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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Ubisoft Signs Deal With U.S. Army 57

Posted by CowboyNeal from the setting-sights-on-success dept.
Pig Hogger writes "The French video game producer Ubisoft has entered an agreement with the U.S. Army to market America's Army-branded video-games. According to the Ferrago story (and this Eurogamer story), '...the full and vast resources of the army will be at Ubisoft's disposal.'"
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Ubisoft Signs Deal With U.S. Army More

Ubisoft Signs Deal With U.S. Army

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  • I'm glad (Score:5, Funny)

    by Oriumpor ( 446718 ) on Friday April 16, 2004 @11:18AM (#8881932) Homepage Journal
    '...the full and vast resources of the army will be at Ubisoft's disposal.'"


    Well it's good to know at least one company will have coffee and cigarettes for all.

  • Joke prompting... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Godeke ( 32895 ) * on Friday April 16, 2004 @11:21AM (#8881970)
    ... but they are all so obvious that I will leave them as an exercise for the reader. Simply combine the following fragments as desired with a few connector words:

    • US Military
    • France
    • Game company with
    • More powerful than
    • Finally a chance
    • Surrender Monkey

  • In other news today... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 16, 2004 @11:24AM (#8882014)
    Acting on newly received intelligence, U.S. Special Operations troops neutralized several cells of a dangerous terrorist group known as Electronic Arts.
    • It appears that while Electronic Arts might have been able to fend them off with their vast arsenal of WW2-era, Desert Storm, and Star Wars Universe technology, it appears that they were unable to mount a successful defense because everybody was camping the fucking planes and helicopters.

      When we attempted to contact a diplomat from EA, his response was, "Those base-camping fucktard fagg0ts. They even parked a fucking tank in our hangar, how the fuck do they expect us to fight back? That's so fucking unfai

  • Ubisoft's first order of business.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Giving soldiers a white flag to get them out of dangerous situations.

  • At the disposal of the French? (Score:3, Funny)

    by tchdab1 ( 164848 ) on Friday April 16, 2004 @11:27AM (#8882057) Homepage
    So will the series be called "Freedom Games"? Que ironie.

  • WOW (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 16, 2004 @11:30AM (#8882097)
    I thought a free game like America's Army wouldn't need such a marketing department.

  • great (Score:5, Funny)

    by Areeves ( 598018 ) on Friday April 16, 2004 @11:47AM (#8882407)
    '...the full and vast resources of the army will be at Ubisoft's disposal.'" Reminds me of a great story, I was working *somewhere* for the gov and they we're testing a handheld device for the marines that would say simple phrases in arabic like "get down on the ground" "freeze!" etc. A bunch of grunts are sitting around in a room messing with these things while the CO is rambling on about how many millions they blew on this thing and how much its going to help, one marine manages to say the following "sir, I've got an M-16 with a huge frikin knife on the end of it, and, well, I'm pretty sure that will be all the translation I need. The CO looks around, shakes his head and dismissed them all. God I love the Mil.
    • Another variation on this anecdote: A recent police academy graduate is on patrol with his training officer. There is an armed robbery nearby and they spot a vehicle and passengers that match the reported getaway car and suspects. They pull the vehicle over and the junior officer uses the PA system to instruct the occupants to put their hands out the windows. Nothing happens. The junior officer repeats the instructions in Spanish. Nothing happens. The training officer tells the junior officer to use the "Un

    • Re:great (Score:2, Insightful)

      by catphile ( 316499 )
      nice attitude. That's exactly why I *loathe* the military. "I have a big gun, so I don't have to try and communicate." Assholes.
    • Why couldn't they just hire the Desert Combat team and install a slimmed down version of BF1942 with DC into the handhelds? They've had Arabic phrases like that since their .6 release!

  • Ubisoft has been putting out some really nice military games already. Ghost Recon, Rainbox Six, Splinter Cell, etc.

    Hopefully with this deal they'll release an Xbox version of America's Army.
  • ALL of the army's resources? Maybe they'll take over Belgium or something.

  • I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Friday April 16, 2004 @02:01PM (#8884646) Journal
    Okay, I'm just trying to understand the motivations here.

    Perhaps the Army is getting money from Ubisoft from foreign sales? If money from foreign sales is treated as icing on the cake, as additional funding, then this makes sense.

    However, ultimately America's Army was built as a recruiting tool -- it's why it got tax dollars to fund production. It's intended to make a big deal out of the glamour of the Army to convince more people to enlist to help stop the shrinking ranks. I'm not sure what having this thing sold in, say, Belgium is supposed to do for America. Perhaps it will help build up the Belgian Army ranks?

    I mean, spending tax dollars to produce a video game wasn't an easy decision with Army folks -- and the game is becoming even less recruiting-tool oriented.
    • You can't forget Propaganda. If the image of the US army is the image that the game portrays it would minimize such embarrassments as the SAS refusing to work with any member of the US army. Or not having the US army have some credibility when they claim bombing their allies was an accident and nto the result of gung ho pilots with a rambo complex.

      The world wide image of the US army and even your allies and soldiers in allied armies is that the US army is a well equip troop of red neck idiots. We liek your

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 )
      I mean, spending tax dollars to produce a video game wasn't an easy decision with Army folks -- and the game is becoming even less recruiting-tool oriented.

      True, but think about it this way :

      First off : America's Army is a good game (I won't say great since to tell you the truth I haven't played it myself.) What the Army succeeded in doing is making a fun game. How many independently funded and developed games fail to simply do that? (True they had millions and millions of dollars to do it, but look at EA

  • Does anyone find this agreement weird considering one of their last titles was Beyond Good and Evil [gamespot.com]?
  • they might declare war on competing developers
  • Ubisoft has announced that their implemented features will implement easily bindable commands for: "Run", "Hide.", "Surrender" and "Collaborate."
  • is that icon for First Person Shooters supposed to be anyways?
  • Ubisoft would be smart to milk this chance for all they can get. I mean, if they develop some awesomely incredible AI and graphics engines for the military, think of the knowledge and techniques they have gained, at no expense to them - and the Military wins by getting more people and possibly more conscripts.. Winning situation.

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