Video Games Prepare Soldiers for War

[bapenguin]

From the Fuel for the Anti-Video Game Fire Department comes this article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021302437.html) from the Washington Post regarding Video Games and Soldiers of war.

"It felt like I was in a big video game. It didn't even faze me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! " remembers Swales, a fast-talking, deep-voiced, barrel-chested 29-year-old from Chesterfield, Va. He was a combat engineer in Iraq for nearly a year.
In fairness the article does go on to say how the army is using Virtual Reality to train soldiers for war as well. It's not just Battlefield 2 or Halo 2 that's doing the "training."

Thanks Borgboy for the link.

[Yama]

You wouldn't want to use a retail FPS as an official training aid anyways... unless you want an army of wannabe-Rambos that think circle strafing is the answer to every tactical scenario.

Sgt. Dethkilwarior23 yells to his men, "Own teh n00bs! Circle strafe, bunnyhop, and run with your knives out to get there faster! FTW!"
Sgt. Dethkilwarior23 and his men promptly die.

[kokyunage]

The article mentions Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War. It's an excellent book that oddly is "light reading" even though it deals with a serious and sometimes gruesome subject matter. I'd highly recommend it. Evan Wright does a good job of staying out of the political how's/why's and mostly just writes about the soldiers in Iraq. Good read.

[phantomhitman]

I wonder if they hax0r the real world to run faster or shoot through walls....

[YoungAlCapone]

"I even heard there are no respawn points in RL...

What If I lag? I'm dead!"

-FPS Doug

Not a direct quote, but the story made me think of it.

[Reanimated]

Good to know that if we ever get into another world war, we'll have plenty of pre-trained killing machines.

[Hizawky]

If we get robots to do the work for me and I can safely control them from here, I am good for about 20:1 K/D ratio.

If Medic robots are in the field, might as well just call game over because we would rape.

[Vjornaxx]

I really like this quote


Lt. Col. Scott Sutton, director of the technology division at Quantico Marine Base, where the mock-up M16s are used, says soldiers in this generation "probably feel less inhibited, down in their primal level, pointing their weapons at somebody." That, in effect, "provides a better foundation for us to work with," he adds.


I don't know why, but I think it's funny.

[mpsmith]

I've done some of the pseudo-video game Army weapons training. The one where you get a CO2-operated M16 and theres a big screen with live-action people in it whom you kill.

It's sometimes cheesy... In the beginning your scouts will be out front and maybe one gets shot or something with somewhat crappy acting. I realize that theyre trying to make it realistic but I'd rather just shoot people without any "background."

But it's always fun! Did I mention that the live-action OPFOR actually die when you shoot them? It's cool stuff.

Oh, and it's generally agreed upon by "older" officers (late 30s+) that the younger soldiers ("Nintendo generation," we've been called) are able to handle multiple complex tasks quite easily without further training. Yay video games!

[Stooby]

I think it is pretty much common knowledge that playing video games makes you better equipped to handle stressful situations. When I was younger and would get put into a stressful situation my adrenaline would start pumping and I would stop thinking clearly. I would go into survival mode and do stupid shit.

For instance, when I was about 12 years old me and my friends were out playing and we saw someone get into a car accident. We ran over and started yelling to the people it didn't even occur to us to call 911 we were trying to see if they lived and we were trying to get them out of the car. My friends and I were completely paniced and not thinking straight in the slightest.

Fast forward six years later, I am driving home from my University on an interstate and I see a car coming from the merge lane in front of me. It seems to happen in slow motion I see the car fly across the road slam into a guard rail, turn in the other direction about 70 degrees and go flying into a ditch. Before the car can even get into the ditch I am already pulling over. I jump out of the car and run down to the car. I immediately call 911 while running down there and get them on the line. I get down to the car and explain the situation to 911 and then I toss my phone to one of the other people that pulled over to finish giving them directions. This time instead of being in an adrenaline induced haze, the adrenaline just made me sharper. I noticed how she was hurt and while all the other people there were screaming to get her out of the car, I told her to stay in the car and try not to move because she may have a back injury. I rescued her dog which was in the backseat (and some how only slightly injured despite the woman being injured very badly even though she was wearing a seatbelt). I had to calm down the lady in the car, take care of the dog, and keep the people that pulled over in line because they were all freaking out.

The change in response from when I was 12 years old and when I was 18 year old is in part due to maturity, that is not so much the point, the reactions of the other people that pulled over was ridiculous. They were acting like scared 12 year olds. I probably saved that womans life because, I found out in the newspaper, she had a vertebrae that was seperated, if someone had pulled her out of the car, without proper restraints, she could have ended up paralyzed.

[Aespir]

I dunno, at the same time, I'm a little worried about this information being misconstrued.

Four years ago I was very, very close to going into the Marines. As anyone who knows me can tell you, this would have been a bad, bad move for me. The short of it is that a recruiter just happened to call me at the wrong moment, and though games may have made my mind keen, this is one of the few times I've felt lucky that they made my body week. They ran me through the physical tests three times, with workouts in between, and I never managed to pass.

Well, when I finally got it through my thick skull that I didn't mind the idea of being shot at (well, okay, I DO, but not on a moral level), I really didn't like the idea of having to shoot at someone else. So I backed out. Unfortunately, a Master Sargeant happened to be in town the next day. My recruiter and the MS tracked me down to the gaming store I hung out at, and we had a little talk.

I learned a lot that afternoon (among others, I learned I was right for backing out), and one of the more disturbing things that stuck with me is that he seemed to think that, as a gamer, I should be perfect for the military. I tried to point out why I disagree with him, my main point being that when you kill someone in a game they aren't really dead--it's just a game. He didn't seem to agree with my point...

I dunno. You hear all the time about how people think games lead to violence and yada yada yada, but what I don't think people seem to realize is that many gamers tend to have a strong sense of the gravity of their actions. This article mentions, briefly, what happens to a gamer after he's had to shoot some people... And I'm honestly curious about how, on average, the difference between a non-gamer and a gamer's reaction to killing for the first time. I've only recently started thinking of this, so I'm probably just full of hot air, but I honestly think that the non-gamer would have an easier time recovering from such a traumatic event.

[Mason]

I view this as a net negative, because in spite of all the command-and-control hierarchical aspects of military service, soldiers are still required to make moral decisions. Particularly in the asymmetric conflicts which seem to be America's destiny. And while I'd say that a background in video games or simulator training is really no different than conventional military training when it comes to abstracting away the moral aspects of service, that's no reason to applaud the refinement of such training techniques.

And Stooby, I've been involved in a very similar situation. Stupid TV has convinced people that wrecked cars almost always explode, so the well-meaning people who pull over at accidents can end up doing more harm than good.

[Yama]

I make a silly comment, and the thread goes all serious and insightful. I should do this more often.

Anyways, it takes a lot to make a car explode. The amount of heat and force needed to rupture and detonate the gasoline vapour is enough to probably kill the occupants outright. They deliberately make those gas tanks to be resistant to such things. Leak? Absolutely. Explode? Not unless the whole car is on fire, in which case leaving the person in there is not an option.

As for moral decisions, even though I seperate real world from game world I find myself squeamish when it comes to indiscriminately murdering innocent NPCs in a game, even more so if they're women, children or pets. Enemy combatant? I'll kill them in as gruesome a fashion as possible. Someone's pet dog in their yard? I'll wince at that. Bonus wince-age (It's a word now!) if it includes a sound effect of the dog whimpering as it dies :(

I don't think a successful soldier is necessarily the one with the ability to react in a cold-blooded and mechanical fashion. A successful soldier simply has cool under fire, and can make an informed decision during a chaotic mess. It may not be the best decision, but being able to think at all when the world is full of fire and smoke puts you way ahead of those who've gone irrational. Even just regurgitating something you remembered in your training can save your ass. Screaming hysterically and firing randomly at things that move? Not so good.

[Mason]

As for moral decisions, even though I seperate real world from game world I find myself squeamish when it comes to indiscriminately murdering innocent NPCs in a game, even more so if they're women, children or pets. Enemy combatant? I'll kill them in as gruesome a fashion as possible. Someone's pet dog in their yard? I'll wince at that. Bonus wince-age (It's a word now!) if it includes a sound effect of the dog whimpering as it dies :(

Wasn't quite the point I was getting at.

First, for the people who keep reality and fantasy quite separate, games can prepare you to carry out goals in combat, but they can't prepare you for the results. The guilt and anguish over killing in combat or surviving when a friend didn't, the PTSD, are psychological wounds which can be crippling. So games and training can convince someone that they're ready for combat, without preparing them for living with the aftermath. On a human level, that's a problem.

And like it or not, but there are those for whom the nihilistic eliminationist worldview of games and military training can bleed into their real-world behavior. This isn't a problem in civilian life, but when coupled with a weapon and a perceived authorization to use force, the results can be problematic. The soldier who was videoed killing a wounded Iraqi in Fallujah, for example, was a lot closer to the juvenile amorality of a CS script-kiddie than the standards of honorable conduct which our armed forces venerate.

This problem way predates video games, of course, and is pretty much inherent in any form of military training. Games are only relevant in so far as they represent a component of that training.

[Stooby]

I don't think games really make people feel less when they kill someone. They just make you better at handling stressful situations. When I play games I feel bad if I accidentaly shoot one of the innocent bystanders. I have played violent games my entire life, and I still don't enjoy killing some random innocent civilian in a game.

However, what games have done is make me more comfortable in a stressful situation. I can handle a situation that causes my adrenaline to start pumping because everytime I play through an action packed FPS it puts me in survival mode. My body is trained to know how to react.

I have heard that having adrenaline pumping through your body is bad for your heart, so maybe F.E.A.R. took a few years off my life. :'( It was worth it, though, that game is totally badass.

[pavlovscow]

I find these articles a bit sophmoric. The general premise is that video games make people more prepared to kill as compared to the past, before video games.

My dad was in Vietnam and he was pretty good with a rifle. Why? He hunted deer in Pennsylvania since he was 12. Using guns for protection and/or hunting was far more prevalent in the past. And as far a preparing a person to kill, I'm sure actually using a gun to kill deer is far more useful that pressing a button on a controller when one pixel replaces another.

If one was to make the argument, that today's kid is better at multitasking, that may have merit. But it is frequently implied that video game generation kids are more prepared and desensitized to violence simply because they play video games with killing in it, without any historical evidence showing that kids of past generations weren't just as interested in violence. The most popular male children games: war, cowboys and indians, cops and robbers; these are not new themes. Video games are just the newest medium for them.

Anyway, I had to register to go on my rant.

[hund_]

I learned a lot that afternoon (among others, I learned I was right for backing out), and one of the more disturbing things that stuck with me is that he seemed to think that, as a gamer, I should be perfect for the military. I tried to point out why I disagree with him, my main point being that when you kill someone in a game they aren't really dead--it's just a game. He didn't seem to agree with my point...

trust me if you had said you were a pool cleaner they would of had reasons why you would have been a better killer.its the way recruiters work[they have quota's to meet];)