‘Full Spectrum Warrior’

An early flirtation with gaming-as-training was Pandemic’s Full Spectrum Warrior, now kindly available for free with ads from the Army. FSW is a squad tactics simulator in which you command a squad of soldiers through series of missions in urban — and distinctly Middle Eastern — terrain.

Unable to fire for your soldiers, you have to seek out cover, set weapons arcs and adapt to threats. Unlike the PC-based America’s Army, the FSW originally ran on an Xbox console, whose development contract required a commercial version.

This led to a 2005 release of the game in stores with the military version unlockable by a code. While it was a commercial success for the developer and even spawned a sequel called Ten Hammers, the Army was criticized for not keeping a tighter control on the development to ensure it met their requirements.

Regardless of the success of this particular project, it spawned two other command simulation projects by Quicksilver Games and pushed the Army back to the PC. The game was also reportedly used to create a virtual combat environment to treat post-traumatic stress.

Real War capture

‘Real War’

The 2001 release Real War is a real-time strategy game based on the Joint Forces Employment training tool developed for the government in 2000. The game was commissioned by the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to teach high-level war command to cadets at the U.S. military colleges.

Almost identical to the commercial release except for a more education materials and finite resources, the game envisioned a war on terrorism before 9/11 had even occurred. Real War was a commercial failure and was critically slammed. If you really want to play it, you can pick up a sealed copy for $999.95 on eBay.

With gaming an ingrained part of growing up in America, there are sure to be more crossovers between the commercial and government game markets.

But considering how bad some of the military-sponsored games are, it’s pretty clear that major franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield will do more to encourage recruitment than any America’s Army or Real War.