Talk:America's Army/Archive 11

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Archive 11

OPFOR vs. Enemy

I modified the article to use the correct terminology of enemy as opposed to OPFOR. I left one instance, noting that OPFOR was used to designated the opposing team in training maps; the M.I.L.E.S. maps.

I disagree with this, OPFOR stands for opposing forces in this game and is a generic term for the opposing team no matter what map. Look at the opposing team's global chat sometime, it will say [OPFOR] in front of their name.

I play AA and the term enemy isn't used. It is always OPFOR.

This is the greatest part of the game, and in my POV the most politically realistic part of it. When you play, the opposing forces always look like bad guys! Change sides, and the other side looks like... the bad guys again! Real World - Now the Iranians are the bad guys. Three years ago it was some of the Iraquis. Ten years ago it was all of them, and twenty years ago, The Iranians again! Twenty five years ago the Iranians were our good friends! Go figure. Egmason 12:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know which version you're playing, but OpFor was recently (either in 2.6 or 2.7) removed from 90% of the maps and replaced with Enemy. As the first person in this discussion said, OpFor is now only used for the opposing team in MILES maps; Enemy is used in all other cases. I am, however, unsure of whether the use of OpFor and Enemy is determined by the map itself or the game type that the map is running as, i.e. Live Fire or MILES. This is an option that can be selected server-side, which is why some MOUT McKenna maps, which is meant to be a MILES simulation, can be played as Live Fire. --Danielizzat 16:35, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

AA used 'Enemy' and not 'OpFor' for the purpose of MILES maps and live fire maps difference. in reality, opfor is the proper term to identify opposing forces. ADouBTor 12:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Grammar

Is this correct?

It should be "America's Army has been developed since 2000 and still changes through add-ons and patches" since development is ongoing. I would prefer something like "Development began in 2000 and continues through the release of numerous/regular add-ons and patches". But that's just me. Slinky Puppet 13:57, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Questions

"shortly after computer-based wargames were permitted on government computers for U.S. Marines" 

Does this mean some computers were set aside for marine training or that marines could install games on their computers?

"The Department of Defense raised its spending for recruitment to more than US$2.2Bn" 

Compared to what? Is that a 10% increase or 0.001%?

"After the game proved successful, the project was withdrawn from the Naval Postgraduate School due to allegations of mismanagement[1] in March 2004" 

Is it relevant that the game had proven successfull at the time the project was withdrawn? Was the project withdrawn in March 1994 or was that when the allegations were made (not always the same)? Slinky Puppet 14:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Serious Bias

The links to other games at the bottom frames AA in a very negative light, by placing it alongside white supremacist games. It then shows 'peacemaker' games, with the implication that they are better? What do these games have to do with AA at all? This needs to be changed. 172.188.138.112 14:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• In fact, pretty much the entire article is written from an overall negative standpoint. This is a ridiculously horrible attempt at an informative, unbiased article. 68.79.203.1 18:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I dnt think this article meets NPOV standards and should be marked as such. 172.216.7.123 12:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I've gone through and remove a link to an article that had false information about the game system requirements, the language filter and other blatently wrong content. I've also gone through and added a few citations and changed the caption on one of the pictures. While I agree that it is a bit of a strech to toss AAO in with white supremacist games, both are intended for recruitment. It may be distasteful to leave the other references in there, but perhaps not completely unfounded. If there is anything else that needs work just let me know and I'll try and correct the errors.--Saintlink 08:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm reading this article in August of 2007 and was still surprised as the propagandistically negative tone. I came here to freakin' read about the game, not to hear these stupid pacifists' take on the game. 76.27.126.69

Linux and Mac discontinued

The mac and linux version have been discontinued, article modified to show that.

Why did they discontinue the mac and linux versions (I would assume due to low popularity; i.e. not worth it any more)?63.152.13.173 11:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I for I research

A poll by I for I Research said that 30 percent of young people who had a positive view of the military said that they had developed that view by playing the game.

A google search for "I for I research" finds this text repeated word for word on several websites, none of which cite a source (even SourceWatch). Does I for I Research actually exist?

An exact search on Google shows this article as one of about five sites mentioning it. It most obviously does not exist. Removing until someone can prove it does. 207.67.145.204 00:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

-It sounds like some vandal was trying to do a play on words: I for I = "an eye for an eye"

Abbreviations and whatnot

Hey I have an idea let's always use things like "U.S." (instead of, you know, United States) in the very beginning of an article...because we want to give the reader as little information as possible and abbreviations are the perfect way of accomplishing this. Love to all, Paul 04:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Right. It's not like the country this game was made for is an important detail. And using an abbreviation instead of a short name would REALLY cut down on useless info. 207.67.145.204 00:10, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to comment on the recent update made to this article. 2.7:Steamroller is a SITREP (situation report, i.e, a news update) posted on the America's Army website, talking about a new map named Steamroller. It is NOT the working title of 2.7. Version 2.7 is still titled SF Overmatch.Marine4Life51 00:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

-Yes, and people also think that there will be a 2.9, when the devs have stated that 2.8 will be the final 2.x version. This article has gone to hell. 207.195.254.206 02:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

External links

The external links section needs to be cleaned up. Wikipedia:External links states that an article should have a few links to an external source, not fifty. Any articles used for information should be cited, not added to EL. There are far too many articles linked here and the number needs to be cut down significantly. 207.67.145.194 22:48, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you guys mind not removing my WARSPAWN link? Theres a free download for AA there, free hosting for clans, and a free toplist. I would understand removing it if I were enforcing paid services, but its a completely optional thing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ragnarev (talk • contribs).

<:Wikipedia is about information, not services. Promoting your site is against Wikipedia guidelines, especially if it has nothing that anyone besides a few people will care about. Linked sites must be popular, notable, and useful. 207.67.146.222 23:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The external links section definitely needs to be cleaned up; there are simply far too many links. I'm not going to be the judge of what to remove, but some of the newspaper articles and scholarly papers, not to mention links to servers and other AA hubs, should go. -- Kicking222 15:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggested cleanup

Here's a suggestion: {{wikibookspar||America's Army: Special Forces}} It's no longer on wikibooks

• Official website for the PC versions - keep
• warspawn.com (Free services to the military community including Free AA v2.8 Download) -along with all similar. There's nothing encyclopedic about hosting services.

warspawn.com is one of several inter-related domains that were spammed often enough Wikipedia to get blacklisted. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

*ArmyOps-Tracker (Statistics tracking website which collects and stores data not recorded by the official tracker) - unless these statistics are somehow really useful to anyone not heavily involved in the game. I don't see it myself. *U.S. Army Developers and subject At most we should have a wikilink to the United States Army article *Pragmatic Solutions (Software Development Partner for Army for Middleware as well as Honor and MBS) To tangential for an article on a particular game. *AA-MBS (Matchmaking System to monitor server activity) not encyclopedic *AAHonor (Honor Servers) not encyclopedic *AA Mission Depot (America's Army Official Mapping Hub) not encyclopedic *Official website for America's Army: Rise of a Soldier not encyclopedic

• The MOVES Institute (former developers) - keep
• DRAAT b1.20 | America's Army 2.5 Tracker Americas Army 2.5 Tracker - 'keep

Media/News articles

I think we only want one or two of these. I've tried to go for the one that looked most at the unusual nature of a game coming from the Army than ones that are more game-reviewish or the ones that look at the pro-con political/moral aspects (which I think would be best handled in the article itself, not through links supporting one or the other POV).

*"The Army's New Killer App", BusinessWeek (May 22, 2002) *"U.S. Army using games to recruit soldiers", ZDNet for CNET Networks (May 23, 2002) *"Video game offers young recruits a peek at military life", Christian Science Monitor (May 31, 2002) *"Your tax dollars at play", CNN (June 3, 2002) *"Join The Interactive Army", Associated Press (July 2, 2002) *"Uncle Sam wants you (to play)", St. Petersburg Times (August 19, 2002) *"'America's Army' Targets Youth", The Nation (August 23, 2002) *"War Games: New Media Finds Its Place in the New World Order", The Village Voice (November 13-19, 2002) *"Army targets youth with video game", Not in Our Name (November 7, 2003) *"The Pentagon Invades Your Xbox", The Los Angeles Times (December 16, 2003) *"Army Recruits Video Gamers", CBS (April 1, 2004) *"Recruitment hard drive", The Guardian (June 19, 2004)

• "War games in a time of war", MSNBC (July 18, 2004)

*"Army's war game recruits kids", San Francisco Chronicle (September 23, 2004) *"The killing game", Gary Webb (October 14, 2004) *"Video Game Used To Lure New Recruits", The Charlotte Observer (March 4, 2005) *"US army cuts teeth on video game", BBC News reporting from the Serious Games Summit (November 25, 2005) *"Toy Soldiers", The Guardian (uncut), Pat Kane (December 1, 2005)

Academic articles

• University teachers
  • "Social Realism in Gaming" analysis of America's Army in terms of "Social realism" by Alexander R. Galloway a book author and Assistant Professor at New York University. --Probably keep it is a critical look at the realism of playing America's Army, but it's very specific in what it's looking at. Could see other links being more appropriate for a general encyclopedia.

**"Unsettling the military entertainment complex: Video games and a pedagogy of peace" by Prof. David Leonard at Washington State University I just get a blank page when I click on this link. **"Theatre of war: The military entertainment complex" analysis (42 pages) by Tim Lenoir, professor of history and chair of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Henry Lowood, curator for History of Science and Technology Collections, of Stanford University (PDF) - Not really about the game, more about the relationship between military investment in virtual simulation and impact on the gaming industry in general.

• Scholars and graduates:
  • "Militarism and video games" interview with the movie director Nina Huntemann, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Only a small bit at the end is about America's Army and neither the interviewee nor the interviewer are particularly notable commentators for this subject.
  • "Cyber Sam wants you!" short report by a student of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Journalism school does not a journalist make. the actual newspaper articles were better nd this doesn't seem to have anything unique or not already covered.
  • "Video game propaganda" University research paper by Travis W. at California State University Not ctually published as far as i can tell.
  • "America's Army Game and the Production of War" analysis (20 pages) by Abhinava Kumar, Master's candidate at York University (PDF) Not actually published as far as i can tell.
  • "Online-Gaming as Marketing and Sales Catalyst" analysis (with pages 50-51 for America's Army) by Jürgen Kleeberger for the University of St. Gallen (PDF) Very light coverage of America's Army, almost all of it already covered here.
  • "The Potential of America's Army as Civilian-Military Public Sphere" extensive February 2004 thesis (149 pages) by graduate student Zhan Li for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - includes ethnographic analysis of real-life soldiers - both veterans and recruits - who play the game during the invasion of Iraq, and interviews with West Point directors of the America's Army project (PDF) - keep assuming it was accepted as a successful doctoral thesis.
  • Utrecht University
    • "Changing the Rules of Engagement - Tapping into the Popular Culture of America’s Army" 238-page Master's thesis by David B. Nieborg, 2005
    • "Together We Brand: America's Army 13-page analysis by Shenja van der Graaf and David B. Nieborg (PDF)
    • "America's Army: more than a game?" article on America's Army by David B. Nieborg (PDF)
    • http://www.minitrue.nl/essays/nmnc-aa/justin.html "The message is the game, or is it?"] about the practise of inclusion and exclusion outside America's Army by Justin Beck
    • "Virtual Dictators, Real Exclusion" about the practice of community forming in America's Army clans by Ruud Oud
    • "Empower yourself, defend freedom" comparison with Counter-Strike concerning the community by Jeroen Steeman

These might be suitable as references for a well written section on how America's Army and the military-entertainment complex (which every one of these papers seems to focus on). But bunching them all here as further reading is no service to readers. They're not the most accessible of mterial and much of what they have to say bout the game itself is said more eloquently and plainly elsewhere.

Official publications and views of the developers

• "The Army Game Project" article for the Army Magazine by Chris Chambers (deputy director of AA), Thomas Sherlock (teacher of political science) and Paul Kucik (economic analyst in the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis), 2002 - keep
• "PC Game Vision and Realization", booklet of The MOVES Institute, 2004 We already link to this website. I'm sure people can find the promotional material if they want it.
• "America's Army -- Behind the Scenes", blog of a former developer, 2005 - not sure It's an interesting inside view, but the anonymous nature of it makes it iffy as an encyclopedic piece.

*"E3 Update: America's Army polishes up its act" interview with Colonel Casey Wardynski at GameSpot, 2005 It's pretty dull interview. Doesn't seem to have much that isn't already covered elsewhere.

That still leaves us with 7 links, which should be plenty for an EL section.

Does this look like a good clean up? -- Siobhan Hansa 04:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Main section of the game?

I have a problem with a part of the gameplay section:

The main section of the game is the multiplayer part, in which players fight either as the U.S. Army or, on "Special Forces" maps, as Indigenous forces against an opposing enemy team.

As america's army has no single player campaign mode, and its previously stated as being a multiplayer online game. Seems redundant. Also, how many quotations are used in the article? seems a bit overboard.

Version 2.8 out w/ Mission editor

There should be something said about the new version (2.8) Also there is a mission editor. That has been long awaited and there is a "Mission Depot" that lets people share their missions. Tenio 00:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Image copyrights

There are many images on this page which have no source and appear likely to be copyright violations. Please note all sources and justify anything considered fair use. Images that cannot be proven to be legal to use on Wikipedia may otherwise listed on Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images for deletion. 119 06:36, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Done (except for two or so screenshots of "Gameplay". These are made by me). "Justification" is a good start in general. It is the problem of the article and this discussion page.

Let me give a short introduction. I've been involved in this article for roughly 5 months now and it could be stable by now if the way to justify things had been changed. I've played video games for 11 years, America's Army for 15-16 months and had an eye on the game in general for two years so you could say I know a bit about this all. I've been involved on the entire discussion page and know its outcomes of the arguments, and I know the discussion pages vicious circle: it's way too long. That's why new persons just ignore the discussion page, the articles about the game, and start to edit, making the article an unstable moving train of thought.

When someone excludes the answer to the Why-question concerning the game from the short summary paragraph (why did they spend millions? why do they keep up the project? why did the game get successors? answer: the game successful propaganda and recruiting tool, which was discussed elaborately in this page here and successfully ignored during the edit), then I disagree and do I need to justify that? I've tried to explain that these "millions" of players the devs proclaim to have, is a serious and successful misinformation (you could say it mirrors the game) and I justified that twice already. Now I probably need to justify it for the third time since no person would care a damn to get informed about the game before starting to edit. I mean, how could I demand that a user shall read through something for e.g. an hour when I needed 10 hours to write that??? The edit the user would do would ignore the discussion, an ignorant edit. And when I edit it back, the user will demand a justification for that instead of giving a justification for his change. Some user would even find it too unfair to have to justify the edit, and just go on editing (no names) and no matter what you try to explain, you get ignored.

The perfect example that anyone without any knowledge of the game can understand would be "series of games". America's Army for PC has, like so many other programs, patches and addons, other versions, the POV-term would be updates. You don't call two versions of the same program "two programs". If the developers release a new version, you can't even say "I keep the old version" because the old one will soon not be playable anymore. So you can say everything but "series" to the game. Since it is merely a mod by developers for UT, it can qualify for "game" at best.

So this above is ONE justification against editing "game" to "series of games", an explanation against an unreasonable edit that cost less than 5 seconds. One of hundreds edits. Wikipedia says: "Be bold!" but it also says don't be reckless. If you want any information about the discussion page, the game, the research papers, the entire AA article, please ask me via my talk page, discussion page, email or icq. I'm so sick of the article's unstableness. Get it right, then get it written.NightBeAsT 17:34, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I know very few about the U.S. copyrigth policy but since this game is from the U.S. army, a part of the federal goverment shouldn`t all the images extracted from it be on the public domain? And another thing, anyone have stats of how important is this game in the gamers world? because I have a arguing with a dude in forum and he say that there is 80 million of active users and 150.000 new accounts are created every day, so, anyone have info about it? if that is true then cs and wow are just dust in the wind.--ometzit<col> 02:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Go to http://www.americasarmy.com/ and look to the middle right of the page. There are stats there about the number of players. Currently, there are about 8 million registered, 4 million who have completed trainig, 50 thousand new users this month and 2 thousand registered servers. CS is only the biggest because of the servers , servers are free to set up in CS while they cost money in AA. If honour servers in AA were free then it would probably be a bigger game.Tenio 05:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

You can set up AA servers for free too. I should know, I have done it. It's only Honour servers that you have to pay for. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by -OOPSIE- (talk • contribs) 07:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC).

Who the hell would not want to play for honor, I guess if you didn't want to be ranked.. in any case, regarding the image I think it looks good. Articles with no picture look like shit, but there are some screenshots so, eh. You could always ask permission. Fr0 21:23, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Players

Those people who play America's Army list there name here: Destructo 087 03:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No. This is not a discussion forum for the game but for the encyclopedia article about the game. --ElKevbo 14:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Government Versions

I know that there are also versions for military-internal non-public use, which have a different (greater) set of features and are used as training tool for troops. However it is not so different that you could call it a different game, a lot of those advanced features later found their way into the normal version (better UT engine, vehicles, weapons etc). I think this is important and worth to be mentioned, however I don't dare to edit the article myself. --84.134.214.65 08:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It is shortly mentioned here. --Theodore Witness 14:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

A list of some of the government projects bieng developed using America's Army as a base can be found at http://info.americasarmy.com/projects.php. It may be out of date, as it was last updated on the 7th November 2006, but this doesn't mean that the site relevant. --Danielizzat 16:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Version 3.0 is a new game

Version 1.x and version 2.x are basicaly the same game. One evolved into the other gradualy. But version 3.0 is a complete rewrite, using new code and a new graphics engine. Its a new game in all but name. So shouldn't America's Army 3.0 get its own seperate page? Other games series have their own entry per game. Just look at Final Fantasy for an extreme example. -OOPSIE- 12:45, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree (I'm CFB, by the way). From what I've been told by an AACM a while back, AA 2.x will still be supported and played after 3.0 is released. Isn't it a bit early to be discussing this, though? We still have at least a year before it is released. Danielizzat 19:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it is a bit early. But there are plent of other games that had pages on wikipedia, quite some time before they were released. World of Warcraft was released on January 18th 2005, yet its earliest page on wikipedia is dated 26th novermber, 2003. -OOPSIE- 23:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I certainly believe it deserves its own article, if as you say, it is indeed entirely a new game. I know nothing about 3.0 so the only problem is, I don't think there's enough info about 3.0 to create such an article. Was there anything recently said about it, aside from its use of the Unreal Engine 3? 72.49.194.69 12:43, 25 July 2007 (UTC) Joshua

Fair use rationale for Image:Boxart sfas.jpg

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New training

Will there be new training in 3.0v?