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America's Army Recruiting Success Discussed
Thanks to Nola.com for their article discussing the success of the America's Army game/recruiting tool, as the free PC first-person shooter "...now has more than 2 million registered users, making it one of the five most popular action games played online." Most interestingly, since "...the ultimate aim of the game is to arouse tech-savvy teenagers' interest in serving in the Army", can the success of the game be measured? The article gives an example of the Kansas City Recruiting Battalion, who are hosting monthly LAN sessions at a technical college, and "...can claim seven new recruits among the players, and expect to sign at least as many more in the coming month."
At least, not for me. Maybe because I'm not from the US?
is a freaking idiot.
;) ).
is there a way to 'sample' the army experience in usa, in real life? i mean, the game has just about zero to do with what real military work would end up being, especially zero to do what it would end up to be for support personnel they need those geeks in(not to mention that geeks wouldn't in their right mind to join to do something like aa is in real life on the level it's needed in a real army. lemme tell you, real combat training sucks from a geek perspective
in countries with mandatory army service the people who will turn it into career pretty well know what shit they're putting themselfs into, be them geeks and non-geeks. i would expect a quite high dropout rate for people joining at a flashy recruit station because they enjoyed a cool pc game(how easy is it to drop out of army in usa? any real penalties?).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
i don't know if they handle usual recruits the way they do with virtual recruits. Currently i need about 100 tries for one successfull logon. It took me about a week to complete the basic training (4 missions) just because the authentication fails in 90+% of all cases. It seems that
209.58.64.85 authcentral.login.americasarmy.com
is not up to the task of taking so many virtual recruits and the game is killed by its success.
Bye, Martin
P.S. I'm not in danger of joining tthe US Army. Served my time with a different one and i didn't enjoy it. Most seargants had an intellectual lag which made the experience very frustrating :-(.
Here's the other side of the story. Special Force, an fps " allegedly produced by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. The game's designers seek to "correct" the influence of western gaming concepts on the Middle East. In particular, they want to combat the view that the "oppressor" always defeats the "Arab."".
I found an article about it in arstechnica.
Just of curiosity, how many of the 2 million player are actually americans ?
Oh.. it's available for Linux as well. see e.g. here
...and I'm suing the army for a gazillion dollars!
maybe the game is just good?
Obviously they know how many recruits they get each month-- is this classified or something, that they can't show a graph of the changes since the game was introduced? The only reason I can imagine them withholding that graph is that the increases are so small they fail to justify the expense...
Heh! The Us army can bring out extra mission packs every other month to coincide with their invasions.... Coming soon, from the makers of Iraq: All you black gold are belong to us!...and other such thrilling titles as Vietnam:If at first you don't succeed, sacrifice a whole generation to still not succeed ...and the all time classic Russia: Our police state is more free than yours! ..the Us Army brings you: Democracy: Operation kill them all , the fantastic conclusion...now also available in box set!
It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious. -B.Hicks-
Apparently they couldn't get it ready in time for the initial rollout but they are pretty keen to get it out the door ASAP.
With any luck it will bring some stability to the game.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Killed by enemy.
Killed by teammate.
Killed by teammate.
Squad leader says "Wait for my signal to attack." Said signal turns out to consist of accidentally detonating a grenade in the middle of our base, killing everyone.
I ask everyone, "This is an effective recruiting tool why?"
If I had a complaint about the game, it would be that while it does a lot, it doesn't do enough to teach the Army's core values: respect, duty, loyalty, selfless services, integrity, and personal courage.
For example, the game allows users to be disrespectful to superiors (where rank is fairly arbitrary and assigned based on one's role in a given game) with no consequences. I'd like to see some kind of feature where disobeying an order or being disrespectful to a superior results in negative consequences... although, in all fairness, I can't figure out how such a feature would work.
In other ways, the game is very successful as a teaching tool. For example, before you can serve in-game as a combat life saver, you have to sit through a couple of hours of combat life-saver training and take some exams. And these are real CLS lectures, not watered down for teenagers. The people who play this game are, whether they know it or not, learning.
It's basically impossible to succeed in the game if you don't embrace teamwork. Sure, you can run around, hopping and blasting like you're an idiot, but your game will end quickly, and you'll be forced either to go find another game, or to sit there while the round plays out. The players that use teamwork and communication succeed, while the players that don't fail. That's an important lesson.
As a recruiting tool... meh. Who cares. As a teaching tool, to teach the core values that the Army is built on, and that incidentally serve people throughout their lives, the game is a phenomenal success.
I certainly enjoyed blowing up Rebel scum in TIE Fighter, but I didn't enlist in the Imperial Navy.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
It makes me sad to see that the US Military is using computer games to recruit, especially considering that being a US soldier is probably less than glorious.
Don't forget you Americans have been duped into fighting a war based on lies. The real purpose behind the war is to fill the pockets of the people who put Dubya in power.
So maybe they should release a new game called "Oil Tycoon".
Anon
The article doesn't say that the seven joined because they played the game. Also seven out of a yearly average of 2,000 new recruits? Whoop-de-doo.
Yes, I actually read the article. You can all mock me now.
I'm active duty military and I pack a gun for a living. I looked at the game and there are some interesting things they have included from a training standpoint. When a weapon malfunctions, the immediate action performed by the 'person' in the game gives the player a view of what you would actually see in real life if performing an immediate action drill correctly as you were taught to do. So a player of that game who was being trained on immediate action for an actual weapon would already have a visual image of what the correct action should 'look like'. I don't think the army was expecting people to sign up because they play the game. I think in part it was to give people an idea of what training is really like as opposed to what the movies show it to be. The average American after the second world war had an 80% or greater chance of having a parent or relative who served in the military. Today that % is under 10%. The average American citizen really has no idea what life in the military is like or what the military actually does. That is not a good thing. That can cause people to vote unwisely due to basing such decisions on faulty knolwedge.
Or is the goal to make potential recruits realize that the military is not for them. The military "wastes" millions on people who think they want to join the military but later decide it isn't right for them. If those same people had instead played this game and saw, at least virtually, what the military was like then the game has paid for itself.
This is a fluff magazine piece just begging to be written.
I started a secondary account for America's Army. It uses the name "a UN Peacekeeper". So now in the game you get the joy of seeing:
PimpDaddyMac was shot by a UN Peacekeeper.
SupaKilla was blown up by a UN Peacekeeper's grenade.
LaughablyMachoName was sniped by a UN Peacekeeper.
and all too frequently:
A UN Peacekeeper was shot by ~achildwithoutparentalsupervision~.
Other amusing names:
osamas mama
mujahedin
DickCheney
a lil girl (unfortunately the player was an asshole)
Good game, but i don't think it's a very effective recruitment tool. I do commend them for their attempts to discourage tk griefers and racist and homophobic chat spammers of all sorts.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
-- Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
So that recruitment battalion, they are hosting lan games, and during these games, are they leaning on the geeks to join up?
I hope not, considering that it is a serious choice, and one that should be made without any pressure.
I can imagine a few situations where the recruiter can muscle a person into signing up without putting much thought into their choice.
Not that games like Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six or Counterstrike(!) did anything to bolster recruitment numbers, probably more so than any sorry ass America's Army game ever did.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
..the army is just dying to get ahold of fat-ass teenagers who are stuffing their face with cheetos between watching their aimbot take out opponents.
I mean, geeze, think about your average gamer. Is that really the type of person you want to see defending the country as anything other than a flesh-bullet-barrier?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Americans are weak. I downloaded a video along the lines of "dedicated to our soldiers in iraq".. and it's all just bombs and jets and missiles and tanks!! The only time you see some soldiers is some drill sequences... it's dedicated to explosives and robots, while claiming all the generice freedom and pride bullshit.. FUCK GLEICHSCHALTUNG, FUCK CORPORATIONS, FUCK FASCISM!
This doesn't have as much to do with America really, this problem is global. Let the Americans clean up their act while you clean up yours and I mine. Oh, interesting times this are indeed.