America's Army Games Cost $33 Million Over 10 Years

Responding to a Freedom Of Information Act request, the US government has revealed the operating costs of the America's Army game series over the past decade. The total bill comes to $32.8 million, with yearly costs varying from $1.3 million to $5.6 million. "While operating America's Army 3 does involve ongoing expenses, paying the game's original development team isn't one of them. Days after the game launched in June, representatives with the Army confirmed that ties were severed with the Emeryville, California-based team behind the project, and future development efforts were being consolidated at the America's Army program office at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. A decade after its initial foray into the world of gaming, the Army doesn't appear to be withdrawing from the industry anytime soon. In denying other aspects of the FOIA request, the Army stated 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.'"

Comments

How much does a missile cost?

[SharpFang]

Thermal-guided. One of the kind a few hundreds of were launched at wooden tank dummies with a coal burner heaters inside, in Kosovo maybe?

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[MachDelta]

Google tells me a single Javelin missile (shoulder fired anti tank missile) costs about 80 grand. So that's 410 missiles for 10 years of gaming.
However, a big fancy Tomahawk cruise missile is (according to wikipedia) $600,000 a pop. So that would get you almost 55 cruise missiles, which would cause a heck of a lot more destruction.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking moron.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many Tom Cruise missiles?

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reproducing low IQ person

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[commodore64_love]

War is foolish.

When 9/11 happened I said to myself, "This is tragic, but I hope the president and Congress doesn't do something foolish, like waste billions of dollars fighting a war, just because ~2000 people died. After all more people die every year from just car accidents, and we don't declare war on Ford or Toyota."

Well my hope was forlorn. If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were re-enacting the downfall of the Ancient Athenian Democracy - death through war and foolish, out-of-control spending.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Gamer_2k4]

War is foolish.

When 9/11 happened I said to myself, "This is tragic, but I hope the president and Congress doesn't do something foolish, like waste billions of dollars fighting a war, just because ~2000 people died. After all more people die every year from just car accidents, and we don't declare war on Ford or Toyota."

Well my hope was forlorn. If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were re-enacting the downfall of the Ancient Athenian Democracy - death through war and foolish, out-of-control spending.

War may be foolish, but it's a necessary evil in our world. What if we'd approached Pearl Harbor with the mindset of "Yeah, we were attacked, and a few thousand people died, but it's better to just sit there and take it than to do anything about it"? Things would've turned out a lot differently in Europe, I'm sure. Refusing to participate in war doesn't make it go away, after all.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[tjstork]

War is foolish.

So is sex, but we do it anyway. It's all just a question if the benefit outweighs the cost. If you look at the cost of STDs and the impact of an ever expanding population upon the human eco-system, the sapping of the human creative spirit, you might actually think sex is bad and war is pretty good.

Let's all ban sex and have a national army of all men.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Ozric]

War is foolish.

That depends on how War is conducted.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[stewbacca]

War is foolish...

Speaking of foolish...

more people die every year from just car accidents, and we don't declare war on Ford or Toyota."

If Ford and Toyota willingly created devices that were meant solely to kill people for ideological reasons, we most certainly would and should declare war on them.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[StuartHankins]

The difference is that in the case of Pearl Harbor, an actual government was responsible. We could identify and fight that enemy. In today's Iraq / Afghanistan mess, no government is responsible, just a bunch of extremists.

There is no way to "win" when you're talking about a handful of extremists, when you kill one group another pops up. Their "goal" is to achieve destabilization and they're happy to die in pursuing that goal. We will find no end to these wars because of this. You can't fight suicide bombers with an army, the best case is to make yourself uninteresting as possible rather than keep stirring them up, while increasing security at our borders. We have no idea how many of these people are already in our country, more keep popping up every day.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[hjrnunes]

Never actually considered to talk with these extremists to know what's pissing them off instead of labeling them extremists did ya? Oh and maybe robbing them out of their oil...

It's funny Pearl Harbor is mentioned, because it's got to do with - that's right! - oil! In that case, the skillful manipulation of the Japanese empire into attacking first or loosing their supplies of oil.

I fail to understand how is it that you always manage to think you are the victims of unprovoked attack and aggression. You guys really live inside your own little bubble isn't it? You really believe the whole world hates America because they don't like, what, your flag? The way you talk? Or maybe it's the fact that your successive governments persist in fucking with everyone that has something they would like to have? You fuck with them, they fuck with you... I'll tell you more. You think it's going to stop? Think again. This is not the 40's... Your big bad army is pretty much useless. It's been like 8 years since Afghanistan was invaded right? Are more troops going to finally win the war? Think again. The war is lost already. Whether you want it or not, the talibans are returning to power. It's a matter of time and dead Americans. It's sad but true. Your people is dying there for what? Freedom? Come on...

Welcome to the big wide world.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[noric]

You're modded Insightful, but your comment is unfortunately off topic. The Japanese were a credible threat, Pearl Harbor was a preliminary strike, to be followed by like, a real war, and the WW2 and modern day political climates are completely different. For one thing, the Axis really was the biggest threat to the quality of life of the average citizen, hardly a claim any terrorist can back up with data. Although I guess these days there is data to suggest that a single terrorist attack really can affect average quality of life :/.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[MattSausage]

I'm pretty sure the people responsible for hijacking the planes on 9/11 disappeared from the face of the earth when the planes they were on crashed into buildings and the ground. Kind of hard to try those guys. And we did try the one guy who survived... and that we can find. I'm sure Bin Laden will get a nice trial whenever he's caught... alive that is.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have wasted enough time talking. The sides have proven time and time again they are not trustworthy, not willing to listen to reason, and not willing to stop killing each other. At this point should either nuke the area and be done with it or get out of there and let the natives bicker and fight over the dust.

Re:How much does a missile cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound almost as foolish as those Hamas clowns. Grow up!

Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[GrpA]

Three games in total on the budget of a startup... That's pretty good.

This would have to be one of the army's most cost-effective projects ever then, wouldn't it?

GrpA

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or DARPA.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[rpillala]

That depends less on the cost and more on the effect. If the Army was trying to make a popular online FPS, then yeah I guess. One wonders if this is a valid goal for the Army. The game is supposed to be a recruitment tool, right? Is there data on how effective it has been in that role?

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[jocabergs]

I think it was both recruitment and a PR tool. Personally I really liked the honor system also the free part was very nice. I think that in the context of other FPS it was really much more pro teamwork and mission oriented in contrast to being pro carnage and destruction. When I played quite a few of my fellow players came from the military and really enjoyed the game because it was more like real combat, i.e mission based not carnage based. Also I enjoyed the no respawn feature, I hate respawns, but thats a personal preference.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[phantomcircuit]

Except a cruise missile costs about $500K dollars... so like 1/60th of these games

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Tellarin]

From a conversation I had at GDC a couple years ago with an army guy involved in the project, the main goal was not recruitment, quite the opposite.

He claimed that the army looses a lot of money and resources in training new people, who just give up somewhere along the training or right after it. So the game was originally developed to try to show that "real combat" is not what happens in FPSs and thus weed out some of the applicants.

Of course, the PR impact was welcome.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Lord_Jeremy]

Heh. They must hate the Call of Duty - Modern Warfare games then. Those things probably have the exact opposite effect.

I remember playing America's Army when it came out, I think one of the things I found more annoying was you had to take "classes" and tests before you could actually play the game. Mandatory target practice is one thing, but virtual instruction that actually plays no part in gameplay is a bit idiotic.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Cwix]

With a lot of new equipment the army is fielding, hand eye co-ordination was a major factor too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Weapon_System A lot of the army's vehicles are equipped with these now. Ive used one, it is almost exaclty like a video game screen. They also love the fact that they can start feeding you things like rank structure, acronyms, small unit tactics, and other assorted army tidbits, everybit you come in with on your own, the less they have to teach you.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[d3ac0n]

Mandatory target practice is one thing, but virtual instruction that actually plays no part in gameplay is a bit idiotic.

Unless, as Tellarin stated, the goal is to provide a more realistic simulation of what being in the Army is all about without the whole "spend months and months in training" bit. Thus the required learning and tests make perfect sense.

Honestly I think it's a smart approach. The last thing you want recruits to think is that you can join the Army and they just give you guns to play with. While I can't speak for other country's militaries, being a member of the American armed forces is actually quite difficult. Not merely on a physical level, but it is VERY mentally challenging.

Thus you will find that a very large portion of the American armed forced are highly intelligent and more often than not from middle class families. Despite some politician's desire to paint the military as a bunch of dumb poor people, the truth is the exact opposite.

(Note that I have never served in the American armed forces or any armed forces. Although I HAVE played the AA game and enjoyed it quite a bit. Hmmm.. Now I want to go download and play it again!)

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[IndustrialComplex]

. Despite some politician's desire to paint the military as a bunch of dumb poor people, the truth is the exact opposite.

Which politician?

And the exact opposite... the military is a bunch of smart, rich people?

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Interoperable]

The Onion reports that the next Modern Warfare game will be an extremely realistic portrayal of the life of a soldier. Worth a watch!

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, yeah the Army usually just lets you "give up" during or right after training :-P Obviously you've never been in the Army lol. :) Trust me, it doesn't happen like that.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[StormyWeather]

John Kerry and Charlie Rangel.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/31/kerry.mccain/index.html
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/11/26/video-rangel-says-men-join-the-army-only-if-they-cant-have-a-decent-career/

http://sayanythingblog.com/images/recruits_by_quintile.gif

C'mon man, 2 minutes on google.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[d3ac0n]

Mandatory target practice is one thing, but virtual instruction that actually plays no part in gameplay is a bit idiotic.

Just about every powerful member of the Democrat party, to be honest.

(Yes, I realize that I accidentally included an apostrophe where I should not have if I meant multiple politicians. It was a typo, move on.)

But if you want specific examples, former presidential candidate John Kerry is an excellent one. In 2008 he infamously said to a group of college kids:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

HERE is the video of that one.

Another excellent example is John Murtha's recent slander of the Marines, wherein he accused marines of murdering civilians in an incident at Haditha, Iraq. (Incidentally, all of the Marines involved have been acquitted or had the charges summarily dropped.) John Murtha is now being sued by the Marines and their families for slander.

Those are just TWO High profile examples. Unless you start thinking "Oh, it's just a couple of stupid loudmouths" Understand that this attitude runs from top to bottom of the far left, which has taken control of the Democrat party. We have had attacks on off-duty soldiers, vandalism against recruiting stations, and many many not-so-subtle jabs against military members as "stupid" "dumb" "thugs" "killers" etc. It's endemic in the far left and (by extension) the Democrat Party power structure. They HATE the military, and it shows.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the education level of our Armed Forces:

– 49.2 percent of officers have advanced or professional degrees; 39.4 percent have master’s degrees, 8.5 percent have professional degrees and 1.3 percent have doctorate degrees.

– 22.8 percent of company grade officers have advanced degrees; 16.5 percent have master’s degrees, 5.9 percent have professional degrees and 0.3 percent have doctorate degrees.

– 85.4 percent of field grade officers have advanced degrees; 70.7 percent have master’s degrees, 12.1 percent have professional degrees and 2.5 percent have doctorate degrees.

– 99.9 percent of the enlisted force have at least a high school education; 73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree; 16.2 percent have an associate’s degree or equivalent semester hours; 4.7 percent have a bachelor’s degree; 0.7 percent have a master’s degree and .01 percent have a professional or doctorate degree.”

that is from an internal military survey, which you can find HERE.

If you want more detailed information, an overall survey was performed by the heritage Foundation and an article on it (along with nifty charts) can be found HERE.

The point is, our military is OVERWHELMINGLY Educated, Middle Class, and White. (although whites are, on a proportional basis, slightly underrepresented, with Pacific Islanders somewhat overrepresented.) While I don't have specific figures I can quote, My understanding is that America's military is among the (if not THE) best educated and highest class (economically) in the world. That's something I, for one, am very proud of.

I hope that answers your questions.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[samkass]

Great post, except the part where you ascribe untruths to the Democratic party. They (we) represent a majority of Americans right now, and are not "far left" and DEFINITELY don't "hate the military". In fact many leaders of the Democrats (including Murtha) are retired military. Heck even many leaders of the far left, including Kos of DailyKos, are retired military. We may disagree about what is best for the military and the country, but please don't assign motives where none exist.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[jgtg32a]

Damn I burned all my mod points on people arguing over the extent of Blizzard ripping off Games Workshop.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Redwing]

!(smart && rich) === !smart || !rich

The military is a bunch of smart OR rich people.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't include the Tom Cruise(tm) license.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Ill_Omen]

From the statistics you posted for the enlisted forces:

73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree
16.2 percent have an associate’s degree or equivalent semester hours
4.7 percent have a bachelor’s degree

I gotta say, reading that makes me think John Kerry might have been right after all. That's an awful lot of college kids that didn't finish college.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Let's apply a bit of research to that John Kerry quote, turns out he just boffed a joke, the copy of his written remarks that was handed out to reporters before he made the speech had this sentence at that point: "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Something that the youtube sound-bite has conveniently edited out is the fact that he was clearly beating up on Bush at that point, to take his statement the way you have is to completely ignore the context and assume he just decided to make a random comment about the military in the middle of a totally unrelated discussion.

I can't really blame you for doing that, the republican party is so highly skilled at doing the faux outrage act, its no surprise millions of people are suckered in by it. However, I do blame you for citing Murtha - how does accusing someone of murder equate to thinking that they are dumb or poor? Since when do only dumb or poor people commit homicide? Sounds like you may be a classist. And, you didn't even get that one right either, Wuterich is still charged with negligent homicide.

So, in summary you have completely failed to support your claims that Murtha or Kerry have a "desire to paint the military as a bunch of dumb poor people."

Now, lets take on the general perception that poor and uneducated people end up in the military...

99.9 percent of the enlisted force have at least a high school education; 73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree; 16.2 percent have an associate's degree or equivalent semester hours; 4.7 percent have a bachelor's degree; 0.7 percent have a master's degree and .01 percent have a professional or doctorate degree."

You just kicked the crap out of your premise with that one.

let's compare:

Bachelor's Degree:
enlisted force: 4.7%
us population: 16.7%

Master's Degree:
enlisted force: 0.7%
us population: 5.9%

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_009.asp

And don't even try to point at the officers - a bachelor's is a requirement to be a commissioned officer, having a degree gives you options. This is about the military being the employer of last resort for a lot people. If that were not the case, we would not have seen the number of conduct waivers double over the last 5 years - the people with options have been going elsewhere.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

"that America's military is among the (if not THE) best educated and highest class (economically) in the world."

Totally incorrect.

Many countries in Europe, such as Germany for example, have mandatory military service. These countries are far higher educated and 'classed'

Your right wing slant on everything is oh so unbiased :)

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or found out they couldn't pay to keep going, found out about the usefulness of the gi bill and joined. I know a few of my friends from college did that. They are either graduated or almost done with school, though I graduated 6 years ago. Boy have all of them "grown" up since then.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[GodfatherofSoul]

That John Kerry reference was about BUSH not soldiers. Why is that some people actively try to misinterpret everything the political opposition says? BTW, Kerry was also the guy who VOLUNTEERED for frontline duty in Vietnam. And, Murtha was a Marine for something like 30 years. And, the Haditha incident was an awful slaughter of civilians by bad Marines. Just because the Marine Corp decided to drop charges doesn't mean they were innocent. Go look at the evidence and decide for yourself how innocent those guys were.

You're working off the talking point that Dems hate the military and Republicans support the troops. And, that's all it is, a talking point.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[je ne sais quoi]

I notice that you don't mention that BOTH of the examples you give of the "evilness" of democrats served with distinction in the armed forces! John Kerry served in Vietnam and John Murtha was a drill instructor for the marines at Quantico and him in particular was one of the biggest supporters of the armed forces before the large-scale, unnecessary war in Iraq pushed forward by a pair of draft dodgers (Bush and Cheney). You'd think the best people to give critical assessments of what the military does are ones who have served. But no, the Republican slander machine needs to denigrate anyone who has a D by their name, regardless of the validity of their claims.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol 2 people listed were previously enlisted in the military.

nice job at fail, stupid partisan.

I love how you wingnuts perform mental gymnastics/convenient amnesia to try to paint Dems as "military hating"

captcha for this post: burned.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[misexistentialist]

our military is OVERWHELMINGLY Educated, Middle Class, and White

But then you end up with an even more ridiculous situation like the bored British Imperial officers who viewed the native Indians as animals. In the end the military is non-productive, or rather anti-productive, and wasting large numbers of educated capable people on it is hardly more desirable than filling it with convicts and laborers.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

The statistics quoted are actually just for the airforce, which obviously is the most educated and well-off of the armed forces. Just in case the fact that the poster repeatedly calls it the "Democrat" party wasn't enough of a blow to their credibility.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your really going to bash democrats with youtube videos of people mis saying stuff? Cause we just had a republican in office who broke all records on that account...

regardless, If the Military were full of geniuses, no one would listen to their superiors, or follow stupid orders. I honestly think they look for dim people, who are easier to shape and control. Looks like they did a good job with you.

be proud of your white military...?

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[d3ac0n]

Great post, except the part where you ascribe untruths to the Democratic party. They (we) represent a majority of Americans right now, and are not "far left" and DEFINITELY don't "hate the military". In fact many leaders of the Democrats (including Murtha) are retired military. Heck even many leaders of the far left, including Kos of DailyKos, are retired military. We may disagree about what is best for the military and the country, but please don't assign motives where none exist.

"Untruths"????

Did you not watch the video or read the quotes? Are you denying what is right there for everyone to read? The fact that members of the Democrat Party have, in the past, served, DOES NOT invalidate or absolve them from actions they have taken and things they have said since then.

Stop trying to use "Military Service" as a shield for heinous actions and statements. It's a braindead, strawman argument.

Oh, and the Dems representing a "majority" of the people is BS, complete and total. I mean, how can you POSSIBLY square that circle when poll after poll shows that Americans, OVERWHELMINGLY don't agree with the direction the Democrats are taking the country in, and that they don't trust the Dems?

Yes, Political PARTY affiliation is slightly higher with the Dems than the GOP, Although that is shrinking.

However if you look at IDEOLOGY, Conservative vs Liberal vs Moderate, you will find that Conservatives FAR AND AWAY outnumber Liberals, and the "Moderate" group is shrinking, with more former moderates now identifying as Conservative. The Liberal group is also shrinking.

The nation is moving AWAY from far leftism as rapidly as it can, and Americans are becoming MORE conservative than ever before. So to say that the Far-Let Democrat party "repreresents a majority of Americans" is prevarication of the worst kind. To put it bluntly, you are full of shit and it is laughably easy to prove it.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical republican teabagger.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[times05]

Or it's a lot of high school kids who are in the process of getting their college degrees. Army pretty much pays for you to go to college while you are in. Civilian education is worth promotion points to advance in rank in all branches as well. Also count in those enlisted that finished their degrees, often end up becoming officers. Enlisted to officer is a nice pay increase.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

"“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”"

Which is nothing but factual: it's for the most part guys with little opportunity in the job market and a high student debt who end up 'volunteering' for the army, and once they get to Iraq most of them don't like it and like it even less when they get a second tour.

"They HATE the military"

No, they hate war - just as most (experienced) military men do.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of these stats are way below the background population. The army preys on the poor and dumb still. And I'd say it was the Republican party (you can't get the IC on "Democratic" for some reason) who hates the military - they're the ones sending them off to die in stupid places. It's one thing to say bad things about people, it's another to deliberately waste their lives for your own political goals with no benefit either to the country or to the soldiers involved.

Republicans - "We love you so much we want you to get killed!"

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The statistics quoted are actually just for the airforce, which obviously is the most educated and well-off of the armed forces.

Truth

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[artemis67]

I think there's also a training aspect to it... teaching prospective soldiers how to think and act as a team in a ground combat combat situation. For a training tool like that that is accessible to virtually every service member, $33 million is quite a bargain.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[d3ac0n]

I love how my post, which includes multiple source links to back up my position is modedm "flamebait" while the post I am replying to, which is nothing but utter BS with nothing to back it up, is modded "Insightful".

Can I get a correction mod please?

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

With a lot of new equipment the army is fielding, hand eye co-ordination was a major factor too.

Yeah, because we all know that using old school technology from 20 years ago required no fine motor skills whatsoever.

Ever engage a target at 500m with a standard issue 5.56mm M-16 battle rifle?

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that I have never served in the American armed forces or any armed forces.

So let me get this straight.. you yourself have never served in the military but you have the cajones to deride the actual military veterans who have served our great country, simply because their experience doesn't mesh with this fantasy reality you've convinced yourself of?

Partisan hackery at it's finest.

captcha: repulse

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[samkass]

As I said, I thought your post was actually fairly insightful. However, the problem with it (and why it might legitimately be considered Flamebait by some) is that it vastly overgeneralizes specific anecdotes to an unfair assertion about millions of Americans. Statements that could be supported by your links include specific (debatable) claims against Murtha, Kerry and a couple others, but you cited nothing to support the assertion that anti-military attitudes or actions (or violence!) in any way permeates the Democratic party, nor that the "far left" had "taken over" the party.

And my post is not "utter BS". I work with Army folks every day and many of them vote Democratic. If you believe a hatred of the the US military permeates the Democratic party it says more about your state of mind that those of Democrats.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[bolthole]

Having served in the millitary when they were 20, does not automatically mean they are promilitary now they are 50+.

I hear there are quite a substantial number of people who are "anti war", , etc, etc. who served in their youth. Just as there are people who are anti-drug in their 50s, who probably took drugs in their 20s.

erm.. thats not saying the millitary is akin to drugs. I think it is sadly neccessary. I was just making a comparison of how one person can migrate from one end of the spectrum on something, to the other, over their lifetime.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[kcitren]

But if you want specific examples, former presidential candidate John Kerry is an excellent one. In 2008 he infamously said to a group of college kids:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

That was a swipe at GW Bush. Who is often portrayed as being a 'C' student in college.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the statistics you posted for the enlisted forces:

73.3 percent have some semester hours toward a college degree
16.2 percent have an associate's degree or equivalent semester hours
4.7 percent have a bachelor's degree

I gotta say, reading that makes me think John Kerry might have been right after all. That's an awful lot of college kids that didn't finish college.

Most army training courses after BASIC training will earn you college credits. A friend of mine joined the Army right after high school. He had zero college credits. After 2 years in the army he had gone through BASIC and advanced training. Because of the advanced training he was considered to have completed the first year of college.

He has been in the army for 8(?) years now. Currently he has about 30 credit hours (or about 2 terms) shy of his Bachelors degree. I would guess that he would have that by now, but he has spent about half that time deployed in Iraq.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Richard Dick Head]

It has been a while since any party held a true loyal majority, like during the of times Reagan and FDR. Meanwhile the independents and swing voters keep both well under the dedicated 50% that is so cherished by fanboys from both sides.

Interesting reads:

Climategate emails.

Obama: 46%
Sarah Palin: 46%

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[random coward]

Which politician?


Senator John Kerry for one. I am sure there are others in his party as well.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol......33 million and the game doesnt work....too funny.......guess a few million dont mean anything nowadays

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[ravenshrike]

Kerry was anti-war while IN the military.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[scot4875]

I lend more credence to someone who served in the military and is now anti-military than someone who never served, but is gung-ho about sending soldiers off to "serve". (Romney, Cheney, Rumsfeld...)

--Jeremy

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Ill_Omen]

That's certainly a possibility. I was under the assumption that you didn't get your college money until you finished your enlistment period.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[ShakaUVM]

>>I gotta say, reading that makes me think John Kerry might have been right after all. That's an awful lot of college kids that didn't finish college.

Hmm, maybe because you're looking at the stats for *enlisted* people?

Think about that one for a second.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[bigstrat2003]

I can't really blame you for doing that, the republican party is so highly skilled at doing the faux outrage act, its no surprise millions of people are suckered in by it.

It has nothing to do with party affiliation. Politicians in general do what you describe. Come on, don't sit and assign blame to only some of the guilty.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Shane dot H]

While I can't speak for other country's militaries, being a member of the American armed forces is actually quite difficult. Not merely on a physical level, but it is VERY mentally challenging.

Thus you will find that a very large portion of the American armed forced are highly intelligent and more often than not from middle class families. Despite some politician's desire to paint the military as a bunch of dumb poor people, the truth is the exact opposite.

As a servicemember, I appreciate the sentiment, but I think you're wrong. My colleagues, subordinates, and superiors clearly aren't intellectuals by any means. I had a military intelligence lieutenant ask me WHILE WE WERE IN IRAQ what the difference between Sunni and Shia was. I've met 2 soldiers who were unable to list all 12 months of the year. I have never been in a mentally challenging Army school, and I have yet to meet an officer who graduated from a good university. Culturally speaking, the Army sorta pushes out their best and their brightest while retaining a lot of the dead weight. The truth is, Soldiers are individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. We're not stupid, but I would never label Army work "mentally challenging," much less "VERY mentally challenging."

For the typical college student at a decent school, I would imagine that the conventional (non spec ops) military is neither physically nor mentally challenging.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Cwix]

Yes I have. I was pointing out that the video game was similar to an actual weapon in use.

I qualified consistently expert utilizing both the M16A2 in basic, and the M4 later on. If you wish I can email you score sheets, I still have most if not all of them. Any other inane off-topic questions?

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[shutdown -p now]

There are several American political parties that identified as "far left". For example, Communist Party of the United States of America, or Party for Socialism and Liberation, or Socialist Workers Party. However, all those parties are highly hostile towards U.S. Democratic Party, and that attitude is mutual. As such, referring to any wing of the Dems as "far left" is pure flamebait, as correctly reflected by the moderation of your post.

By the way, Obama isn't a "far leftist" either. He's a centrist.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It has nothing to do with party affiliation. Politicians in general do what you describe. Come on, don't sit and assign blame to only some of the guilty.

Ordinarily, I'm equal opportunity for criticizing the republicrats - but I can't recall a faux outrage episode from the democrats, while I can think of a couple from the republicans - lipstick on a pig, and letterman's joke about palin's daughter, and somewhat more seriously there has been Cheney's criticism of Obama for following through on plans like SOFA that were developed while Cheney was running the show.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[GodfatherofSoul]

Maybe next to the VA.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[AK Marc]

The point is, our military is OVERWHELMINGLY Educated, Middle Class, and White.

There are 6 enlisted per officer. Those enlisted have less than 6% bachelors or higher. Thus, less than 20% of the Air Force can have a degree. And that's lower than the national average, so calling them "educated" doesn't seem accurate to me. Oh, and your numbers were for the Air Force, not the Armed Forces. I don't know if there is a real difference, but there is a perception of the Air Force being more heavily educated.

Oh, and as for those in the line of fire, how many officers (those with degrees) go on the convoy runs that are likely to be hit with IEDs? I'm curious about the lineup of who is in the average regular convoy. I honestly don't know, but of those most likelt to be killed, I'm guessing it's the enlisted, who are uneducated, as opposed to the officers.

And, if you've ever analyzed statistics, one of the most interesting things is what isn't said. I never saw anything in the links you presented about the grades *serving*. Great, their recruitment numbers are given, but what's the representation of whites in the officer ranks and the enlisted ranks? Is there a difference in representation? Over 60% of officer recruits in the Air Force came directly from college programs (ROTC or the academy). What is the racial makeup of those people vs those recruited by recruiters into the enlisted ranks?

Either they didn't examine things they didn't want the answers to, or the questions were asked and they didn't like the answers so they cleansed them. Having crafted surveys, it is easy to find what you want if you know what it is when you start looking for it.

Oh, and I'm not a political person, so I've never heard of the Heritage Foundation before. After reading the survey, I guessed them to be a neo-con group, and reading their opinion page, that seems to be correct. They did things like equate a state's average income to the recruits income and declare that recruits are not poor. However, they did state that recruits over-represent rural areas, where income is generally less, and never actually asked about income. So they made up some metric they didn't ask in the survey, linked it to something they could have just asked for but didn't, and then declared to get the answer they wanted, even though it contradicts other answers they have. I'm not sure I'd trust a survey done by people like that. To know how "rich" a recruit is, they should ask for the income of their parents (combined if two, only the primary caregiver if one) and compare that with the national average. That would be a much better metric than assuming that everyone made what the average of their state was and ignoring other details available, like the percentage from rural areas. But hey, I wouldn't want good processes to get in the way of finding the result you already want.


What I can't understand is why the Democrats badmouth the military and support the soldiers, while the Republicans praise the military and cut soldier benefits. Maybe that's just my perception, but when VA benefits come about, the Democrats want to investigate Gulf War Syndrome and expand VA benefits, while the Republicans tell the soldiers to suck it up and move on. But then I'm neither Democrat nor Republican, so I don't pay too much attention to the specifics of either. That's just the way it appears to someone at a glance.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[ozgood]

Or an awful lot that are currently going to college and serving in the military at the same time, and are becoming more educated.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[GrpA]

Not quite...

The current per-UNIT cost of a cruise missile is $500K - The TOTAL cost of the Tomahawk cruise missile program is $11.2 BILLION...

The UNIT cost of America's Army is nil....

Given the US stockpile of around 3500 Tomahawks, that means that the TOTAL COST of just one cruise missile is still around the same price as the ENTIRE cost of AA and I think AA is still slightly cheaper if you take everything into account.

GrpA

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[altern1ty]

Every instance of implied racism and calling the Tea Party movement "Teabagging" doesn't qualify? Jeanine Garofalo going on MSNBC saying that "teabaggers" are racists on Kieth Olbermann's show doesn't qualify? How about Nancy Palosi equating protesters at this summer's town hall meetings to nazis? That's just off the top of my head, and during the current presidency. Don't even get me started on the B.S. Democrats were spewing during much of Bush's two terms. Not saying some of it wasn't valid, but there was a lot of hatemongering and faux outrage there too. If you can't think of any, perhaps it's because you're too close to the sources.

Re:Less than the cost of a single cruise missile.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Every instance of implied racism and calling the Tea Party movement "Teabagging" doesn't qualify?

No it doesn't - that's not faux outrage. Faux outrage is choosing to misinterpret a statement then using the misinterpretation as a strawman and doing it with great anger for political gain. Calling teaparty people teabaggers is just a cheap shot - they are laughing at the teaparty people not acting outraged. Accusing members of the teaparty of being racist? Did a teaparty leader say something that sounded racist but wasn't meant to be? I haven't heard any such statement. Pelosi comparing townhall protestors to nazis is not faux outrage, its like teabagging - calling them names. That would be the same as saying every case of Godwin's law is a case of faux outrage - clearly not.

All your examples are just simple accusations and while faux outrage can be used to hatemonger, hate mongering is not automatically faux outrage.

America's Army

[Zerak-Tul]

The real deal; not quite as cheap.

Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[mjwx]

and the US army has managed how many releases over ten years for less money incl hosting?

Methinks the industry is doing something wrong.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[phantomcircuit]

Yeah except Modern Warfare 2 didnt crash the first time I ran it.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

... the industry has managers costing US$20 million ...

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[blackchiney]

Try connecting to their online server. because I'm still............waiting.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

And MW2 is fun.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

MW2 made $550M in the first week, they definitely got to fix this and transition to living off your taxes.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah except Modern Warfare 2 didnt crash the first time I ran it.

OK, I may be anonymous coward, but believe me, this is true:

I bought MW2 last week and it DID crash the first time I ran it (got a window saying some value was missing and then my console froze). I had to reboot the console (xbox360) by cutting the power (the game freezed it totally) and when it booted up, I got lots of random green pixels on the screen. I rebooted it again and got the red ring of death. Fortunately the console is under warranty.

So yes, MW2 did crash the first time and in addition to that, it fried my GPU :)

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like your console was broken to begin with...

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

lol? you get an F in math. please uninstall yourself

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[mdarksbane]

Someone obviously hasn't looked at the games side by side.

Most of the manpower cost of a video game is artist time. DoD games and military sim stuff looks like crap comparatively because they don't put millions of dollars into artists. When I played America's Army the visual quality was about the same as most fan mods to commercial games.

Although what amazes me is that the army spends millions building their own game and engine, then still turns around and spends $10k/seat on meta-VR for all of their sim training. I mean, I get it for large scale sims - as someone who worked in this area, there is a big difference between building a military sim engine that can span hundreds or thousands of miles and a video game engine that will span two - but for a lot of the small-scale infantry work like the fort benning training, I really don't see the point.

Supposedly they were looking at finally correcting that issue - I was at one point going to be the guy doing some of the work to make the game read mil-sim protocols, actually, before that part of the contract fell through. I wonder if they've made any progress since then.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Peter Amstutz]

America's Army licenses the Unreal engine.

The closest I know of to a general purpose engine intended for military simulation apps would be Delta 3D (http://delta3d.org) but that is more of a small-scale academic project than a robust product effort aimed at developing a product.

Open Scene Graph (http://openscenegraph.org) is pretty widespread in the visual simulation industry, but hasn't gotten much traction in PC/console games sector.

The Army deals a lot with modeling real-world places based on GIS data, which creates a whole slew of toolchain and scale requirements that are not typical in the entertainment industry, where you get to make stuff up.

Also, personally I think Army sims should invest more in graphics quality to improve immersion, but the management usually see it as a waste of money when you could be madly cramming more features into the product instead. Pretty much the same issue with any other software development, actually.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

But at the same time the Army didn't spend the money for overpaid programmers. Get over the bugs and keep playing or uninstall it and shut-up.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[shentino]

Exactly.

Either that or defectively designed.

Why the hell should software ever be able to fuck up the hardware that badly?

Self destruct mechanisms should be the ONLY exception... ...oh wait this is a greedy company we're talking about isn't it? You know, the same one that half-bricked the consoles it banned from XBL so that even offline features broke?

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[dlanod]

I wonder if the phrase 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.' indicates any competitive advantages they might have...

OTOH, I think I just really like that phrase and intend to reuse it whereever possible given it's one I never thought I'd see anyone utter in complete seriousness.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[mdarksbane]

I thought that by now it was a fairly heavily modified Unreal engine. I knew it was based on the tech, wasn't sure how close to its roots they stayed. In any case, they're still paying however many millions of dollars in licensing fees on it and not really using it.

There are plenty of general-purpose mil-sim engines, but they're built by private defense contractors and generally sold along with that contractor's expertise in setting up a more complete sim. There's a fair amount of overlap sometimes between more air and ground oriented ones. Meta-VR is the gorilla in the room most of the time. I used to work on a startup one called Vision, but it didn't sell too many copies outside of our own contracts. There are a few others. Many of them are just a wrapper on open scene graph with handling for DIS and other mil-sim protocols built in.

Had a bit of experience with Delta3D. I don't think too many people are actually using it - it's an academic project to cobble together a bunch of open-source gaming libraries - take OSG, add cal3d for character animation, etc. We were talking with them for a while about working on improving cal3d and adding a better character-scripting interface on top of it at some point - the sort of thing that is obvious in most gaming libraries, but sadly lacking from most mil-sims - but I don't think it ever went anywhere.

There just isn't money in it. Most of these sims are maintained by 2-3 guys who sort of do whatever the next government contract needs out of it, rather than building something that is a whole product. They then sell the engine, internally or externally, to the contractor whose job it is to build and maintain the PCs or simulators or whatever the troops are actually going to use. Those guys take some map data and probably 1-2 artists total (as compared to the dozens to hundreds of artists working on a commercial game) to cludge it together into something that vaguely resembles fort benning enough that they can use it for simulation.

But there's nowhere close to as much money in it as the game industry, and it isn't as glamorous, so instead you have something with 90's level tech and horrible artwork that costs $10,000 a seat. Ah, niche markets.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[mjwx]

Most of the manpower cost of a video game is artist time. DoD games and military sim stuff looks like crap comparatively because they don't put millions of dollars into artists. When I played America's Army the visual quality was about the same as most fan mods to commercial games.

You must be one of those people who thinks graphics are the only metric for judging a game. I've played MW and MW2 and found their gameplay to be lacking (I cant call it bad, but its the same as every FPS for the last 12 years so it gets boring quick), the stories tired and predicatable, the story/dialouge timing is terrible (often I'm looking in the wrong direction when there's dialogue, HL and HL2 mastered the art of keeping us looking at the non cut-scene cut-scene). Even graphically MW and MW2 wasn't that good (Disclosure: I'm a PC gamer).

Games like Sins of a Solar Empire prove you don't have to drop millions into art assets to sell a good game. Same with Indie games like braid (haven't played it but heard it was good) or Audiosurf as well as short titles like Portal.

Point in short, throwing money into a game will not automatically create a better product and to cover up for this even more money is thrown into marketing. This is where the industry goes wrong.

America's Army is more of a recruitment tool then a training tool not that I'm complaining mind you the US Army are quite honest about their intents (yvan eht nioj). True training tools are closer to VBS (Virtual Battlefield Simulation) which are, surprise surprise made from commercial video games both of which don't have state of the art graphics but engines geared towards realism. VBS1 was made from the original Operation Flashpoint and VBS2 was made from Armed Assault (ARMA) the game play in both of these games are excellent even if a little frustrating but this is due to the games being geared towards realism.

Re:Compared to US$40 million for Modern Warfare 2

[mdarksbane]

No, I'm saying that they are not equivalent products.

I'm the sort of person who would choose a cheap but fun to drive car like a miata over a lexus any day. That's a value judgement on my part. That doesn't mean that the Lexus shouldn't cost more, because it's a nicer car.

The polish and production values in a modern game like MW2 far exceed that of small independent releases or a military sim. That is a factual statement that is completely independent of how fun the games are.

Also, if you say the MW2's gameplay is exactly the same as all FPS's for the last 12 years, you either don't like FPS or haven't been paying attention. The overall idea hasn't changed - the details have massively. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the CoD series because of some of these changes, but you're taking a very high-altitude view to say nothing's changed.

I never claimed that better graphics make a better game. I claimed that better graphics make a game with better graphics and better production. All other things being equal, better graphics improve a game. The fact that graphics are not a substitute for gameplay is irrelevant.

Sad but true

[MaizeMan]

An average of $3.3 million a year for ANY government program seems quite reasonably priced!

Re:Sad but true

[francium de neobie]

For a game of American Army's complexity and quality, $3.3 million is actually pretty cheap. I'm actually impressed by the Army's efficiency here.

Re:Sad but true

[phantomcircuit]

It wasn't exactly efficiency that got them the low cost game. Basically they got a team of developers and had them worked to the bone to produce a game that initially would hardly run.

Re:Sad but true

[Shadow of Eternity]

Quality? I've been playing AA since before the "Honor" system was added and I assure you that word does not belong in any sentence referring to the game.

Re:Sad but true

[grouchomarxist]

Why do you continue playing?

Re:Sad but true

[KDR_11k]

So they relied on proven industry standards then?

Re:Sad but true

[Imrik]

I'd guess because he gets his money's worth.

Re:Sad but true

[the_pooh_experience]

You are probably right, it is "cheap". I am, however, sure it doesn't include expenses on the government outside of paying the contracted development group (contract cost). If it takes four government people (I don't really know), that is probably about $500K/year in salary, maybe another $20K in travel/year, etc. I don't know anything about the game, so I could be way off base here, but if it is run off of government servers, cost to set those up and maintain those would also not be included in the price.

Re:Sad but true

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah...they're supposed to use COTS tech wherever possible...

Re:Sad but true

[Anonymous Coward]

the_pooh_experience: "so I could be way off base here, but if it is run off of government servers, cost to set those up and maintain those would also not be included in the price."

It's not really run off their servers. It operates the way most FPS games do with people in the community renting dedicated servers. There is some expense in running the master authentication servers, and having the PunkBuster AC system, but that is minor. It's the same system as the other FPS games maintenance overhead, so only a few thousand a year. There are also separate fixed configuration dedicated servers, known as 'Ranked' servers. People can rent those from Army authorized game server providers.

Over all, the cost seems to be cheaper than other advertising methods and appears to do a decent job of giving a more expanded 'eyes wide open' approach to recruiting. It certainly is a more interactive approach as compared to sitting in a chair watching a movie and reading a few coloured pamphlets. I'm sure future technology will make this recruitment tool even more immersive.

Re:Sad but true

[jgtg32a]

Doesn't it use the Unreal Engine?

Re:Sad but true

[Sandbags]

Shit, their US TV advertising budget is more than 3.3M a year.... This is chump change. And the unquantifiable savings in reduction in recruitment office costs, and weeding out of undesireables who have non-realistic views of army life easily saves more than that...

This was a good program. I suggest increasing the funding to $6M anually and see what they can do with it...

How about relative to other recruitment methods?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

How much does it cost to recruit new soldiers via other methods? How about weighted by efficiency?

Just because it costs $33 million, doesn't mean it isn't a good deal.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does it cost to recruit new soldiers via other methods? How about weighted by efficiency?

Just because it costs $33 million, doesn't mean it isn't a good deal.

Killing people is never a good deal.

Goddamned babykillers.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[dushkin]

Maybe not. But it's pretty damn awesome.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[imunfair]

I'd wager they're doing more with the game than just recruitment. I'm sure there are a lot of interesting studies you could run on a game like that. This doesn't mean it's tin foil nefarious stuff - a lot of academics would probably like to get their hands on that data set.

Behavioral factors, navigation patterns, learning and adapting.. I'm not even a scientist and I can think of all kinds of interesting offshoots from the game - I'd be pretty surprised if there were no scientists with government grants pursuing some sort of research involving it.

pissed off

[angelwolf71885]

our tax dollars at work

Re:pissed off

[Cwix]

wahhhh wahhh wahhh fucking baby probably the best 33 mil the army ever spent..

Horrible thought

[warp_kez]

This might not be a game. You, the player as it were, might be controlling a remote drone in some far off country.

Re:Horrible thought

[FlyMysticalDJ]

Or on the flip side, maybe all that we know in our world is just an advanced video game to entertain some higher life forms.

Re:Horrible thought

[Anonymous Coward]

That gives me a great idea for a book - thanks!

-Orson Scott Card, circa 1985

Re:Horrible thought

[Jesus_666]

Bad idea. It wouldn't take long until someone decides to fire at the "virtual" civilians or find out if the IFF keeps him from shooting his "virtual" teammates and if he can overcome it by starting a salvo and then rapidly turning.

And assume people found out about this (perhaps by virtue of the drones teabagging killed enemies): They'd have to immediately cancel the project before someone hostile to the Army makes his way into the game and intentionally goes on a rampage.


Letting random civilians remotely control military hardware is a phenomenally bad idea.

Re:Horrible thought

[kcbnac]

Agreed. But it WOULD provide a wonderful base of recruits if the software functions the same - recruit those who do well. (They do track success/failure rates)

Re:Horrible thought

[jgtg32a]

If that was true why wouldn't they allow aim bots?

Re:Horrible thought

[jalefkowit]

Just make the early levels an actual game and then switch them over to controlling a murderbot (without telling them, natch) once they reach a high enough score/rank/level to have weeded out the experimenters/griefers/etc. Problem solved.

That's twice USSR's whole propaganda budget!

[AlexLibman]

... I guess American Communism didn't reach their level of efficiency just yet.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Splab]

Also the game was a massive success in the beginning regarding recruiting, don't know these days since I've stopped playing, but when I played there was a lot of people talking about signing up because of the game.

Horrible thought

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be a game. You the player as it were, might be controlling nothing at all, wasting the precious moments of your life in an illusion.

That's awesome

[Boronx]

I'm gonna steal that idea and put it in a short story - thanks!
-Orson Scott Card, circa 1977

Re:That's awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm going to vaguely steal all that and make a crappy movie with Robin Williams and BOTH the Cusacks!!!

- Barry Levinson circa 1992

Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[steve buttgereit]

'In denying other aspects of the FOIA request, the Army stated 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.'

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a fan of America's Army and like the games. But that the Federal Government, much less the Army, should be concerned with its ability to compete against private industry? Isn't that contrary to our beliefs regarding the purposes of Government and of our economic system (at least in the U.S.)? And to top it off, it's denying a FOIA request on the basis, not of national security, an on-going criminal investigation or violation of someone's privacy, but on the basis of what could be called a trade secret? And it's so bogus to boot, they can invest as much as they want into the program to out-compete their private industry competitors without fear as they don't have to recoup their expenses... the Army won't go out of business if they spend foolishly. Private companies on the other hand do go out of business when they fail to have excess revenues to costs... unless you're a car company or a well connected bank of course. I know it's not the first time this has happened (Amtrak, USPS), but still... aren't the existing game companies good enough?

(Stepping off of soap box and taking big breath to facilitate big sigh)

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[Tarinth]

I thought it was an odd statement too. It would be a good public service for the Army to reveal as much as possible, since the information could actually benefit the industry by providing useful benchmarks, development methodologies, budget allocations, etc.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[lobsterGun]

In order for information to be considered exempt from release under the FOIA it must fit into one of the following categories AND there must be a legitimate Government purpose served by withholding it:

1. Information which is currently and properly classified.
2. Information that pertains solely to the internal rules and practices of the agency. (This exemption has two profiles, "high" and "low." The "high" profile permits withholding of a document that, if released, would allow circumvention of an agency rule, policy, or statute, thereby impeding the agency in the conduct of its mission. The "low" profile permits withholding if there is no public interest in the document, and it would be an administrative burden to process the request.)
3. Information specifically exempted by a statute establishing particular criteria for withholding. The language of the statute must clearly state that the information will not be disclosed.
4. Information such as trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a company on a privileged or confidential basis that, if released, would result in competitive harm to the company, impair the government's ability to obtain like information in the future, or protect the government's interest in compliance with program effectiveness.
5. Inter-agency memoranda that are deliberative in nature; this exemption is appropriate for internal documents that are part of the decision making process and contain subjective evaluations, opinions and recommendations.
6. Information the release of which could reasonably be expected to constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of individuals.
7. Records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes that (a) could reasonably be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings; (b) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or impartial adjudication; (c) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of others, (d) disclose the identity of a confidential source, (e) disclose investigative techniques and procedures, or (f) could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.
8. Certain records of agencies responsible for supervision of financial institutions.
9. Geological and geophysical information concerning wells.

(Excerpted from: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/5200-1r/appendix_c.htm)

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[AmberBlackCat]

I'd like to know why our government will compete against video game companies, but won't compete against internet service providers or health insurance companies. Maybe it's just that a video game is a good way to convince people to join the army. That's a much better reason to do this than improving people's lives.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[iainl]

Information such as trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a company on a privileged or confidential basis that, if released, would result in competitive harm to the company, impair the government's ability to obtain like information in the future, or protect the government's interest in compliance with program effectiveness.

Is probably the clause they're using here. Further details basically mean declaring what they're currently paying for hosting and salaries, which would interfere with negotiating future contracts to do the same.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[jalefkowit]

Or maybe it's because telcos and health insurance companies spend huge amounts of money on lobbyists whose entire job is to prevent such competition and the game industry doesn't.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[aero6dof]

It's OK, sometimes the peas and carrots mix a little, but it's still perfectly edible... I see this expenditure as a cost-effective, creative alternative vs. PR coming from a buy of ad-time on tv. It gets the army a little PR and introduces some realism vs most other FPSs. The only people to complain might be other game companies in the niche of providing semi-realistic miltary FPS, but all indications is that there's no real effect there, see Call of Duty and Modern Warfare sales...

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[hey!]

The issue isn't whether it's cost effective (it probably is) or whether game publishers don't like it (they probably don't care).

The issue is one of principle, and violating that principle has costs that are significant although hard to measure in dollars: you can't control what you can't observe.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[nametaken]

I think they should be concerned with the competition. That $33mil was spent to put material in front of eyeballs to aide in recruiting and very basic military concepts (ranks, etc). If you don't keep up, nobody sees it and your investment is over.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[ivogan]

Information such as trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a company on a privileged or confidential basis that, if released, would result in competitive harm to the company, impair the government's ability to obtain like information in the future, or protect the government's interest in compliance with program effectiveness.

I wonder if this is the criteria for the withholding. Could the Army have entered into a NDA with private industry? What I picture is a situation where the Army lays out the budget for the project and a company agrees to write the code (A.I. behavior comes to mind) in return for whatever the Army can pay plus an agreement to not disclose the code. It has been years since I played AA so this theory make not make sense in some aspects.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[DigitalCrackPipe]

Not competing for dollars, but for eyeballs. The army wants to be able to get people to play the game and be influenced by it. Making all of thier strategy available to everyone could allow private gaming companies to beat them to it. That would mean less eyeballs and wow factor when they finally do release a product.

Re:Competitive in the gaming industry?!?!

[aero6dof]

Oh I agree with you on the transparency issue. I was just (unclearly) commenting on the handwringing over possible competition with private industry.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

Well considering a lot of "gamers" I know, with the exception of the hardcore types who would be afraid to leave their rooms, joined the army when they turned 18, or got a wild hair up their ass about it all of a sudden.

Funny enough, they all had america's army.

Also, conscription is the other alternative, and the efficiency there is pretty bad, such as those who arent the type to fight trying to surrender in the middle of a firefight or running away, revealing the location of a platoon and getting them all killed vs. a bunch of brainwashed and highly motivated soldiers who think it's time to play the game for real.

I'd say it's working quite well.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Tarinth]

Numerous studies have shown that games are about the most consistent and effective way to reach young US males. They generally watch a lot less TV (sports being the possible exception). Considering the huge marketing budget that is spent on advertising the Army, I'd wager that programs like this are highly effective--but I'd be very interested in additional data that reveals how many recruiting leads the Army associates with the program!

How do they figure the costs?

[Higaran]

I was at the auto show and the had a booth setup with a humvee and a bunch ov xboxes and pc running for people to play. I remember at E3 one year and the had special forces guys drop in from a chopper and stuff like that. I think the cost are probably more but they write the costs off as traning or recuritment or just plain old PR stuff.

Why so much for just 3 games?

[master_p]

32 million seems to much for just 3 video games. Why is it so high?

Re:Why so much for just 3 games?

[WindBourne]

It probably is not high. It is on multiple platforms, networked and multiple versions. Considering all the stuff that went into this, I think that 3 million a year for this is nothing. In fact, it has probably helped the army not only recruit, but also avoid having to do loads of expensive training.

Re:Why so much for just 3 games?

[StormyWeather]

30 people at 75,000 a year for ten years would be around 25 mil with benefits.
Of course then there are server costs, publicity costs, office costs, hardware blah blah blah.

Seems reasonable cost to me for the end product.

I don't really agree with creating the product, because that should have been a private company creating the product at the army's direction if at all. Government really shouldn't be in the business of private industry whether it's the army, or whatever.

Re:Why so much for just 3 games?

[snaz555]

It's not high at all, $32M is peanuts for three mass market software products of this size and complexity. The more interesting question is why it has taken them so long to get where they are today. The answer to both questions lies in the fact that they work with enlisted personnel - for whom this may be their first job. They're cheap and enthusiastic, but slow.

Re:Why so much for just 3 games?

[MaWeiTao]

That's not high at all. Many individual games run that kind of budget and I recently read that Gran Turismo 5 has cost $60 million to date. Take a look at the credits for many of these games, these developers have a massive staff. Those salaries alone eat up a fairly significant portion of the budget. Then factor in all the other expenses and it's easy to see why the budgets are so large. That said, it does seem ridiculous that a game costs so much to develop, but that's just the nature of the kinds of games being developed today.

Budget Summary

[Registered Coward v2]

People seem to assume that is development costs; but AA's budget, in true Army style, could include a lot more - from printing copies, facility costs, operational costs such as vehicle gas, travel and TDY expenses, etc.

That said, 33 mill is pretty impressive, especially if it is all in costs of the organization.

Re: Budget Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the "public game" that cost that much. They use the guts of the game to model new weapon systems as a sort of "try before you buy" type system. They also use it for training.
In fact the TALON (tracked robot) first saw the light of day inside the game's engine.

No, that $33M was an -exceptional- deal compared to other military projects. It makes sense, though, seeing as this project was developed & run by the Army's business department (Office of Economic and Manpower Assessment.)
imo Col. Wardynsky should be given a medal for this.

They far more on NASCAR

[Shivetya]

Figure ten to twenty million plus per team fielded.

At least AA doesn't present war as a clean and easy and dismissible.

America's Air Force

[WindBourne]

If I were the Air force, I would grab one of the OSS forms of a sim (flight gear comes to mind), and then enhance the daylight out of it, so that it can do dogfights. Finally, include both regular aircrafts AND the new drones on these.

Re:America's Air Force

[adamchou]

The airforce is hardly having difficulty with recruitment. In fact, they're so overwhelmed with requests that you can barely enlist for the airforce anymore. I enlisted in July and I went to MEPS 32 times after enlisting and everytime, the Airforce recruitment office in the LA MEPS (biggest in the nation) was closed. They're going to focus their developers working on top secret software and other related projects and thats exactly what they should be doing.

Re:America's Air Force

[WindBourne]

I did not say that the air force was having issues with getting numbers. They never have. BUT, I would like to think that they have the BEST quality fliers at the stick as well as at the button. Basically, a good America's Air force, ideally tied into America's Army would open up doors.

Now, as somebody who has done work for various 3 letters, and spent part of my childhood in the shadows of the B-47, I can tell you that they need the best that they can get. All of the forces do. Many of their projects are humdrum, but others are true cutting edge. Taking a simulator and improving it allows for an increase in a number of talents. The least of which is understanding the physics that applies to flight and warfare. By learning it, it is possible to turn it from an art to more of a science.

Re:America's Air Force

[Hardhead_7]

The Air Force doesn't even really do dogfights. That's more of a navy/army thing. The Air Force flies AWACS, predator drones, and (wierdly) does cyber-security. They're more like the Computer Force these days.

Re:America's Air Force

[DavidTC]

Also, of course, they operate the Stargate.

Re:America's Air Force

[MaerD]

BUT, I would like to think that they have the BEST quality fliers at the stick as well as at the button. Basically, a good America's Air force, ideally tied into America's Army would open up doors.

Besides the fact that most air combat is done "Beyond Visual Range" these days with complicated radar systems (which, if judging by some of the modern combat sims like Falcon 4, are pretty hard to come up with a good control scheme for), PC or Console SIMS will not always give you good pilots. While not as much of an issue for the UAVs, I know a number of flight sim lovers who would never pass medical to fly a fighter jet .
Also, depending on how good your sim is, you can usually do a number of things in a sim that just aren't realistic due to G-forces, etc.

Re:America's Air Force

[Bios_Hakr]

I think OpenFalcon or FreeFalcon would be a better starting point. Both are fairly realistic in their modeling of the F-16. I think OF is out of development now; it's been shut down a while. But FreeFalcon just had a major release and it's a *very* nice sim.

Get FF here: http://www.freefalcon.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14498

Here's the 5.3 patch: http://www.freefalcon.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16562

Re:America's Air Force

[icegreentea]

That's total bullshit. Army doesn't do dogfights at all. Yeah, the Air Force is shifting emphasis away from manned pilots, but it still stands that they have the largest fighter plane inventory among the services. And it's going to stay that way for quite a while.

Re:America's Air Force

[adamchou]

thats an interesting concept. i was under the impression you wanted it as a recruiting tool like what america's army is. however, i think that learning the concepts of dog fighting, or even just intense acrobatic flying, requires an intensive classroom lesson in physics and the dynamics of flight. if they could somehow fit that into the game, i'd be all for it. i'd definitely d/l that game and play it. i've always wanted to learn to fly.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you from a proud veteran

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[AHuxley]

Recruiting teams per shopping mall @$10 per hour, 8 h weekends, ~a few per ~50 states over ten years, front and back.
The cost of having kids play a 33 million US$ Army branded computer game.
Having kids turn up at a recruiting office after playing a game:
Priceless.

They ought to build a tax-funding add-on for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's fun (for some) to play shot 'em up & stretegy games, that are based on real war,
I think it's time to look at the costs - both within the games and in Real Life (t(.

Some sort of US budget, as affected by all this silly military spending, needs URGENTLY
to be added to America's Army, so folks can begin to wake-up to the fact that they - or
their children (for generations to come) will need to pay for all this nonsense, someday...

Better they start to think about military costs in the context of such a game, rather than
wait for these costs to give rise to very real deficits & credit crunches, etc. that can last
for decades...

Maybe a new game needs to be developed, eg, "Political Will - the Renewable Resource"
that let the player work through some of the possible effectes of such deficits...

(Maybe some of those who play -that- will invent workarounds that will prevent some of the
dire consequences to happen (or push their happening into the future, maybe even giving
rise to some wotkatounds.).

Recreation for soldiers

[BondGamer]

I have played America's Army a bit and there are a ton of active duty military playing the game. So it has quite an appeal. Plus the army runs training simulations with America's Army. So it has many more benefits than just being "a game". Of course some people are still going to claim it will be a waste of money. If you haven't played, it isn't just another FPS. The game is based on realism. You don't respawn after you die. If an enemy sees you first you die. There isn't kill streaks that give you power ups. Oh, and the current version is super buggy. Probably because they fired the entire development team after the last release.

Re:Recreation for soldiers

[StuartHankins]

Oh, and the current version is super buggy. Probably because they fired the entire development team after the last release.

Yep, there's military intelligence for you. I tried the game twice several years ago and it was horribly buggy then. I see some things don't change.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

criminally stupid waste of money for propaganda for an unjust war.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[arkane1234]

da = the
dis = this
dat = that

I figured I'd decipher for those that actually type and read right.

Economy Act

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, because the federal government is not supposed to compete with commercial businesses. They are supposed to procure from industry. In fact, I believe that when this first came up with AA, they said that they WERE NOT trying to compete in the industry, just to provide a recruiting tool.

The Army should not be making videogames...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

If our Army is going to continue to make videogames, surely we can provide our citizens with Universal Single Payer Health Care....

right?

I mean we really must have no budgetary problems at all, surely we can afford to take care of our people if we can use our military as entertainment for our children we hope to send to their death overseas...

Re:The Army should not be making videogames...

[snaz555]

If our Army is going to continue to make videogames, surely we can provide our citizens with Universal Single Payer Health Care....

The VA provides single-payer, single-provider, socialized, health care for the Army.

Re:The Army should not be making videogames...

[rhsanborn]

Sure, because $33 million on a PR and training sim is the same thing as several trillion dollars on a single payor healthcare system.

Re:The Army should not be making videogames...

[stewbacca]

If we can provide citizens with Universal Single Payer Health Care for $32.8 million over 10 years, I'd say you have a point. Something tells me that $32.8 million wouldn't last very long though.

As a 12-year vet myself, it is pretty clear to me, and the overwhelming majority of people who sign up, that our military is completely voluntary, so nobody is being sent "to their death".

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

Your just saying that because cruise missiles have a lower return of dead babies per dollar than a good old fashioned cudgel over time. Its takes time to get a return on your investment, but with practically unlimited potential you will get a great deal on baby killing.

Didn't cost a dime

[Danathar]

Until we pay back foreign lenders....which are probably never. Of course we probably could of just printed the money...oh..did that too.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't work for recruiting. Players are usually scared from joining the army when they see how much grenade spamming is done in guerrilla warfare.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[GooberToo]

Bingo.

Lets put this into perspective. How many TV commercials, all across the US, can you pay for with $33.00 million dollars over ten years? Not many. Now consider how many of those commercials are primarily targeting the very people who you want to entice? Not many. Figure $100,000 per 30-seconds of national airtime. That same money spent on national commercials would have only purchased 330, 30-second, national commercials. Or, thirty three commercials per year. In reality, its likely it would be even fewer than that as $100,000 per slot is likely the minimum. Had they wanted placement during something like American Idol finales (ya, likely bad example), the slot price is likely to be 30% to 50% higher; or more. And even then, the number of people who are actually effectively targeted would be very limited. Especially when you consider with a game the same people they are targeted become inundated with the concept of actually joining the military, versus as most, 165 minutes (2.75 hours) of exposure with the concept - assuming those same people see every commercial, which simply isn't likely.

Simply put, this is clearly one of the most cost effective advertising campaigns ever produced by the military, let alone government, and is likely providing a huge bang for the buck! Especially when you consider the same game is then used as a direct recruiting tool at public events - as it allows would be recruiters to directly talk to potential recruits at said events. This in turn significantly improves the bang for the buck ratio.

I don't have a problem with this at all.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[stewbacca]

$10 an hour for a recruiter? Most recruiters are in the E6-E8 range, which is a salary roughly around the $50,000 a year mark. That's a lot more than $10 an hour!

I want my 11 cents back.

[steak]

33 million / 300 million = 0.11 dollars / 10 years = .01 dollars per year per person.

of course that's assuming everyone pays the same amount of taxes.

I don't make a lot of money so it cost me nothing, on the other hand it probably cost my parents 3 cents a year or something.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[jgtg32a]

Actually my brother and I showed up to the recruiting office to pick up the game, they were disappointed when we said we only wanted the game. I was 6ft and in reasonable shape, and my little brother was 6'5" defensive end on the football team.

Not bad...

[Schnoogs]

When you consider Avatar has an advertising budget of something like $100 million I'd say the Army had found a cheap and effective way of getting their name out there.

umm...wait a sec

[theblackarrow0]

The army is overspending on a computer game?? what about our COUNTRY overspending on health care?? if we're going to complain about the Army spending our money on computer games, why not complain about your money being used to pay for the loser-in-the-apartment-next-to-you's health care because he doesn't feel like working?? sorry...that's kinda a pet peeve of mine :P

Re:umm...wait a sec

[arkane1234]

Way to play the field with your political shenanigans.
Please, don't ever bring that up again when talking about something not even remotely close to it.
Have a good one.

AA Platform

[tprox]

I think there's more to it than that. Hopefully the cost includes America's Army as a Platform. I know military training has been trying to enforce compliance to standards (e.g. SCORM) and Learning Management Systems so they can track who has what training. Something like this can bring it all together, and that cost over 10 years sounds like an excellent investment considering they took the time to proof something out, then extend functionality as opposed to the typical requirements swirl that ends up with programs that never actually come to fruition.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

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Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh! - "...disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry."

Maybe da wise guys in Vegas should follow dis novel approach to protecting disclosure of dis information regarding "gaming."
Make it all a national security todo -- Yeah! Dat's da ticket! (grin)

Hey - anyone remember Admiral Poindexter's online betting parlor for who's next to get da axe?

Yeah! - Great idea! Maybe we should get Cy to take out an intellectual property patent on it.
Buzz! Wake up! Gimme dat phone ...

Hey, Cy! ... We need a betting parlour on national security targets up on SecondLife ... Yeah, by tomorrow!

Hey, Cy! ... It's Linden dollars! Just do it! No one's goin' to ask. What's the beef? It's national security ... Yeah, cool! Very cool ...

From the You-Can't-Handle-the-Truth Dept.

[hduff]

Great post, except the part where you ascribe untruths to the Democratic party. They (we) represent a majority of Americans right now, and are not "far left" and DEFINITELY don't "hate the military".

Democrats AND Republicans = False Dichotomy.Both are sides of the same coin. The rank and file are overwhelmingly decent people who are concerned about their families and communities but are clueless about how things are accomplished in government (HINT: follow the money). The political leaders are almost without exception opportunistic asshats.

Re:From the You-Can't-Handle-the-Truth Dept.

[shentino]

That would be "corporate dicksucking greedy assholes"

They know damn well what they are doing, it just happens to not be in the best interests of the nation.

Calling them asshats is an insult to the REAL morons who would probably scream bloody murder quite loudly if they found out how things really worked.

Mod parent up please

[daemonenwind]

This comment deserves to be Score:5, Troll, if I've ever seen one. Give 'em a +1, underrated.

Sure, it's a troll, but it's oh-so accurate. There's no reason a troll can't be admired, on rare occasions.

I remember the first time I played AA

[default luser]

Ahh, the good old days. I left my computer on overnight so I could download the game on my "640Kbps" (really only about 480Kbps sustained) DSL line. Remember back when hosts didn't have lines for servers, and everyone was downloading at-once at 5KB/s? That was exatly my experience downloading America's Army.

Then after all the wait, I installed the game and - hey, why can't I connect to multiplayer servers? It turned out, you had to go through "basic training" before you could play online on the official servers. Part of the training was single player on your local machine, and that was easily completed, but the second half was online.

Here was the problem with the online training servers:

(1) There were not enough training servers to handle the load, and dozens of people were sitting there waiting for when a training session was over, and the server would clear-out.

(2) The training session was an ungodly 45 minutes long, and if you failed any part (or got disconnected), you had to start over.

I gave up after just 2 45 minute failures, and decided to bypass the whole "official" server system, just to see what kind of game I was missing out on. The game, it turns out, was not any more interesting to play than say Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer, and it paled in comparison to the upcoming Battlefield 1942 (demo released the following month). I uninstalled AA and never touched the series again.

So, what did the Army get for their millions? A marginal free team FPS that got trounced by better game developers. I don't think that's worth it.

Re:How about relative to other recruitment methods

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you from a proud veteran

Surely you mean, "proud babykiller"?

building their own... engine??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Although what amazes me is that the army spends millions building their own game and engine.."

Actually, the Army licensed the Unreal engine from Epic for AA. They didn't build one from scratch.

Re:building their own... engine??

[mdarksbane]

Yes, I know. They paid the millions in licensing fees for it, though, and did enough modification to make it into a game.

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