For years, America's Army, a game developed by the U.S. military, has been a powerful tool for attracting "targeted talent." The series of games that has attracted countless players to join the army is coming to an end in its 20th year of release.
On Monday, local time, after eight years of operation, the first-person shooter "America's Army: Proving Grounds" announced in an announcement at the official forum that it would stop operating in May this year, officially ending the development of the "American Army" series of games in the past 20 years.
Packaging for the original U.S. Army game
The U.S. Army: Proving Ground is played on PC and PS4, and the mall homepages of Steam and PSN are also operating normally. After May 5 this year, the online server and marketplace homepage will be closed, but players who have already downloaded the game can still experience the offline version of the game.
"Free" does not mean "Buddhist"
U.S. Army: Proving Ground is free-to-play, and players don't need Krypton gold. However, the seemingly Buddhist game planning has a "well-known" landing goal - recruiting new recruits to join the US military.
In 1999, the U.S. Army hit a 30-year low in new recruits. In order to "create glory again", the US Congress has invested a budget of 2.2 billion US dollars a year to recruit new blood, and the US Army is one of the programs used by the US military to improve its own image, mainly targeting the vast number of young people in the United States.
In July 2002, the U.S. Army series released its first generation of games on PC, which received unexpected praise. The original development budget of "U.S. Army" was about $7 million, which was originally expected to be implemented until 2007, but the U.S. military believed that the effect of recruiting through games was very good, so it invested more time and budget in the follow-up and continued to develop sequels and other related products. When the game launched its second generation, the production team even established a cooperation with the well-known French game manufacturer Ubisoft in game development.
U.S. military participated in the E3 exhibition in 2006 to promote the "U.S. Army"
Currently, on the homepage of the U.S. Army website, if a user clicks on the image of "THIS TEAM IS READY FOR ANYTHING," they will hyperlink to the U.S. military recruitment website.
Canadian punk rock band Propagandhi wrote a song called Die Jugend Marschiert in 2005 to satirize the game "U.S. Army", and even made a fake "U.S. Army" official website with audio and lyrics for the song. The site is still accessible today.
Game recruiting is really effective and really harmful
In 2005, Colonel Casey Wardynski, who oversees the development and revision of the U.S. Army game, said that about 20 percent of West Point recruits had played U.S. Army, and about 20-40 percent of the recruits had played the game that year.
Because of the game's effectiveness as a medium, the U.S. Army has won a number of awards in the United States. However, the voice of criticism of it has never stopped.
Opponents argue that U.S. Army downplays many of the negative impacts that war can have on people and soldiers, such as the huge risks and psychological problems of military life. The unavoidable killings in the game cast doubt on whether they affect teenage values, and understated scenes of bloody violence may also reduce perceptions of the brutality of war. In addition, some people believe that this game is glorifying the us military activities around the world.
The first U.S. Army came online, just before the Iraq War, just a year after the war in Afghanistan. The game's main target group is potential recruits, in order to help them understand whether being a soldier is in line with their interests and abilities.
The U.S. Army: Proving Ground, which was officially launched in August 2013, is about to "converge" a lot. The game establishes a user-friendly "Normal Mode" that guides players through basic tasks performed by soldiers in routine daily operations, as well as a "Hard-of-The-Limit Mode" that allows players to keep themselves safe. Its developers told polygon in 2013 that the game would return to its original intentions, focusing on teamwork and completing goals and tasks, rather than relying on the number of kills or killstreaks to earn achievement rewards.
According to Steam Charts, the average number of daily online players for U.S. Army: Proving Ground was less than 200 in June 2021, rising to around 220 in January this year. The last time the average number of players per day exceeded 1,000 was in June 2017.