Your country needs YOU – and your XBox

  Buried deep inside a feature about how the US Army is using a videogame to lure new recruits were some incredible ‘facts’. America’s Army is a free, realistic first-person shoot-em-up with online multiplayer capability designed by some of the world’s hottest games designers. What struck me was that for a mere $1.5 million a year to support the game the US Government says 28 per cent of players clicked through to the US Army’s recruitment site – and about 40 per cent of new US Army recruits in 2005 had played the game before signing up. Not a bad return for your money to attract Generation Y to plug the shortfall in the 80,000 new recruits it needs each year. Apart from the (PC compatible) online version the game is also now available for mobile phones, the XBox - and, for us GenerationXers a ‘coin-operated arcade machine’. 

~ by Stephen Walker on November 22 2007.