveCD.

6.19 MB - Firefox 0.8
7.52 MB - Thunderbird 0.5
257 MB - Wolfenstein Enemy Territory
51.0 MB - gmax + help, tutorials, and textures
133 MB - Maya Personal Learning edition
2.20 MB - Blender
63.5 MB - OpenOffice 1.1 installer
--------------
520.41 MB total

Someone forgot to put a URL...

americasarmy.com

looking for free games? or retail games($)?
Me, personally, I've been playing Battlefield 1942, which just got Punkbuster added to it. Then there's the free Desert Combat mod for it. Also been playing Call of Duty. And Battlefield : Vietnam should be out within the next month or so.

As for free... How about America's Army? I haven't played it in a long time, but I loved it when i did play it. There's also Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory.

Anyway, try Armerica's Army

It is free. It has several levels of online training allowing you to practice your skills, meet other players, and form your own 'clan' before venturing on to where all the real bad asses play. Not sure how well it protects against cheating though.

- Nicholas
Hacker Intel - Constantly Updated Hacker News

America's Army

No, but I do imagine they pretty much pwn America's Army

why dont you just keep your mouth shut? you are free to choose what games you want to play, arent you? as well as id is free to choose what games they release... and if you are looking for a game with "american soldiers hunting down terrorists" why not stick to games released by the government.

Goodman mentions that

"it's very hard to appeal to everybody. Part of the way we did this was we divided the game into an Empire Builder and an Action mode to try to target those audiences more carefully than perhaps other games have done in the past. And I think that was a wise thing to do."

He doesn't talk much about the decision to divide the game into two different styles, which is a shame. What about the future of games that, in the process of play, change from one style to another ? Let's take a current example - the Army game. It has an FPS part, and what they're calling an RPG part. Would a game where you did both of those things, then shifted more towards the RTS paradigm as your character ascended in rank, be marketplace-viable? What would you tell a developer who wanted to make a game along the lines of Elixir's Republic: The Revolution - only that it was an adventure game until you became a political big wheel, at which point it turned into a nation-building strategy game somewhat like Civ/Capitalism, with an intrusion of FPS in the Rainbow 6 style when ninjas attempt to kidnap the president ? Are these games inherently a bad idea, or has their time not yet come ? Final Fantasy-style minigames certainly wouldn't cut it - but I think that that shows that there have already been some tenative pokes at this.

Personally, I think that a game that's capable of moving between genres in response to the player's actions is a spectacularly good idea, but is it? And for that matter, if it is, what about implementation?

I like ArmyOps even better. Yes, it's propaganda crap but technically it's a really good shooter.

sure

you'll find everything you need there. just type in "america's army" in the little text box. it works for most anything, in fact.

okay, okay, i wont be a prick.
here ya go

Why not try the latest and greatest FPS, America's Army. It will run OK on your 1.7G machines, and it has Linux, Mac and Windows versions - an added benefit is you'll get higher FPS on the Linux version too! It's free, what more could you want? Get it here: America's Army

America's Army

Well, some of us ARE working on that very thing. (In all honesty, there's another distribution that I know of that we're working with, but since it's not public knowlege, I can't point people that way- YET.)

Shortly, with the efforts of companies like ourselves, SCI and hopefully others, that is going to change.

(Oh, and on a different note, HOW did you get the ability to have links without the [foo.com] after them? :-)

More aggressively with game developers. I mean its sort of sad that even though there are a handful of active commercial (and non-commercial albeit high quality as in my sig) game developers who are supporting Linux there is still the perception that Linux doesn't have games.

Gentoo seems to get it, but I'd expect to see a more aggressive commercial distribution seriously pimping this and I believe in we really need some good exposure like this.

Be sure to put these ninny soccer moms on the mailing lists of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Perhaps reminding that no matter how overprotective they are, they're going to register for Selective Service unless they go live on a Commune. So be sure and mail them CD's w/ America's Army for the ultimate insult.

Not enough room in the story to clarify it, but the first link says:

"Please note: this release includes only the Windows client version. Mac client, Linux client, and Linux server will be released at a later time."

Doh.

that they've posted windows download locations, but what about the other platforms? I seem to recal this being an all-platforms release. You might think that you could find some info here, but then you'd be wrong.

(or maybe all those flash ads I supporessed give some info?)

Not to mention that America's Army is basically one big ADVERTISEMENT for the good old armed forces of the USofA.

Oh, for all you who want to know what it is, it's a free game first-person squad based shooter game that tries to show you the "military experience". Watch out for the subliminal messages (just kidding)!

http://www.americasarmy.com

Drill sergeants.

America's Army makes you go through basic training before you can play.

On the tech front, America's Army now has a Linux version for 64-bit Athlons, shipping as a bootable disk. Now that's cutting-edge technology.

And it's all free. You can even run your own server.

Of course, if you do well, they try to get you to enlist in the real army.

http://www.americasarmy.com/

From the article:

Points, ammunition and more weapons are awarded for completing missions that include stealing cars, crashing them, shooting pedestrians and other motorists, drug dealing and beating up prostitutes.

I don't know about Vice City because I haven't played it, but for GTA3 the above statement is rubbish. You're never required to shoot pedestrians or other bystanders, nor do you deal drugs or beat up hookers. Nor do you ever have to directly target the police. In fact, many of the missions in GTA3 involve busting up a rival gang's drug operations. Kind of ironic that a game with this level of violence carries an implicit anti-drug message.

As for the lawsuit itself, it's simply another example of parents trying to cover up their own failures by blaming the media. These two kids could just have easily been playing America's Army and decided to go on a fantasy hunt for some terrorists. BTW, this game's level of tactical violence is far more realistic than any GTA game, yet it received a 'T' rating. And this is a recruiting tool commissioned by the Army. But I'm sure it will be OK if America's Army turns kids into murderers, so long as they're in uniform and Defending Our Freedoms.

...

Hi there. I run Linux here (Gentoo) and the following system:

• AMD XP 2500+
• nforce2 motherboard
• 512MB PC 2700 RAM
• ATI Radeon 9700

I play the following games on Linux. Enemy Territory and America's Army. With high detail settings on both games, 1024x760(?) resolution, fullscreen, I get 70-80FPS. This is *excellent* FPS, and wouldn't be possible unless there were decent drivers available for ATI cards under Linux.

Your post is incorrect.

You can download it for free from the internet no matter what country you are in.

http://www.americasarmy.com/operations/downloads2. php

Videogames influence people. And some videogames are made to make kids kill. Okay -- that was a little bit of a joke -- but the point is that entertainment influences people. And that influence is especially felt by the young. Socrates' discussion of music in the Republic was not a silly argument.

This is more likely to be 'propoganda'. Since when does playing game based on factual events classify as propoganda? If anything, it serves to produce the reality of battle planning and team/individual management that makes success possible in modern warfare. I'm not saying that maybe it isn't propoganda, but sometimes a game is a game and more likely out for profit than political reasons. Of course, this stricks very similiar to this; so if anything, this Iraq game is more of a stylisitic ripoff.