btw I just reread Ender's Game last month, so its still fresh in my mind. I finally convinced my wife to read it, and as soon as she finished it I picked it up and reread it.

You can approach a series of books as a sort of archeology problem. I remember in one of the later books when it seemed as if Card had just discovered the Internet (allowing one to date the book if the publication date were missing). That was when Valentine and Peter began posting on a future version of the newsgroups ("John Locke" and "Hegemon", wasn't it?), and started influencing world public opinion through their essays. Don't you wish posting on the HabitableZone brought that kind of influence? Maybe someday...

Actually it was in Ender's Game. Card was ahead of his time. However its not in the short story, and it may not be in the first printing, but I don't know since I never read that version. I first read Ender's game 3 years ago. The Habitablezone was what came to my mind first when reading about Peter and Valentine's expoits on the nets. :)

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I doubt America's Army is used in any sort of real recruiting effort which result in knocks at the door by Colonol Graff, There are a lot of players from foriegn countries who play. I see it more as a propoganda tool than anything else. America's Army is designed around some basic ideas which could be useful for the pentagon and future recruits. Here's a few points that stand out to me.

1. You always play the good guys. Your squad is always the good guys fighting against Opfor or terrorists. The other team's players also play the good guys on their computers and you look like a terrorist to them. This is pure genious IMO.

2. Killing your own guys is bad. Every new account starts out with an Honor score of 10. It takes a certain number of point to increase that score. I forget, but its like 1000 game points per honor point or something. Killing a teammate gets you negative 250 in game points, where wounding a teammate isn't quite as severe. Killing all your teammates in at once with a grenade gets you kicked off the server and sent to a virtual leavonworth. I did this once wholly by accident. (I told you I wasn't very good.) Right now I'm about 200 game points away from Honor 15. I've seen players with honor 95 occasionally, but most are between 10 and 40.

3. Finishing the mission gives you points, even if you didn't kill any enemy yourself. There are usually objectives to do which end the mission or you can wipe out the enemy. Killing an enemy is only worth 10 points whereas finishing the mission can be between 75 or 150. Getting yourself killed is negative 10 points., but only ROE violations (killing your teammates or even civilians in some maps) can send you below 0 points. Also combat medics can patch up wounded teammates which gives points as well.

4. Teamwork is encouraged. Going Rambo ussually gets you killed unless you really are Rambo.

5. Tactics such as using cover and knowing the terrain are necessary if you want to stay alive for very long.

Some items that might work against the pentagon are:

1. Camping. In the real army a sniper would not want be moving around, but waiting for the right shot. IN AA it can get you kicked off the server. Nobody likes campers, everybodys expected to keep moving, even in defense. It makes for a better gameplay, but loses points in realism.

2. All those foriegners playing the game. Are we training the wrong recruits with our tax dollars? Sometimes I wonder.

3. Cheaters. Unfortunatly there are a lot of cheaters playing AA. The game designers try to keep it limited, but after playing a while sometimes you realize that the enemy's SAW is shooting a little too accurately and fast. Or that there is no way that the enemy's single grenagde launcher can be firing/reloading/firing that quickly not to mention he should have run out of ammo after 10 shots ago. I doubt the Pentagon is interested in molding a bunch of cheaters into the Army of One. Some of the high Honor players on the game smell the cheaters pretty quick though. They get votekicked off the servers when detected.