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US Army To Invest $50 Million In Game Development
$50 million in funding has been approved for the Army to establish a unit that will develop games. The purpose of the games will be to train soldiers for various tasks, and they say there is no intent to compete with commercial games. We've previously discussed other efforts by the Army to integrate games into their training programs.
"Col. Mark McManigal, the capabilities manger for gaming under the Training and Doctrine Command, said the selected game must provide low-cost training and must not require large number of technicians to run. It must also have a play-back function for after-action reviews, he said. 'One of the major events for training is to be able to capture all these events, good or bad, throughout the entire scenario,' he said. Trainers must be able to edit the game during play to change the difficulty level or add complexity to an exercise. For example, they must also be able to edit terrain to replicate training areas or combat zones, he said."
Deja vu means the trainer changed something.
The hard-core difficulty level will result in actual death of the player.
There won't be any cheat codes.
Acoording to this man, murder simulators are already out on the shelves, and have been for quite some time
FTFA, it seems more like the military is spending the dough to seek out off the shelf technology that can be adapted and integrated into their current systems. I wonder where they look for inspiration? Are they chatting with the folks at Rock Star and Valve?
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
They will be investing more than 50 mil technically, if you count the development costs associated with Americas Army game, which is soley owned by the US millitary as a recruitment tool.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
This should better equip the troops to handle zombie or alien invasions! :D
http://www.object404.com
US troops are cheaters. They use all those hi-tech weaponry and the other teams only have AK's, knives and home-made explosives.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
One that lets you experience:
- the joys of running through snow and much with a 20kg backpack and a submachinegun
- the wait/RUN-RUN-RUN!/wait cycles of a standard soldier's day
- guard duties during which, if you fall asleep, your CO kicks your ass and throws your in jail for 5 days
- toilet and shower cleaning duties
- obeying to stupid conflicting orders without being able to respond anything but "yes Sir!" (failing this, see 2 previous sections, in that order)
- Binge drinking after service
etc...
That would give potential recruits a real taste of military life, something that romanticized war games don't exactly provide.
For anyone who plays counterstrike or any similar games, you know how important it is the know your terrain... B, A, middle, doors, etc.
If they would be able to train themselves on a portion of a city they need to raid or attack, they should do much better than looking at a map and photographs. They'd have spatial memory of wherever they needed to go. Just like the locals.
Still, someone or something would have to get in there for the initial data. I think I read a story about cameras on bug sized flying machines somewhere.
Take the troops from the world's bully off the streets. All that we need to do now is to persuade all the world's other bullies to do likewise, beat each other up in cyber space and leave the rest of us in peace.
Next up, Ender and his team win the war.
Dude, I'm done with those already (yay DownThemAll!)
Update your damn link, dude.
-1, Old Porn
Uh, did anybody ever think about where that 50M is coming from?
Let's see:
They get the money from the US government, who, in turn, is getting the money from us people. We are paying for the Army to make another game.
What was wrong with America's Army game? Old technology? Too bad.
Don't worry though, when war breaks out, maybe we will get a laugh when all of our soldiers are dressed up like Link and only have a sword and shield.
I am pretty confident that if they need a spatial, 3-D view, that they already have the technology. Even if they somehow magically were not keeping up on technology (which would mean they were still firing muzzle loaders), then maybe they should screen the people they accept in better instead of just bringing in redneck bobby-joe. If your brain can't function well enough to look at a map and understand what you are looking at, you may not be the right person to be given directions when you are fighting.
*Raises his glass
Here is to soldiers, may they finally be able to defeat the Locust Horde.
When I went through WLC (Warrior Leader Course), we had some training in one of these games that was based on what appeared to be the Full Spectrum Warrior engine. The training was very "regimented", not because they were trying to teach us anything specific, but rather because they didn't want us to "break" the system. These contractors running the game obviously did not fully understand their own game, but acted more like substitute teachers. They were ex-military guys who understood tactics and whatnot but not the system itself. When things didn't go right, they would blame the soldiers and never the system, even though there were huge flaws within the game itself. There were 3 or 4 classrooms with around 14 soldiers per classroom playing this game on one game server per classroom. Only one guy was really "proficient" on the system though, and he ran back and forth between the classrooms fixing situations as they arose.
I guess my whole point in recounting my experience with this is just to say that this is going to work like every other government contract. It's a great theory that gets glossed over in politics and pro/buzzwords so as to make a great powerpoint brief for the general, but in the end the soldier gets nothing out of it that they couldn't get from taking the soldiers out to a small town built out of plywood with some paintball guns.
No Let's play Global Thermal Nuclear War
It's asymmetric warfare, my friend. If you can pay for an advantage that you can take to the battlefield, by all means, do it. However, it doesn't always help, as the more assets of greater value you have in combat, the more committed you are to protecting those assets, even when it's disadvantageous for you to do so. And low-cost solutions for dealing with asymmetries usually emerge. Did you see Black Hawk Down? The Somali militants were clearly out-teched, and yet they kicked the US forces' asses because they had anti-aircraft missiles and the willingness to swarm downed helicopters and exploit the US' willingness to send more troops in after them.
They are trying to lure young geeks into the military. You won't be allowed to play video games. Trust me.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
How can this article possibly NOT be tagged Ender's Game?
The article mentions DARWARS Ambush!, but gets the genealogy wrong. DARWARS Ambush! was a military-funded mod for the commercial game, Operation: Flashpoint.
News on health and exercise related video games:
http://www.healthygaming.com/blog/
Colossus would so totally pwn WOPR.
Yeah, that was a rather trollish thing of you to say. I have nothing but respect for the armed forces and for the individuals who put the nation's needs above their own safety... and therefore I have no respect for those who would dupe them into fighting an unnecessary war.
If my tax dollars paid for the development of that game, am I entitled to use any of the game's assets?
So.... does anyone else see this as a huge waste of taxpayer money?
If this isn't a sign that the US military has waaaaay too much money I don't know what is.
Budget cuts!!!
Far Cry 2 seems to have an excellent map editor. Shame the game has bugs too.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"You have found a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Sorry, you lose!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The MCP would have owned both of them if it hadn't been for that meddling TRON.
Being that the Government requires a lengthy and expensive bidding process (see also the 180,000$ contracting costs estimated for just processing bids for a replacement marble slab for a the tomb of the unknown soldier)...
and that high efficiency in product-to-yield present in all defense contracts....
50 million MIGHT be enough to fetch some of the software from the 80's cult classic "War Games"...
tic-tac-toe anyone? for the bargain basement price of 48 mil I'll be happy to write one, thereby under bidding everyone else who will cite cost overruns.
Anybody ever play America's Army for xbox 360? It was probably the worst game I have ever played for any system. They're going to need a lot more than $50 mil to turn that around.
What an irresponsible use of taxpayer money.