"America's Army" has proven a strong and popular game franchise, and this fall will move from the PC to the console market.
Quick! Name the online video game that has over 5-1/2 million registered users but has never earned a dime. And, while you're pondering, know that the wildly popular massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) "World Of Warcraft" has just half that audience -- 2-plus million subscribers -- and it is considered a mega-hit.
The answer is "America's Army," the game launched on Independence Day, 2002 as both a promotion for the Army and a recruitment tool and which has become successful beyond the wildest dreams of its creators. Because the game is free for the downloading at www.americasarmy.com its success can best be measured not by its non-existent revenues, but by the fact that the game has almost 3-1/2 million active users, attracts nearly 130,000 new users each month and has generated over 18 million downloads to date. It may be free but, as one developer observed, if it were a lousy game, would anybody play?
Perhaps the most significant indication that "America's Army" has been an effective PR device for the Army is the fact that both the Navy and the Air Force have created their own video games in hopes of attracting their fair share of the young gaming audience.
On July 15, the Navy Command will launch "Navy Training Exercise: Strike And Retrieve" as a free Internet download. The single-player game was developed by the Navy Recruiting Command and its advertising agency "to help build interest and awareness of Navy high-tech jobs." Players will need to locate top-secret documents from within a downed reconnaissance plane while battling challenging underwater terrain, deep sea creatures and an opposing force. To secure special codes to help them through the game, players will be directed to the Navy's Web site at www.navy.com.
The Air Force hired Austin-based developer Critical Mass Interactive to create the game "USAF: Air Dominance" to "raise awareness and perpetuate the high-tech image of the Air Force." But, says a CMI spokesperson, the only way to play the game at this time is at an Air Force recruiting office.
But it is the United States Army which has the most ambitious gaming battle plan: To celebrate the game's third anniversary on July 4th, a new update of "America's Army" will be posted on its Web site; this October, publisher Ubisoft will release a console version -- called "America's Army: Rise Of A Soldier" -- for Xbox and PlayStation 2; and a next-generation Version 3, utilizing the Unreal Engine 3, is in the works.
The story behind the development of "America's Army" involves its own type of skirmishes as two factions -- soldiers with a schedule to keep and a bunch of laid-back game developers -- worked together in close quarters, frequently rubbing each other the wrong way.
In 1999, "America's Army" was just a gleam in the eye of Col. Casey Wardynski who had just sold the Army on building a "strategic communications tool" to reach the video games generation. Army recruitment numbers were going south and Wardynski's solution was to sign a five-year agreement with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., bring in civilians who knew something about building games, and go to work.
It wasn't your normal commercial game project, to say the least. According to Michael Zyda, the civilian who first headed up the project, the budget was just $2.5 million a year to deliver the game in 24 months with a development team that grew to as many as 28. Zyda is currently director of the University of Southern California's GamePipe Laboratory.
"America's Army" is a first-person shooter which starts with single-player training that includes, for example, target practice, an obstacle course, parachuting, and medical training. Once the gamer meets certain requirements, he can participate in online missions with other players.
"However, our design and release schedule was much more consistent with that of an MMOG, where you're constantly releasing patches, new content, maps, levels, new features, bug fixes, and optimizations," says Phillip Bossant, the current executive producer and art director. "We've just been in continual release since we debuted."
The greatest challenge, according to Alex Mayberry, the game's original executive producer and now a producer with a top-tier game developer, was dealing with the clash of cultures.
"Imagine all these people in uniforms and crewcuts, and in walks our little group in shorts, flip-flops, earrings, and beards," he says. "In many ways, it's a miracle that the game exists at all, considering all the obstacles we had to go through."
"Working with the Army was quite an experience," says Michael Capps, who hired the original team, was lead designer and programmer, and is now president of Raleigh, NC-based Epic Games, which makes the Unreal Engine. "They are used to dealing with people they can order around, and that didn't go over too well in what was essentially a research environment. Whenever anything went wrong, their reaction was to yell. And if that didn't work, they'd just yell louder. On the developer side, our reaction was to just scratch our heads and say, 'Well, that didn't work,' and then to try something different."
"Everybody really wanted to succeed and, as a result, we shipped the original game right on time -- to the day," says Capps. "I've never heard of any other game that's done that ... and we did it with a bunch of rookies."
But not all was copasetic between the Army and Navy where there was reportedly considerable friction over how well the game had done. And so, when its five-year agreement with the Navy ended, the Army chose to pull its development team out of the Naval Postgraduate School and move it to nearby Fort Ord. In doing so, the Army brought in new management and it wasn't long before the original team members began handing in their resignations.
"Some Army people had begun to take more of a hands-on approach, demanding that more be done at a faster pace," recalls Lt. Col. (Ret.) George Juntiff, who had acted as the liaison between the Army and the game developers. "Leadership 101 teaches you to let people who know what they're doing do what they do best. That had been one of the secrets of the game's success, but that was no longer happening."
Col. Wardynski recalls the events of Spring 2004 somewhat differently, describing the transition as "a leadership challenge" in which the team "went through some teething pains."
Phillip Bossant describes the current revised team's challenges as keeping "America's Army" timely and state-of-the-art.
"In the next week or so we'll be coming out with the latest iteration of the game," he says, "which will be called something like 'America's Army: Special Forces Direct Action.' I'm not allowed to say more, other than that we've had the time to optimize everything."
The plan is to slowly phase out development work on what is now version 2 of the game, release the "America's Army" editor to the public so that creative gamers can build their own maps, and then begin work on version 3, which will be based on Epic Games' next-generation Unreal 3 Engine, which is still in development. Bossant estimates that won't be before the end of 2006.
"This is an ongoing product," he adds, "which is one of the dissimilarities between our game and standard commercial games. For the most part, people buy a title, enjoy it for a short while, and then stop playing it. As long as the Army considers 'America's Army' a valuable tool, our intent is to keep the game fresh and leading edge."
The Army considers "America's Army" to be such a valuable tool that it wants to expand its reach beyond the PC to console platforms.
"That's always been part of our long-range plan," says Col. Wardynski.
The Army asked its marketing firm, Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based Ignited Minds, to approach the 10 top game publishers to determine which wanted to develop and publish console versions "under the Army's control." Three showed some interest and French-owned Ubisoft was selected because of its reputation for such military-style games as the Tom Clancy series developed by its Red Storm Entertainment division.
This October, Ubisoft will unveil both an Xbox and a PlayStation 2 version -- to be called "America's Army: Rise Of A Soldier" -- with subsequent games expected to be developed, including cell phone and next-gen versions for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, according to Col. Wardynski.
The MSRP of the games hasn't yet been determined but they won't be free. Critics have questioned whether the Army will profit from the agreement with Ubisoft, and Col. Wardynski cites the National Defense Authorization Act of 2005 in which the Armed Services are authorized to "recoup the cost of their trademarking activities," he explains. "We are hoping that the royalties from Ubisoft will offset the cost of our marketing efforts, the cost of patenting, and all the legal fees."
Wardynski describes the 10-year license with Ubisoft as one in which the Army retains full control over the marketing, public relations and content of the game.
"Ubisoft will have to make sure that the Army's values are present and we will review all games for their accuracy," says Wardynski.
In fact, maintaining accuracy and making certain "America's Army" doesn't trivialize the Army's role has been a priority from day one of development.
"To pump up the gameplay, the developers frequently wanted to include action that just wasn't appropriate for a game that depends on realism," explains Lt. Col. Juntiff. "It was my job to say that, no, the Army doesn't do it that way."
For example, the developers first armed the on-screen soldiers with pistols, but Juntiff had to explain that the typical infantryman carries a rifle, a bayonet, perhaps some grenades, but rarely a pistol.
"In one particular level, the mission was to maneuver your convoy to the other side of a bridge," says Juntiff. "The original plan was to first have the soldiers clear a minefield. I had to say that the Army doesn't send soldiers into the middle of a firefight to clear a minefield."
While the current team of 15 designers gets inspiration from current events in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bossant, their executive producer, says the game is never specific about the geographic locations of its missions.
"That's not because we are concerned about security, since all the information in our game is already out there," he says. "It's just not our goal to mirror the news. We are artists and we are inspired by what we see in the news, but we're not trying to reflect it."
Besides, he adds, there is sufficient opportunity for the game's military advisors to catch any security slips if the designers go too far.
"At the beginning, there were concerns that our game could be used to train terrorists," Bossant notes. "We get that question a lot. But there's nothing in 'America's Army' that isn't public knowledge already."
Without a doubt, "America's Army" has been a tremendous success with gamers. The three-year-old shooter is rarely out of the list of Top 10 online games, along with such titles as "Half-Life," "Half-Life 2," and "Unreal Tournament 2004." Meaning that at any given time, at least 4,000 gamers are online playing it. Less clear, however, is how successful it's been at boosting Army recruiting figures. Bossant admits that it's very difficult to determine how many enlistees were motivated by their video gaming experiences.
"What we need is a big red button in the game that says: 'Press here to join NOW!' jokes Bossant. "Hmmm, maybe in version 3."
By Paul Hyman
Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
