Ubisoft under fire for America's Army

By Robert Purchese Published 7 August, 2008

Ex-soldier calls game a waste of taxes.

Ubisoft has had to fend off anti-war protesters up in arms about the America's Army series of games.

Former soldier Ryan Lockwood, backed by protest group Veterans Against the War, claims using US Army tax funds to pay for a glorified recruitment tool is wrong.

"It's definitely a recruitment tool, and the fact that it's put out by the federal government and being funded from our tax dollars sounds illegal to me," ex-soldier and Iraq veteran Ryan Lockwood told MTV Multiplayer.

"I'm not exactly sure what the laws are, but if it is being funded by our tax dollars, we have the right to say, 'Hey, stop taking our money and using it for stupid sh**.'"

Lockwood claimed the difference between America's Army and Call of Duty 4 was the latter being developed as a hyper-realistic game rather than a simulation, and also not with US tax money.

Ubisoft US president Laurent Detoc defended the right to publish the America's Army console game, and said the publisher had no plans for any further instalments - although he stopped short of promising an end to the series.

Ubisoft, rather unsurprisingly, decided not to publish the "official US Army game" in Europe.

After all, we have all those Army adverts where people who just wanted to be engineers ended up making aeroplanes. They're pretty bad.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (42) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • mingster #1 4 years ago

    i like the UK army ad where the guy controls the remote spy plane using an xbox 360 pad on his PC..

  • ChthonicEcho #2 4 years ago

    We don't have army ads where I live. We don't need them - we just force everybody who's able to 'serve his country'.

  • kangarootoo #3 4 years ago

    "Lockwood claimed the difference between America's Army and Call of Duty 4 was the latter being developed as a hyper-realistic game rather than a simulation"

    I think one other key difference is that CoD4 wasn't shite.

  • bad09 #4 4 years ago

    @ mingster

    Did you know that that ad is a complete lie? They only stuck the pad in to encourage gamers to sign up the cheeky sods!

  • kangarootoo #5 4 years ago

    There was an army ad when I was young that showed two bored youths sat in a cafe, extolling shock that their mate frank has joined the army. They wondered why he would join, at which point we are shown montage sections of frank climbing trees, snowboarding and walking along a beach with cute girls.

    You don't really see that type of ad anymore, not least because joining the army in the current climate means actually getting shot at on a regular basis (unless you are posh of course).

  • mikeawmids #6 4 years ago

    I did like how in US Army, when you shot your instructore during the training mode, you ended up rotting in jail. :D

  • SirDespard #7 4 years ago

    Kangarootoo - I remember that ad, there was a large arrow pointing to Frank. What I really wanted to see was Frank in a large explosion, and then lots of arrows pointing to bits of Frank

  • kangarootoo #8 4 years ago

    @bad09

    "Did you know that that ad is a complete lie? They only stuck the pad in to encourage gamers to sign up the cheeky sods!"

    It really makes you think what kind of people are out there carrying guns around, if the appearance of a 360 pad is going to play any part whatsoever in their decision making process when wondering whether to sign up.

  • kangarootoo #9 4 years ago

    @SirDespard

    That would be the modern version of the ad I guess, which is why we now see some bloke on a submarine joking about how he switches the servers on and off.

    The truthful tagline at the end of that ad would be;

    "We don't hire in IT and engineering experts, we just train up our existing soldiers who only signed up because they saw a 360 pad in the adverts, so consequently we aren't that good at anything really".

  • bad09 #10 4 years ago

    @ kangarootoo

    Very true :)

    Mind you I wonder how many "Xbots" did actually sign up after that ad, or how many PS3 fanboys decided not to sign up because they thought they would have to use the 360 pad to fly the spy plane ;)
    Edited by 1 at 07/08/08 @ 12:45

  • Turambar #11 4 years ago

    I was in the TA for a while. Then i stopped.

  • CheesecakeBobby #12 4 years ago

    I once read that the America's Army game cost just one or two per cent of the total army recruitment budget. It would be interesting to know how many soldiers say they signed up because they played the game, as I would expect it would expose these detractors as the ignorant moaners they appear to be.

  • bad09 #13 4 years ago

    Hold on, this isn't the first game by the US army though is it? Didn't they have something to do with Full Spectrum Warrior as well?

  • kangarootoo #14 4 years ago

    2 percent of the US army recruitment budget is actually quite a huge amount of money. Just over $28 million in fact. I suspect the game cost rather less than that to make.

    The budget for 2006 was $1.4 billion.
    <a href="http://radical reference.info/node/1111
    ">http://radical reference.info/node/1111
    </a>

    That isn't the point though. Its not a matter of how little it cost to make, it is whether that money was effectively spent or it could have been put to better use elsewhere. I suspect that the effect on recruitment numbers was negligible, but I too would be interested in numbers (not that anyone is going to be able to provide them).

    There is also then the entirely seperate issue of whether using a video game to entice young adults to train as killers when they grow up is ethical.

    Edit: Oops. Correction. The figure I gave above is the US military as a whole. The recruitment budget for the army was $854,146,000. 2% of that is still $17 million. I suppose the game could have cost that much to make, if somebody somewhere was properly taking the piss.
    Edited by 1 at 07/08/08 @ 12:59

  • kangarootoo #15 4 years ago

    @bad09

    FSW was originally contructed as a training tool, rather than a recruitment tool.

    It was also very good (except for when it felt the need to be political).

  • DanWhitehead #16 4 years ago

    The guy's argument about the legality of using tax dollars to fund propaganda kind of falls apart when he says ""I'm not exactly sure what the laws are..."

    Of course the Army is allowed to spend its money on recruitment tools. Even ones as shitty as America's Army.

    As for Full Spectrum Warrior, that was just a commercial game based on a military simulation designed to train officers in urban combat, I believe. Not really the same thing.

  • bad09 #17 4 years ago

    @ kangarootoo

    Ah, that's right I remember now, they turned into a cracking game I loved FSW!

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #18 4 years ago

    "It's definitely a recruitment tool, and the fact that it's put out by the federal government and being funded from our tax dollars sounds illegal to me"

    So how's it different from them producing adverts for TV?

    Fuckwit.

  • tap #19 4 years ago

    @bad09

    'Did you know that that ad is a complete lie? They only stuck the pad in to encourage gamers to sign up the cheeky sods!'

    No, it's completely true as far as I know - it's just not an 'official' MS controller but one that looks more or less identical.

  • kangarootoo #20 4 years ago

    Its clearly not illegal, unless you consider the funding of a military force illegal (which I don't, despite lefty leanings).

    As for "we have the right to say, 'Hey, stop taking our money and using it for stupid sh**.'" No you bloody don't, and a good job too. Imagine the shit tip any country would be in if its general populace got to say in detail how taxes got spent?

  • vegard #21 4 years ago

    sounds like a presidential candidate to me....

    "'Hey, stop taking our money and using it for stupid sh**."

  • LunatikCajun #22 4 years ago

    Surely the best way of stopping American's playing this game, would be simply to point out that its made by a French company.

  • kangarootoo #23 4 years ago

    tap speaks the truth (if this link is to be believed).

    [link url=http://technabob.com/blog /2007/06/05/us-army-remote-vehicles-using-xbox-360-controlle r/
    ]http://te chnabob.com/blog/2007/06/05/us-...[/link]

    The final comment about is being "familiar to users" is a bit obtuse though.

  • asphaltcowboy #24 4 years ago

    ""I'm not exactly sure what the laws are"

    As Dan says, I think this is the key phrase.

  • rudedudejude #25 4 years ago

    I quite liked the game!

    Sitting under a truck with my SAW was awesome gunning down all those baddies!

  • bad09 #26 4 years ago

    @ tap and kangarootoo

    Ah interesting, I guess the article I read was wrong. If you look at the comments on that link a soldier does indeed say that it is the same design but not made by MS like tap says.

    Damn, the US and UK armies are training us all to do their death dealing!!!!!!

    / turns of COD4 and put on tinfoil hat

  • LOLLERS #27 4 years ago

    "I remember that ad, there was a large arrow pointing to Frank. "

    I heard that Frank moved into a different government department to give out advice about drugs because war was too dangerous.

  • mattniche #28 4 years ago

    " What does that stuff actually smell like ? "

  • DanWhitehead #29 4 years ago

    As for "we have the right to say, 'Hey, stop taking our money and using it for stupid sh**.'" No you bloody don't, and a good job too. Imagine the shit tip any country would be in if its general populace got to say in detail how taxes got spent?

    No, he's correct. He has the right to say it. Nobody has to listen to him though.

  • Ranger101 #30 4 years ago

    LOLLERS Wins.

  • mossychops001 #31 4 years ago

    AMERICAN ARMY, FUCH YEAH!

  • GitSomE_UK #32 4 years ago

    I liked Americas Army on the PC, at the time it was one of the more decent shooters out there (When they finally fixed the early bugs).

    I liked the training bit at the start, basically depending on how good you were shooting stuff determined your role.

  • paul_haine #33 4 years ago

    GET OFF THE ROAD

  • MattyD #34 4 years ago

    Ubisoft are creepy as f*ck when it comes to their war games. They may or may not be cutting deals with certain high-profile arms companies to get their guns into the games, and with the many gung-ho titles they've been putting out lately they're helping to spread the notion that America's imperialism is normal and morally right. It's like Orwell said, repeat any lie often enough and people will start to believe it. When people see heroic US forces on their TV all day long saving the world from the Evil Ethnic Terrorist Types it doesn't exactly encourage them to look beyond the surface impressions and spin in the media and examine the political motives behind any conflict.

  • Silvervein #35 4 years ago

    @MattyD

    You are right, but in this particular case it doesn't take a genious to realize that if you enlist, you get a) good chance of being shot at (and shot dead, quite likely. No save games in real life) and b) you will be joining party you were not invited to, for the sole purpose of increasing profit of oil industry. And indirectly, family of one mr. bush, that has large stake in said oil industry in the states.
    Sad thing is they are so devoid of imagination that as an excuse to start the whole middle east rumble they came up with the whole wmd: weapons of mass seduct...I mean, destruction story. I mean, come on. When I heard about that for the first time, I wondered if it wasn't a teenager son of some propaganda person coming up with the idea. It couldn't be any dumber even if they tried.

    And what's even worse, now that states woke up with one hand in a nightjar, because costs of this war sent their economy (and world economy using domino effect) to hell, they send presidential candidates abroad to try and get other countries send their armies there. One word that can sum it all up: Bleh.

  • kangarootoo #36 4 years ago

    "I liked the training bit at the start, basically depending on how good you were shooting stuff determined your role"

    Is that what the real army is like then? If you are good at shooting you get to shoot tanks, if you are crap at shooting you get to fix tanks.

  • MattyD #37 4 years ago

    My point wasn't that Ubisoft is helping to somehow trick people into joining the US Army by giving a false impression of war - rather I was making a general statement about how they seem to have no qualms in siding with the establishment for a profit, which is what worries me the most. This makes them little better than the arms companies and in a sense even worse because the way in which they promote and feed off war and conflict is less obvious to the casual observer. Nobody thinks that buying a £40 game that isn't America's Army is supporting war generally but that's increasingly becoming the case.

  • CARL05 #38 4 years ago

    America is complaining that their TAX money is being put into a dull game... In the UK we are complaining that our TAX money is being put into a rotting bank! - One slight difference is the amount, I don't see a game costing the American state £3.6 billion ($7.2 billion) and at least they get something to play at the end of it! But it any of the gamers are gullable enough to want to go to war as they liked a game I wouldn't trust them defending my country, thankfully they're not - ares are pulled in by adverts :p

  • optimusprym8 #39 4 years ago

    If only we could say to the Government "Hey stop taking our money and using it for stupid shit" and it meant anything - like crack and whores, 2nd homes, expenses, Labour conferences and Gordon Brown

  • YourMessageHere #40 4 years ago

    @ MattyD

    It worries me too that Ubisoft are so keen to publish rightist, neo-con wargames, especially Tom Clancy derived stuff - not every wargame has to be about the US 'liberating' the world from 'terrorists'. However they are far from the only ones in gaming doing it, or the most widely-affecting perpetrators. Hollywood and US TV news seem to me a far worse offender in this, not to mention Clancy's book publisher.

    Also, what's wrong with licensing guns from gun manufacturers? No different from licensing cars or clothing for a game, and traffic accidents and heinous textile sweatshops kill plenty. Surely better that Colt make money from selling virtual M4s than from selling real ones, yeah? Although interestingly, there's not a single Colt firearm in either of the R6 Vegas games, and IIRC all the guns that are in the game don't have their full names shown or any trademarks visible.

  • Camilitus #41 4 years ago

    Am a Anti-War activist in the UK and I regularly take down ads for the Uk airforces/navy/army as well as for the major arms manufactures when I can. (i'm still trying to work out how to stop Raytheon painting directly on to taxis - any suggetions welcome). I wouldn't touch a COD or Battlefield or any game ad - however violent. I have a fairly bad COD4 multiplayer habit (6ds,3hrs of play) but COD4 is entertainment - AA is a recruitment tool dressed up as a game. War isn't funny or and fighting one isn't a game..

    @Tiste - Surely our own dear armed forces could make a mod for realism's sake....
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/08 @ 12:05

  • randomboy #42 4 years ago

    How is this different from any other recruitment campaigns? It seems like a very effective way to get some people to join, so if anything it's taxpayer money well spent. Are Uncle Sam posters better?

    The statements of the veterans who think this is some "stupid sh**" shows how stupid you really have to be to volunteer for military service in the US.