Army Sets Up Videogame Studio

Ralph Lee writes "Is it time to enlist? Wired News is reporting that the US Army has set up a video game studio to model training and recruit soldiers on the heels of the successful America's Army title: 'The America's Army Government Applications office was quietly opened in January in Cary, North Carolina, with a team of 15 video-game creators, simulation specialists and ex-Army personnel. Many of the studio's employees come from local video-game companies like Interactive Magic, Timeline, Vertis, SouthPeak Interactive, Vicious Cycle Software and Red Storm Entertainment.'" It's also noted that "the office is working with a team of 24 video-game creators in Monterey, California, on the latest edition to its main franchise, America's Army: Overmatch, which will be released in March 2005."

Re:Amazing that!

[simoniker]

To be fair, America's Army wasn't actually built by the, uhh, Army - but by a team headed out of the Naval Postgrad School in Monterey, as referenced in the article. Plus, the Army has been using external contractors such as There Inc. and Pandemic for much of their training-related development, so in some ways, it _is_ interesting that they'd set up a dev studio of their own.

Sarcasm is also always welcome on Slashdot, of course.

Re:Am I alone...?

[ooby]

propoganda is political advertising [wikipedia.org]. A message such as 'Serve your country' is propoganda. As are your former examples. With that said, I doubt that America's Army is promoting joining the military much more than Counterstrike or Battlefield 1942 are. First person shooters have been around for over 10 years and if they inadvertantly promoted enlistment, as the poster to which you replied suggests, the military would probably not be in such a need of soldiers as they currently are.