Orlando, Fla. --- Military leaders and video-game makers pledged to work together to create better training simulations at the GAMES (Government, Academic, Military, Entertainment and Simulation Synergy) Summit in Orlando, Fla. yesterday.
Orlando Sentinel technology writer Chris Cobbs, who covered the conference, zeroed in on an interesting point in this report.
(Background: military simulation technology is a huge industry and Orlando is home to a couple dozen companies that develop software. Almost all of it is D.O.D. funded and much of the technology and most of the workers matriculated from a particularly powerful technology incubator program here).
One Cobbs source suggests video games create a huge generation/culture gap that distinguishes people under the age of 35 (most gun-shooting soldiers, who have played video games) from those older (most commanders, who have not).
Note: the Sentinel is (free) reg. req., this link is probably only good today.
...military leaders still need to bridge generational and cultural gaps with younger soldiers and with video-game developers if more realistic training simulations are going to be developed, according to the experts...
"This conference is symbolic [said Doug Whatley, founder and chief executive officer of BreakAway Ltd., which has developed training games for the military.] There's been an awakening by the military to the technology revolution. The military can't practice war without tools that put troops in a virtual environment, so the video game is real and it's here to stay."
Here's where the report gets more interesting:
...senior military officers, many of them age 40 or older, still control much of the decision-making process, and not all of them have bought into the video-game generation's approach.
"Some of the older types just don't understand the zen of games, the sense that people who grew up playing games look at the world differently," said Noah Falstein, president of The Inspiracy, a consulting and game-design firm.
"There's a dividing line at about the age of 35, and those who are younger look at learning from a game-like standpoint. Probably only one in 100 coming into the military today didn't play games. Games are an intuitive part of their lives."
John Beck, senior research fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, was keynote speaker at the conference. Beck says the military is ahead of business in adopting game tech, but progress is slow.
"There are still generals who don't want their younger troops sitting around in an air-conditioned room 'playing Nintendo,' " he said.
"Still the military has got the message more clearly than corporate America, because they deal with 19-year-olds all the time."
Beck's research has convinced him there's "a huge amount of hope" for what he calls the "Gamer Generation," mostly people under age 35.
"They can learn many valuable lessons relating to teamwork, risk-taking and decision-making from their experiences with games," he said.
"We've found gamers are about twice as likely to believe in the role of luck, and in the military, luck is part of everyday life. The battlefield is all about chaos. Luck determines if a shell explodes next to you. That attitude allows gamers to dust themselves off and move on."
Some conference participants stressed the need for games that develop leadership and command skills as they teach soldiers how to operate weapons delivery systems that can kill hundreds with a single pull of the trigger.
"We've been too focused on the easy things, like taking the game Doom and replacing the monsters with Marines," said Whatley, referring to an early consumer game that was adapted by the Marines for training purposes.
An example of a next-generation video game recently adopted by the Army and Marines is called Darpa Ambush. Developed over the past six months, it runs on a laptop computer and trains soldiers in dangerous, urban convoy scenarios how to communicate effectively and respond when fired upon, said Jason Robar, founder of AISA Group, which created the game.
I have about $5 worth of Grand Theft Auto in a bar under my belt, that's my whole tech gaming experience. My brother operates about 500 arcade-style games around Disney, so I know there's an oceanic following.
Is it big enough, and distinguishable enough, to constitute a culture? Generation V?
Secondly, how will experienced gamers view the operations of sophisticated military weapons differently from, say, farmers?
Will vidgame sophistication affect the way they will make "pull the trigger" decisions?
Do vidgamers dKos on Saturday mornings?