"It's an ambush, with gunmen on both sides of the road.
Soldiers on top of the five-ton trucks return fire with mounted machine guns.
The clatter is deafening. The truck beds fill up with hot,
bouncing, jingling brass shell casings …"
"This isn't a real ambush, and the convoy isn't in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It's in Guernsey, Wyo., north of Cheyenne.
The attack was staged by the U.S. Army for the benefit of about 35 computer
programmers who work on the government-sponsored video game called America's Army.
The game's primary mission is to recruit: to persuade the millions of young people
who play it on their home computers to go from the virtual soldiers to real ones….
Since it was released on July 4, 2002, America's Army has signed up 4.6 million registered players,
and it adds 100,000 new ones every month."
Sources do not have to be read aloud.
Source: Time, Feb.28, 2005 "The Army's Killer App" by Lev Grossman |
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"30% of Americans ages 16 to 24 say that some of what
they know about the Army comes from the game America's Army…
You can click a button in the game menu and go straight
to an Army recruiting website…".
"We have a death animation. We don't sugarcoat it."
He stops and corrects himself. "It's not real; it's simulated.
But we're simulating reality. But it has to be fun too, right?
Bottom line, it's gotta be fun … If it's not fun, you don't have a game."
Source: Time, Feb. 28, 2005 "The Army's Killer App" by Lev Grossman |
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