Army Sets Up Videogame Studio

Ralph Lee writes "Is it time to enlist? Wired News is reporting that the US Army has set up a video game studio to model training and recruit soldiers on the heels of the successful America's Army title: 'The America's Army Government Applications office was quietly opened in January in Cary, North Carolina, with a team of 15 video-game creators, simulation specialists and ex-Army personnel. Many of the studio's employees come from local video-game companies like Interactive Magic, Timeline, Vertis, SouthPeak Interactive, Vicious Cycle Software and Red Storm Entertainment.'" It's also noted that "the office is working with a team of 24 video-game creators in Monterey, California, on the latest edition to its main franchise, America's Army: Overmatch, which will be released in March 2005."

Comments

Amazing that!

[GeckoX]

It is truly amazing that the organization that gave us the America's Army video games...wait for it...now has a video game studio!

Holy shit! Who would have thunk that releasing a Game like America's Army would lead to building a game studio?

Do you catch the hint of sarcasm yet?
WTF, like really. Of course they have a freaking game studio...somebody had to build the freaking game in the first place.

Re:Amazing that!

[simoniker]

To be fair, America's Army wasn't actually built by the, uhh, Army - but by a team headed out of the Naval Postgrad School in Monterey, as referenced in the article. Plus, the Army has been using external contractors such as There Inc. and Pandemic for much of their training-related development, so in some ways, it _is_ interesting that they'd set up a dev studio of their own.

Sarcasm is also always welcome on Slashdot, of course.

Re:Amazing that!

[osullish]

Not that amazing - this company are able to make this product product without any known manufacturing facilities!

Am I alone...?

[SimianOverlord]

Am I alone in feeling somewhat disquieted in the military in this country associating itself with the entertainment industry? Is this the thin end of the wedge?

The apparatus of state is separated from the church, because it is harmful. It should likewise be seperated from the entertainment industry, because of the propaganda possibilities, shaping the next generation of Americans.

Re:Am I alone...?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

They've been at it for years. The pentagon is probobly the most skilled crowd of propagandists there is.

What worries me is that "traditional" propaganda has always been subject to (some) constraint. You couldn't run around screaming "YOU'VE GOT TO KILL OUR ENEMIES!!! WHAT ARE YOU!!?!?! YELLOW!?!?!" without someone calling a halt.

However video game propaganda is more subtle. Because the player is so involved, they will be more succeptible to whatever you throw at them. On top of that, they are immerrsed, a propagandists dream.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that in 10-20 years time these games will have affected a generations outlook and attitudes towards patriotisim and the army in general.

Why else would the pentagon invest so much money and then give it away for free?

Re:Am I alone...?

[gl4ss]

well, think about it.
clubs for boys have been usual in getting people to join up for the military later on in their lifes, when they're young it's easy to put some 'ideas' into their heads or at least push them to 'right direction' so that their lives can 'have a meaning'.

yvan eth noij

there was this one club in germany once that was more than effective.

I'm not saying that armies are useless and so on, just that if you're fighting conquering wars you need to have some kind of extra motivation for the lads - for something you can wrap up as defence the motivation is much easier to build up. I've done the mandatory military service/training for my nation... real military sucks balls, in games you can just concentrate on the fun part of it.

Re:Am I alone...?

[Draxsr]

Perhaps your right in saying that we should leave entertainment to the entertainment industry. Yes, their propaganda is much more palatable and should remain in the household. I'm glad to only have subjects like auto theft, murder for hire, drug wars, drug use, adultry, rape, and all the other topics that keep the entertainment industry guiding our moral compass. Seriously now, it's a shame that a message of 'Serve your country' is pigeonholed as propaganda.

Re:Am I alone...?

[blueZhift]

In the end, it's all just good marketing. Just like any business, the Army needs to market itself in order to get a steady stream of customers. And let me tell you, they are quite serious about it. The America's Army game is a tool that they use to teach something of the Army way of life. I haven't played the most recent versions of the game, but the last time I played, it didn't seem preachy or anything, so I'm not really sure if it could even be called propaganda. It's basically a FPS that follows Army rules/morals so to speak in mission structure and objectives.

In any case, it is a very good question as to just how many of these side businesses any government agency should be allowed to get into.

Re:Am I alone...?

[Planesdragon]

The apparatus of state is separated from the church, because it is harmful. It should likewise be seperated from the entertainment industry, because of the propaganda possibilities, shaping the next generation of Americans.

Wrong. I mean, wrong from the get-go.

Seperation of church and state is to protect the church from the state, not the other way around.

The military is entirely withing their fair and right avenue of action to try and influence the attitudes of the next generation of Americans. If they weren't, they wouldn't have a recruiting program.

Re:Am I alone...?

[LGagnon]

I agree with you on everything except your question of why it is free. It's free because our tax money was spent on it. You and I already own it, because it was created with our money (whether we like it or not).

Re:Am I alone...?

[ooby]

propoganda is political advertising. A message such as 'Serve your country' is propoganda. As are your former examples. With that said, I doubt that America's Army is promoting joining the military much more than Counterstrike or Battlefield 1942 are. First person shooters have been around for over 10 years and if they inadvertantly promoted enlistment, as the poster to which you replied suggests, the military would probably not be in such a need of soldiers as they currently are.

Re:Am I alone...?

[Anixamander]

The propaganda has always existed, and may even be necessary, and this is just a new way of doing it. I for one am looking forward to America's Army: Torture!, but I just hope they can get better models than this. She's no Lora or Samus, that's for sure.

Re:Am I alone...?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Well... your tax money was spent!
I'm just a freeloading european! ;E

I guess the marshall plan never really ended. :E

Re:Am I alone...?

[CompressedAir]

Eh? It's a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army. They never claimed it wasn't, so anyone who chooses to play it is willfully submitting themselves to "propaganda".

The Color of Money

[xanderwilson]

Didn't the Tom Cruise character (Vince? Vinnie?) in The Color of Money talk about this as a possible future for his video game prowess? That he'd work for the military as a video game specialist, since all the training and then the action will be done like computer games? Was that before or after "Ender's Game?"

And then there was that movie Toys...

Alex.

Software Career in the Army?

[Nyhm]

America's Army looks, plays, and runs great ... except for the parts that aren't the Unreal engine. All of the software around the engine needs some serious work. Here's hoping the new development team can whip this software into shape! Huah!

Warning, rant follows:

This is not the forum for complaining about the shoddy software (that Americans probably paid collective millions in taxes for), but here are a few of the simplest pieces of functionality that are miserable failures:

- Server can't cycle maps, causes client GP fault

- Client menu layout is incomprehensible

- Whether you're online or offline is some kind of mystery

- Plenty of 'Error connecting' messages with no information

- Connecting to a so-called LAN game requires opening the command console

- There was talk of 'admin mode' and the only documentation for logging in as an admin is in the FAQ (if it's so frequently asked, then how about making it part of the login dialog?) Then once you log in as admin, are you a player with admin ability, or some non-player observer. How do you get back to being a regular player? Others don't see you logged in, but your personal user name appears in the admin list of online players....

Don't do it!

[silicon not in the v]

It's a front to get more recruits for the war. You'll get deployed! (I'd better put in this ;) or I'll need to search for my asbestos underwear.)

Re:Don't do it!

[Draxsr]

As a note, that project was started as a recruiting tool LONG before the current conflict.

Re:Don't do it!

[Pvt_Waldo]

It is EXACTLY designed to get more recruits. The US Army spends a lot of time and money recruiting, and this is a different approach they are using.

Way after End's Game

[Mycroft_514]

Since the first Ender story was published in 1977

Re:Warning, Rant about rant about rant follows.

[Nyhm]

Thank you for the attempt at clarification (Anonymous Coward), but I don't see things your way. Yes, I've learned how the interface operates and how to interact with it to get what I want. However, just because 'lots of games' are like that doesn't mean it's good interface design!

No, just being in game is not the only time you go online. When you want to get your personnel jacket, you must connect. While doing training, you must reconnect to update your jacket. If this fails, you've completed the mission, but your record is lost. To start training, you must connect - if remote servers are down you can't even train locally.

What if you start up the game and don't care about your personnel jacket, and just want to join a freinds server? Well, you have to fill in the name field in the first screen even if you don't connect. The lan connection just picks up your name from there.

When I want to connect to a friend's personal server, I cannot use the LAN screen. It's technically a LAN game, but doesn't work there. Instead, I must open the console. How about a tab for "direct connect". It should include Player Name, Password, IP, Port.

I'm running the 2.1 version and a server on a dedicated machine. The server will not properly cycle maps. It's all over the forums - it's broken. Maybe leased servers do, but that does me no good. Furthermore, when the server starts it CHANGES MY CONFIG FILE SETTINGS, removing the map cycle list! This is just plain wrong. Even worse, it makes every client (all fresh 2.1 installs) GP fault. Simply the truth. We mitigate this by setting high number of rounds per match. When the match is over and the clients GP fault, I restart the server manually with a new map on the command line.

I recognize that most people get used to crappy software. Yes, we do learn to work with it no matter how unwieldy. My primary point transcends Americas Army - we should not be so lenient of trashy software. Demand better products.

Re:Warning, Rant about rant about rant follows.

[Nyhm]

Thank you for the apology. You have renewed my faith in the quality of the slashdot community!

Regarding the important stuff (technical): There have been many improvements since the early releases. Remember when teams got shuffled between rounds and there wasn't even a good way to pick teams?

I actually resolved (well, found how to avoid) the map cycle GP fault. To clarify, the server never shut down - but when maps should cycle, all connected clients would GP fault. Every time I run the server it seems to re-write the config file (which is really annoying). It may be re-inserting fail-safe values where I had a typeo. I can't tell anymore because it changed what I had. I started from scratch, and map cycling worked! So, the real complaint is that the clients GP fault if there's a mistake in the server's config (try getting away with that in any production level software).

The fact that I've kept playing through all these woes is a testament to how good the gameplay is! I really like the rules and environment for this game (much better than die-respawn-die-respawn... ad nausium). Here's looking forward to 3.0.