Gamers made good soldiers News
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by
Tom Bramwell
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.
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Comments: 1-35 of 35 in total
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CaptCastle
29/11/07 @ 11:32
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Went off to find a link but ZuluHero was faster...
oh well, here it is anyway http://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/0... |
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RamblinSydRumpo
29/11/07 @ 11:53
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"pretty good at shooting people in the Afghanistan"
Which area of the body would that be in? |
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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. |
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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. |
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@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? |
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@ 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. |
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kangarootoo
29/11/07 @ 15:04
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@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". |
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seamonsterneil
29/11/07 @ 16:50
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awesome... im gonna join the sas... what was that "lets do this"..craig fairbrass...what..from eastenders.... thatll throw my aim right off... id be in the middle of battle and him going "lets do this" and me going "werent you in eastend...."SPLUTCH.....
war is bad kids |
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Ghettomurph
29/11/07 @ 19:00
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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! |
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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 |
Comments: 1-35 of 35 in total
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