‘AA3’ recruits players into a detailed, full-on land war - Military Video Games, computer games, games, gaming - Navy Times

‘AA3’ recruits players into a detailed, full-on land war

The real Army may still be fighting in counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its virtual counterpart has moved onto a full-scale war against a new enemy in “America’s Army 3,” the latest version of the Army’s officially authorized first-person shooter.

The fictional adversary is a “peer competitor,” said Col. Casey Wardynski, the Army’s primary consultant for the video game, which means that players are pitted against another country’s army for conventional force-on-force infantry battles. Earlier versions of “AA” included insurgent enemies, but this time the Army wanted a peer enemy in the game to showcase more of what soldiers train for.

“In a typical game you might play off the shelf, there’s not much of a role for a guy who’s a cryptographer or an electronic warfare guy. Now, having one of those guys in your team is important,” Wardynski said. “The idea is to show kids, what are occupational groups I could go into in the Army?”

Introduced in 2002 as a recruiting tool to get the Army brand on a product that would attract young boys like an electromagnet — a free, highly authentic first-person shooter — “America’s Army” takes players through basic training, then infantry instruction and eventually into combat.

The major land war setting means players in “AA3” can use bomb disposal robots, jam their enemies’ communications — seriously, they can block team-chat for other players — use unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and fire artillery barrages.

But for all the destruction you can rain on your opponents, everybody remains the good guys.

Although players on both teams see their enemies as bad guys, each side plays as the U.S. Army, with teammates wearing U.S. uniforms and using American gear. This way the game can bring each player through the same basic training — modeled on Fort Jackson, S.C. — and everyone has the same damage system and the same honor code.

Integrity is a big part of “America’s Army 3,” Wardynski said, because the Army wants to emphasize its honor code for young players curious about enlisting. “AA3” even gives players the opportunity to cheat, he said, just to show what the consequences are.

“We make the game so that people can cheat — not so that they will cheat, but in real life you can cheat. But unlike cheating in normal games, where I can become invincible or get unlimited power, or whatever, in medic training [for example] you can nudge your buddy and ask him for an answer to a question. If you get the answer, the computer knows that, so we record that. Downstream, when you’re supposed to be using that skill to render aid to a buddy, you’re going to find out you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know, when you cheat, if the corner you cut is going to catch up to you.”

Plus, the honor code rules keep players from shooting up their squadmates, a familiar problem in big online multiplayer environments.

Wardynski also said the game focuses on details that might seem prosaic to soldiers, but that are very important for the young players the Army wants to consider enlisting.

“We want to represent whatever’s in theater and show what it’s like for food — you stand in a chow line and get Skittles, or get the sandwich the Army has figured out how to make last for weeks. They need to know it’s not like the movies, where all they get is their own can of eggs. This is the stuff people want to know about the Army,” Wardynski said. “It’s just like on the space shuttle — people want to know, ‘Do you get private time? How do you go to the bathroom up there?’ We try to provide that in a high level of detail so they know.”

But players of “America’s Army 3” won’t be able to walk away from the game and have enough training to pick up an M4 carbine or a Javelin anti-tank rocket, Wardynski said.

“If we’re showing technologies, we’re trying to just give them the gist.”

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“America’s Army 3,” for Windows, is available free online.