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View Full Version : US buys into video gaming to supplement training



Teo
Jan 11 2006, 12:42
Take a look at this:

http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw051212_1_n.shtml

This is an extract from a report on Janes.com:

12 December 2005
US buys into video gaming to supplement training

By Dennis Blank JDW Correspondent
Orlando, Florida

The US armed forces are looking to expand their use of video gaming to augment simulations and other training, according to several military leaders.

As many as 100 video games - depicting a wide range of storylines from hand-to-hand combat to commanding a fleet of battle ships - are being actively used by the military to complement existing training programmes.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is spending an estimated USD120 million on evaluating the effectiveness of gaming and creating new ones - a sum dwarfed by the USD7 billion commercial gaming market. However, defence spending in the sector has become serious enough that game manufacturers have put together a formal alliance with the DoD.

However, Michael Freeman, deputy director in the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Readiness, said a major issue is how to integrate the games into the overall training. "Our biggest challenges are matching game technologies to training needs and context," he said.

By far the most popular game is 'America's Army', which was created three years ago and has almost four million registered users. It is a squad-based, first-person shooter game consisting of basic training, plus a series of team-based missions that involved special forces operations and combat medical specialties.

redface
Jan 11 2006, 13:16
this may sound promising, but previous experience has already taught the OFP-community that such spending doesn't come as institutional support, but rather as a weird mix of contractors and pseudo-companies ready to make quick profit out of other people's work, whilst dodging and neglecting our beloved game companies' own official military training tool (VBS1)

Placebo
Jan 11 2006, 14:06
I think this suits OT more than the Flashpoint:Elite forums http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif