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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'."
Well, on one hand, this might be a really good idea: train people to think in new ways, provoke discussion and innovation, and generally have a place for people to make their dumb mistakes before they go out into the field.
On the other hand, let's not forget one of the big dangers of simulator training is that people often get very attuned to artefacts in the simulator, and then in the real world get their ass handed to them.
Great if it works. But if it turns out more over-enthusiastic rookies with unrealistic simulator expectations, people are going to get killed.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
From the article:
So those many, many hours I've spent on Doom, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, etc... can help make me a worthwhile soldier?
Hmm... having served in the military, I suppose it may be true.
The concepts of good cover, working as a team, knowing what your weapon can/can't do...
It makes sense. Aircraft pilots learn in a simulator, why not soldiers?
Maybe this is why my friends and I are good at paintball... cover me... go, go, go!
When I play Couter-Strike, or BattleField, I don't care if I die. I just spawn back in next round. I may try to take the game "seriously" for about 5 minutes, but then I just go komikaze into the field running and spraying. What happens when soilders don't take their lives seriously after battle "simulation" for 6 weeks straight? It goes the same for me when I play paintball... it's all serious, until I try and rambo it up a notch and end up with a new multi-colored ass. It's something for phsyciatric stundy, imho.
You talk better than you fool!
It seems to me that this is the perfect opportunity to save a few of our taxpaying bucks and contract with a gaming company that has an existing game. Pay the coders to add a the necessary training features and you have saved a bunch of redundant work. Don't reinvent the wheel guys!
[developed by There Inc.]
I got into their Beta (I think everyone did) and never got the game installed because I refused to upgrade to the latest IE *and* make it my default browser.
Good to know that someone's doing something to counteract all this Open Source in Government nonsense...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Perhaps this will gradually turn into a situation kinda like that one episode of Star Trek where they beam down to a planet that is fighting a simulated war with another planet.
i.e., if Osama or the French or whoever want to fight the US, they would just log in to the US Army's MMOG and do their fighting online, without actually killing anyone or blowing anything up.
You pretty much hit it right on the head, but I really wonder how you can simulate extended asymmetric warfare, considering that it has some interesting features.
A short-term asymmetric war (say, the 1939 invasion of Poland) is relatively easy to simulate. Give one side Panzers, give the other side horses, and start calculating the variety of ways that the horses can lose.
Long-term asymmetric wars are trickier. Once the weak side knows where NOT to engage the enemy, assuming enough of them survive, they stop doing that. And they get creative. As time goes on, they get very creative. And they actually start doing some damage, while not taking so much damage themselves.
I really doubt a simulator like this can accomodate this "creativity" factor. Yes, we now know that someone in the IRA figured out how to hook cell phones to mortars for remote-control launching, and yes, we now know that someone in Palestine figured out how to retool land mines to take out tanks, but what we can't know is what will be done in the FUTURE. The simulation would have to know about the possibility of the "creative" attack before it's done--and that's why it won't be a good simulation.
The most important thing to learn about asymmetric warfare is: Win fast while you have the advantage, because your advantage will diminish faster than you think.
Ya know, invite everyone to play. That way you can see tactics from all over the place. A lot of gamers are very good at "gaming the system" or "min/maxing." Pit the world at large against the Army in this sim (altho it should be anonymous, no one should no who's real Army who's a gamer). Of course, there's always the concern that someone else will take to heart the lessons being learned. But with the Army actually in control of the system, I would hope the benefits would outweigh the risks.
World War II Online already has an immersive world oriented towards shooting people with ballistics/armor resolution, interaction between ground sea and air units, and 3000+ people in a single game world (1940 NW Europe, the largest game world in existence). Would have been nice to see some of that $6 million thrown towards a working model.
Likely they are going to get better eye candy (which is important for immersion in infantry battles) but the vehicles are not going to be right without serious serious work. And forget about interacting with fast moving choppers and jets.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Wouldn't it be a cool idea,
as well as good practice for the troops,
if they could play against the average joe?
Perhaps have weekly games, 1 spawn per a game,
to prevent dumbasses from just going rambo,
in which the troops, using their machines, could play against anyone in the US with the proper program and computer setup.
It'd keep them on their toes, thats for sure.
It'd similate a half-hazard army, such as guerilla armys, or mobs. Plus, I'd love to be able to whip out my sniper rifle and pick off a few of them
You obviously didn't get it at all. The crews on the subs and ships might have a hard time reloading their missile launchers or whatever they do, but all they see is how the missiles go up in the sky and maybe later they're told that the mission was successful. They're never in a really dangerous situation, never have a rifle pointed at their heads and never have to look someone in the eye before killing him.
I wouldn't call someone brave who's spent the war on a ship doing nothing but watching missiles or planes going off.
I'm willing to bet if you do something stupid and die in the simulator "game"... you're gonna be pulled out, get your instructor to yell at you until your ears bleed, and then be doing pushups and "helped" pushups until you die.
For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, one form of "training" has you do pushups til you can't no more, then do pushups with someone helping you up with a towel around your toso.
If you really think they'll have a "click to respawn" feature either a) you're an idiot... or b) you're right and the army is dumber than I thought.. and I'm an idiot too.
BTW, when you are in another country killing people, they are called natives.... not foreigners.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.