Doubling Down: Army of Two Bets Big on the Concept of Teamwork

Cover story for The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Oct. 2006

In 2005, KBR made an awful lot of money. According to the company’s website, the group
posted revenues of almost 11 billion dollars. KBR does two things, and it does them very
well: Its Energy and Chemicals division offers support to the energy industry through “engineering, procurement, construction, technology and services,” while its vastly more profitable Government and Infrastructure division offers support to the military through “logistics, construction and maintenance services for national governments as well as consulting and civil engineering services for local governments.”

The 2005 year-end report of KBR’s parent corporation is a bit more explicit, calling the
Government and Infrastructure division “one of the world’s leading defense-services providers,” providing “‘whatever and wherever’ support across the full military mission cycle—from on-base services to the largest deployments.” In other words, KBR draws most of its income from its function as a private military company, or PMC. In fact, KBR’s G&l division is so successful that in 2005, it provided nearly 40 percent of the revenue of its parent corporation—nearly double the revenue of the next-biggest division. You may have heard of the parent corporation: It’s called Halliburton.

CONTRACTOR’S SPECIAL
Private military companies are a growing force in the world. At their most innocuous, they provide civilian support for military action: building roads, stringing wires, or providing or servicing vehicles. They can take much of the logistical load off of the traditional military through their specialized services, allowing the military to focus on more immediate demands. But at the other end of the spectrum, many provide another military asset that’s not often talked about: professional soldiers. This function is the basis for EA Montreal’s ambitious co-op shooter, Army of Two.

There are a lot of benefits to augmenting a public military with a private corporation. Lacking the bureaucracy of, for example, the U.S. military, a PMC can respond more quickly to changing conditions, with more agility than its publicly funded counterpart. And private soldiers are often both better equipped and more experienced than the traditional military; the significantly higher pay—rumored to be more than $30,000 a day for particularly hairy assignments—tends to draw battle-hardened ex-military who may have gotten fed up with the mindless bureaucracy that permeates the life of a traditional soldier.

But there are less innocent reasons for a government to contract a PMC. “You can do things in a PMC that the military either can’t or won’t do,” says Corey May, scriptwriter for Army of Two. “There are a lot of things that may be considered unethical or illegal, but they still need to get done. Assassinations are a big thing. You’re not supposed to assassinate people; it’s against the Geneva Conventions. For a PMC to go in there and do it, it’s not going to dirty the government’s hands.”

SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE
This is heavy, scary stuff. But the young team behind Army of Two isn’t afraid of taking chances. “We’re going one step beyond pure gaming, into the gray area,” says Alain Tascan, vice president and general manager of EA Montreal. “Are these things possible? Do these things happen? You have things that happen today that, if a movie was made about them, you wouldn’t believe it.

“Between one-fourth and one-third of the budget from the Pentagon is going into private corporations,” Tascan continues. “This is the reality today. You’re talking about 100 billion dollars. And think about a private company: What’s your role? To make more money. And there is so much going on in the world right now—I would be an investor in Halliburton or the Carlyle Group right now, because between everything going on, it’s happy times [for them]. It is not in the corporate interest to have less trouble in the world.”

This is the central conflict that underlies the story of Army of Two: the conflict between doing the right thing and doing the profitable thing. Here you have two private soldiers—the older, battle-scarred Tyson Rios and the young upstart Elliot Salem—who go beyond the restrictions of legitimate military for very lucrative sums of money. But at some point, questions arise. “Later on in the game, they’ll start facing these complicated situations,” May says, “and they’ll start asking themselves, ‘Are we the good guys, or are we the bad guys?’ They start to notice that there are certain things under the surface that may not sit well with them. So they’re going to have to make some decisions: How much do you want a new car, or clothes for your kid, or a bigger house—and at what price?”

(This is a very lengthy piece with a lot of sidebars and such, so please see the PDF to read more.)