Department of Defense plays games!
July 21, 2005 9:04 AM   Subscribe

From Marine Doom to America's Army to...Starcraft? A community of military games and game developers. Eerie or excellent?
posted by sandking (17 comments total)
 
On Starcraft: "A real-time stategy COTS game from blizzard. As the military leader for your species, you must gather the resources you need to train and expand your forces and lead them to victory. Used by the USAF."

I bet the Zerg never had recruiting problems. I bet the Protoss never had journalists reporting their blunders. I bet the Terrans...um. Hm. So when are the Marines going to deploy the first Firebats?
posted by voltairemodern at 9:15 AM on July 21, 2005


Forget firebats. We need to deploy a defensive line of Vultures, with a fast strike team of Goliaths and a moving artillery line of Tanks with airborn Science Vessel to provide anti-stealth and forward battlefield visibility. The marines should be holed up in inner zone bunkers to repel any wayward units that break through the firelines. Oh, and get a fleet of Battlecruisers ready to bring in the heavy bombardment should the enemy try and infect out command center. We'll need to nuke it from orbit, just to be safe.

Commander, you have the comm...
posted by daq at 9:32 AM on July 21, 2005


Shit. There goes my evening. I've not been on Battle.net for a long time.
posted by sciurus at 9:46 AM on July 21, 2005


I hope Iraq is littered with health and ammo pickups...or at least some crates containing them.
posted by unsupervised at 9:54 AM on July 21, 2005


I actually do a lot of related work, and know the people behind the site, so I thought it might be worth explaining some of the reasoning. The idea of using games in military training is very appealing: live training is expensive, difficult to schedule, difficult to do enough of, and games, unlike training, are something soldiers want to play, even in their spare time. A key realization has been that it is not necessarily good to always base training scenarios on real life, if life ends up being different than the game world, the result can be confusing (witness the Iraq war planning issues, for example!). It turns out that skills like teamwork, leadership, strategic thinking, and communication can be taught and practiced in non-realistic games, like Starcraft, and doing so improves real life abilities as well. Of course, you can’t just sit down and play Worlds of Warcraft and expect to be a better leader, but all of these games are built into lesson plans with specific goals that the gameplay reinforces.

The other end of the spectrum are games that are intended to be realistic simulations, and, interestingly, most of them are not shooters. One of the coolest is the Tactical Language Simulator, which combines commands like “remove hat” and “shake hands” along with voice recognition to teach soldiers basic Arabic, as well as cultural awareness and sensitivity (and its made using the Unreal engine!) There are also leadership trainers, logistics simulators, and even civil reconstruction games in the field. Not only are they (somewhat) engaging, but they teach a lot of skills traditional training can’t, and I suspect we will see a lot more of this in non-military training as well.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:27 AM on July 21, 2005


The Sims: Tactical Language Edition! I loves it!

I wonder if any of the more realistic war simulations are actually fun though. Is it fun to play a military supply-chain management simulation?
posted by sandking at 11:00 AM on July 21, 2005


This is great! (I work on video games simulations for the Navy)

DOD does a lot of war gaming. It's actually quite amazing to see BGIE (Battle Group In-Port Exercises) take place with ships in-port in San Diego and Virginia Beach, but using software that simulates/stimulates the ship's computers, making it think it's running at speed in the Indian Ocean.

It's also fun to strap SM-2 anti-aircraft missiles on the backs of dolphins and turning them lose in the sim, but I digress...

If you're interested in this sort of thing, take a look at the results of the Millennium Challenge. Also neat is OneSAF, which looks like Command and Conquer, but is a multi-million dollar top-tier distributed military simulator.
posted by SweetJesus at 11:18 AM on July 21, 2005


"Of course, you can’t just sit down and play Worlds of Warcraft and expect to be a better leader"

There's a Leeroy Jenkins in every platoon, eh?
posted by dazed_one at 11:22 AM on July 21, 2005


Oh, and get a fleet of Battlecruisers ready to bring in the heavy bombardment should the enemy try and infect out command center.

My carrier swarm will pwn your battlecruisers!
posted by Foosnark at 12:15 PM on July 21, 2005


I'm in ur base, killin' ur doodz.
posted by basicchannel at 12:36 PM on July 21, 2005


Foosnark:[quote]My carrier swarm will pwn your battlecruisers![/quote]

Ah-ha, but you forget, my fast strike group of Goliaths are fully mobile to lock target your carriers, and the EMP burst from the Science Vessel will render your shield useless from the missile strike.

Of course, you could just send in those damn crawler things with the little long range guided mines. Those things are nasty. I'd have to assign an airstrike squadron on Wraiths to intercept any perimeter forays.
posted by daq at 12:38 PM on July 21, 2005


Also neat is OneSAF, which looks like Command and Conquer, but is a multi-million dollar top-tier distributed military simulator.
posted by SweetJesus at 1:18 PM CST on July 21 [!]


So, anyone got a .torrent?
posted by WinnipegDragon at 12:51 PM on July 21, 2005


Of course, you could just send in those damn crawler things with the little long range guided mines. Those things are nasty.

I'm not a big fan of those, though they do help hold choke points against a big crowd of meleers.

I admit these days I just play against the computer, playing defensive while building up my carrier armada and occasionally raiding or taunting to pull stuff into my wall o' cannons.
posted by Foosnark at 2:49 PM on July 21, 2005


There's a Leeroy Jenkins in every platoon, eh?

For those that dont get this joke (all three of you) check this video out for the joke...
posted by SirOmega at 3:08 PM on July 21, 2005


There's a Leeroy Jenkins in every platoon, eh?

I almost pissed myself when I saw that video the first time, I was laughing so hard. Thats like every group I've ever been with in .... well, any instanced dungeon, at least once every time.

Good to see it again, now that I've learned to control myself... and I'm at work so I have to keep the volume down.
posted by elendil71 at 3:37 PM on July 21, 2005


daq - Commander, you have the comm...

Is that what they way in the game, or was it "...you have the con?" I can't remember.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 7:22 PM on July 21, 2005


This is a strange site, chilling in some ways...I can't help but think of War Games or Ender's Game when I read about stuff like this.
posted by OmieWise at 4:05 AM on July 22, 2005


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