army

Military Videogames, Circa 1981

12:36PM Ian Bogost | Serious games are an increasingly prevalent, albeit not necessarily increasingly popular, type of videogame. One of the most prominent players in serious games has long been the military, with their significant investments in training games of their own, as well as advertising and cross-over games like America’s Army and Full Spectrum Warrior. They’ve been at it a lot longer than you think. Way back in 1981, the US Army commissioned Atari to create a modified version of the hit arcade game Battlezone, to be used to train soldiers to manoeuvre and target the Bradley “armored fighting vehicle” (that’s a “tank” to the rest of us). I knew about the game thanks to an article Peter Smith wrote for a collection I co-edited. I unearthed the image above during some research for the Atari VCS book Nick Montfort and I are finishing. It’s from the official Atari fan club magazine. Atari Age, vol 1 num 1, May/June 1982 [Atari Museum] More »

Fun For Our Troops Sends Gaming Relief

2:20AM Mike Fahey | While a lot of us are safe at home playing Call of Duty 4 on our game consoles, a sizable portion of the US military is overseas right now living it – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t gamers. There are tons of video game addicts in the military, and now there’s an organisation dedicated to getting them their fix. Created by military wife Stephanie Doctor Shea, whose own husband was just redeployed to Iraq, Games For Fun is an organisation that plans on raising money to supply our troops with video game goodness. She and partner Dana Blackman Brady believe that the comfort of video games will do our forces a world of good. “What they really appreciate over there is the true comforts of home,” Blackman Brady said. “The stress relief and the escapism involved in these games, we really think could be beneficial.” More »