America's Army Introdcution
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America's Army (also known as AA or Army Game Project)
is a video game developed by the United States Army and released as a global public relations initiative to help with recruitment. The Army Game Project was conceived by Colonel Casey Wardynski and is managed by the U.S. Army's Office of Economic and ManpowerAnalysis (OEMA) at the United States Military Academy, West Point,New York. Col. Wardynski envisioned "using computer game technology to provide the public a virtual Soldier experience that was engaging, informative and entertaining."
The PC version 1.0, subtitled Recon, was first released on July 4, 2002. Since then, there have been over 25 versions released, the most recent being America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch) v2.8.4. All versions have been developed on the Unreal Engine and use Evenbalance's PunkBuster technology to prevent cheating. The game is financed by the U.S. Government and distributed at no cost.
America's Army 3.0
America's Army 3 AA3) is scheduled for Beta-testing in Winter 2008. Based on the Unreal Engine 3, this version is said to put emphasis on graphical performance and on graphical flexibility to cover a greater range of PCs, as well as decreased size for the full version download. The OPFOR's weapon will no longer be the AK-47 but a fictional weapon called the Obran KNP, based on the IMI Galil. The player's "jump" function will be radically changed. Several pictures of various guns have been released as well as a few leaked screen shots from the game.