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Virtual Peace Sim Game Based On America's Army
fortapocalypse writes "Duke University in collaboration with Virtual Heroes (who created America's Army) has produced a game called Virtual Peace, the intention of which is to help the gamer develop disaster relief and conflict resolution skills. Virtual Peace also is the winner of the HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition, according to an article published by the university."
I played as the US in the Katrina emergency so that I could eat Cheetos and surf the web instead of helping anyone. After a few in-game days, I transferred some water to the survivors and attempted to blame everyone else.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
America's Army teaches conflict resolution.
By killing all those that disagree with you, you resolve the conflict.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
There's a video up on the referenced website, and it's freakin' hilarious - there are 20-30 kids seated at computers and wearing headsets and playing around in a virtual world, completely ignoring the fact that, if they took the computers away, they'd be sitting in a room with 19-29 other students who could easily pose the same arguments and take on the same personalities IN PERSON. It's called Model UN, and it's been going on in high schools for at least a decade. The selling feature of this thing looks to be that it's happening in a virtual world that looks sorta like the conference rooms in the real world where decisions were made about Hurricane Mitch, and that you can make your avatars look like the real-life politicians involved.
The internet is not and should never be a replacement for exercising an imagination. I can't help but shake the feeling that somebody needed to justify a shiny new computer lab and this is what they came up with.
I hope this took you at least several hours to write because it's difficult to imagine the two thoughts occurred within within seconds or minutes of each other...