Online Army video game targeting potential recruits

WASHINGTON – The Army’s flagging recruitment numbers are serious business, so Army officials increasingly are turning to a game for help.

It is an online, multiplayer video game they believe will lure teens into Army culture, hoping to educate them about the military and spark interest in volunteering to serve.

The game, dubbed “America’s Army,” employs a realistic approach to give players a sense of what it’s like to join the Army, train to use weapons and work with others on missions. Players progress through the game in a variety of ways, learning how to jointly accomplish military tasks while using different skills, such as fighting as an infantryman or saving lives as a medic.

First-time visitors go through weapons training on the game Web site and learn how to jump from airplanes. They are punished for “criminal” mistakes – such as shooting the drill instructor – by doing time at Fort Leavenworth’s prison. Then players join others from around the country on virtual missions, helping one another move through lifelike scenarios.

“We want kids to come into the Army and feel like they’ve already been there,” said Col. Casey Wardynski, of the Army’s office of economic and manpower analysis, who had the idea. “A game is like a team effort, and the Army is very much a team effort. By playing an online, multiplayer game, you can get the feel of being in the Army.”

Wardynski began developing the game after a recruiting crisis in 1999, when Army officials were looking for a way to reach out to potential recruits with minimal cost. Wardynski wanted an economical way to counter pop-culture images of the military with a no-nonsense approach to being a soldier. The game, he decided, would provide a gateway to information and entertainment, targeting boys 14 and older.

With many potential recruits put off by images of basic training and drill sergeants, Wardynski said, the game tries to break down those barriers.

“It’s designed to give them an inside view on the very fundamentals of being a soldier, and it’s also designed to give them a sense of self-efficacy, that they can do it,” Wardynski said.

Since the game’s 2002 launch, nearly 5.4 million users have registered on the site and more than 2 million have passed basic training in the latest version.