U.S. Army confuses video games with reality? - by Ghostly Apparition
charlestheoaf on 15/5/2007 at 04:28
Sometimes, I think, maybe I want to join the army. I mean it's basically like FPS except better graphics. But what happens if I get lag out there? I'm dead! I mean, I even heard there's no respawn points in RL.
I just hope Jack Thompson doesn't get this commercial involved in his crusade.
Vivian on 15/5/2007 at 06:53
Hah hah, no wonder you guys have a shit army.
Seriously though, what the fuck is this? Are they recruiting for klendathu already or what? and apart from anything else, what the hell were they thinking? The obvious insult to our collective intelligence apart, this is deeply sinister - I mean, the only large group of people without the nounce to separate games from actual violence must be quite young kids, right? So is this an attempt to get kids into the army?
duckman on 15/5/2007 at 07:11
I think you're all over-analyzing this advertisement. Their simply trying to tap a market of gamers, the military, like a product, needs consumers. Your average person isn't an intillectual who will delve into the particulars of this commercial.
Also videogames used by the military isn't new. Look at the army game released by the US, or the use of videogames to desensitize soldiers to a degree to intense combat missions [see Vietnam, far more soldiers used their weapons in Vietnam than WWII, videogames were part of a program to de-sensitize particular soldiers to particular situations as lame and unreal as I sound saying that].
Morte on 15/5/2007 at 08:03
Quote Posted by duckman
Also videogames used by the military isn't new. Look at the army game released by the US, or the use of videogames to desensitize soldiers to a degree to intense combat missions [see Vietnam, far more soldiers used their weapons in Vietnam than WWII, videogames were part of a program to de-sensitize particular soldiers to particular situations as lame and unreal as I sound saying that].
They used videogames to de-sensitize soldiers for Vietnam? Really? What did they use, Pong?
Not that I dispute the utility of simulated violence to overcome people's natural aversion to killing, but something about that particular tidbit doesn't seem
quite right.
Telliamed on 15/5/2007 at 08:39
Quote Posted by duckman
I think you're all over-analyzing this advertisement. Their simply trying to tap a market of gamers, the military, like a product, needs consumers. Your average person isn't an intillectual who will delve into the particulars of this commercial.
But... but. That army guy that came to my school said it's real so it must be true. Are you trying to tell me that the recruiter might actually have
lied?
Not delving into the particulars of an advertisement is a fatal flaw and shows lack of practical sensibility. But, of course, that's what the corporations
want is a populace of shallow imbeciles who depend entirely on mass media to tell them what is or isn't true. You don't have to be an "intellectual" to know when someone is handing you a load of bullshit. That character trait used to be called "common sense".
I don't see what the big deal is about soldiers playing computer games. No one has ever made a fuss that airline pilots are trained using flight sims. And some of the hardware the army has is fcking leet. The CAVE system, for one.
"Desensitizing" (you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means) is not what the army is interested in. If they were truly doing that, there wouldn't be the countless cases of people returning from a warzone with myriad psychological problems. They're mostly practicing procedures and how to work in the chain of command.
If anything, army training is meant to increase sensitivity to violence by encouraging mild paranoia in the soldiers. They're basically being taught "That bad guy will kill you unless you kill him first."
Recruiting methods, on the other hand, all but deny that there is any danger in joining the military. Thus all these "the army is cool" and "people who join the army are better" type of advertisements. If any other industry made the types of claims that the army did, they'd have been sued out of business long ago.
p.s. I don't normally point these things out, but it's slightly humorous that you misspelled "intellectual".
Quote Posted by Morte
They used videogames to de-sensitize soldiers for Vietnam? Really? What did they use, Pong?
Of course! Haven't you seen Forrest Gump?
(well, okay... that was real ping-pong not a video game)
Rogue Keeper on 15/5/2007 at 09:07
Anybody knows Desert Rain, a hi-tech simulation performance game based on SGI MASSIVE-2 -VR system?
(
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_desertrain.html)
Forget about your console military games, this is the next level of military simulation they spoke about.
Rogue Keeper on 15/5/2007 at 12:28
More specifically a war themed art, inspired by real accident from 1990 Gulf War, when US Marines trained on combat simulators have shot down - influenced by computer calculations - a civilian aeroplane, killing 290 passengers. During Desert Rain performance in Prague in 2002, Blast Theory member Matt Adams commented their source of inspiration : 'It's a dreadful example of how are simulators able to influence our sense of reality and perception of our physical world.'
(
http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/events/rain/)
(
http://www.blisty.cz/art/9970.html)
(this is an article about DR presentation in Prague in 2002, you probably won't understand much of it, but the author comments a seminar called "Simulators, games and reality" which accompanied the performance and presented a topic of possible military potential of VR systems such as Massive-2).
Of course if we accept that computer games are basically 'art', then we should accept that combat simulators like VBS are basically 'art', too.
The_Raven on 15/5/2007 at 15:58
Quote Posted by Morte
They used videogames to de-sensitize soldiers for Vietnam? Really? What did they use, Pong?
Chances are it was Space Invaders.
