America's Army Most Effective Recruitment Tool for U.S. Army

The Washington Examiner reports that America's Army is a more effective U.S. Army recruitment tool than "any other method of contact," according to recent Army testimony to Congress. America's Army is a series of first-person shooter titles developed in cooperation with the U.S. Army. The PC version of America's Army is available as a free download from the U.S. Army's website, and commercial versions are sold for the Xbox and Xbox 360. The article cites a 2008 study in which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology determined that "30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined." The Washington Examiner also notes criticism of the series from an unnamed Air Force colonel. "The video game generation is worse at distorting the reality of it [war] from the virtual nature. They don't have that sense of what really going on," the colonel told The Washington Examiner. "It teaches you how to compartmentalize it."