Army Launches $50 Million Videogame Push

U.S. soldiers from the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, play with video games at a base in Baghdad. Games can help soldiers deployed in combat zones deal with stress, boredom and loneliness. MSNBC / Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images

From The Danger Room:

The Army's Training and Doctrine Command is getting ready to pour $50 million into videogames that'll help troops get ready for combat.

Development won't start until 2010, Stars & Stripes reports. The games themselves wont be ready until 2015. By then, the U.S. military will be in its eighth decade, using games to prep troops for war -- starting with primitive, 1940s flight simulators bought from a Coney Island amusement park.

This isn't the Army's first stab at developing games, either. In 1999, the Army teamed up with gaming and Hollywood pros to found the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles; it's become one of the world's most advanced schools for simulation-building. 2002 saw the debut of the wildly-successful shoot-em-up, America's Army, developed by the military as a recruiting tool. In 2004, the Army set up a videogame studio in North Carolina. Last year, Training and Doctrine Command opened a new office for gaming.

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Update: Not playing around: Army to invest $50M in combat training games -- Stars And Stripes

My Comment: As a "cured" video game player/addict .... this is one videogame that I am going to stay away from.