America's Army - Development, Impact Analyzed

Professor writes "The MOVES Institute's America's Army team has placed a booklet on the game's development and impact (PDF link) onto the web." The MOVES Institute is part of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and their page notes this booklet was "...developed for the America's Army exhibit [part of the Bang The Machine exhibition] at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Art Center... [and] tells you all you wanted to know about the philosophy, history, and implementation of the MOVES Institute's hit game." We've previously covered the reported recruiting success of America's Army.

Re:Winner of

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Better link here [movesinstitute.org]. Plain text, and even links to the penny arcade showing it.

Re:I don't know about you...

[Anonymous Coward]

In a study by the US Army's advertising agency, America's Army is the MOST COST-EFFECTIVE TOOL EVER for strategic communications. It outranks ALL advertising expenditures IN TOTAL in visibility and communication with America about the Army. The full cost, development and operations of the game, is less than the full cost of a single Superbowl commercial. The US Army believes it saves it some $700M to $4B PER YEAR in advertising, retention, and other costs. America's Army costs $2.5M per year in development and $1.5M per year in operations, a very spartan effort understanding the now measurable payback and spartan compared to the development and operation of other similar games. America's Army is the third most played online game almost continually as measured by GameSpy.

Re:Evil...

[__aawwih8715]

I'm in the army, i don't know what you're talking about. All the BRM (basic rifle marksmanship) stuff in the game is _exactly_ how i learned to fire a rifle.

Breath control, trigger squeeze, steady aim, all that stuff.

The army is what you make of it. if you're shitbag, you'll be treated like one and you can't quit.

I've received somewhere near $250k in training for free. I love my job. I work on apache helicopters every day, what do you do?