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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...
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....Interesting that one day the government is blaming violent games for every problem the youth of today ever have, and, the next, they're paying for the most realistic killing game ever...
I wonder who'll get blamed next time there's a Columbine-like incident...
This is a self-referential sig
Given how long military pilots have been using flight simulators, it makes sense that there would be a similar type of computerized Risk game for commanders. It will be interesting to see the crossover between the military use of it, and the commercial / retail aspect of it. Where Hollywood fits into this, other than through its ownership of the software firm in question, is a bit sketchy to me - that article is pretty hokey IMHO.
Of course, the whole thing kinda reminds me of when the Marine Corps used DOOM II to train 4-man fire teams.
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
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.
It's reviewed in further detail in the November 2001 issue of PC Gamer. Sorry, no online copy. Like I said, it's a serious wargame so they didn't put up an online copy of the review.
There is. =)
It's called 'Battle Command Staff Training'. There's several systems involved, playing various things including logistics, combat, etc, but on the HQ level they actually just have to do the maps and radio the commands to their subordinates, who are 'players' in the scenario.
http://www.usarc.army.mil/91div/ (currently down) is the of the units that does this kind of stuff, especially 1st brigade.
=)
As for tactical training? I'm playing way too much return to castle wolfenstein. *grin* Fun squad level fragfest!
As long as it's not by the company that just released Real War, which loudly proclaims on both its box art and in every other form of media that it is a "commercial version of the official military Joint Forces game being used to train the US armed forces."
In reality,as this Gamespot review notes, it's a "throwback to the days of those horrible real-time strategy clones that followed the success of Westwood's Command & Conquer series.".
A definite waste of my $39.99 USD and a solid contender for 'Meh' game of the year.
GI Joe. Some have accused them of trying to make the villains have arab features. Iduno.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I looked harder (aka, I stuffed it into Google) and found a review of Decisive Action at GamesDomain.
So does that mean that we'll be getting a cheap game interrupted by "Join Uncle Sam" screens every 10 minutes....
-.sig sauer-
But... any game like this is going to be a HUGE compromise with the salesmen wanting realism, and the army wanting propoganda and secrecy.
I don't imagine I know 2% of whats actually going on in afgahnistan right now. So I don't suppose the Army will divulge much of anything to a public release. They may share technology in simulation terms, but thats not the interesting stuff - the interesteing stuff is knowing all the new tech they actually have on the ground.
But yeah, if you want a driving game you involve McLaren, if you want a golf game you involve Tiger, and if you want a war game you involve the army.
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
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
Yet Another Realistic Soldier Sim?
The trouble with RSS's is that they're helluva frustrating. Ever played Hidden And Dangerous? And I'm not talking about the irritating crash bugs, the actual gameplay is so realistic that it can send you into screaming fits. You're crawling along in cover for ten minutes, then there's a crack and one of your men goes "Urgh" and curls up. You can't even see the enemy; in some missions, you can be shot from beyond the far clip plane. The solution is often to charge your 4 men forwards until you spot the sniper (getting cut down as you go), then reload the level, creep forwards, and saturate the far clip plane at that point with machine gun fire. A small tweak to the engine, to randomly place the enemy, would remove even this cheat, and make the game so "realistic" as to be unplayable.
So realism and gameplay don't necessarily go hand in hand. You have to allow some "cheats", like static enemy placement, which then ruins the value of the application as a training tool.
On the other hand, I'd rather see something like Hidden and Dangerous than Solider of Fortune. "Realism" in Soldier of Fortune means that you can blow your enemies into screaming, writhing piles of organs and detatched limbs (the ostensible message being that "Guns are no joke, kids!"), but the effect on enemy fire on you is to whittle a little off your health bar, and a medikit will fix that right back up and let you get back on with breaking the 1000 kill barrier. Just like in real life! Hmmm.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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..."
The Army and Marines has been using first-person shoot-up games for training for a while now. I believe the Marines using Doom were the first. It's a cheap way to train for squad-level tactics now that training budgets are squeezed.
Why not sponsor development of a game that you can use to train your people with later?
The Army has even taken this to a higher level, in that many of the major command & control exercises that were accomplished with thousands of troops and vehicles in the past are now done entirely on comptuer.
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.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
... 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
Upcoming titles
"Bomb the Chinese Embassy by mistake"
"Ooops we hit another residential area"
"Oh no we hit a tourist boat"
Most games at the moment penalise when you fuck up, I guess these ones will reward you with promotion.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
As all things in America(TM), the US Army(TM) is just trying to work their brand into some cross-marketing..
man, I cant imagine who could have a problem with that, except maybe some godless-commie.
Maybe they can even work in some 'Enemy Pack Expansion System(TM)' where the latest evil-du-jour can be plugged in and Americans everywhere can have the thrill of bloodily slaughtering them, JUST LIKE THE REAL THING!
I for one welcome this development in the war against %whoever-we-please-at-the-moment%, it will help communicate to the American People(TM) and it will help keep you solidly behind the President, who in times of trouble should not hear any dissenting voices, but a chorus of approval.
What a terrific idea.
Somehow I doubt Sony will be writing title exclusively for the XBox anytime soon. You know, that whole playstation thing they have going for them.
Rod Taylor
From the article:leverage human resources and information -- skills that will benefit them enormously in their professional lives
Was anyone else chilled by this statement? I read it as:
leverage human resources and information -- skills that will benefit them enormously in combat situation."
I guess their take, with "professional lives", holds true for professional killers - which they are.
This idea makes my stomach turn. Does the Army, which purpose is to defend from attack (plus all the other things they seem to be 'supposed' to be doing..those things really are another discussion), do they really need to be involved in making and marketing a video game . Training people to kill one another is a very serious proposition, maintaing 'armed forces' for international combat is a inditement in-and-of-itself of all humanity... do we *REALLY* want these idiots making a business out of it? Are we really comfortable with the idea of them selling (through marketing, branding and advertising) their 'product'?
soldiers get confused on the battle field because they don't hear updates like "you've take/lost/are tied for the lead" from an announcer.
Or accuse the "enemy" of cheating because they don't make grunts and sounds when they jump around or hit the ground.
I can see it now: legions of new recruits in boot camp taught to "bunny hop" while firing their weapons.
You know you've been playing quake too long when you fall off the roof of your house and are instantly comforted by the fact you will only take 5 points of damage.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Has no one made the obligatory Ender's Game reference yet?
It's that "it's training, but it's not, but it is" sort of story.
I was part of the pitch that UCLA made to attempt to get this institute located at their campus. The idea was that UCLA's contacts with the visual effects community would be helpful in building these simulation games. Unfortunately for UCLA, their perennial cross-town rival USC made a better presentation.
It was weird to see a group of relatively high-level military people sitting around the conference table talking about writing next-generation video games; in dead earnest.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
A friend of mine has it; it is the only flight simulator to simulate every aspect of combat flight, AFAIK. It actually has a full control panel, which can make it extremely difficult to play, unless you happen to have a pilot's license. The manual that comes with it looks like a novel. Anyway, the combat missions are extremely realistic, and can change depending on whether you screw up. It is definitely not for the casual game player.
Since it's being funded by the government, it should use the cross-platform OpenGL standard, not Direct3D.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Anyway, there are lots of problems with Delta Force (even Landwarrior) but the most significant one is the fact that it doesn't support squads. Hell, half the missions you're just trying to catch up to your 'support'. The guy runs to the edge of the camp, shoots one person, then everyone in the camp is aware of his position and start laying the smack down. we're only lucky they don't require your team to live!
Anyway, i don't think it'd work well. besides, the game is fun but very pixelated. those single pixels you end up shooting... not good combat training. 'oh crap, someone is shooting at me, i'll stand stock still and will only move if they hit me.'
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I found a book written in the 70s or the 80s. It warned of the computer era from a leftist viewpoint. Mass unemployment and such.
One of the points was that the surge of computer games (Atari,...) was a plan of the DoD to cast the kids into future combat pilots with superb eye-hand coordination. It was the time when electronics was still passing from military applications to the civilian mass-market.
I laughed at that.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Now all we have to do is get the armies of the world to agree to fight all future wars in these realistic simulated realities.
NO MORE LOSS OF LIFE and destruction of property!!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
"The institute was formed in 1999 with a $45 million grant from the Army as a partnership among academics, video game makers and creative talent in Hollywood to design advanced ''virtual reality'' and simulation training systems for the military."
:-)
So because this project is being developed with public funds, they're going to release all the source code as public domain right? Or maybe that would make too much sense and that's just wishful thinking. Seriously.. think about it! How far could $45 mil go towards an Open Source project with the same goal? Imagine say.. a team of 150 quality programmers, mostly telecommuting, being paid $100,000/yr. for 2 years to work on such a project. And that leaves 15 million to buy some special hardware and rent an office building floor for meetings and coordinating activities. (and housing the CVS server of course.
The only thing slowing the adoption of Open Source is bureaucracy.