Virtual War vs. Physical War

[prof_pangaea]

from the Washington Post:
Virtual Reality Prepares Soldiers for Real War

from selectparks.net:
Full Spectrum Propaganda

Comments

[old-hylian.livejournal.com]

Aw, frickin'...

Great, that's just what we need. The military telling people Halo helped their soldiers kill better. This is gonna go over real good, I bet.

[zougla.livejournal.com]

I've heard about the video game training before. Sounds kinda lame to me. Since when are Half Life players expert stealth soldiers anyway? Sounds like something the army actually laughs about and makes fun of, but that the publicity sector want to play off as something "cool" to the younger generation (who is obcessed with video games).
I guess that's pretty clever of them.
As far as the propaganda goes, well, c'mon, what else did you really expect from a game made by the army? Even if it is for training purposes, you can't ADMIT realities, even when everyone knows they are true. Not even in a lame ass video game.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

The "video game angle" is definitely a marketing scheme by the army targeted at lower middle class kids who are looking for ways out of their limited situations that appeal to their own interests.

But it's not only that. We shouldn't forget that video games were first developed in labs that were funded as part of the military-industrial complex of the 60's and 70's -- some just out of an idea of fun for geeky engineers, like pong or spacewars, some with a definite military agenda, like flight simulators, which have spawned quite a few games (by imitation and by technological innovation). So video games have been a part of the military establishment for a long time.

Also, the thing that I thought was really interesting in the first article was the idea that wargames have made it easier for soldiers to physically understand those basic mechanics of pushing buttons or pulling triggers to make things happen, that that mode of thinking is already naturally ingrained in them when they get to the military and the military sharpens it. But of course the physical consequences aren't a part of video games -- I mean, the closest anyone has gotten to that is to make your controller vibrate a little when you get "injured" in a game. There's no kickback, there's no heat singing your eyebrows in a video explosion, etc. So there's this mental training, especially with the amount of mechanised warfare that the U.S. engages in, but without any follow-up experience, which of course is best for the military, because they can get people out there and if those people figure out that they don't actually enjoy the repercussions, it doesn't harm the military because the soldiers can't leave.

I feel like it's just another aspect of the whole "I just joined for the college money!" thing, like those commercials where they show the soldier visiting his slacker friends who are all playing video games, and they ask him what he's doing, and he says, "Working with computers", and it flashes over to footage of the soldier pushing all these buttons and talking into his cool headset and there's all this crazy editing and sound, as if to say, 'You guys can play your lame fake video games, but I'm in the army and I play real ones.'