Gaming

America's Army (also known as AA or Army Game Project) is a series of video games and other media developed by the United States Army and released as a global public relations initiative to help with recruitment. America's Army was conceived by Colonel Casey Wardynski and is managed by the U.S. Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at the United States Military Academy.

Wardynski envisioned "using computer game technology to provide the public a virtual Soldier experience that was engaging, informative and entertaining."The PC version 1.0, subtitled Recon, was first released on July 4, 2002. Since then, there have been over 26 versions released, the most recent being America's Army 3. All versions have been developed on the Unreal Engine and use PunkBuster to try to prevent cheating. The game is financed by the U.S. government and distributed by free download.

America's Army has "grown in ways its originators couldn't have imagined". Dozens of government training and simulation applications using the America's Army platform have been developed to train and educate U.S. Army Soldiers. America's Army has also been used to deliver virtual Soldiering experiences to participants at events, such as air shows, amusement parks, and sporting events around the country. The America's Army series has also been expanded to include versions for Xbox and Xbox 360, arcade, and mobile applications published through licensing arrangements.

The game was developed by Col. Wardynski who recognized that a video game might be helpful to the U.S. Army in the strategic communication efforts by providing more information to prospective Soldiers and to help reduce the number of recruits who wash out during the nine weeks of basic training. The effort proved successful as more than 9 million copies have been downloaded. One teenager was quoted saying the game "provides great information. This would probably spark an interest. I don't know how I would have found out so much some other way."



The critical and hazardous nature
of the work for which soldiers are trained requires a “virtually real” environment where mistakes
are not catastrophic. The highly coordinated and cooperative nature of their work requires
a learning environment that builds teams and prepares personnel for highly specific and highly
coordinated missions. The U.S. Army is so convinced of the power and effect of serious games
that it uses its massively multiplayer online game as a recruitment tool.



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Research Poster

Poster should contain:
1. Title
2. Introduction presenting your research question or central proposition
3. A short description of its significance, context and relevance
4. Overview of methodologies used in the design research investigation
5. Description of key design activities, original investigations,
experiments, technical achievements and reflections
6. Overview of the intended design solution
7. References
> Link address to PDF version on Stream
> Poster should be understandable in 10min.
> Only A1 format
> Portrait



Just two posters to get me thinking about composition and aesthetics

For my teams poster we are going to explain the participatory culture with a heavy emphasis on the entertainment industry e.g Music, Games and Movies. We decided to get active participation with the design aesthetic by getting facebook users to submit to us an image that they think best describes the entertainment industry. These images will be collected and transformed into a collage. This information was sent to facebook users online via a group invite, here is the description they received:

Major Project Assignment Thingy

Category:Entertainment & Arts - Online Media

Description:
Hey guys, for my design research paper i have been looking onto the participatory culture and user driven content online. One part of my assignment requires me to create a poster explaining this user interactivity and i would like to create a collage with your collaborative input.

I basically need an image(s) of your favorite aspect of the entertainment industry e.g movies, bands, music, technology, gaming etc. From there ill take your image and hopefully turn it into an amazing piece of informative design. So jump on google or your favorite image search engine, grab an image that you think represents your definition of entertainment and chuck the link onto this page.

Thanks for your time, you guys are the shizz!!!



So far there has been a positive response with many people joining the group but fewer to actively participate by posting a link or image. This maybe because they do not have an incentive to participate, in saying that some facebook users found the group by chance and found it interesting so they joined and began adding images themselves.

Object

The class was asked to bring in there favorite/most desirable object to class, iv decide to take a photo of mine rather than bringing it all the way in. My object is my guitar which is a black G-310 Epiphone SG guitar that i purchased when i was 17 years old from a music shop in Rotorua, a fairly cheap guitar but sounds good on clean.