Videogames Are Far More Than Play

USA Today has a piece up talking with the writers of Smartbomb about the greater significance of gaming in the here and now. From the article: "In 2002, the military released America's Army, a game designed to inspire young men and women gamers to join the army. Within one year, it was registered by 2.4 million people and nominated for an award by a top gaming organization. It was a blockbuster. America's Army, along with a game used to train recruits and a sci-fi, holodeck knockoff (a room that allows the participant to see, feel and smell a virtual environment), will be used to 'train soldiers for the emotional experience' of war, making up a part of the U.S. military's new DNA, according to Chaplin and Ruby."

Comments

FREE

[SafteyMan]

I think the biggest reason America's Army was so popular was because it was a decent first person shooter - THAT WAS FREE.

Re:I've tried playing this recently

[Sierpinski]

There is hardly anyone playing America's Army anymore. At least I couldn't find any servers playing it. VERY small numbers. And it's a great game too.

This is probably because you are lacking one more more patches. I was playing AA not 2 weeks ago, and there were hundreds of servers, more than half of them were full. AA is still alive and well, but if you aren't patched up, you will only see servers that match your current patch level, which probably are few. Download all the latest patches and see if you can see any more servers than before.

You might also want to check your filters to make sure you aren't looking for some old map that nobody likes anymore, or have turned off some of the other filter options. There were lots of the US West/East "official" servers, and even more leased ones just recently.