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."

Comments

anybody who joins because of a pc game..

[gl4ss]

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?).

Re:anybody who joins because of a pc game..

[Spock the Baptist]

I'm don't think that very many people join the military just because of a gaming experience. I believe the game to be directed toward young men who are already inclined toward service in the military, and is used by the Army to be a "deal maker," or "to close the deal."

FWIW

There are some interesting things about the game.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.