[Ekco]

Originally Posted by shovelquest [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

the new days, "make video games that will recruit soldiers."

US army used to make straight up bangers

America's Army 2002
Full Spectrum Warrior 2004

"America's Army was a series of first-person shooter video games developed and published by the U.S. Army, intended to inform, educate, and recruit prospective soldiers. Launched in 2002, the game was branded as a strategic communication device designed to allow Americans to virtually explore the Army at their own pace, and allowed them to determine whether becoming a soldier fits their interests and abilities. America's Army represents the first large-scale use of game technology by the U.S. government as a platform for strategic communication and recruitment, and the first use of game technology in support of U.S. Army recruiting."

Full Spectrum was nuts also because you could get into the actual "training" part of the game via a KONAMI code iirc

"At the time, there was a great deal of interest in leveraging the stability, low cost and computational/rendering power of the new generation of game consoles, chiefly Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox, for training applications. Legal restrictions on the PlayStation (using the platform for a military purpose) combined with the default Xbox configuration "persistence" (i.e. missions recorded on the embedded hard drive for after-action review) led to the final selection of the Xbox platform for development.

A commercial release of the game was required for Xbox platform access. The team, however, quickly concluded that a viable entertainment title might differ from a valid training tool. The exaggerated physics of entertainment software titles, it was believed, could produce a negative training effect in the Soldier audience. Accordingly, the team developed two versions of the game. The Army version was accessible through a static unlock code; the entertainment version played normally."