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."

Comments

Good PR

[TheLOTR]

Teach kids that war is good

Teach them that killing ppl for the government is patriotism

and when all is said and done, tell them that video games are bad 'cause they give kids the wrong idea'

Sounds like business as usual

Use Delta Force... Not quite what they want

[Manic Miner]

Why not use Delta Force Landwarrior?

The only reason I can think of is that Delta Force is probably not quite what they are looking for. The article mentions the ability to command a squad of people, Delta Force doesn't have this ability. Yes you can play in a team but with no good system for orders. For that you need to look at games like Rouge Spear, or SWAT3. Both of these have floors but at least they try to include an element of planning and group work with the computer

Yes the ballistics and terrain in Delta Force are great, long range fire is effected by wind, and the bullets have fairly realistic flight paths but... People can run up stupidly steep hills, snipers can run for ages, drop to prone and instantly have a steady scope (hardly realistic). There is no team command and some things are sacrificed for playability, primarily the enemy AI. Those guys are sooooo easy to kill (unless you are playing on fog when they seem to be able to see about twice as far as you can which is very anoying), you can walk into a building and they just sit there watch you kill them, and they don't run away! I mean come on if you had killed all but one of a team of 8 people from a distance with a sniper's rife, would you really expect the 8th guy just to sit there and get killed?

If they want people to learn real world lessons from these games then they need serious AI, take a lesson from Shogun, in real life people can get scared, people can question orders that they don't think are reasonable.. and you can change those orders once the mission has started (unlike Rogue Spear). Enemy sqauds need to break and seek cover when they are attacked rather than just kneeling down.

Delta Force is a wonderfull game with a good balance between the real world and playability, it is great fun to play. But having said that it doesn't really fullfil the critiria of squad command etc. You can't perform any mission planning before starting the game, you can't plan your own attack, and you can't decide what time of day to attack. These are all things that need to be included in a game which teaches commanders not just foot soldiers