Comments on: Game-based military recruiting

By: Xion

Xion — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:30:42 +0000

#15 I’m not a gamer, but I played COD4 on our PS3 once to humor my son. I got shot 30 times. The only person I killed was an accident because I dropped a hand grenade just as someone was killing me.

What is weird about modern games is they are online. So the people you are interacting with are actually real people. They don’t behave like computers at all. It took some getting used to. These games are very realistic.

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By: Cuthalion

Cuthalion — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:00:25 +0000

I was playing Call of Duty 4 with three friends once. We were in a competitive fight, sneaking around a ruined town, looking for each other, and hoping we’d see before we were seen. Someone made a comment about how freaky that would be in real life. For a couple minutes, we talked about that as we played. “No wonder they come back all messed up”, someone said…

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By: Xion

Xion — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:43:44 +0000

My son played Call of Duty 4 incessantly prior to going to boot camp. Afterward he said that the weapons on COD4 were very true to life and he actually knew quite a bit about weapon capabilities, simply from playing the game.

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By: Kennethos

Kennethos — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:58:02 +0000

Lynn:

I’ve seen tons of CD-based video games given out for recruiting in the last five years. Apparently, it’s effective with the younger generation. Also, there are numerous weapons simulators on Army bases, i.e. huge videos games. It saves money on ammo, and weapons usage, as opposed to spending an entire day blowing through 20,000 rounds. Better save that for overseas.
I’m not crazy about huge cash bonuses, but in a recruiting industry that operates on numbers, it seems to work (probably greed-based).
I’d prefer an honor/duty based recruiting system…but I’m probably old-fashioned.

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By: opinionated teen

opinionated teen — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:31:54 +0000

There was an episode about this on Johnny Test! That was a good episode, except for the global warming jargle.

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By: opinionated teen

opinionated teen — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:31:21 +0000

Semper Fi.

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By: Xion

Xion — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:18:47 +0000

SawGunner and Cuthalion.

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By: Cuthalion

Cuthalion — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:01:37 +0000

The Marines pretty much attract people by scaring them… and it works!

And Lynn, by “lots of shoot ‘em up games”, are you referring to typical arcade blam blam pretty colors and skimpy outfits fare? Or are you talking more like the “America’s Army” series, where it’s more realism-based?

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By: Sawgunner

Sawgunner — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:38:59 +0000

#5 Xion,
Your story reminded me of when Frank Schaeffer’s son John was considering the USMC. Recruiters came to the Schaeffer home and explained all that would be demanded of young John. Frank’s wife at last asked “..and just what does my son get out of all of this?” The leatherneck was perplexed. “He’ll be a U.S. Marine, Ma’am!” Not “He’ll get Xthousand for college, a business start-up, a valuable post-corps career skill” Just had to laugh at that one.

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By: Sawgunner

Sawgunner — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:35:36 +0000

This video game as a way to identify future combatants sounds familiar? Wasnt that the job of Centauri in “The Last Starfighter”?
I would go USAREC even one better. Build the video machines so that players dont have to feed it quarters to play. Instead, have them enter their identification data (driver’s license, SSN) and once they’ve done that let the machine run a full diagnostic skills test battery. The info could then later be sent to a Pentagon database

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