America's Army

The Michigan Army National Guard has revealed theyre using games - including golf, tennis and the newly-launched Halo: Reach - as well as football as part of a new project to reach potential recruits.

Fudzilla: If taxpayers weren't rejoicing enough the last time around we've heard where their money trickled in, then there's more to come as America's Army Online got a new all-expenses-paid-by-you online graphic novel. The novel has apparently been thoroughly inspected by the Army to provide maximum authenticity, to the point where experts were even checking whether uniform pockets were drawn wrong. Tough and daunting task that one.

America's Army, the game that makes army recruiting FUN, cost taxpayers a pretty penny. How much you ask? $32.8 million. That's what the cost of the series has been to date (the game launched in 2001). It was originally planned to be a five-year long project with a total operating budget of $7.0 million. Here's the cost breakdown...

The US Army has announced its PC shooter, America's Army, is the most-downloaded war game, IncGamers report.

Since 2002, Epic's Unreal Engine 2 has served as the foundation for America's Army. To take advantage of leap-ahead capabilities afforded by Epic's newest engine, the Army has been developing its next generation version of America's Army on the Unreal Engine 3 since 2005. While the game has no release date yet, a beta is tentatively scheduled for this winter.

Fox News weighs in on America's Army, the video game... About five years too late and Sarcasticgamer.com calls them on it. From the article: What I do care about is how horribly misinformed and uninformed these professional journalists are about the fastest growing and highest grossing form of entertainment in the world. At what point are news organizations going to catch on and stop assigning the guy who stands in hurricanes to talk about how the wind is blowing really hard, to cover a story about gaming?

A report issued yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union criticizes US miltary recruitment practices, including the use of the popular America's Army game franchise as a tool to attract potential recruits.

Various commentators have accused Generation Y, those born after 1981, of being disrespectful, constantly distracted, unable to live without a mobile phone, contemptuous of authority, cynical and precocious. A more unlikely batch of soldiers just couldn't be imagined. But this much-maligned generation is precisely the target that the US and Australian defence forces are homing in on in their efforts to keep the 'war on terror' well manned. And their key recruitment strategy? The humble video game. The Age's Fran Molloy looks at the disturbing link between gaming and the military in its efforts to use video games as a propaganda tool to lure Generation Y.