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The U.S. Army wants you, gamers. It's testing a new kind of recruitment centre, one the New York Times is calling a "model for recruitment in urban areas," one that smacks of old-school arcades.
CNN has just run an interesting segment on military robots coming in the near future that will be controlled using the Nintendo Wii remote, looking at the pros and cons of Wii-bots.
You know the United States Army is hard up for recruits when they start poking around in the unicorn-filled virtual world of Linden Labs' Second Life.
US nonprofit group Soldier's Angels is donating Nintendo Wiis to severely wounded veterans.
Donna Jo Blake, Chief of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation at Department of Veterans Affairs in Eastern Colorado thinks that this could lead to (and I do apologise for this) "Wii-hablitation".
"We are aware of many colleagues throughout the Veterans Affairs medical system who have developed dynamic Wii programs in multiple areas, including PolyTrauma, Spinal Cord Injury/Traumatic Brain Injury, and Long Term Care," says Blake, "Wii gaming has great potential for physical, mental and emotional well-being. We are delighted to receive this support from Soldiers' Angels."
Nonprofit Donates Wiis To Injured Soldiers [The Wiire]
The U.S. Army has created a video game training unit that will begin operation in 2010, and has funding for it set aside to the tune of $US50 million, reports Stars and Stripes. This isn't for recruiting or marketing, but the training of its soldiers in virtual environments.
You know who likes the smell of victory in the morning? The British Army, that's who - and now the Ministry Of Defence is pumping research pounds into creating a Virtual Battlefield complete with Virtual Smells so soldiers can sample that smell - alongside the bouquet of bullets, the whiff of weaponry and the perfume of the paramilitary - without having to step into harm's way.
Slate is running a story covering the debate about whether pilots of drone aircraft (which feels rather like playing a video game) suffer the same stress as pilots in actual combat.
We've all felt a bit stressed when playing a video game - whether its the tension of creeping around a Doom map that you know contains a Cyberdemon or just the feeling of panic as the Tetris blocks creep inexorably up the screen - if you game you know that it can take a real mental toll.
Of course, there is a big difference between BFGing some demons and guiding an actual missile that you know will kill actual human beings. Could it be that the reverse is true & that the video game nature of drone piloting gives a sense of distance that insulates people from killing?
As an aside, current recruitment ads for the British Army show someone piloting a recon aircraft using an Xbox 360 controller. Make of that what you will.
Ghosts in the Machine [Slate]
Fascinating article on Wired.com — the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's CIA counterpart, just paid $2.6 million for three custom video games to train its entire analyst corps, young and old. So, you want to bitch about $US60 titles on the Xbox, think of that next time. Plus, these games are bereft of squad-based FPS tactics or any real arcade action. They're designed to get to the heart of epistemology, which is, in essence, how you know what you know, and in these three cases, it's how to assess a threat or judge the quality of information.
We're already well aware of the various health-related applications for the Nintendo Wii, but what about the military uses? The U.S. military, who were up until recently confirmed Xbox 360 fanboys, are now looking into the possibility of Wiimote-controlled robots. Scientists have created the Packbot, a Wiimote-operated robot armed with a machine gun, to be used in clearing mines and bombs. The military would generally use a standard remote for such purposes, but scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy say the Wiimote is more instinctive, allowing users to focus on date processing rather than which button to press. In my world the device would come with a screen so the soldier operating it could watch his Mii diffusing bombs and tip=toeing around land mines. My world is a much happier place.
Wii controls to defuse bombs [Metro.co.uk]
U.S. Major General Jeffery Hammond, delivering a press briefing on the progress of the 4th Infantry's efforts in Iraq, revealed the inspiration behind their current strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda operatives and Shiite extremists.
"I believe they have been degraded, we continue to PacMan, like the video game, away at their efforts, at their different levels," Major General Hammond said.While it's nice to see a video game reference made by high-ranking military officers, I have to wonder exactly what this means. I get this bizarre mental image of an overhead view of the streets of Baghdad, fruit carts spilling into the streets and the military struggling to pick up the produce for extra points. Are we the ghosts, or are we Pac-Man himself? Are power pellets sanctioned under the Geneva Conventions? With so many questions, one thing remains quite clear - we need to air drop Billy Mitchell into the war zone immediately, hot sauce and all.
