In 1999, Lieutenant Colonel E. Casey Wardynski, a professor at the U.S Military Academy at West Point decided to tell the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Military Manpower about his idea for an online computer game. His basic idea eventually became America's Army. In the same year, fewer people were joining the army.. Congress decided to use "aggressive, innovative experiments" including America's Army to get more people to join the Army.