Gamers made good soldiers

By Tom Bramwell Published 29 November, 2007

Head of Army says so.

The head of the British Army has said that the "PlayStation generation" (zomg bias) is actually pretty good at shooting people in the Afghanistan and Iraq.

"There was a time when commentators and some more experienced members of the Army expressed concern as to whether the 'PlayStation generation' were up to dealing with the gritty bloody conflict that is routine business in southern Afghanistan and Iraq," General Sir Richard Dannatt told Cardiff Business Club in comments reported by BusinessInWales.

"Well, I'm pleased to say that they are. Our young soldiers, drawn from across British society, are more than a match for what is required of them and I salute every one of them."

Obviously Dannatt wasn't suggesting that years spent fine-tuning FOV settings and learning how to use TeamSpeak properly have been influential in all that horrible warring, but presumably it is useful for morale to operate under the assumption that once you've done what you're doing a giant dropship will land and extract you. General Dannatt's Gamertag is unknown.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • KingOfIceland #1 4 years ago

    wow..... just.... wow....

  • ZuluHero #2 4 years ago

    well obviously!

    They control spy-planes with 360 controllers now, dontchaknow :)

  • ZuluHero #3 4 years ago

    I need to comment some more!

    And I wonder if they all leap around sniping and shouting "ZOMG owned - Pew, pew, pew...."

    Sorry if that's in bad taste.
    Edited by 1 at 29/11/07 @ 11:32

  • CaptCastle #4 4 years ago

    Went off to find a link but ZuluHero was faster...

    oh well, here it is anyway http://ww w.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/0...

  • aldo_14 #5 4 years ago

    Soldiers make good targets.

  • syphaa #6 4 years ago

    I like how the quote is "Gamers MADE good soldiers" its a bit past tense...sounds a bit like the soldiers where just thrown in for cannon fodder...dumb army bollocks.

  • asharkman #7 4 years ago

    I wonder did MS provide them with decent drivers so you can press the two triggers at the same time.
    I've had that bloody pad nearly 2 years now +i still cant get my team to defend more heavily in pro evo.

  • Darren #8 4 years ago

    So video games can make you a bad footballer but make you a good soldier? I knew all those sessions on FIFA and Pro Evo were going to be good for something... :)

  • RamblinSydRumpo #9 4 years ago

    "pretty good at shooting people in the Afghanistan"

    Which area of the body would that be in?

  • blender #10 4 years ago

    army will take anyone... and train them up . just like Mcdonalds.. Obviously army wants marathon runners but will settle for snickers as they are desparate.

  • Whizzo #11 4 years ago

    "pretty good at shooting people in the Afghanistan"

    Which area of the body would that be in?

    It's near your Khyber.

  • Vin #12 4 years ago

    Clearly no hitboxes to worry about.

  • Xerx3s #13 4 years ago

    Well, I did apply COD4 tactics in last weeks painball match and kicked some massive arse. Do I get a job in the army now?

  • Bluetooth #14 4 years ago

    Shame the pay, working conditions (getting shot excluded) are all shit.

  • ArcMonkey #15 4 years ago

    You see! JAck Thompson was right! Murder simulators!

    etc etc...

  • Kismet. #16 4 years ago

    "I wanted to meet interesting people from an old and distinguished culture... and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block with a confirmed kill." (/quote)

  • bad09 #17 4 years ago

    After playing COD4 I signed up for the SAS and got in! Lets do this....

  • Big-Swiss #18 4 years ago

    This is totally wrong, what kind of idiots would even think it is good to say such a thing..
    The Army made me good at playing FPS games, not the other way around.
    If a game is done realisticly, then you have a advantage if you have had 32 weeks of real combat training, because what you need to watch out in real life, you may need to watch out in the game, but to pull a trigger with a STGW90 is much harder and diffrent then to push some buttons. This was always the reason for me not to play too much FPS, because I can do that 4 weeks a year in real life.
    Nah, this is a very weird interview with a very weird person with a very weird opinion. Games train Killers! It is the other way around if you can even combine these things.

  • matrim83 #19 4 years ago

    And I wonder if they all leap around sniping and shouting "ZOMG owned - Pew, pew, pew...."

    :D

  • Olemak #20 4 years ago

    Maybe gamers have slightly better eye-hand coordination than average. Maybe refexes are honed through playing games, too, experience at quick thinking and analysing dangerous sitations. Then again, maybe leet soldiers expect to be respawned at the beginning of next round anyway, and are desensitized from thousands of virtual kills...

    Irony aside, one of the most chilling game experiences I've ever had, was the gunship "level" in COD4. The one in black-and-white, with the pilot and target analyzer chatting calmly as anonymous grunts en masse are blasted into a fine paste below. I caught myself thinking that this is really what modern warfare is like: technology disconnecting the soldier completely from the human tragedy unfolding on the other sides of the crosshairs. Hundreds of lives wasted in minutes, me coldly pulling the trigger, detached. I bet that level is about as accurate as war simulations come. I bet gamers are great at that kind of soldiering.

  • Nobuo #21 4 years ago

    'The head of the British Army has said that the "PlayStation generation" (zomg bias)'

    Actual lol.

  • bad09 #22 4 years ago

    @Olemak

    I have to say I LOVED that level on COD4 but I do have a sick sense of humor in games! But seriously, that is a really good point. Modern warfare is detached and easy, press a button and it's gone just like a game. That's why it's important, now more than ever, to keep an eye on what our governments are doing in our name!
    Iraq anyone?

  • Rich72 #23 4 years ago

    @ Olemak

    that was the same for me too.... death from above or whatever it's called. i watched some actual footage from one of the U.S. planes in Iraq and that level was very close to the mark. in fact the footage was even more disturbing as i remember what seemed like a hundred bombs as this anonymous figure ran for his life while the pilots happily joked when they had finally got him.... took around ten minutes of dropping explosives on this guy.

  • mattigan #24 4 years ago

    "pretty good at shooting people in the Afghanistan"

    Which area of the body would that be in?

    At the end of your Afghanistarm of course ;)

  • bad09 #25 4 years ago

    mattigan, I thought my jokes were bad!!!!

  • kangarootoo #26 4 years ago

    @Big Swiss

    Perhaps it works both ways. Playing a driving sim might make you better at actual driving, and driving round a track might make you better at a driving sim.

    I agree that there are some things a game can't teach you, but other things related to warfare (such as cover tactics) could be taught if the game was accurately constructed.


    However.... I actually think people are missing the point (to some degree because the misleading headline).

    To my eyes this guy isn't saying,
    "Playing games makes people potentially better soldiers".

    What I think he is actually saying is,
    "We feared that, when compared to previous more physically active generations, this generation of game playing teenagers were going to be lazy, fat, unmotivated and unable to take orders effectively, resulting in a new generation of soldiers that would be less use than a parachute made of cabbage. We were pleasantly surprised to find this is not the case, they are actually not bad at soldiering, and the future of our armed forces is not damned... phew".

  • Pulsar_t #27 4 years ago

    This statement reminds me why I always avoid the (online) fps crowd, despite being a fps player myself..

  • dsmx #28 4 years ago

    I just had a vision of a group of army soliders bunny hoping down the roads in Afghanistan when they get shot at by a sniper.

  • JayPee #29 4 years ago

    Like he would say anything other than our soldiers are performing really well.

    This really has nothing to do with gaming.

  • dsmx #30 4 years ago

    New recruiting message for the army: "Join the army it has better graphics and you don't get any lag or crappy hit detection"

  • Ghettomurph #31 4 years ago

    Its true. I was last in Iraq in 2005 and when I had to shoot someone it was no different a feeling to say, killing an enemy in something like CoD.

    That's just my personal experience of it though. I had some mates who just couldn't get over taking someone else's life. I didn't give a toss tbh, if some nob is firing from the hip with an AK in my direction then they deserve a 5.56 in the chest!

  • aldo_14 #32 4 years ago

    And yet there has yet to be a game made which features antiquated communications systems, being bombed by dumb-arsed US National Guard* A-10s or having to replace melted boots with those of dead enemy soldiers.

    *the National Guard air force being about as useful as Strathclyde Police Submarine Command, it seems

  • Ginger #33 4 years ago

    isn't he just saying that the british army can turn the current crop of kids into soldiers, regardless of the fact that they spent the first 18 years of their lives plugged into a PS2 / Xbox rather than because of it?