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US Spies Use Custom Video Games for Training
Wired reports that the US Defense Intelligence Agency has just acquired three PC-based video games which they will use to train the next wave of analysts. The games are short, but they have branching story lines that change depending on how a trainee reacts to various problems. Quoting:
"'It is clear that our new workforce is very comfortable with this approach,' says Bruce Bennett, chief of the analysis-training branch at the DIA's Joint Military Intelligence Training Center. Wired.com had an opportunity to play all three games, Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust. The titles may conjure images of blitzkrieg, but the games themselves are actually a surprisingly clever and occasionally surreal blend of education, humor and intellectual challenge, aimed at teaching the player how to think."
It gets confusing because they all pretend to be medics.
>Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust. The titles may conjure images of blitzkrieg,
>
Sounds more like pr0n.
Seriously, video games are a simulation environment. Makes sense to use them as training tools. This is news, why?
Only 2 games are necessary to make you a super spy:
1. Deus Ex
2. Thief
It cost them 2.6 million to get 3 ~90 minute training games made? Hot damn! I need to get me some government contracts.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum! (*)
* I think I think, therefore I think I am!
But seriously, I'm curious as to what part of these games is aimed at improving cognitive skills versus indoctrination? i.e. the difference between "how to THINK" versus "HOW to think."
What would it take to get some real branching storylines in games for us ordinary mortals?
That's always been one of my major gripes with most games that have a story: none of your decisions can affect it aside from "Whoops! You failed! Now the world ends!"
...and if someone knows of some such games that do exist, I'd appreciate knowing about them, especially if they're not PC-only ;-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Do they learn how to sap sentries and backstab the engie?
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
Complex? Like all fundamentalists, if you don't believe the way they do, you should convert or die.
You wake up and the room is dark. _
for starters, I've been a gamer since I was 5. I'm now 32. I happen to think I can fly a plane and drive a race car, plan and execute a hostage rescue operation, and stave off an alien attack. Sure I've played those kind of games and simulators.
Now we want this type of training for analysts? I'm torn. I know that computer-based training is effective. But intelligence analysts? Where's Jack Ryan when you need him?
They're using their grammar skills there.
The future of cloak and dagger involves an actual copy of Cloak and Dagger.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I doubt that independent studies would confirm your hypothesis regarding changing styles of learning. I've not seen or heard of any accepted study which demonstrated any fundamental shift other than a decline in literacy. I would welcome any valid input in that regard.
Educators have taken up the mantra that we must change our assessments to meet new types of learning. However valid or invalid that arguement, "old" or "standard" types of learning appear to be declining.
Invenio via vel creo
Is there a version, y'know, packed conveniently in multiple 15/50 MB archives? For backup purposes?
Because I don't suppose it's coming up on Steam anytime soon...
the science with respect to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and its probable contribution to global warming is still "unclear".
It IS still unclear, and will be for a long time at current rate of progress in climatology.
Any regional rise in average temperature results in increased evaporation, and that is tied to increased cloud formation (which reduces average warming) by an extremely complex process that we only partially understand at present, and cannot model at all well except under very constrained and unreal assumptions. We don't even know the sign of the actual global change because of this. What's more, we're not even attempting to model the contribution of oceanic biota on the process of CO2 exchange, so to believe that Science is in good shape in this area is to not understand how Science works.
Science doesn't work by personal interpretation and wishful thinking (although scientists are human and so many of them do work that way). Science holds itself to a higher standard than that, and mere cross-correlation of observations followed by handwaving interpretation is not enough. We're not there yet in climatology.
...what are the eight principles/questions of intelligence analysis, as mentioned in the article?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
These video games ara not for spies, they are for intelligence analysts - NOT the same thing. I am an all-source military intelligence analyst and instructor by trade and I do not do any spying. Spies are collectors; they do not need training in critical thinking, analysis of competing hypotheses, logical fallacies, biases, ad infinitum. Anyone at the DIA who calls himself a spy has watched too many Bond movies and/or is just trying to impress chicks. And the authors of this article should have known better. This is why we get new analysts who are disappointed they're not going to be James Bond. Hell, they're not even going to be Jack Ryan.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
My Name is Bond... James "PWNAGE" Bond.
...our next national intelligence estimate will state that the #1 threat to the USA is a grue.
-Styopa
and where are torrent links ? phew, how unprofessional submission...
Rich
Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust
good Grief - they sound like titles to REALLY BAD MOVIES, the kind with some violent dork like Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris in it.
Those kinds of titles are so lame, my friends and I no longer use them as they are utterly generic, so we call them "Adjective/Noun Movies".
RS: "What did you do this weekend?"
OldFriend: "Saw a movie."
RS: "which one?"
OF: "Adjective Noun with Steven Seagal."
RS: "Oh. How bad was it?"
OF: "OK. Lots of shit blowed up. The Ingenue had a really nice rack. Oh, and a bad guy's head exploded after he picked his nose. That was funny. And the ingenue had a REALLY nice rack."
RS: sounds terrible.
OF: It was. nice rack, though.
Whenever I see a modifier noun title, I get VERY suspicious, and if the words suggest some kind of violence or suddeness, then it's sure to be a stinker. I mean, when would we EVER see some violent POS called "Fluffy Tufts"?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
See title.
Do you get to water board people in the game? or other stuff like it.
training material
Soldier: General, the terrorists are camping our spawn point at Basra.
General: Well, drive them back.
Soldier: How?
General: Didn't you get trained for these kind of situations.
Soldier: No sir, spawn camping was not allowed until patch 2.2.. we got deployed at patch 2.1.
General: Can you sneak in some crack troops through their gaps?
Soldier: We tried that sir, but these terrorists can see through our spies' cloak, fucking hackers..
General: How many men do we have left?
Soldier: That's the other thing sir, the terrorists seem to be using some sort of hack that prevents respawns. None of the privates blown up returned.
Videodisc players with branching story lines have been used for training going back to the 1980s. Popular Science, I think it was, had an article about police trainers where the scenarios would change so the trainee had to respond appropriately, sort of like a virtual kill house trainer but it was for street situations. There's nothing really new to this story.
So where is the download link at?
The Government/GLADoS: The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak.
The Truth/WCC: You are being spied on!
The Government/GLADoS: In the event that the Weighted Companion Cube does speak, the enrichment center urges you to disregard its advice.
The Truth/WCC: 9/11 was planned! Hey are you listening to me!
The Government/GLADoS: If it could talk - and the enrichment center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.
The Truth/WCC: What are you doing! Hey! Put me down! No not into the fire! Don't flame me, bro! Ahhhh! What a world...what a world!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Not even any hashes for the isos...what a shame.
:P
Oh well, the pirated servers would probably be full of people speaking Arabic anyway.
AnonC: Hi
'ARS: Hmar
AnonC: Need cover at NE corner
'ARS: Arie Fique
AnonC: God you guys suck
'ARS: el khara dah? yahreq deenak
Abu: Mus o ant sakit fascist
To be fair, I disapprove more with the use of VG as a recuitment tool, ala America's Army. Training purposes isn't as socially irresponsible.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Of course the people scoring this message as troll/off-topic are unlikely to have seen the Frontline episode (which I think was made last year but was repeated last night on cable) documenting how hard the current administration worked to bury perspectives in the EPA and NASA on these topics. Now, if they will sabotage their own appointed administrators and the scientists who are paid to give informed, presumably rational opinions, then how much of a stretch is it to think they will make an effort to bias the minds of trainees at the "US Defense Intelligence Agency"? As we know that organization has done a swell job over the last 5+ years... (sarcasm intended).
And believe it or not I was initially in favor of going into Iraq because I bought the arguments. That will teach me to trust politicians.
Yes!!! But... I didn't know who wrote it, just that I'd heard it many years ago. Thanks for the attribution!
Aren't they the working titles of all of the 'Splinter Cell' games??
Get yourself a cheap version of the original Fallout 1 & 2. Should be around 20$US. And while your at it go to the fansite No Mutants Allowed look up the games projects that have the same non-linear spirit as Fallout: Arcanum, Age of Decadence, Zero Projekt.