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Army Funds Game Development
winter@ES writes: "The U.S. Army is teaming up with Sony, Pandemic Studios, and Quicksilver software to develop a pair of squad-level combat games. Through the Institute for Creative Technologies (jointly operated by the U.S. Army and the University of SOCAL) the Army will be funding and developing "C-Force", targetted for next-gen consoles, and "CS-12" for PCs. The project is headed up by Mech Warrior veteran, Rob Sears."
I hope the kinder dosent try rocket-jumping with LAWS portable rocket launchers...
Train solders with Tuxracer also. Could be useful if Bin Laden is hiding in the Himalayas.
Shall we play a game?
Global Thermo-Nuclear War
Would you not prefer a game of Chess?
No, Lets play Global Thermo-Nuclear War
OK.... Please select primary targets....
etc etc etc....Get every army troop to train with counter-strike for a few months, and the US could comb Afghanistan for bin Laden with bunny hoppers armed with just desert eagles - problem solved!
just what we need.. half of the army running around screaming 'w00t'
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jonathan barket
While modern games and gaming consoles can definitely increase your heartrate, I guess it's not quite the same as crawling around in a 2-foot tunnel looking for a guy who's gonna blow himself if you find him.
So does that mean that we'll be getting a cheap game interrupted by "Join Uncle Sam" screens every 10 minutes....
-.sig sauer-
erm wouldnt top gun have been funded by the air force (or at least the navy) rather than the army...
"Lets try to sell the kids into a life in the army using a film."
"Hey a I've had this idea about a jetplane movie knocking around for a while lets use that!"
{slap}
"We're the us army, we don't have jetplanes..."
Osama Bin Laden is currently working in association with software company al-Qaedasoft to produce a new line of action games. Included in the series will be a game called:
"The Yanks Are Coming" inwhich you control taliban children with AK-47s, and must mow down as many american solders as possible.
"Attah's Fun Time" is a game aimed at a younger audience, inwhich the late mohammed attah (pilot of hijacked plane) will teach school children how to count "12-Degrees-North-15-Minutes" do arithmetic "5000ft -4000ft = 1000ft" and learn about shapes "Which tower looks like that tower?"
And finally, to replace the numbers of expensive training camps "Afgans Over the Line" or 'AOL' will be given away free to teach basic training, how to clean your AK-47, Piloting modern airliners, and how to get past passport control in 4 easy steps.
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... is hard in that fact that you're so disadvantaged by the terrain (urban, buildings, limited LoS). Groups like SAS train extensively and I would wonder seriously about the sanity of any general sending in a bunch of grunts based on these games. Not that I doubt the army are lacking at simulation (they do excellent distributed interactive simulations with thousands of vehicles) but fundamentally because the retail gaming market is selling entertainment which is a direct conflict with building survival skills (paranoia rules!). Sure you can have semi-fun things like counter-strike but the kill-at-a-click mentality is not something I would want to see in the military ... it's bad enough having police rough up civilians but asking army people to desensitise themselves to the point of being trigger happy is not my idea of peace mission which is what modern warfare is about ... low-intensity pacification/de-arming missions (e.g. Timor).
... a few years ago when the US visited Australia for military exercise, they did some flight combat simulations and thought it would be a fun thing to buzz the local kangaroos. Imagine their surprise when after disappearing around the hills, they popped up and let loose a bunch of Stinger missiles! Apparently the developers reused the objects for human soldiers and just modified their movement parameters to emulate wildlife. I know Australia has the reputation have having crocodiles and the most poisonous snakes in the world but when wombats start shooting back, then I'll really start to worry.
ObJoke
LL