The US Army has developed a new center in PA called the Army Experience Center which uses interactive entertainment to provide to visitors a “unique insight into the life of a soldier”, thus modernizing their recruiting techniques. Between the large interactive simulators where you can have four player teams go on a Humvee, Apache or Blackhawk mission and a large section of linked PCs and Xboxes, it’s an impressive setup for what they are trying to accomplish.
The last time we posted something related to a game with the US Army (America’s Army by GlobalVR), many people were not happy and I’m sure we’ll see the same thing with this. Apparently the Army will be bringing these centers (which I think are a stretch to call them “arcades”) to different locations across the country in the near future. The only thing I’ll say about it is that no one will be forced visit these centers and if you do, you know what you’ll be getting into. I do find the simulators to be fascinating in the way they are setup and the LAN centers are certainly cool. Otherwise I can’t say that I’m afraid of them siphoning my business away if there was one opened locally.
[Army Experience Center] [Discuss on the Forum]
Discover more from Arcade Heroes
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Editor
This is an example of the public-space Out-of-Home interactive entertainment that we report about in the Stinger alongside our amusement and attraction reporting. Why it is important is that the development is part of a trend for ‘retail-tainment’, using amusement style products to promote a selling experience (in this case selling recruitment). The US Army also supports NASCAR and has invested in simulators and as AH stated above arcade games. All this along with their investment in home gaming (remember the blow out at the 2002 E3 show?)