America's Army is a multiplayer first-person shooter computer game series. It can be played using Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. It is the official game of the United States Army. The first version was free. It came out on July 4, 2002. It has been updated many times since then. The second important release was America's Army: Special Forces in November 2003. America's Army was made by the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School. It is based on the Unreal engine.
Overview
America's Army is a tactical shooter. The Boston Globe called it a "serious game", "part of a new wave of computer simulations that provide entertaining lessons about real-world activities". According to the game's website, America's Army "provides civilians with an inside perspective and a virtual role in today's premier land force: the U.S. Army. The game is designed for verisimilitude and to provide an accurate portrayal of Soldier experiences across a number of occupations. In the game, players will explore progressive individual and collective training events within the game. Once they successfully completed these events they will advance to multiplayer operations in small units."
On February 20, 2005 there were 4.6 million registered players, and 2.7 million of them had finished basic training. Also, there were more than 15,000 servers being used, and 1.3 million rounds being played each day. The game has been changed a lot. This keeps people interested in the game. It can be found as a free download on the Internet or on a CD-ROM at recruiting centers around the United States.
History
In 1999, Lieutenant Colonel E. Casey Wardynski, a professor at the U.S Military Academy at West Point decided to tell the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Military Manpower about his idea for an online computer game. His basic idea eventually became America's Army. In the same year, fewer people were joining the army. . Congress decided to use "aggressive, innovative experiments" including America's Army to get more people to join the Army.
The first release was July 4, 2002, and other changes (called patches) were added. On November 6, 2003, version 2.0 of America's Army: Special Forces was made. (Go here for more information about the different version). The Army is spending about USD$3 million a year to make more versions of the game.
Another AA version called America's Army: Rise of a Soldier is available on Playstation 2 and Xbox. This version was developed by UbiSoft.
Since America's Army was created, people have complained about its purpose. People have argued about the Army using its money to make a game. They are also worried about how this game will change people's lives.
Gameplay
In America's Army there are teams of soldiers fighting in a war. The person who is playing controls a soldier of the US Army from the character's eyes. This is called first person. Players fight as either the US Army or Indigenous forces ("IF"). They fight against a team called "OPFOR" (Army lingo for "Opposing Forces"). There are different kinds of OPFORs called insurgents, enemy forces or terrorists.
US/OPFOR Transformation for Teams
One of America's Army'''s different features is the way the enemies are. The players are split into two different teams. There is usually an assault group and a defense group. The assault loses the round if the time limit runs out, which is usually ten minutes.
The players on each team see themselves as American soldiers with American weapons, such as the M16A2. Their opponents look like non-uniformed people with Eastern bloc weapons, like the AK-47 (the counterpart of the M16A2 in the game). In training maps the only distinguishing features are the players' uniforms. The development team did this to make the game realistic for players on both sides. They allowed everyone to play on the side of the American forces. They also avoided the problem of asking players to kill American soldiers.
On the Special Forces maps, players can also play as non-uniformed people with Eastern bloc weapons (known as Indigenous forces ("IF") in the game), but be on the same team as regular army forces.
This is confusing to many players because when they pick up an enemy weapon, it works differently than the US version. An AK-47 removed from a fallen opponent is fully automatic, more powerful, but less accurate than his M16. But when his opponent had it, to him it was an M16. The important thing is that each weapon behaves as the owner sees it. It transforms when it is picked up. If people pay a lot of attention might notice that the enemies weapons behave wrong, but it is hard to notice.
