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

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.

Comments

Another Time-Capsule Slashdot Story?

[Speare]

Hey, 1990 called and wants their headline back.

Thousands of Videogame-Playing Soldiers Could Shape the Future of War

There was a LOT of discussion about the "Nintendo Warriors" and the precision ordnance guided by soldiers with years of training in their parents' basements. Operation Desert Strike, and then later Desert Storm.

Re:Enders Game

[adosch]

BINGO! I was just going to say the same thing. This is straight out of Orson Scott Card realm. Not surprised by any of this, we're already seeing already for YEARS with the Air Force marketing drone operators as 'video game playing'.

I'm not a true gamer by definition and levels of this, but the amount of Counter Strike, Half Life, Battlefield, Call of Duty and a like I've seen my college friends of old play in groups (a la LAN parties) and all that televised stuff now --- that game play and engines backing that are remarkably polished, realistic and the tactical intuition you develop would no doubt be a transferable skill for any future warfare.

When I did my time in the service, I remember vividly remember the SNES MACS setup being a huge marketing tool at our unit and booths. It was a recruiters wet dream to bring in kids "hey you like Super Mario World, try this!" shit. Then, I remember being deployed to the motherland of Iraq for a stint in early 2000's, the name of the device in our up-armoured HMMWV's ran embedded Windows CE with a GPS and a few other sensors, then back in Kuwait or some of those master command camp areas, General's had all those up on a huge zoom-in map interface projected on a big 30-40' wall and would use that for surge and placement like they were playing 'Risk'.

Re:Yeah, totally real war!

[Austerity Empowers]

Legacy of Valor - Returning home missing an arm or a leg, being passed over for employment because, it turns out, limbs are helpful. Having to pay for your groceries with food stamps while everyone cheerfully tells you "Thank you for your service". Then as the teenage boy loads your pickup, you hop in and drive with hand controls.

Hero's Courage - Players can experience constant flashbacks (maybe this can be shaped by sanity bar or savior point balance) to that time when you saw your friends torso blown off, or when you had to mercy kill them.

Defender of Democracy - As you lay on your deathbed, decades too early because of some drug they gave you before being sent to the field that hadn't been fully vetted, you can witness yourself in a gurney hooked up to a dialysis machine watching the guy who was the director of the research team that produced that drug, who has since been promoted to CEO, receive his multi-million dollar golden parachute as you finally suffer one last stroke and die.

Re:Enders Game

[AmiMoJo]

Drone operators demonstrate the problems with this approach quite well.

While it undoubtedly protects the lives of the operators, it seems like it makes things worse for innocent people on the ground. This is true of all remote killing technologies such as missiles and bombs, and even guns to an extent. The closer you are to the actual killing the less likely you are to accidentally kill innocent people it seems.

There is also the problem of operators going from a warzone to civilian life and back again every day. Turns out it's a stressful transition to make, when many assumed it would make life easier for them. Seems that it is actually harder to dehumanize the enemy when operating from a position of complete safety.

Innocent people are exploiting this by ramping up psychological pressure on the operators, for example by placing large photographs of children on the roofs of their homes so that they are visible from the air. The hope is that it will make them hesitate before dropping bombs.

In other words while being in an air conditioned office somewhere is physically much safer than being on a battlefield, it has simply changed the focus from inflicting bodily damage to inflicting mental damage and encouraged civilians to join in.