America's Army (also known as AA or Army Game Project) is a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter owned by the United States Government and released as a global public relations initiative to help with U.S. Army recruitment.

The PC version, subtitled Recon, was first released on July 4, 2002. Subsequently Operations was first released on July 12, 2002. The most current version Overmatch debuted Dec 21, 2006, the SMU GuildHall Map Pack was released Mar 22, 2007 bringing the curent version to 2.8.1, and has had many upgrades since Recon. It is financed through U.S. tax dollars and distributed for free. It was originally developed by the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School and continues to use the Unreal Engine.

Rise of a Soldier is the subtitle for the Xbox version that was developed by the U.S. Army, Ubisoft and Secret Level. A mobile phone version, published by Gameloft, is also available.^[1] An arcade version using light guns is also being developed.^[2]

Overview

The game falls into the sub-genres of an advergame, serious game and militainment. America's Army has been developed since 2000 and still changes through add-ons and patches. The Windows version can be found as a download on the Internet or as free DVDs at U.S. Army recruiting centers. The Macintosh and Linux versions are no longer updated. The current version uses PunkBuster technology to prevent cheating

Professor Michael Zyda, the director and founder of the MOVES Institute, acknowledged Counter-Strike as the model for the game.

America's Army is relatively authentic in terms of visual and acoustic representation of combat, especially pertaining to its depictions of firearm usage and mechanics, but its critics have alleged that it fails to convey wartime conditions as accurately as it claims.

America's Army is the first computer video game to make recruitment an explicit goal and the first well-known overt use of computer gaming for political aims. The game is used as a playable recruiting tool and critics have charged the game serves as a propaganda device. It is often pointed out that the game bears resemblance to the movie The Last Starfighter^[3] and to the novel Ender's Game, a popular science fiction story of the 80s.

A counter on the homepage of the PC version claims over eight million registered accounts as of 2007 which is often confused with the number of players. Statistics show that the game has had an average of roughly 3,000 to 6,000 players playing online at any one time between 2002 and 2005 and thus ranking in the top ten online games[2] tracked by GameSpy. By comparison, under the same counting conditions the most often played online game, Counter-Strike, has between 70,000 and 100,000 players.^[4]

History

Background

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had plans for using video games since the early 1980s. However, it was not until 1996, shortly after computer-based wargames were permitted on government computers for U.S. Marines, that U.S. Marine simulation experts modified the commercial game Doom II to create Marine Doom as a tactical training tool.

The success of Marine Doom led the U.S. Marine Corps to contract with MÄK Technologies for the development of Marine Expeditionary Unit 2000 the following year. This was the first game funded and developed by both the Department of Defense and the commercial game industry.^[5] The game was both used for U.S. Marine training and released to the public.

A 1997 report of the National Research Council, of which Professor Michael Zyda was a member,^[6] observed that the Department of Defense's simulations were lagging behind commercial games and advised joint research with the entertainment industry.[3]

In 1999, U.S. Army recruiting numbers had hit their lowest point in thirty years, and after two straight years of missed recruiting targets,^[7] the Congress of the United States decided to carry out "aggressive, innovative experiments" in military recruiting.^[8] The Department of Defense raised its spending for recruitment to more than US$2.2Bn for an entire promotional campaign to polish up the U.S. Army's image including the Army Game Project. The new slogan, "An Army Of One" was invented and used in numerous publicity efforts, such as the sponsorship of a NASCAR racing team.

Initial Development

Lieutenant Colonel E. Casey Wardynski, at that time an economics professor at the United States Military Academy, West Point, took the idea of an online U.S. Army computer game to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Military Manpower. After convincing them of the project's cost-effectiveness, Wardynski - who later became director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point and the head of the Army Game Project - began working with Professor Zyda.

In May 2000, the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School was contracted by the U.S. Army to create the game.

In 2001 the Department of Defense licensed Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear from the French software company Ubisoft for training military personnel.

Zyda said later in an interview with Gary Webb that, "We thought we'd have a lot more problems. But the country is in this mood where anything the military does is great. ... 9/11 sort of assured the success of this game. I'm not sure what kind of reception it would have received otherwise."^[9]

In May 2002 the game was announced and presented to the public at the E3 combined with a static display provided by the US Army that included Soldiers and an M6 Bradley Linebacker armored air defense vehicle.^[10]

On July 4, 2002, the United States' Independence Day, the first version of America's Army, named Recon, was released after three years of development and production costs between between $6 million and $8 million.^[5] The game was easily available, the gameplay was similar to Counter-Strike, and it had the Unreal Engine as well as free servers sponsored by the U.S. Army.

America's Army: Soldiers, a role-playing game in the development stage that was to elucidate career paths in the U.S. Army "died a sad and whimpering death before ever seeing the light of day", a former developer concludes.^[11]

Also in 2002, the ArmyOps Tracker website was created by a German computer engineer with the purpose of tracking gameplay statistics such as a player's number of kills or hours played.^[9]

Later Development

In 2003, Ubisoft's commercial Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield was licensed by the U.S. Army to be used for testing soldiers' skills.

On November 6, 2003, version 2.0 of America's Army was published, with the full title of America's Army: Special Forces. In a booklet produced by the MOVES Institute, an article by Wagner James Au explains that "the Department of Defense want[ed] to double the number of Special Forces soldiers, so essential [had they proven] in Afghanistan and northern Iraq; consequently, orders [had] trickled down the chain of command and found application in the current release of America's Army."^[12]

After the game proved successful, the lack of the Army's acknowledgment for the contribution by the US Navy annoyed the Navy and led to tension and political fights over the project.^[11] Eventually the project was withdrawn from the Naval Postgraduate School due to allegations of mismanagement^[13] in March 2004 and the development team was moved to two new locations.^[9]

Further Platforms

One month after taking over production, the Army declared it has signed an exclusive long-term contract with Ubisoft to reach a wider and younger audience. America's Army: Rise of a Soldier, a different version of the game for Xbox was produced by Ubisoft in collaboration with the U.S. Army.^[9] Despite of this 10-year publishing deal, the control over all communication and advertising remains with the Army.^[14] The Xbox version was released in November, 2005. It was also to be released on the PlayStation 2, but was later canceled.[4]

According to Colonel Wardynski the game generated interest from other U.S. government agencies, including the Secret Service, resulting in the development of a training version that was similar to the public version but for internal government use only.^[15] At the Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, one of the new places of the developers, the game is used to test new weapons.^[9]

F2C2

A successor to America's Army is Future Force Company Commander (F2C2) portraying the military in 2015.^[16] It is a serious game developed by Zombie Studios based on the Empire Earth II engine to promote the Future Combat Systems (FCS),[5] a project to modernize the Army. It was commissioned by defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation, together with Boeing the lead integrator for FCS, for $1.5 million, also ultimately paid by taxes. After developing it for more than 11 months, it has been available for free at the Army website since March 2006.^[17]

Gameplay

America's Army is a round- and team-based tactical shooter with a gameplay similar to Counter-Strike, with the player depicted as a soldier in the U.S. Army.

Before being allowed to play online a player must first go through four training maps and have his or her progress saved online in a player account. Accomplishing the other thirteen training levels enables the player to become a combat life saver (CLS, medics are not depicted in game), special forces operator, SDM (squad-designated marksman, not to be confused with a sniper which is currently not present in AA), HMMWV driver, CROWS gunner, and Javelin missile operator.

The main section of the game is the multiplayer part, in which players fight either as the U.S. Army or, on "Special Forces" maps, as Indigenous forces against an opposing enemy team.

One of America's Army's unusual features is the design of the player's opponents. The players characters' are divided into two teams: usually an "Assault" group and a "Defense" one. The Assault team loses the round if the time limit runs out. Players always see themselves and their team as U.S. Soldiers or friendly Indigenous Forces. The other side is always seen as the enemy (or OPFOR in the case of training maps.)

The players on either team appear as U.S. soldiers carrying U.S. weapons such as the M16A2. Their opponents usually appear as non-uniformed people carrying Warsaw Pact weapons such as the AK-47.

The game is a medium-paced tactical shooter, similar to the Tom Clancy series of shooters. Pacing is fast in the sense that players can be killed very quickly, but the players' movements are a lot slower and the gameplay contains fewer firefights than Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike, especially on larger maps. Unlike common first-person shooters, players are required to aim using iron sights to shoot more accurately.

Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously and each always starting with the equipment of their soldier class. This equipment normally consists of one or two firearms and several grenades.

The round usually ends with only one team winning. In certain circumstances, such as when both teams are eliminated or both sides are Assault and time runs out, there will be a tie. A team wins when its objectives are achieved or when all members of the enemy team are killed. For example, the objective on the SF Hospital map, one of the most played maps, is to kill the rebels' "VIP", while the other team's mission is to keep him alive and escort him to the extraction point.

The game features a kind of honor system making use of operant conditioning, which means that gamers who obey to the rules, dubbed "Rules of engagement" (ROE), are rewarded with experience points or else punished with a decrease of them. Rewarded are the achievement of specific mission objectives, killing enemies and healing injured teammates, although one receives more points for completing an objective or healing a teammate than for killing enemies. Punished are friendly fire and eliminating objectives which are assigned for protection. Players are kicked from the server when their ROE is too high and their characters are sent to the Fort Leavenworth military prison.

Any player character killed before the round is over becomes a spectator; their chat or text messages cannot be seen or heard by the players still alive, but they can watch the rest of the round. The developers of America's Army do not prevent spying spectators from communicating with those still playing, which has become a common type of cheating, widely referred to as ghosting. Players whose protagonist is dead receive information through the chat and the view as spectator and are capable of using external VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) communication programs to gain information, especially on players' positions. As is not uncommon in multiplayer online games, cheating, such as through the use of wallhacks or aimbots, is a common problem in America's Army, which is being fought by the cheat-prevention utility PunkBuster. In the more recent versions, cheating activity not related to ghosting appears to have been significantly reduced. America's Army developers actively work against cheating. Some servers have rules against using grenades or grenade launchers within a certain amount of time from the beginning of a match. These rules are set up because some players think it is unfair when they are killed when the enemy fires a grenade into an area that is where players usually are at that moment in the round. Some servers have rules against firing a grenade when you do not see the target. "Spamming" is usually said in reference to the enemy firing the SAW or 203 grenade in the general direction of the enemy without a specific target.

Depending on server configuration, spectators can watch the rest of the round in up to three ways. One, which is always available, allows the "dead" player to choose a member of his own team and see through their eyes; another allows the "camera" to rotate his view around the chosen player; there are also certain fixed viewpoints that allow the "dead" player to observe a specific area of the map.

2.8 SF version AA editor

The latest version 2.8, includes a tool called AAEditor, based on the same Unreal editing tool used to create the official maps currently in AA, in order to allow players make and submit their own custom maps. The submitted maps are judged at AA Mission Depot and in the future in could be included on the full package with the normal maps. There is a tutorial available in the game manual, which is written using the Wiki system.

Controversy

Apart from the common controversy that surrounds games rewarding the virtual killing of other human beings, America's Army caused additional debate and disagreement that made it become the subject of journalistic and academic research.

Intention

America's Army is intended to give a positive impression of the U.S. Army. In the official Frequently Asked Questions page the developers, too, confirm that in a statement giving the reason why people outside the United States can play the game: "We want the whole world to know how great the U.S. Army is."

A graduate of Utrecht University concluded the game "with its governmental background, is instead of an advergame, better to be described as a propagame."^[18] Chris Chambers, the deputy director of development for America's Army, admits it is a recruitment tool,^[19] and "the Army readily admits [America's Army] is a propaganda device," wrote Chris Morris, a CNN/Money columnist and director of content development.^[20]

America's Army, considered by the U.S. Army to be a "cost-effective recruitment tool," aims to become part of youth culture's "consideration set," as Army deputy chief of personnel, Timothy Maude, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.^[8]

The game has also been described as an extension of the military entertainment complex or so-called "militainment", further blurring the line between entertainment and war,^[19] with criticism that it contributes to a militarization of society.^[21]

The Army Game and its official webpage, which must be visited to be able to play the game, contain links to the army recruitment website goarmy.com, another recruiting tool that, according to the Army Subcommittee Testimony from February 2000, has a higher chance of recruiting than "any other method of contact."^[8] Leading American players to the website is a major goal of the game, and it was confirmed that twenty-eight percent of all visitors of America's Army's webpage click through to this recruitment site.^[21]

In the Frequently Asked Questions section of the game's official website, its developers argue its suitability for teenagers. It reads, "In elementary school kids learn about the actions of the Continental Army that won our freedoms under George Washington and the Army's role in ending Hitler's oppression. Today they need to know that the Army is engaged around the world to defeat terrorist forces bent on the destruction of America and our freedoms."[6]

Gary Webb argued that the game's other purpose was aptitude testing of potential recruits and that this had never been noticed by the public. He concluded that this could be the only reason for spending taxes to track players and collect statistics.^[9]

Realism

The game is generally considered to be realistic by players. The most notable realistic feature of the game is the weapon used by the character and actions preformed on the weapon. For example the reload of a M203 rifle (grenade launcher) is captured by the game very accurately ^{[citation needed]}.

However, one common argument against the game's realism is that it seems to be playing down or excluding some notable facets of Army life from its portrayal, such as the emotional trauma that soldiers may experience when they are confronted with combat. Hence the critics claim that the game creates a false impression of reality.

One commonly brought up example is gore, which is much more tame than it is in real life. One reason for this is that too much gore would raise the ESRB's rating of the game above Teen, while the target audience is teenagers just below recruiting age (17). Another reason is that high gore would not attract potential recruits to join the military. As one post on the official forums states, "[...] I doubt anyone would want to join the Army after watching their [sic] arms and limbs get shot off and such." Another possibility is that a high gore depiction may direct even more intense criticism towards the Army for the perceived glorification of violence that other developers have been the target of.

As well, Alexander R. Galloway, an assistant professor at New York University notes that, "What is interesting about America's Army, is not the debate over whether it is thinly-veiled propaganda or a legitimate recruitment tool, for it is unabashedly and decisively both, but rather that the central conceit of the game is one of mimetic realism." In his analysis, Galloway concludes that America's Army, despite being a fairly realistic game, with real-life settings, does not make even the least attempt to achieve narrative realism—that is, accurately representing what serving a tour in the Army would actually be like. Instead, it simply expresses a nationalistic sentiment under the guise of realism, being little more than a "naïve and unmediated or reflective conception of aesthetic construction."^[22]

Usefulness for recruits

At the United States Military Academy, 19 percent of 2003's freshman class stated they had played the game. Enlistment quotas were met in the two years directly following the game's release.^[23]

M. Paul Boyce, an Army public affairs officer at The Pentagon, was quoted as saying it would never be possible to find out what difference the game has made to recruitment numbers, but that he hoped no one has been recruited because of the game alone on the grounds that America's Army makes no attempt to help answer "hard questions" about the Army, such as "Is it right for me, is it right for my family, and is it right for my country?"^[24]

Because America's Army focuses on the technological aspect of war rather than the moral, it has been referred to as How We Fight, alluding to the U.S. government's series of films named Why We Fight, which supported the war effort for World War II.^[25]

Cultural Impact

The Canadian punk-rock band Propagandhi wrote a song against the game in its album Potemkin City Limits in October 2005.

Starting with the anniversary of the Iraq invasion in March 2006, University of Nevada, Reno Art Professor Joseph Delappe began a protest both against the war in Iraq and the game. He logs into the game under the username dead-in-Iraq, and then uses the chat to broadcast the name, age, service branch and date of death of real soldiers who have died in Iraq.^[26]

References

See also

• Under Ash
• Special Force
• Recruitment tool
• Militainment

External links

• Official website for the PC versions
• The MOVES Institute (former developers)
• "War games in a time of war", MSNBC article (July 18, 2004)
• "Social Realism in Gaming" academic analysis of America's Army in terms of "Social realism" by Alexander R. Galloway a book author and Assistant Professor at New York University.
• "The Potential of America's Army as Civilian-Military Public Sphere" extensive February 2004 thesis (149 pages) by graduate student Zhan Li for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - includes ethnographic analysis of Soldiers who play the game during the invasion of Iraq, and interviews with West Point directors of the America's Army project (PDF)
• "The Army Game Project" article for the Army Magazine by Chris Chambers (deputy director of AA), Thomas Sherlock (teacher of political science) and Paul Kucik (economic analyst in the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis), 2002
• Enjoy the video game? Then join the army. by the Christian Science Monitor[7]