Is America's Army a Recruiting Tool?

BN: The game is developed using taxpayer money. Why are gamers not paying for it so taxpayers get a return on investment? Many other games in the genre cost $30 to $40. Why is the U.S. Army giving it away for free?

Maj. Wilson: It really sounds like these people aren't aware that there are other ways the Army spends money informing folks. For example, there's the goarmy.com Web site. That's a tool. There's arena football, NASCAR, and the Go Army commercials. The Army still has its authority and responsibility to take it's message to the public to inform young Americans of the benefits of service in the U.S. Army. This is just one of the ways they do that.

BN: My feeling is that one of the reasons people were concerned is that it's like some form of government propaganda.

Maj. Wilson: So the issue is people are leery of the government doing this? Well, let's just look at the alternative of not building an ample volunteer force. The draft, and that's not an option.

BN: Do you think the Army has an inherent advantage over developers of other "Army" games?

Maj. Wilson: Rather than learning vicariously through photographs what its really like to model, say an obstacle course, we sent our developers down to Fort Benning, Georgia, we threw them in BDUs and let them crawl through mud. And I think that makes a difference in what you see in the game. It's not enough to look at photographs or talk to somebody who's been in the Army. It's also about access. Everything you see in the game has been rigorously reviewed by subject matter experts.

For example, the medical training within the game. That was reviewed by the folks that manage medical training. What you see in the basic marksmanship course was vetted by the infantry school. I think it makes all the difference in the world. I mean, if you want somebody to build you a house, do you want somebody who read a few books on architecture, or do you want an architect.

BN: Now I think a major issue for most of our readers was a post within the America's Army forums -- apparently from one of the project managers -- that said, "We will find you, we will find your friends," in response to alleged cheating. A lot of people seemed to have taken issue with that particular post. Was that overboard, or what would really happen if somebody cheats in this game?

Maj. Wilson: Yes. That was not an official response on the part of that particular development team or the Army itself. In fact, we go to great lengths to ensure we maintain the privacy of all our users. As you know, it's hard to develop an RPG game without some information.

The information we collect is an ambiguous name and an e-mail address - we don't ban services like Hotmail, MSN or Gmail, etc. The rest of the data is just essential to the game itself like how many times you play a level, what's your favorite classes (in the game), the last time you played, important gameplay stats. We don't collect geographic locations or anything like that because frankly there's no value to it.

BN: But it was an actual response from a team member.

Maj. Wilson: Again, it wasn't an official response. It was wrong.

BN: Thanks for your time and helping to clear the air on the Army's position regarding the game.

Maj. Wilson: Thank you for the opportunity.