What Role Can Video Games Play In Training Our Soldiers

Image from Wikileaks

Death From Above: How Video Games Could Help Prevent Battlefield Tragedies Like The One Revealed By WikiLeaks. -- Slate

Whether this video is evidence of a war crime committed by U.S. troops in Iraq or not, one argument seems beyond dispute: "It seems like they are playing video games with people's lives," said Julian Assange, whose site WikiLeaks released the footage taken from a U.S. Apache helicopter as it sprayed gunfire on a group of men, including two Reuters employees, in Baghdad in 2007.

Read more ....

My Comment: I know that many soldiers just love their video games, and can play for hours and hours. As a "former" video game addict, I know the feeling. But can it be used to train our soldiers .... I would have to say yes.

By altering the parameters, a video game can put boundaries and restrictions on certain patterns of behavior that a player may manifest when playing the game. This training will help in conditioning the soldier on how to respond to a certain environment, and .... if things go right .... will be the behavior that he will exhibit when put into a real situation.

In theory .... that is what everyone hopes will happen. In practice .... warfare always brings in variables that we never thought of before .... how a soldier will respond is something that we will only know when that situation finally arises.