War Games

From the recruiting game that started it all to the commercial juggernaut that outsold all but the biggest Hollywood blockbusters, here's a snapshot of militainment in action.

BY P.W. SINGER | FEBRUARY 22, 2010

America’s Army

One of the most popular video games of all time, America’s Army has been played by more than 9 million individuals. But it was actually developed to aid U.S. Army recruiting and has become one of the most successful military recruiting tools. A 2008 study found that 30 percentof all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and that the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined. Once in the military, the gaming platform has also begun to be used for various training applications, including recently for robotic systems that use video-game like controllers modeled after the ones used to play the game.

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P.W. Singer is senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.