America's Army Cost Taxpayers $32.8 Million

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The game has serious issues. Given the number of people who play this game as seen in hours played ranking systems (xfire) I'd have to say this is not only a big waste of money but also fails to bring a return on investment through soldiers being recruited. A routine check of servers shows the game peaks at several hundred players a night. Yes, several hundred players! I think its ok to spend money on something like this but someone has to call this particular game a dead game! Its not worth the current investment.
 
Revewulf, I understand economics just find... certainly better than you do, based on what you've said previously.

Yes, I am aware that my wood example is overly simplistic. I was attempting to illustrate a point about confiscatory taxes. I also understand the concept of sustainable economics. What is NOT sustainable is the current pyramid scheme were have in this country (and which Obama wants to vastly expand), where an ever increasing base of tax payers is required in order to support all of the people on the federal teat. What is not sustainable is this mantra of, "well just tax the rich" every time some politician wants to implement a new pet project or social program. I've seen the exact same thing in large corporations. People with jobs like making sure all the desks are at the right height; or implementing feng shui in the breakrooms. These companies tolerate a certain amount of dead-weight simply because their is plenty of money in the system. During a decline, these people are the first to be given their walking papers. In this regard, it should serve as a microcosm for the federal government. With an astronomical $12 trillion debt, trillion dollar deficit, and $50 trillion in unfunded obligations over the next 40 years, we need to be eliminating social programs, and whole government agencies. What is not sustainable is doubling-down on deficit spending while suggesting that it is a moral obligation of the nation's largest producers take up even more of the slack.

Our whole tax system is fundamentally flawed because it is based on taxing production. What we should be doing is taxing consumption instead (i.e. a national sales tax). Doing so had many benefits, it levies taxes against those making unreported income (illegal immigrants, drug dealers and other criminals, etc.); it allows the taxes to be tailored such that extravagant consumption (buying mansions, yachts, etc.) can be taxed more heavily than necessary consumption (food, energy, rent, car payment, etc). It does not punish those who save, nor does it punish those who invest. Of course, the downside is greater record keeping and transaction monitoring for the government. But with the current technology and the fact that cash transactions are becoming an ever diminising volumes of the total transactions, I believe this is no longer an issue.
 
I agree with most people that this was actually a good use of money for recruiting. $32M over 10 years ? That's just above $3M per year. They probably spend way more than that on other recruiting tools such as TV commercials. I did play a little bit of the first AA game and it actually was fairly decent.
 
[citation][nom]superprelude[/nom]I think they can pay IW 5 million to mod MW2 into realistic game for the army. But who cares? I am no American.[/citation]
Then IW would go to bohemia interactive and give to money to them to make ArmA 2 into exactly that 😉 cod and realistic, nah I would not even try.
 
[citation][nom]annisman[/nom]Considering Obama and Co. Just spent Trillions of dollars in his first term, and inflated the deficate and our currency beyond belief, not to mention the 787 billion dollar 'stimulus' bill that has not only stopped job creation, but has put us in even more debt I think 30 million dollars for a game I enjoy is actually worth it.Hey guess where the money that is being returned to us from the banks that we helped bail out is going.... back to you and me ? Oh, no it's being spent by our government on more entitlement programs. Spend our way out of debt? Hmmm that just doesnt sound right.[/citation]


Sorry fella, but that's the new economy - the US will always be in debt and lowering taxes isn't going to fix that. The only way for the US to get out of debt is to export more than it imports and our collective consume-everything-in-sight attitude won't let us do that.
Add to that the fact that we have exported most of our jobs (from the assembly person at the factory, to the tech support guy, to the engineers) and we are toast.

Next time you hear a republican talk about tax cuts for the companies, ask yourself what these companies will do with these tax cuts (I can tell you they won't hire more people in the US - they'll figure out ways to open more plants/facilities abroad).

Peace
 
[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]This article is on what the military spent creating ONE GAME. Overall the military is 52% of the government's spending. The current war hasn't been payed, it's all borrowed (aka a large chunk of the deficit)[/citation]
You keep citing this 52% which is flat out wrong! In 2008, national defense made up 20.72% of the federal budget. In 2009, it was 21.73%. Considering that "provide for the common defense" is actually enumerated in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States, I think that is completely reasonable.

Source: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/hist.pdf

If you want to be taken seriously and have an honest discussion, then do not continue coming in here and spouting nonsense you got from who-knows-where (your ass, maybe?).
 
[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]You mean like sitting back and waiting for a bunch of Saudi nationals to fly planes into skyscrapers? That kind of thing?[/citation]

So if Saudi nationals ran into our buildings, why are we in Afghanistan/Iraq?

Oh that's right, because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (no they didn't) and we knew that Osama was in Afghanistan (except that the Rangers had him located and were told not to go in).

It's a good thing all these private companies (Haliburton, Xe, etc.) offered to help our military for all these years. Yup, there's nothing better than for-profic contractors helping you out during wartime.
 
I'm sure some of those millions went back into our economy. It had to create some jobs for programers, artist and so forth. And the end result gave us a game that we can use to practice some killin just in case the zombie apocalypse happens
 
Wheres the pie chart that shows how much of the Army's annual recruitment budget that AA used over each of those years and the chart that shows yearly enlistment and commissioning numbers before and after each AA release? Giving us just the dollar ammount without any context is kinda biased and misleading.
 
[citation][nom]israil[/nom]Wheres the pie chart that shows how much of the Army's annual recruitment budget that AA used over each of those years and the chart that shows yearly enlistment and commissioning numbers before and after each AA release? Giving us just the dollar ammount without any context is kinda biased and misleading.[/citation]

according to the stats sheet found here: http://www.usarec.army.mil/hq/apa/goals.htm

during the late 90s, the army wasn't consistantly meeting its recruitment goals for the first time since the records begin ('98 missed by almost 1000 and '99 missed by over 6000). so i can see why they were worried enough to want to come up with an alternative recruiting method. Since 2000 they've exceeded their goals every year except 2005 where they missed it by almost 7000. so it looks like the effectiveness of AA as a recruitment tool is debatable considering the game came out in 2002 and they were already back on track in recruitment quota by 2000. i would imagine Iraq being at its worst in 2005 is what scared their numbers down for that year.
 
[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]You keep citing this 52% which is flat out wrong! In 2008, national defense made up 20.72% of the federal budget. In 2009, it was 21.73%. Considering that "provide for the common defense" is actually enumerated in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States, I think that is completely reasonable. Source: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/hist.pdfIf you want to be taken seriously and have an honest discussion, then do not continue coming in here and spouting nonsense you got from who-knows-where (your ass, maybe?).[/citation]

Here: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
 
[citation][nom]phexac[/nom]Wtf 32 million! How do you spend that much on developing a video game? The most expensive games are made on a tiny tiny fraction of that budget. Seriously, wtf do you have to do for a video game to cost that much to make?[/citation]

Not sure where you have been about gaming development costs, but 32m over 10 years isn't a lot when you consider this..
Modern Warfare 2"cost $40 million to $50 million to produce"

http://www.serpento.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=358:how-much-did-it-cost-to-make-modern-warfare-2&catid=1:latest&Itemid=124

Not that AA is in the same caliber with MW2. My point really is that 3-4m a year is a small portion of the Army's Recruiting budget. What really would be interesting is a comparison of how effective that budget is compared to other recruiting techniques.
 
[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]Here: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm[/citation]
Oh yeah, I'm sure that's a completely objective, accurate, and unbiased source. (*rolls eyes*). So when I suggested that you pulled your stats out of your ass, I see I wasn't far off.
 
[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]Oh yeah, I'm sure that's a completely objective, accurate, and unbiased source. (*rolls eyes*). So when I suggested that you pulled your stats out of your ass, I see I wasn't far off.[/citation]

If I am completely honest with myself, I don't completely trust either. The gov't provided percentage seems WAY too low considering all of the areas related to the military. I also wouldn't be surprised if this was a bit off, but it seems to be closer to what it should be. 35-45% maybe. Even at the bottom of the page I linked to they state:

The U.S. Government says that military spending amounts to 20% of the budget, the Center for Defense Information (CDI) reports 51%, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) reports 43%, and the War Resisters League claims 54%. Why the variation?

Different groups have different purposes in how they present the budget figures. WRL’s goal has been to show the percentage of money that goes to the military (current and past) so that people paying — or not paying — their federal taxes would know what portion of their payments are military-oriented. Also, some of the numbers are for different fiscal years.

There are at least five different factors to consider when analyzing the U.S. budget:

discretionary spending vs. total spending
budget authority vs. outlays
function vs. agency/department
federal funds vs. unified budget
time period
Click to expand...
They then go into detail for each of the last points, but I'm not going to waste more space here. Go to the site and read it yourself
 
You'll forgive me, but I'm not going to waste a microsecond of my time on a biased, agenda-driven, anti-military website with dubious statistical data.

The federal budget, on the other hand, is a document that is public information and that has been scrutinized by experts as well as pundits both right and left leaning. It is the quintessence of a vetted source. And, since we are talking about the federal budget, it is the authoritative source.

Think about it... you're ranting about military spending being 52% of the federal budget, but then saying you don't trust the numbers reported by the federal budget. Surely I don't have to point out folly of that line of reasoning.

Look, here's the thing. When you hear something on the news or radio or talk show or from some politician, you should be sceptical until you have gone to the source documents and examined them for yourself. You may still believe that 21% is too much to spend on the military, but you won't look like a fool for presenting propaganda and talking points as the basis for your opinion.
 
[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]You'll forgive me, but I'm not going to waste a microsecond of my time on a biased, agenda-driven, anti-military website with dubious statistical data.The federal budget, on the other hand, is a document that is public information and that has been scrutinized by experts as well as pundits both right and left leaning. It is the quintessence of a vetted source. And, since we are talking about the federal budget, it is the authoritative source. Think about it... you're ranting about military spending being 52% of the federal budget, but then saying you don't trust the numbers reported by the federal budget. Surely I don't have to point out folly of that line of reasoning.Look, here's the thing. When you hear something on the news or radio or talk show or from some politician, you should be sceptical until you have gone to the source documents and examined them for yourself. You may still believe that 21% is too much to spend on the military, but you won't look like a fool for presenting propaganda and talking points as the basis for your opinion.[/citation]
Yes, you should look at the source, but you should also examine it more deeply. You have to look into what exactly they choose to include in each of the percentages. As much as you would like it to be, it isn't simple cut and dry answers.

As a bit of an analogy, you don't trust the company that makes a product to give you just the facts and not downplay or highlight certain parts of a product. You go to third party reviewers that independantly analyze the details, looking at what the company did and didn't tell you.

By combining trust funds with federal funds, the percentage of spending on the military appears smaller, a deceptive practice first used by the government in the late 1960s as the Vietnam War became more and more unpopular.
Click to expand...
 
To be fair, you should never completely trust the percantages given by anyone unless you see how they break down the numbers and do the math yourself. You should also look into how others break down the numbers (which the site I listed does break down how different groups can get their different numbers)
 
... this game is a bad example... you should split the game from reality... i can play all the levels of Modern Warfare 2... i don't go to the nearest airport and shoot people... it is not a nice thing to do... but when you use a game to recruit new people for army an in the nutshell say that war is like a video game?! he? common... it is not right... and the waste of tax money...
 
Thank goodness I am not American and my tax dollars weren't wasted on this game!!
Click to expand...

Dude grow up" No one cares about your opinion.........

Hands down the the Army has something good to show for it's time and effort, Money well spent.

 
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