Army to use MMOG for Simulation Training

Anonymous Coward writes "Military Training Technology (online edition) has an interesting article, 'The End Game', containing revelations about a Research, Development and Engineering Command project 'that is as timely as the nightly news' - a Massively Multiplayer Simulation for Asymmetric Warfare, or simply MMP: 'essentially a virtual world [developed by There Inc.] intended to train soldiers well beyond the goals of war gaming'."

Comments

We already knew

[Ponderoid]

There addicts have known about this for months.

Re:Asymmetric Warfare?

[dj961]

I'm not sure if you know this but not getting killed is sort of a priority for soldiers. Training and equipment tend to help them with that. Oh, and if you dislike the current path America is taking in respect to attacking other countries, perhaps next election vote for the democrats? Remember if you don't vote, your "opinion" doesn't matter.

Re:Why not privatize?

[Cali Thalen]

Actually, that's pretty much what's happening. There.com is a 'gaming' or virtual world site that has regular paying members. The software used to run it is the same (basic) software that the Army is using to train with. Obviously modified to fit the situation.

Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, but no matter which one came first, it's an existng game, so you can stop worrying about your tax dollars.

Re:Violence because of video games ? nahh

[kwpulliam]

I believe that it's closer to "Teamwork and Situational Awareness Though Video Games" Seriously, The army is already pretty darn good at training citizens into soldiers. Your premise is wrong because you presume that violence is the desired end result, when in reality, the desired end result is soldier safety combined with an end to hostilities.

Re:Why didn't they just start with Counterstrike..

[caferace]

RTFA again. I believe $32M is what There spent to develop their system. The article says the gummint is paying $6M on dev, and this article says the gummint contract with There was for $3.5M.

A bit of disparity, to be sure. I still want a gold toilet seat.

The end of this path should be familiar to us all

[paiute]

"A Taste of Armageddon" is one of classic Trek's occasional, obvious metaphors for the absurdity of the then-cold war between East and West. Gene Lyons stars as a Federation ambassador named Fox, who boards the Enterprise to reach the planet Eminiar VII, where he hopes to negotiate a peace treaty with the inhabitants. Instead the crew of the Enterprise gets caught in the middle of an interplanetary war between Eminiar and neighboring planet Vendikar. The twist is that the war is being fought on computers, and compliant residents of those "destroyed" areas obediently report to disintegration chambers, where their "virtual" death is made literal. When the Enterprise is "hit" in one of these simulations, both the warlords of Eminiar VII and Ambassador Fox fully expect Capt. Kirk and crew to report to the disintegration center. The feisty Kirk has other plans, of course. And while the madness of this controlled Armageddon makes a suitably surreal satire of the arms race in the 1960s, the story also evoked the endless, daily reports of body counts during the Vietnam War, with no resolution in sight. Aside from its parable aspect, however, the episode gave Kirk one of his earliest and most compelling scenes of Kirkian preachiness in a bold monologue about peace, reportedly written and rewritten numerous times by series producer and indispensable creative hand Gene L. Coon. --Tom Keogh