Post by Kämpfer on Nov 27, 2006 18:27:29 GMT -5
A new video game commissioned by the U.S. Army as a recruiting tool portrays the nation's military in 2015 as an invulnerable high-tech machine.
The new PC title, Future Force Company Commander, or F2C2, is a nifty God-game that puts players in the driver's seat of 18 systems at the heart of the military's new net-centric warfare approach. The Army added the game to its recruiting tool kit last month as a high-tech follow-up to its successful America's Army shooter.
It's an impressive game, simulating weaponry the military is actually using or building, gamers say. But the gameplay is designed so it's hard to lose: The equipment holds up awfully well and the enemy doesn't learn from experience.
"They didn't ask for hole punchers," says Mark Long, co-CEO of Zombie, where the game was built under contract. "High tech has all kinds of low-tech vulnerabilities and they didn't want the vulnerabilities programmed in."
Defense contractor Science Applications International commissioned the game for $1.5 million. So far, more than 24,000 copies have been handed out on disk or downloaded from the websites of the Army and game builder Zombie.
Missions include planning and executing a night raid on a populated area, and protecting a border and an airstrip in a notional country having problems with its notional neighbor. The game provides terrain maps and data about the strength of the equipment.
Gamers on Battlefront.com give the title good reviews, but complain about the game being paid for with their taxes and offering an overly optimistic view of America's tactical superiority over fictitious enemies.
Susan Nash, an e-learning expert and associate dean at Excelsior College in Albany, New York, has played F2C2 and the Army's first recruiting game. She gives both high marks for fun and for the learning experience. But she agrees with Long that the new game presents an artificially rosy view of warfare.
"It's a great game and a really good training tool that creates conditions for learning, teaches strategic thinking and tactical thinking, and it's got really cool weapons," Nash says. "But ethical issues loom."
For example, there's no consideration that military power or technology could fail or be jammed, she says. And the enemy doesn't learn, in contrast to a certain real-life conflict where the hallmark of insurgents is their ability to rapidly gain knowledge and evolve.
"All their use of technology is so off-label, so future-forward," Nash says. "And you've got to figure the enemy is playing the game too."
Long wanted to see the enemy evolve, based on his own experience in the Army and defense contracting.
"The first time a UGV toddles in for reconnaissance, insurgents will stare at it until the air strike follows," he says. "The second time, they'll throw a blanket over it and run. The third time, they'll immobilize it and plant an IED because they'll have figured out someone has to recover that million-dollar piece of equipment."
More than anything else, Nash is bothered by the fantasy the potential recruits may have that they'll end up the commander riding a joystick rather than understanding what military life means.
"You don't see the day-to-day boredom, you don't see broken legs and equipment failure," she says. "You don't see that the military is mostly grunts and only the grunts on the ground die."
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