America's Army

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America's Army
North American boxart, PC version
Developer(s)	U.S. Army (PC & Consoles), Secret Level (Consoles)
Publisher(s)	U.S. Army (PC), Ubisoft (Consoles)
Distributor(s)	U.S. Army
License	Proprietary License
Engine	v1.0-2.3 (Unreal Engine 2.0) v2.4-2.x (Unreal Engine 2.5) v3.0- (Unreal Engine 3.0) Rise of a Soldier (Xbox): Unreal Engine 2.0 True Soldiers (Xbox 360): YETI engine
Version	2.8.3.1
Platform(s)	Windows (current version 2.8.3.1), Linux (discontinued as of 2.5), Mac OS X (discontinued as of 2.5)
Release date	PC: July 4, 2002 (v1.0)
Genre(s)	Tactical first-person shooter
Mode(s)	Training and Online multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: T (Teen)
Media	Online download, DVD (2.7 and up), CD (2.6 and earlier)
System requirements	Current PC version: Windows 2000, XP or Vista; Internet access or LAN; 2.4 GHz+ CPU or equivalent; 512 MB+ RAM; DirectX 9.0+; 128 MB+ 3D graphics card supporting transform and lighting; 3.5 GB+ of free hard drive space
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse

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 1.0, subtitled Recon, was first released on July 4, 2002. Since then, there have been over 20 updated versions released, the most recent being AA:SF (Overmatch) v2.8.3.1. All versions use the Unreal Engine. The game is financed by the U.S. Government and distributed for free. It was originally developed by the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School.

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 has been developed.^[2]

Contents 1 Overview 2 History 2.1 Background 2.2 Initial development 2.3 Later development 2.3.1 Further platforms 2.3.2 Use of specialized hardware 2.3.3 America's Army experience 2.3.4 F2C2 2.3.5 America's Army 3.0 3 Gameplay 4 2.8 SF version AA editor 5 Criticism 5.1 Intention 5.2 Realism 5.3 Usefulness for recruits 6 Academic analysis 7 Cultural impact 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Overview

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. All versions use Evenbalance's 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.^[3][4][5]

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. The game is developed by a regular game company that is funded by the Army. The latest version is 2.8.3.1 which was released on March 25, 2008, with new features and bug fixes.

It is pointed out that its recruiting aspect bears resemblance to games in both the movie The Last Starfighter^[6] and to the novel Ender's Game, a popular science fiction story of the 80s.^[7]

America's Army has over 9 million registered accounts as of April, 2008, with over 5 million having completed the "basic training" part of the game. With several thousand players online at any one time between 2002 and 2007, it ranks in the top 10 FPS (first-person shooter) games played online during the period, as tracked by GameSpy. It was similar in performance to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Medal of Honor, also in the top ten, for much of that time period.^[8]

Until recently, the U.S. Army and Icculus had a contract saying that the former would port America's Army to Mac OS X and Linux (x86 & AMD64) in both client and server versions.^[9]

[edit] History

[edit] 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.^[10] 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,^[11] observed that the Department of Defense's simulations were lagging behind commercial games and advised joint research with the entertainment industry.[1]

[edit] 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.

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."^[12]

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.^[13]

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 $6 million and $8 million.^[10] 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.^[14]

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.^[12]

[edit] Later development

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."^[15]

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.^[14] Eventually the project was withdrawn from the Naval Postgraduate School due to allegations of mismanagement^[16] in March 2004 and the development team was moved to two new locations.^[12]

[edit] 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.^[12] Despite a 10-year publishing deal, the control over all communication and advertising remains with the Army.^[17] The Xbox version was released in November, 2005. It was also to be released on the PlayStation 2 but was later canceled.^[18] A version of the game was also made for the mobile phone by Gameloft.

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.^[19] 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.^[12]

[edit] Use of specialized hardware

The America's Army developers have recently been implementing the use of specialized hardware into the game. As of version 2.8.1, America's Army has limited support of NaturalPoint Inc's TrackIR motion tracking headset to use in lieu of a mouse.

Version 2.8.2 included improved support for the headset, as well as native support for the Logitech G15 gaming keyboard. The LCD screen attached to the keyboard shows game statistics and player information once the game is loaded.

[edit] America's Army experience

The Developers for Americas Army also came out with a simulator hosted at various shows such as Xprize Cup. A model of a Humvee is placed in a tent facing 3 rear projection screens. the vehicle can seat five, with each person using a real M-16 modified for use as a light-gun. The Driver, however, drives the Humvee through the course, and his weapon is a 9 mm gun. The simulator features special effects, such as the truck shaking and making boom noises when driving over an IED. The Instructors give a small briefing explaining how to use the equipment, and during the simulation, point out IED's, terrorists, civilians, and allies. The simulator lasts approximately 5-10 minutes, and requires that the people sign up for an America's Army Experience card if they wish to use the simulator.

[edit] F2C2

A game related to America's Army is Future Force Company Commander (F2C2) portraying the military in 2015.^[20] It is a serious game developed by Zombie Studios based on the Empire Earth II engine to promote the Future Combat Systems (FCS),^[21] 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.^[22]

[edit] America's Army 3.0

Americas Army 3.0 version was announced for September 2008.^[23] Based on the Unreal Engine 3, this version is said to put emphasis on graphical performance and on graphical flexibility to cover a greater range of PCs, as well as decreased size for the full version download.^[24][25] Reloading time will decrease, along with the effect of flashbangs.^[26] The OPFOR's weapon will no longer be the AK-47 but a fictional weapon called the Obran KNP, based on the IMI Galil.^[27] The player's "jump" function will be radically changed.^[28] The only screen shots that have been released are several pictures of various guns. Screen shots of the environment and characters are yet to be released.

[edit] 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.

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 first-person shooters Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike, especially on larger maps. Unlike Counter-Strike, players are encouraged to aim using their weapon's sights to shoot more accurately, though a crosshair is still displayed for non-sniper weapons even if the player is not using the sights. 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 on multiplayer maps. The A.I. enemy on Co-op maps appears to be wearing the typical Indigenous Forces' uniform in Special Forces maps and carry MP5Ns with suppressors attached.

However, when an enemy (example Team A) is killed, the corpse (when viewed from players in Team B) drops their weapon as in the form of a Warsaw Pact counterpart weapon, and the teammates in Team A views the dropped weapon remains a NATO weapon even when picked up by the enemy.

This part of the gameplay does not apply on A.I. maps whereby some of the A.I.s appearing to be carrying MP5 Navy but drops Warsaw Pact weapons. 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 (high explosives, flashbang, and smoke). The regular soldier will carry an assault rifle (M16A2, M4, or M4A1), but there are specialists like the automatic rifleman (M249 SAW), grenadier (M16A2 with M203), sniper (M-24 or M82, plus a Beretta M9 pistol as a sidearm), or team leader (assault rifle and binoculars). For balance, the defending team will usually have less grenades and often no night-vision goggles.

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 low and their characters are sent to the Fort Leavenworth military prison. A higher honor level gives the player priority over other teammates in selecting specialist classes such as automatic rifleman, grenadier, sniper, or team leader. 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. With the help of Anti-Cheating Organizations such as Anti-Cheating Incorporated (ACI), Airdale Ops Network (AON), America's Army Server Admins (AASA), PunksBusted (PSB), and others, Server Admins can stream their game server to one of these organizations so they can verify PunkBuster Violations. After the violation is verified, they can add the account to their Master Ban List, or MBL, and that account cannot be played on servers that run the organizations MBL. 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 (particularly "spawnshots", a type of "dropshot"). Some servers have rules against firing a grenade at a target which you can not see. This is mainly due to shots known as "dropshots", which are M203 grenades fired into to the air from a certain point, direction, and angle to hit a predicted spot, usually well out the players view. On the map Bridge Crossing, there is a dropshot documented for almost every position of cover on the map. Whether or not these are indeed cheats is in dispute. "Spamming" is usually said in reference to firing the SAW or 203 grenade in the general direction of the enemy without a specific target, or to the predicted position of the enemy after a certain time from the round start, due to the linear and repetitive nature of most maps.

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 or the enemy's too (also depending on server configuration) 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.

AA as well as most online PC games has a competitive side to it. There are divisions of play in well known leagues such as the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL). However, it is lacking a division in CEVO and therefore can not be held in as high esteem as games such as Counter Strike Source.

[edit] 2.8 SF version AA editor

The latest version 2.8, includes a tool called AAEditor (also referred to as the America's Army Mission Editor, or AAME), 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 are official tutorials available in the game manual, which is written using the Wiki system.

[edit] Criticism

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 has made it the subject of journalistic and academic research.

[edit] 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."^[29]

Chris Chambers, the deputy director of development for America's Army, admits it is a recruitment tool,^[30] and "the Army readily admits [America's Army] is a propaganda device, " wrote Chris Morris, a CNN/Money columnist and director of content development.^[31]

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.^[32]

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,^[30] with criticism that it contributes to a militarization of society.^[33]

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."^[32] 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.^[33]

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."^[34]

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.^[12]

[edit] Realism

One of the major aspects of the game is the relatively realistic depiction of used equipment. However, critics of the project state that it excludes some notable facets of Army life from its portrayal, such as the emotional trauma that soldiers may experience when they are confronted with combat.

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 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 associate 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."^[35]

There has also been some criticism about how the game portrays the reaction of the human body when hit by a bullet. For example, an injury to the knee won't result in the player dropping to the ground, and subsequently facing difficulty in movement or not being able to move at all. At most, the result would be the player going from the "Green" status (healthy or lightly wounded) to the "Yellow" status (wounded) usually by bleeding, causing just a slight reduction in movement speed and weapon accuracy. Note that the player would still be able to jump, even in the "Red" status (severely wounded). Likewise, an injury to an area usually not protected by body armor like hands won't result in the player dropping his weapon nor subsequently not being able to fire at all.

It is interesting to note that this game has been cited for its realism in first aid training. In November 2007, Paxton Galvanek credited this game in how he helped two passengers who had been seriously hurt in an automobile accident. The game has some training tutorials and Galvanek credits that for teaching him how to assess the situation he came upon. Galvanek used the information gained from the training to slow the bleeding of one man who had several fingers taken off.^[36]

[edit] 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, as it had two years prior to its release.^[37]

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?"^[38]

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.^[39]

[edit] Academic analysis

America's Army has gained the interest of numerous social scientists in academia. A partial list of published analyses include:

• "Video Games, Manipulation and the U.S. Military: A Comparative Analysis of America's Army and SOCOM II: US Navy SEALs" academic analysis of America's Army and SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs in terms of "Visual Discourse" by Caroline S. Brooks, a PhD candidate at East Carolina University.
• "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)

[edit] Cultural impact

Author Max Brooks, in New York Times Bestseller World War Z mentions the game in his fictional chronology as one of many failed attempts to increase recruitment in the days before the Zombie War.

Propagandhi's "Die Jugend Marschiert", from their album Potemkin City Limits, is an intense criticism of the game and parents who allow their children to play it.

[edit] See also

• America's Army: Rise of a Soldier
• America's Army: True Soldiers
• Recruitment tool
• Militainment

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• The MOVES Institute (former developers)
• "War games in a time of war", MSNBC article (July 18, 2004)
• "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[2]
• Official PunkBuster site