I get home and accidentally switch on ABC to see some moronic show on electronic combat training. The reporter is oohing and ahing about all the fancy video game technology. All about how this Doom++ is teaching soldiers about combat.
I can’t express quite how annoyed I am. I’m not a military boy, I’ve never fired a shot in combat. However I 've stared down the barrel of Yemani tribesman’s gun and thought I was goingt to die. I can’t fucking believe this shit. I’ve been in enough situations of stress, real live life-threatening my body is going home in a bag to the USA kinds of situations so that I find myself doubting with all my fiber the utility of glorified videogames. Fucking tech crazy.
I’m sure that one can learn certain responses. I’m equally sure that live fire and live, in the field training is immensely more cost-effective than this bullshit. No hours on Doom or any other video game prepared me for real AKs wielded by gat chewing teenagers. I dearly hope that this bullshit is for the gullible computer game playing reporters.
But then perhaps some people like ex-Tank can tell me that I have the wrong take on this and I shall feel less disgusted.
I’ll have to root around for a cite, but the US militray does NOT use Doom to desensitize soldiers or accustom them to combat. It is sometimes used as aid to get them to function as a team, but that’s it.
John Stossel, did a special examining whether there was a link between violent videogames and real life violence. Stossel showed point by point why the Doom story is bunk.
Rest assured Uncle Sam still relies mainly on really, loud drill sergeants.
Sorry I was inexact in my rant. The ABC report was not using Doom per se, but showing off some fancy schmantcy video training service with super-Doom like facilities.
I am sure, given my brother was a Marine in the prior decade that all effective training occurs via actual exercises, but I find this sort of technophilia dangerous and stupid.
I know that playing games can’t help you with basic skills like aiming and firing a gun, but I believe some of them might be useful for teaching tactics. In the game SWAT 3 you had to learn how to use the proper techniques for commanding a small team to clear rooms, climb staircases, establishing zones of control in a hostile structure, etc., if you were to succeed.
The military does use M-16 simulation, using M16s fitted with CO[sub]2[/sub] hoses to simulate recoil, and firing imaginary rounds at a screen. This, IIRC, costs about .16 per shot, as compared to .35 for live rounds. Of course, live fire is used as well, but with simulation, more practice can be had for less money.
OK, let me start by saying that I am not in the army, nor have I ever been.
I would agree with this, based on a personnal experience.
Last year around XMas, everyone at the office went for a couple of games of Laser Tag. The staff was separated in two teams, and war was declared. I know that this has nothing to do with real warfare, but I still remarked that people who had extensive experience with FPS games did a lot better. Little reflexes you get from team FPS games can help you IRL. So much so that those that were avid FPS players got on the average twice as many points and got killed half as much.
Nothing really significative, but still interesting IMHO.
I wouldn’t doubt that something like Doom could be used as one tool in training. However I don’t see how anyone can think that Doom in and of itself will train someone how to be an effective soldier. Hell, Doom won’t even teach you how to be a good paintball player.
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Nor will it even come close to teaching you how to shoot straight. I’m with you, it is annoying.
Well some critis of first person shooters maintain that these games desensitize kids and make them better abled to kill. I think it is bullshit myself.
A version of Novalogic’s semi-popular Delta Force series of games was used by the Army to train them to use the new Land Warrior system. This series “simulates” out door small scale infantry engagements. It is a million times more realistic than Doom (or any Quake or UT or their mods) but still NOTHING like real life. It is still unrealistic in many many ways but it is my favorite game. Yes I’ve played Ghost Recon and Operation Flashpoint. GR looks a UT mod slowed WAY down and OFP just felt wrong. Return to Castle Wolftenstien’s demo rocks though. Aaaaa sorry about the hijack. The point is that the military uses these simulaters just like they use sims for pilots and tanks, for training. You still have to go out in the field and shoot the gun and fly the plain before you are combat ready.
dead0man
Well, the military has to draw the potential recruits in somehow. Teaching you video games seems a hell of a lot more exciting than watching a training video on how to scrape the seagull shit off an aircraft carrier.
As for video games somehow honing one’s killing instinct? Feh. I’ve killed a lot of stuff over the years in my computer games, but it still hasn’t perverted me to the point that I want to go out and shoot a deer. Let alone an enemy soldier.
I’ve have killed <i>millions</i> of video game critters in my life, dozens just today in Final Fantasy VII. I’m also a pacifist, and a firm believer in the value of human life. Hell, I don’t even crush ants or swat flies.
Desensitization by video games is a myth. The worst risks video games pose are to the bank account, and to your hard drive’s memory capacity. Other than that, all you have to worry about is getting rickets, from a lack of exposure to sunlight.
It strikes me that militaries are usually pretty savvy about effective ways to condition their troops, and so they must know this. I think video games become a scapegoat when cultures don’t want to adress the real sources of violence – culture and social pressures, poverty, and propaganda – because they hit a little too close to home.
Sky Shark in the arcade, baby. It was at least a good month or two after I finished playing that game that my right wrist could even turn the ignition key in my car again. At the time, it was a horrifying malady for a 20-year-old.
The technique that they are trying to use is something called “operant conditioning”. The basic idea is that these games desensitize you to the idea of pointing and shooting a weapon or something at a person.
Well, now more sober I can say my greatest annoyance was probably with the golly-giz-whiz-we-don’t-need-to-sweat attitude of the reporter (and to be fair his over-the-top guide).
Er, um…huccome when the Columbine killers were reported to have been Doom and Quake fanatics, it was, “oh, video games don’t cause people to shoot people”, but now it’s “we’re using Doom to train soldiers”? WTF? I must’ve missed something. Bring more coffee…
I watched the same report as Collounsbury, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know who that guy is, but “golly gee” is a great way to describe his general demeanor. It was amusing when the soldiers were yelling at him to keep up.
The one thing that struck me as being exceptionally useful is that these “games” can take data from satellite reconnaissance and recreate any area, complete with topography, buildings, sentry towers, gun emplacements, etc in their exact positions. Now not quite the same as real life, I’ll grant you, but this seems immensely helpful for preparing troops for an insertion in unfamiliar surroundings.
