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Army Opens New Office of Videogames
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Dec 12, 2007 07:19 PM
from the johnny-get-your-joystick dept.
from the johnny-get-your-joystick dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time, the Army has set up a project office, just for building videogames. The military has been training troops with games for decades, of course. But this is the first wing of the armed forces dedicated exclusively for gaming. One of the first projects: a tool kit that would let soldiers "build and customize their own training scenarios — just like the Marines' did, adapting Armed Assault for military purposes."
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Bad news (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I myself am part of a team developing a project bid. We call our title, "Soldier of Mercy."
It's basically a sensory-feedback training game. Our test subjects have found it very enjoyable, and I expect it will meet and exceed all the needs of our leaders. We hook the soldier up to a morphine drip, and the flow is increased based on the ability to "urge" a virtual suspect to confess. But it'
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Insightful)
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Makes sense. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: talking games or politics (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly do you discuss a video game made by the US Military without mentioning the political considerations? I suppose we could only closely examine the framerates on various quad-core systems but that would require us to ignore some pretty important stuff.
Parent
Quick, Someone Call Jack Thompson... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't invoke his name! (Score:3, Funny)
Remember though, Guns don't kill people. People, after years of careful molding using today's cutting edge technology, crisp HD graphics, motion sensing multi axis controls, high fedility sound, innovative gameplay, and a compelling story, kill people.
Sadly, you've got a point (Score:4, Interesting)
It's really hard to laugh dismiss Jack and his "FPS games are murder trainers" when the U.S. Government is using them exactly for that purpose. Even better they distribute it to impressionable young gamers at no cost (except your voluntary enlistment in their database).
While I'm not conceding that Jack isn't a certifiable nut, I'm simply seeing this as some degree of validation for some of his arguments.
Parent
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Which you won't be learning if you play by yourself.
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Understood, but that's not the way the media and JT can spin it.
We should know better, these days it's all about spin and emotion not about facts and logic.
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Teamwork, tactical doctrine, learning territory (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't teach you how to "murder" people. What they teach you is team cohesiveness. I.E. working together for a common goal.
Which you won't be learning if you play by yourself.
Exactly. I was involved in an early project with the Army Urban Warfare Center about that same time to modify the Quake engine for their use. It had nothing to do with combat training per se: you cannot learn how to fire a rifle from a game. What they wanted to do was to train fire teams in how to take enemy complexes in an efficient manner, play with scenarios and develop tactical doctrine that could then be played out in a live exercise.
One of the interesting aspects is that (former) Soviet block countri
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Re:Quick, Someone Call Jack Thompson... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Customizing is good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then the real training started.
The first thing the headline brought to mind (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh my God, your tank just blew up my house! Why? In the name of Heaven, why???"
"Well, Mrs. Peterson, I'm afraid your little Johnny was spawn camping in America's Army III. We in the Army Office of Video Games take a might dim view of spawn camping, n00b-baiting, and all-around asshatery, and suppress such crimes by any means necessary..."
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Not till 2015? :( (Score:4, Funny)
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My favorite military trainer (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the Bradley Trainer they made from hacking an Atari Battlezone game. [atariage.com]
Not a fantastic game of course, but it's old school and a neat hack.
Mr General Pops Up (Score:4, Funny)
It looks like you're trying to take that village. Instead of sending in troops on the ground, just call in an air strike to destroy everything. Don't worry about the civilians, their deaths are less politically costly than military deaths. If anyone complains, just say that it's the enemy's fault for hiding behind civilians.
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1. The U.S. army is fighting "terrorists" rather than domestic insurgencies.
2. Killing civilians is ok so long as it is in pursuit of "terrorists".
And, by implication, you appear to be arguing that it is morally justifiable to kill innocent people simply because guilty people use them (against their will) as human shields.
Just thought that observation was worth making.
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Take the case of Afghanistan. Towns and villages are important militarily and that is why both the Taliban and US forces regularly pass through them or set up po
Rumour has it (Score:3, Funny)
The problem... (Score:2)
spispopd would make an excellent tag, by the way.
"A Taste of Armageddon" (Score:2)
Next they'll discover that playing Counter-Strike is cheaper and less destructive than real combat and soon we'll be fighting wars in simulations (and executing the losers) just like in that old Star Trek episode [wikipedia.org].
Incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
Previously they used VBS1 which also had a gamer oriented counterpart - operation flashpoint.
http://virtualbattlespace.vbs2.com/ [vbs2.com]Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
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Don't protest America's Army if you don't give a crap about Grand Theft Auto.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the spirit of optimism then . . .
Maybe one positive result of the military utilizing "video games" as a training tool will be a more accurate, first-hand look at games for government officials. Perhaps they'll come to better understand what players can get out of them. Maybe they'll stop demonizing the entire industry because of a few bad apples.
(end optimism)
Or, maybe they'll just end up wasting a lot of money on a mediocre game to use as a recruiting tool.
Let's Play "Predator!" (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember the opening sequence to the original Terminator movie? They weren't autonomous robots, they were radio-controlled Unmanned Fighting Units from the US of A.
Oh great... (Score:4, Interesting)
Something about this kind of army prostheletizing just doesn't sit well with me. Granted, it hasn't happened yet, but the writing's on the wall.
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Ten Hut (Score:2, Funny)
"Soldier, are done debugging that level yet? MOVE IT, MOVE IT MOVE IT!!!"
R & R Trainer (Score:3, Funny)
A view from inside the industry (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole construct is pretty high tech - think an ride like the Star Wars one in Orlando but where you have control over where your truck drives. We've actually got a game out at six flags based on the same premise.
The problem is that, in general, simulators are five years or more behind what is in any sort of modern game. They just have different priorities - the army doesn't tend to care about lighting, more about how many square miles you can show without a break. And the army doesn't own them - they pay some company (like us, or our competitors) a bunch of money for licenses (10k a seat is cheap) to set up even the simpler, normal-PC based training.
None of this is going to teach you how to shoot straight - but it is useful for cognitive training - what do I do in this situation, how should I respond, how should I work with my teammates. And it's a lot cheaper than (for example) driving around an actual humvee.
There have been a couple different groups working within the military on their own versions of these "video games" for a while - Navy Post Grad has a system they developed themselves, largely from open source components.
I was actually almost hired to modify America's Army for use as a trainer - for small scale stuff it would work fine, and the army already spent millions of dollars to license the version of the Unreal Engine it's using.
But the problem is that game engines don't really support what the army needs, either - they don't support the simulation protocols. They aren't used to passing off all of the game logic to another box, or patching multiple displays together, how many enemies are on the screen simultaneously, or even usually paging in a giant database (the good IG's can do the whole world, or at least the continental US, continuously).
For small time infantry simulations, though (especially the urban combat that they're most likely training on a sim for) a lot of that doesn't matter, and you can probably subvert a normal gaming engine to do it.
Heh, of course, the problem then is actually hiring enough artists to not make it look like crap anyway. You can have all the lighting and normal mapping and effects in the engine that you want, if the office still only hires one artist to do all of it, they aren't going to have time to make it look good.
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Re:why bother ? (Score:5, Informative)
"I haven't seen a game built for the entertainment industry that fills a training gap," said Col. Jack Millar, director of the service's Training and Doctrine Command's (TRADOC) Project Office for Gaming, or TPO Gaming.
As in the army agrees with us that video game do not train, training simulations do.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'll join back up... (Score:5, Funny)
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I almost thought you were serious... (Score:2)
You're one amusing guy! (girl?) (Score:2)
Now that we're done with that clarification. These kids dying, are useful idiots thinking they're honest patriots (and in their minds they are), however, in 2008, when "you win", which "you" probably will, so to speak, your Democraps will be no different than the Rethuglicans. I'm willing to lay down cash on a wager that if
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
America invaded Iraq under the lie that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al Quada and had access to "weapons of mass destruction". Only after that turned out to be blatantly false did America begin waving the flag of freedom and democracy all over the poor, helpless people of Iraq. Americans were stupid for buying into the propaganda to begin with and people like you are stupid for buying into the revisionism now.