America's Army - Development, Impact Analyzed 56
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.
Some "pacifists" are just being trendy (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind that some "pacifists" are just kids trying to be trendy, be fashionably rebellious, etc. They tend to over do it.
Evil... (Score:4, Interesting)
Recently, we were approached by an army recruiter asking us if we had spare computers, network hardware, and space we would be willing to "donate" for free to him. He wanted to attract kids to the army by setting up a free network gaming environment.
While the game might be fun, this is quite frankly evil. The army recruiter was, in fact, under orders "from above" to find a place and acquire free equipment and time in order to use the game to attract otherwise uninterested people to the army.
My viewpoint is simple; if you want to join the military, join it. If you don't want to join, there's probably a reason for that. You don't want to die, you don't like being told to do things you don't agree with, you don't like being yelled at and fed crap... any number of reasons. Using a game to make it look glamorous is just another way of lying to kids in order to get them to join the military under false pretenses. This is nothing new; don't get me wrong. It's just slimy.