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Army Opens New Office of Videogames
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time, the Army has set up a project office, just for building videogames. The military has been training troops with games for decades, of course. But this is the first wing of the armed forces dedicated exclusively for gaming. One of the first projects: a tool kit that would let soldiers "build and customize their own training scenarios — just like the Marines' did, adapting Armed Assault for military purposes."
So now that the government is making games, are we going to have to not compete with government games? Or can the government order people to give the government rights to use your FPS games? The government needs to step aside fom tech matters otherwise we will get the DMCA X 1,000.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Terrorists are easier to defeat if you make the game yourself.
... NOT!
Don't get me wrong, my time in the Army was great and all but it's not for me. Also real combat is just a tinsy bit different from America's Army. You do die easily in the game though and that is realistic of real combat involving infantry on both sides. Can't go rushing in or you die.
... Before these young impressionable kids are turned into trained killers!
Customizing is good - when we went into the trainer, the first day was spent running canned scenarios mandated by COMSUBGOD to check us against deficiences recently noted in the fleet. The second was spent running custom scenarios to investigate weak spots we knew we had (like a new man at a given station).
Then the real training started.
"Oh my God, your tank just blew up my house! Why? In the name of Heaven, why???"
"Well, Mrs. Peterson, I'm afraid your little Johnny was spawn camping in America's Army III. We in the Army Office of Video Games take a might dim view of spawn camping, n00b-baiting, and all-around asshatery, and suppress such crimes by any means necessary..."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Is the Bradley Trainer they made from hacking an Atari Battlezone game.
Not a fantastic game of course, but it's old school and a neat hack.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
because everybody here already knows that videogames have no influence on peoples behaviour, if this is true aren't the Army wasting their time and your money ?
Do they have a little "Mr General" that pops up?
It looks like you're trying to take that village. Instead of sending in troops on the ground, just call in an air strike to destroy everything. Don't worry about the civilians, their deaths are less politically costly than military deaths. If anyone complains, just say that it's the enemy's fault for hiding behind civilians.
Duke Numkem Forever is already installed in Area 51.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/12/bush.war.funding/index.html
may as well train the kids to kill even more? they'll unlearn it after the big flash.
...the games aren't real!!
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
New recruits keep calling out 'SPISPOPD' and then running straight into walls for some reason...
spispopd would make an excellent tag, by the way.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Next they'll discover that playing Counter-Strike is cheaper and less destructive than real combat and soon we'll be fighting wars in simulations (and executing the losers) just like in that old Star Trek episode.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Remember though, Guns don't kill people. People, after years of careful molding using today's cutting edge technology, crisp HD graphics, motion sensing multi axis controls, high fedility sound, innovative gameplay, and a compelling story, kill people.
What is the sever ip or phone # I have the pass word and I want to play Global Thermonuclear War.
biggovernment
Seriously, this is not the proper role of government. Not even the high-tech military. Not even if this is just a PR stunt to get "hip" with today's youth and 20-somethings.
This is another attempt to appeal to the nature of an all-volunteer armed forces: they are built from gathering young adults into contractual labor. the payoff is (initially promised to be) large, and the skillset is indeed advanced - the US wields some of the most advanced weaponry. This doesn't lessen the risk of actual warfare or the usage of strong tools of destruction (independently risky actions).
When fully translated by a player's suspension of disbelief, games do indeed induce actual stress of life/death situations (at least when I'm deep into a game). In fact, this is usually deem a hallmark of a great game. The fact that our military uses this isn't a surprise. However, i'm wondering if it'll be used in recruiting offices to lure kids into the forces. "Hey, this game is *exactly like* the real thing" leaves one huge gap. Nobody gets a second life.
Also, all of this distracts from what is becoming a more vocal area of the forces: If political folly plays a role in controlling our military, do they ever have the ability to reject a command? I doubt it, since right there is the breakdown of the government, but we need top brass with bigger balls than simply rolling over to the politicians' grandiose concepts of nation building, terrorist-fighting, "containment" and so on. Politicians should go back to asking the forces to do one thing, after all else fails: kill the enemy, blunty if necessary. This means they are hardly ever used except for true national defense. The US's current forces are mostly police work, IMO.
I wonder if the game presents the player with 5 men standing at a checkpoint and one blows up a vest, killing half the checkpoint's personnel. Then a van comes screaming in with more guys shooting like mad and firing RPGs. Meanwhile you have 1 good leg and only a disabled light-armor HV for cover. Ok kids - let's try that level again.
There is no "the Army". You mean "the US Army".
Cue the parochial comments about where the /. servers are...
But you're claiming someone was simultaneously a Jew Puppet and Hitler?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Previously they used VBS1 which also had a gamer oriented counterpart - operation flashpoint.
http://virtualbattlespace.vbs2.com/I hope they will drop the games title from their war simulations. Can't see it helping the game industry any.
If people are just collateral assets to be loaned against now, why do they have to spoil our FPS games fun by putting them in the same title as military simulations?
America's Army is a simulator. True Combat Elite is a game. (still bitter about being put in jail last 9/11 for playing too much FPS games)
Mod flamebat, off topic or troll...
...but
FUCK YOU! YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
As a combat veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom (thats Afghanistan you uninformed retard)
Valid arguments why you are a piece of shit...
1. Afghanistan is famous for heroin, and opium.
2. The Taliban has done much violence in "foreign billets"
3.I won't say they rape anyone, but I'm sure a civilized homosexual would not say they are homosexual because they simply believe women are only for procreation.
4. You'd let a 11 year old shoot you in the face and die proudly.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
Mod parent -1, Needs chill pill
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Now... lets see here... sure, the war has been used to destroy more collateral than actually "win" a war, because its not a war, its a "police action" (that's what undeclared wars are).
:) Asphyxiation is a crappy way to suicide.
Now that we're done with that clarification. These kids dying, are useful idiots thinking they're honest patriots (and in their minds they are), however, in 2008, when "you win", which "you" probably will, so to speak, your Democraps will be no different than the Rethuglicans. I'm willing to lay down cash on a wager that if the Democrats win... they will not even TOUCH Bush or his family.
Perhaps you missed the fact that Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush (daddy) vacation together. Its like the WWF Pro Wrestling... on screen they're deathly enemies, off screen they're friends who party together.
Some day you suckers will get it. But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
They need to work on something, since the United States Army is not in charge of Gundam.
Isn't it ironic that the government ends up making the video games designed to train children to kill?
What is the difference between playing Microsoft Flight Simulator and piloting an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) from Boeing for the Air Force?
Remember the opening sequence to the original Terminator movie? They weren't autonomous robots, they were radio-controlled Unmanned Fighting Units from the US of A.
For now, the games are being developed for training, but sooner or later, one's going to come out that will hit the mainstream... and that's when the shit hits the fan. Before we know it, they'll be making games as a form of "recruitment entertainment", trying to spread the good word of Uncle Sam through games. They're already doing it now through music, "3 Doors Down" has a new song specifically comissioned by the National Guard, and the music video is basically one big recruitment commercial, it's playing in theatres now.
Something about this kind of army prostheletizing just doesn't sit well with me. Granted, it hasn't happened yet, but the writing's on the wall.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
It's really hard to laugh dismiss Jack and his "FPS games are murder trainers" when the U.S. Government is using them exactly for that purpose. Even better they distribute it to impressionable young gamers at no cost (except your voluntary enlistment in their database).
While I'm not conceding that Jack isn't a certifiable nut, I'm simply seeing this as some degree of validation for some of his arguments.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
sounds like you have enough anger to go back and "defend the country" some more in that hellhole. i hear they need help, why dontcha buy ticket tonight.
trolls must be fed or they hide under bridges.
Maybe this will set a trend in the industry and ensure games come out on schedule.
"Soldier, are done debugging that level yet? MOVE IT, MOVE IT MOVE IT!!!"
Several military R & R leave training simulators are under development at this time. One of my favorites: 'Weekend in Bangkok'.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yvan eht nioj.
I'm a Marine. The last "simulation" I played was getting thrown around the back of a 7-ton on a dirt road, then slammed into the cab as the driver slammed on the brakes, jumping out the back (what is it, 9 feet to the deck?), making ready, and sending rounds down range at a target about 300 yards out.
The closest I've been to a video game in uniform (not counting Halo in the barracks) was the simulated recoil M240G, and I don't think they're gonna release that on PS3 any time soon.
I hear the kids going through MCT nowadays get paintball rounds.
Anyway, I dunno about the other sections, but I've never sat in a chair to train.
innocent people simply because guilty people use
This is WARfare, not LAWfare.
We are not establishing guilt or innocence.
Tibet decided to get too moral for their own good, and if they are really really good maybe in their next life they will come back as a country.
India decided to go in for a pacifist religion. First they got raped by the Mughals from the north-east; then they got raped by the Muslims from the north-west; and finally the English raped them from the south.
It was so bad even Gandhi said the Jews should have gone gleefully into the ovens (something Europe agreed with but not out of pacifism.)
For a bunch of Leftist who scream on and on about Darwinism, you seem to have missed the point that survival is what matters most.
Of course, to many Leftists screaming on and on is what matters most.
Also with a Europe/Blue State birthrate hovering at 1.2 (versus the replacement rate of 2.1) you seem to have missed the whole reproduction angle of Darwin too.
Which you won't be learning if you play by yourself. Exactly. I was involved in an early project with the Army Urban Warfare Center about that same time to modify the Quake engine for their use. It had nothing to do with combat training per se: you cannot learn how to fire a rifle from a game. What they wanted to do was to train fire teams in how to take enemy complexes in an efficient manner, play with scenarios and develop tactical doctrine that could then be played out in a live exercise.
One of the interesting aspects is that (former) Soviet block countries mostly used Soviet blueprints to design facilities. There were a very limited number of standard designs for say, barracks, headquarters buildings and so forth. A complex would be made up of some combination of these modular components. What they wanted to do was to be able to have the game be able to read in a design for a complex containing these standard building designs (OK, we have two of these, one of those, and five of these other things) and then (somewhat) dynamically throw together a computerized training sim that the fire teams could then work with. Besides developing some basic strategies (limited by the physics of the game), the soldiers were also absorbing the layouts of the facilities. Since the facilities layouts were standardized, these translated to valuable real world knowledge.
I basically acted as an adviser to the project for a bit alongside my regular work. I suggested they use the Quake engine and did a bit of research on how they could use a GIS (GRASS), an Oracle Database, some software to do the level generation, and the Quake engine to get where they wanted to go. It was a really interesting problem. I had a set of maps of the Pentagon at one point (just tourist stuff, not incredibly detailed) and wanted to do sections of it up as a Quake scenario (maybe giant transvestite hamsters take it over and have to be exterminated or something, who knows). Post 9/11, that might not go over well. People just aren't any fun these days.
Sometimes it's both? Military Recruiters Snag Underage Players at Halo 3 Launch Bash
This just screams to be a plot for a modern WarGames sequel. How about a "Burger King" virus invading the "WOPR deluxe"?
8==8 Bones 8==8
Of course, another game that keeps going back and forth between the military and commercial markets is Harpoon, which I played for years before and after I worked in the DoD. It is a fleet-level modern naval tactical warfare simulation (real time) that is a real experience to play if you have the patience and mental energy. It has been used in one form or another at the Naval Academy at Annapolis for a long time (customized data set). It has an easily customizable scenario format and platform database. People are constantly researching and designing scenarios based on current events and tactical problems or historical situations.
Want to see what would happen between China and Taiwan when the US is distracted elsewhere and has limited resources on-hand? How about a sudden Cold-War era eruption of WWIII where NATO is racing to set up an ASW picket in the GIUK gap and protect a convoy corridor? A conflict in the Gulf where you have to sort out small hostile missile boats from neutral and friendly fishing/merchant fleets in crowded waters? It is also often used by military theorists to test the probable effects of new military developments, like when the Joint Strike Fighter was in development, or recently with the potential development of a Chinese successor to the Russian Udaloy class destroyer. Anyway, if you want to get an appreciation of the difficulty of some naval combat situations, especially if you turn on all of the logistics tracking options, this is the way to do it.
In an interesting reversal, we actually used the commercial, non-classified Harpoon dataset in the Pentagon for off-site test/development of software. The data the software acted on was typically highly classified, but we worked to have the source code inspected and declassified, so we needed clean data to populate it off-site to run tests before deploying new builds to the Pentagon. There are just not that many off-the-shelf unclassified military intelligence databases :-)
I wonder will there be cheat codes, map hacking, wall clipping or gravity manipulation for *ahem* possible space conflicts
The Young Republicans need somewhere in the military they'd be willing to serve...
I can't really make out any salient points in your 'roid raging invective, but I think you're trying to say that to have an opinion on cannibalism, one has to be a cannibal. Is that about it?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Just like almost everything else in the Army, it would be cheaper and have better quality to contract it out. This, on the other hand, is a monumental waste of taxpayer money and thins the fighting force out even more than it already is.
Just a question for those in the games industry, how many of you would have moral grounds not to work for the army?
So... Is this what George wants the $200 billion for? Maybe they should be buying our troops some body armor right now instead of building video games.
I work on an image generator for military simulations. We call it an image generator because the way most simulations work is across several boxes, all talking military sim network protocols - so you have one box running the physics simulations, another controller determining who shot whom, and it gets piped out to several image generators so you can have a big monitor wall or projector wall showing you your simulation.
The whole construct is pretty high tech - think an ride like the Star Wars one in Orlando but where you have control over where your truck drives. We've actually got a game out at six flags based on the same premise.
The problem is that, in general, simulators are five years or more behind what is in any sort of modern game. They just have different priorities - the army doesn't tend to care about lighting, more about how many square miles you can show without a break. And the army doesn't own them - they pay some company (like us, or our competitors) a bunch of money for licenses (10k a seat is cheap) to set up even the simpler, normal-PC based training.
None of this is going to teach you how to shoot straight - but it is useful for cognitive training - what do I do in this situation, how should I respond, how should I work with my teammates. And it's a lot cheaper than (for example) driving around an actual humvee.
There have been a couple different groups working within the military on their own versions of these "video games" for a while - Navy Post Grad has a system they developed themselves, largely from open source components.
I was actually almost hired to modify America's Army for use as a trainer - for small scale stuff it would work fine, and the army already spent millions of dollars to license the version of the Unreal Engine it's using.
But the problem is that game engines don't really support what the army needs, either - they don't support the simulation protocols. They aren't used to passing off all of the game logic to another box, or patching multiple displays together, how many enemies are on the screen simultaneously, or even usually paging in a giant database (the good IG's can do the whole world, or at least the continental US, continuously).
For small time infantry simulations, though (especially the urban combat that they're most likely training on a sim for) a lot of that doesn't matter, and you can probably subvert a normal gaming engine to do it.
Heh, of course, the problem then is actually hiring enough artists to not make it look like crap anyway. You can have all the lighting and normal mapping and effects in the engine that you want, if the office still only hires one artist to do all of it, they aren't going to have time to make it look good.
I just came back from the Army's Warrior Leaders Course yesterday where I had spent a month training to learn how to be a SGT. One of the things we did was take two squads into a building and sit down at 16 computers and played DARWARS. While the graphics and such were obviously Full Spectrum Warrior (the first one), it was still an incredibly useful simulation. The people adapted to the computer controls relatively quickly, especially considering that most of them were surprisingly not very familiar with computer gaming at all, and once that was done, we did a few missions where our superiors played as the OpFor and we ran varied missions through some interesting and oddly familiar landscapes.
Simulations can't be knocked. They work. They might not work as well as the real experience (duh) but there is a lot to say for the speed that simulated realities can bring to the training world.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...everything from KP to actual combat and this sort of thing they're doing in-house? I suspect this is simply a recruiting tool. "You won't be involved in combat! We'll get you into our game development division! Would I lie to you?"
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I have read about your Office of Videogames. Between this and the $900 toilet seats, you obviously have too much money. Please send me back the money I paid in income taxes last year.
Thank you.
As you enter the building you hear a computerized voice:
"Do you want to play a game?"
If we were hell-bent on world domination, would we not simply have taken over Iraq? Seems like it would have taken a lot less time and been a lot simpler to just swoop in, sweep up, plant the flag and colonize with an American population. Lord knows we could use the space for overflow.
No, sadly, our intent was not to claim, but to free, which leaves us with little real control over the end-game.
We should have just taken the cue from the whining left's accusations of oil/land grabbing and swallowed the entire Middle-East.
Mr. or Mrs. Troll does not care about politics one way or the other. It just likes making its betters react, because it then thinks it has some power in the world and feels slightly less inferior for a short while.
Not that you aren't completely right, but you need to relax a little bit Daedalus, or the trolls will have you running around in circles.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In other words, if you disagree with a valid criticism because you can think of a single example where that criticism did not apply, you consider moderating that valid criticism "troll."
I don't think the US government would infringe on speech in the way the ggp suggested, but he's right to point out the possibility and the US gov has made many mistakes (not to mention to the rest of the world, which in my view often has a worse record). Governments are run by bureaucrats who screw up all the time.
It certainly is fair to ask how far is it appropriate for the Army to go making domestic media. I don't want my tax dollars fueling propaganda, but I do want smart recruiting for our military. In short, there are many disturbing possibilities associated with this, and like all disturbing things, there has to be a first time. There's an insightful person who realized a valid but novel risk, and there's always some moron to crawl out of the woodwork to accuse the insightful one of being chicken little. If you have nothing to say except "it didn't happen yet" and "I would censor you if I had the power", then you're more the troll than he. You're obviously not adding much to the discussion.
Nonetheless, consider these risks associated with our Quake-based homeland defense strategy:
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Heh, I got Games & Theory...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
America invaded Iraq under the lie that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al Quada and had access to "weapons of mass destruction". Only after that turned out to be blatantly false did America begin waving the flag of freedom and democracy all over the poor, helpless people of Iraq. Americans were stupid for buying into the propaganda to begin with and people like you are stupid for buying into the revisionism now.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Great! Now Cheney can practice virtual torture without black sites, seeing how far he can push the suspect so that he doesn't die until after they have a false confession in hand.
-Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither. -Ben Franklin
No, I probably would have left it alone. The post walks the fine line between "troll" and "opinion I really disagree with", and I always try to let things fall on the disagree side of the line. I think it is trollish, however, to point out something which is really, really far-fetched, especially something about the government, which is bound to stir up trouble. At any rate, someone else asked why, so I gave him a possible explanation. Nothing wrong with that.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
There don't appear to be many comments that have a true political swing on this one, aside from the many hilarious comments (!) I think it can be reasonably argued that simulators are good for training - i.e. driving, flying etc. But when it comes to FPS I become a sceptic and see the many negatives associated. I think that the disassociation of the reality of war is growing larger and although I do play FPS I am well aware of the horrors of war. When you hear soldiers voicing lines you would hear your friends shout on a FPS, you get a little scared. When you hear the army has offices of developing games to train soldiers, I think people should be protesting. I expect to be reprimanded for this comment.
Some of you seem to think that the military will be competing with video game makers like valve/steam or whoever. The video games the military will be making are simply for training purposes. True they have released one or 2 games to try to get public interest in the military but the mainstream of their games will be for advanced tactical training, and semi-realistic simulations of dangerous situations, so stop acting like they are invading the video game market.
bet lots are going to sign up for that job.
By virtue of having minds, we don't have to be slaves of our biological programming.
Recommended reading: Leo Strauss's "The City and Man".
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