War Games

Okay, my mind is reeling over here. The United States Army is getting ready start selling it's own retail videogame, a first-person shooter based on the Unreal engine.

This bothers me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we're at war and at any given time suicide bombers could attack us with explosives, "dirty bombs" or biological agents...we're fighting abroad and things are just pretty tense in general - so why are they worrying about something as trivial as making videogames? It makes sense, in a weird way, I suppose, as propaganda, but aren't there already enough gung-ho military games out there without taxpayers footing the bill for another one?

This brings up my second worry...if the government can wind up spending fifty grand for a toilet or what have you, how much is it going to cost them to make a decent videogame?

(Correction: May 24, 2002 - It's come to my attention that the game in question will NOT be sold in stores, as I said earlier, but given away free as a promotional gimmick. Still, something about the whole idea just bugs me.)