America’s Army

Source: Blue’s News

The US Government is planning to shut down the servers for America’s Army, a military first-person shooter launched as a recruiting tool on July 4, 2002. The game’s official website declares mission accomplished, saying the last choppers will lift off on May 5th. This post has platform-specific details, saying private servers should still be able to run the Steam version after that, but player stats will no longer be available. Here’s the big picture:

The free-to-play America’s Army PC Game represented 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. Three mainline titles and more than 20 million AA players later, the series’ original purpose continued. There have been over 30 million objectives completed, 180 million successful missions accomplished, 250 million teammates assisted, and many more in-game achievements attained in AA:PG alone.

As time has passed and AA has fulfilled its mission, it is time to shift our focus to other new and innovative ways to assist the Army with comms and recruitment.

The U.S. Army today announced it has fully launched the FREE America’s Army: Proving Grounds (AA:PG) game on Steam. The game, which was released in beta in August 2013, had more than 920,000 player accounts created during the beta period and over 7.7 million hours of play. Players can register their Soldier name for the game at the America’s Army: Proving Ground website.  and download the game from Steam.

“We received great feedback from our fans during the beta and with the help of our community we greatly improved the AA:PG game and experience,” said Daniel Kolenich, Executive Producer for America’s Army. “We’ve also been blown away by some of the great creations by our fans who used our AA Mission Editor to recreate some of their favorite maps from the franchise and develop new styles of game play that AA players are already loving.”

Bringing the best features of the previous versions to a new America’s Army environment, AA: PG stresses small unit tactical maneuvers and training that resembles the current day Army. America’s Army: Proving Grounds (AA: PG) showcases the Army by emphasizing Army Values, teamwork, training and completing the objectives through gameplay that reflects the Soldier’s Creed.

Set in a fictional country, The Republic of the Ostregals, players are in the role of an 11B Infantryman practicing combat maneuvers at JTC Griffin, a fabricated training MOUT (military operations on urban terrain) environment created by Conex modular containers. This training is crucial to the player’s success as part of a Long Range Combined Arms – Recon (LRCA-R) unit, a full spectrum capable team that embarks on special operations missions behind enemy lines.

Find out more about America’s Army: Proving Ground on the games official website.