ORIGIN
The first America’s Army was published back in 2002, and has since then been known to be a recruitment tool for the US Army, considered to be a “cost effective recruitment tool” and the first way the Army used growing technology to help recruit. They were also the first to create a virtual reality experience, with a traveling tent called the Virtual Army Experience, and eventually creating a comic series to help the series have a story. Along with the original game, the game could be found with a toy similar to a GI Joe, called Real Heroes. They were action figures that would be characters in the game you could read about.
The game isn’t only a recruitment tool but still used to training till this day, along with other technologies the Army has developed. After searching, there is no definitive data that states how many people joined the army due to this game besides quotes of teens who played it saying that it peaked their interests. The idea behind the creation of the game, recruit young kids who knew how to work technology made sense. The Army had new tech coming out all the time, and young minds were growing up with the internet and were easily adaptable to these new technologies
METHODS
The games are developed using the Unreal Engine which many games have used and still use. It is a tactical shooter, with rounds with no re-spawns and a set objective. All the weapons and equipment in game are all used by the US Military giving players an idea of what they would use if they joined. There is a training mission where the player runs through the course similar to a boot camp, getting yelled at by a drill instructor with belittling comments while learning the controls. Every loading screen of the game is where the real “recruitment” comes into play. While loading into a match, the screen will play a different video that highlights the US Army, ranging from a video describing how they use clay-mores and how much fun it is, to a speed shooting course with people running around shooting guns and moving through obstacles, or just the base trailers the Army shows on TV. Loading Screens have links to how to check out more videos if you are interested, and don’t immediately end the screen if the game is done loading to try and get people to watch the whole videos.
The game series is considered a success by the Army, since they are still updating the most recent game, and the games together have 13 million registered users and 260 million hours between them. Statistics are hard to find on the games player base due to the fact that not all the games were on Steam. The only one still on the platform is the most recent one, America’s Army: Proving Grounds which released in 2013. The player base for the game is small compared to other titles in the tactical shooter genre, when Proving Grounds released its peak player base on steam was about 3000, compared to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which released a year before has a peak player base of about 850,000 with 500,000 regular concurrent players.
