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Thousands of Videogame-Playing Soldiers Could Shape the Future of War (theatlantic.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the war-games dept.

An anonymous reader quotes the Atlantic: As far as video games go, Operation Overmatch is rather unremarkable. Players command military vehicles in eight-on-eight matches against the backdrop of rendered cityscapes -- a common setup of games that sometimes have the added advantage of hundreds of millions of dollars in development budgets. Overmatch does have something unique, though: its mission. The game's developers believe it will change how the U.S. Army fights wars. Overmatch's players are nearly all soldiers in real life. As they develop tactics around futuristic weapons and use them in digital battle against peers, the game monitors their actions.

Each shot fired and decision made, in addition to messages the players write in private forums, is a bit of information soaked up with a frequency not found in actual combat, or even in high-powered simulations without a wide network of players. The data is logged, sorted, and then analyzed, using insights from sports and commercial video games. Overmatch's team hopes this data will inform the Army's decisions about which technologies to purchase and how to develop tactics using them, all with the aim of building a more forward-thinking, prepared force... While the game currently has about 1,000 players recruited by word of mouth and outreach from the Overmatch team, the developers eventually want to involve tens of thousands of soldiers. This milestone would allow for millions of hours of game play per year, according to project estimates, enough to generate rigorous data sets and test hypotheses.

6 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, totally real war! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wish there was a game, that did the oppisite of traditional shooters: Not show any of the "fun" of serial murder, but show all of the pain and suffering caused.

    Semi-dead people, bleeding like pigs, begging like children to save them. The horrible screams. So much blood and torn flesh. Your closest pals with everything below the hip ripped off. Children running screaming through the street. People snapping and getting crazy. Having to look everyone and their relatives in the face! Flashbacks for decades.
    Or just huddling in a half-bombed building, with snipers everywhere around, and no bullets or radio left, deciding whether to starve to death or run into certain death.

    It should be illegal, to show something without its real consequences. These kids have no fuckin clue what awaits them if real combat happens. So in a way, making such a game, is at least partially responsible for their deaths and the deaths of those they murder. It is not so much better than that 70 virgins in heaven fairy tale, is it?

    1. Re:Yeah, totally real war! by NoSleepDemon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh yeah man, that'd be sick! Some mechanics I've thought of just off the top of my head:

      A Sanity bar - you have to maintain your sanity by looking away from your dying friend's mutilated bodies, especially the eyes. Hearing their screams also decreases your sanity, so you need to quickly zip passed people who are suffering (or end it with your trusty shovel) to get through levels.

      Savior Points - You accrue points by putting people out of their misery, and you get a bonus combo multiplier that counts up if you save people within one second of each other, again with your trusty shovel or one of several savior's items, such as crow bars, wrenches, wooden crates or your foot.

      World-wide Locales - There are so many awesome environments this could take place in, including deserts, cities, the countryside and even soon, the border between China and North Korea.

      Achievements - This would tie into how you save people, whose models would have many different hit locations (think Soldier of Fortune). You could save someone by stoving their head in, or by crushing their arms off (so that they stop thrashing, which would give you a thrasher bonus). Blood and entrails would obviously be realistically modelled using PhysX.

      I dunno man, I think you're really onto something here. You should probably create it, you'll want a suitably fucked up game engine for such a fucked up idea. Say, Amazon's Lumberyard?

  2. Nothing ever changes. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Future of War should be an absence of it. Greed will never allow that to happen.

    We pretend replacing humans with bots on a 21st century battlefield is "progress". It's not. We've won a battle, but we're still waging war for profits sake.

    1. Re:Nothing ever changes. by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure but that's not just humans, that's just the very nature of existence. The whole universe and certainly life itself is built around conflicting forces to some degree or another.

      You're basically arguing that reality is harsh, you're right. Our biggest achievement will be resisting the very nature of existence if we manage it.

  3. meh by jocarren · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suppose you can only die once in the game and never play again in your life, otherwise their behavioural data would be worthless.

  4. Enders Game by traldar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are we finally reaching "Enders Game" age? Or have we already?