Since the game's launch in 2002, nearly 5.4 million users have registered on the game's Web site, and more than 2 million users have passed through basic training in the latest version of the game, which focuses on the Special Forces. Wardynski said the game and its nearly 20 updates have been downloaded 20 million times, and recruiters have issued almost 2 million copies of the game on CD-ROM. The Army also has licensed the game for release on Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation platforms later this year.
Although the game runs through its own Web site ( http://www.americasarmy.com/ ), its developers purposefully built privacy into the game -- no personal information is gathered from players. Army officials know how many people have registered and how they are doing within the game, but have no way to contact the players individually. There are links within the game for those who want to contact a recruiter or to learn more about the Army.
20050528
It's a Video Game
Disaster? disObey authority!
For more than four years - steadily, seriously, and with the unsentimental rigor for which we love them - civil engineers have been studying the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, sifting the tragedy for its lessons. And it turns out that one of the lessons is: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do.
webLog POSTS
Hossein Derakhshan is on tour. In the past few years, he has become the public face of Iran's beleaguered bloggers, more than a dozen of whom have been arrested for their politics. The crackdown has stifled Iran's exploding Web culture, and Derakhshan is making a swing along the Eastern Seaboard to drum up support for the bloggers back home.
Attack of the Drones
The F-16s had come and gone, dropping a pair of 500-pound satellite-guided bombs on an insurgent safe house in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. Now it was up to Major Shannon Rogers to see whether they had hit their target. With a tug of the throttle, he brought his plane to 10,000 feet for a closer look.
