The Army's Killer App

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Realism is why the programmers, many notably plumper and longer-haired than regulation soldiers, have come to Guernsey. The Army releases updates and expansions for America's Army three or four times a year, and to keep the programmers on point it holds events like these--they're known internally as green-ups--every few months. Over the course of three days, they eat MREs (the consensus: chili macaroni good, black bean and rice burrito very very bad), ride in Black Hawks ("That feeling has to be there," Bossant says. "We need that zoom!") and wander around a frozen meadow in the dark wearing night-vision goggles. One of the game designers noticed that the goggles throw off less green light than he expected. That will be reflected in the next version of the game. They drink $1.75 Coors at the All-Ranks Club and climb in and out of the backs of trucks ("It took four people to hoist me in, and I still pulled a muscle," said one ruefully). Then there's that mock ambush. "I wanted them to be shocked," says Major Randy Zeegers, a tall, poster-perfect Green Beret who functions as a liaison between the Army and the designers. "They'll take that and put it in the game."

There's another key difference between America's Army and other games. Unlike with, say, Halo 2 or Doom 3, it's a relatively small step from virtual combat to the real thing. You can click a button in the game menu and go straight to an Army recruiting website. Theoretically, the Army can even track your performance in the game and use the information it harvests to evaluate your potential as a soldier. "That's part of the plan, but we haven't done it yet," says Wardynski. "Ultimately, if a kid comes to the Army and signs up, the recruiter could say, 'Have you ever played America's Army?'And with that you could see how they did in the game. Say they've done really well with the medical stuff--are you sure they don't want to be a medic? Of course, most of the kids want to be Green Berets."

Is it fair to let young people think they can learn about the realities of armed combat from a video game? Right now America's Army is available only on computers, but this summer it will be out for gaming consoles like Xbox and PlayStation 2, which reach a broader, more recreational audience. No question, the programmers are doing their best to make as accurate a representation as they can, within the limits of the medium. But in the fog of virtual war the lines between education, entertainment and propaganda can get pretty blurry. After I took part in a heated session on a combat simulator, dodging RPGs and blasting away at street fighters in a nameless desert city, Major Zeegers asked me, "So, is killing Afghans fun?" It was hard to tell whether he was joking.

Colonel Wardynski is quick to point out that in games generally, when you die, you magically come back to life right away. Not in America's Army, he says. "In our game, there are penalties. In our game, if you're wounded or killed, you're out till the game starts over. The level of casualties your team incurs or inflicts on noncombatants--all those things come home as bad things to do. We don't want them to think it's Rambo."