Re: OT: America's Army
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On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 07:40:31PM +0100, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > Especially since the Army is trying to do something *nice* for once,
>
> Um, let's not think this is a selfless move on the part of the US Army.
Oh, I'm not. I am entirely on the understanding that the game is just
another part of the US Army's promotional budget.
> NPR report over the weekend was that development of this game cost $8m US.
> These costs were recovered after the first 140 recruits showed up on
> account of the game.
So it may have been a huge win for the US Army. Especially when you
consider that an ad campaign on TV would cost much more to to get the
same material across.
I don't see this as a detriment to society. The kind of slightly
psycho gamer of the kind to take things to another level are being
offered up front a place to go where they will be put to good use and
perhaps make them a better human (most veterans I know are fairly well
balanced people, I understand you get a lot out of your system in that
kind of environment).
> This is a recruiting tool. Which isn't to say you can't enjoy it or
> play without signing up. But it's not a charitable gesture.
Yes, but as you said, there is no obligation to join anything, and
nobody will contact you by signing up. I had a problem with
recruiters calling me before about two years ago. I read through the
privacy agreement, and they said by using the game they're not going
to contact you unless you specifically want to and go through some
hoops and know fully well that you're getting in contact with the
army. I downloaded a Windows version to try it out sometime last
winter, nobody's called, haven't received army promo material,
nothing.
> OTOH, the US Army now seems to feel that the GNU/Linux community is of
> sufficient interest to expend recruiting resources on us ;-)
Yes. Shortly after they released the Windows version, the Army said
something to the effect of, "OK, yeah, we didn't expect this ahead of
time, but some people had a good idea: Linux and Macintosh versions.
We're going to get right on that, expect them sometime this summer at
the soonest." They came through. Now if the private sector of the
video game industry would take some cues here...
- --
.''`. Baloo Ursidae <baloo@ursine.ca>
: :' : proud Debian admin and user
`. `'`
`- Debian - when you have better things to do than fix a system
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