If you want to join the Taliban but don't have the guts

[Cobra Medic]

EA announced a video game where you can play on the side of the Taliban and kill coalition troops.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/dead- ... 5907691727

Maybe next EA will make a video game where you play as Nidal Hasan. They could release it on 11/5.

[jmorris]

When one can play games as the Mafia, an auto thief, or other assorted low-lifes this comes as a surprise?

[Hoi Polloi]

When one can play games as the Mafia, an auto thief, or other assorted low-lifes this comes as a surprise?

[Beiruty]

I do not like those games. It will end up a tool for the BGs to train, plan and practice their wicked intentions. Not a toy anymore.

[dcphoto]

A lot of "games" these days could be used (and ARE!) as training aids. They desensitize our youths to violence by exposure to lifelike violence (bloody gore) and killing. Add to that, they are also learning that there are no consequences for that violence, only reward. I honestly believe that video games shouldn't have advanced past the Nintendo.

http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Teaching-Our ... t_ep_dpi_3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[jester]

If you want to join the Taliban but don't have the guts.
It keeps nagging at you night and day. Enough to drive you nuts.
Don't leave the house. Just click your mouse. It's time you made a stand.
For a fee, you too can be, virtual Taliban.

mujahidin, done dirt cheap

[wninja]

I don't really see how it differs greatly from Modern Warfare 2, a ridiculously popular shooting game. I guess they call them insurgents or opfor in that one, rather than taliban. It's still dudes with towels wrapped around their face against soldiers wearing ACU pattern camo.

Anyway, as a person who plays videogames himself, and grew up on them...I think it is laughable to say that videogames can be used as 'good' training tools. If anyone has ever actually played something like Modern Warfare, and also fired weapons in real life, you would know that in videogames, you can run around with AK-47s on full-auto and hit your target (as if recoil does not exist). Claymores are automatically tripped by proximity lasers rather than rigged with a tripwire or detonated by a handheld device. RPG's fly in a straight line at whatever you're aiming, rather than exhibiting properties of what it really is...a rocket-propelled grenade.

There are simulation games exist that have more realistic properties, but those are no fun. :P I highly doubt today's youth would want to sit down in front of a PC and spend an hour on ARMA II sneaking through a fictional country only to get shot by an extremely accurate opfor soldier and have to start the whole mission over. They prefer the run and gun games where they can respawn and get back into action in 5 seconds or less. DOES NOT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE.

Kids don't learn to kill playing videogames anymore than they do watching TV, movies, the news, or to a lesser extent, reading books (especially if the kid has a great imagination). Blaming it on videogames is something a lazy parent would do to hide the fact that they did not have enough initiative to teach their children right from wrong and the difference between reality and fantasy.

[OldCannon]

I do not like those games. It will end up a tool for the BGs to train, plan and practice their wicked intentions. Not a toy anymore.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you haven't played the game at all. I have.

Not once did I think of myself as a Taliban jihadist killing Americans, and anybody that thinks a players enter this kind of mindset is playing into the hands of mass media.

Growing up in the US, I remember playing cowboys and indians, or cops and robbers, or allied forces vs Nazis. Sometimes your team is the "good guys", other times you're the "bad guys". Oddly, I didn't want to grow up to be a Nazi, Robber, or the politically incorrect image of "savage Indians."

We play video games because they offer us channels of competition, new and unique ways to experience gameplay, and an opportunity to socially interact in ways that cannot possibly be done in real life. MILLIONS of people, kids and adult, play these kind of games every hour across the world and it doesn't influence their mindset about culture, rightness or wrongness, or whether they need to become mass murderers.

Why, with that kind of logic, you could say that any gun owner clearly wants to be a criminal, because criminals use guns. Or you could be one of those parents that takes anything that remotely resembles a gun, sword, wand, etc away from a child because you don't want them to become violent bullies (which statistically has the opposite effect).

You are either collectively missing the point of the video game market, or are playing into the hands of media reporters who care less about the facts than they do about making headlines, and the fact that this is happening on a forum for gun owners absolutely shocks me.

And, frankly, thinking that a video game can be used as a 'training aid' makes about as much sense as claiming that watching "Commando" will train you to be a commando. Seriously, if I was a Taliban terrorist wanting to train a teenage boy on how to be a terrorist, do you HONESTLY think the first (or even last) thing I would do is hand him an Xbox 360 controller and tell him to get winning scores on Halo or Modern Warfare?!?!

I don't care if you like video games or not, but screw your heads on right before you make Clinton/Lieberman generalizations about video games.

[wninja]

Growing up in the US, I remember playing cowboys and indians, or cops and robbers, or allied forces vs Nazis. Sometimes your team is the "good guys", other times you're the "bad guys". Oddly, I didn't want to grow up to be a Nazi, Robber, or the politically incorrect image of "savage Indians."

As much as I hate to admit it, I grew up during the Power Rangers era....and that's what the kids pretended to be on the playground when I was a youngster.

Same idea though, good guys vs bad guys...everyone hated to be the bad guys too. Rita Repulsa...good lord.

[dcphoto]

Actually, I said that video games desensitize kids to violence and teach there are no consequences, only reward, for that violence. I didn't say it would train kids how to shoot guns, or infiltrate an enemy encampment.

If you can't see that violence in video games and the media does exactly that, then you are fooling yourself. Furthermore, lazy parenting is why kids are learning right and wrong from a video game and television.

I don't blame violence in society on video games. That is an asinine concept. Violence in video games contributes to violence in society, but the root cause (imho) is poor parenting. Aversion to violence towards our own species isn't a right/wrong concept either, it's a natural instinct that has developed to protect a species from killing itself out.

lkd: Video games ARE being used as a training aid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_ ... plications
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingrevie ... 3/10/60688
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02437.html
http://www.helium.com/items/1306221-mil ... ideo-games

Edit: I re-read what I wrote, and feel I should clarify my position. Violence in video games desensitizes children to violence in the absence of proper parenting. As long as a child has parents teaching him the standards and values of their society, those video games lose some of their deleterious effects. In fact, with proper parenting, those same games can be quite effective in enabling a parent to teach their child standards and values.

[Oldgringo]

Actually, I said that video games desensitize kids to violence and teach there are no consequences, only reward, for that violence. I didn't say it would train kids how to shoot guns, or infiltrate an enemy encampment.

If you can't see that violence in video games and the media does exactly that, then you are fooling yourself. Furthermore, lazy parenting is why kids are learning right and wrong from a video game and television.

I don't blame violence in society on video games. That is an asinine concept. Violence in video games contributes to violence in society, but the root cause (imho) is poor parenting. Aversion to violence towards our own species isn't a right/wrong concept either, it's a natural instinct that has developed to protect a species from killing itself out.

lkd: Video games ARE being used as a training aid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_ ... plications
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingrevie ... 3/10/60688
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02437.html
http://www.helium.com/items/1306221-mil ... ideo-games

Edit: I re-read what I wrote, and feel I should clarify my position. Violence in video games desensitizes children to violence in the absence of proper parenting. As long as a child has parents teaching him the standards and values of their society, those video games lose some of their deleterious effects. In fact, with proper parenting, those same games can be quite effective in enabling a parent to teach their child standards and values.

FWIW, I agree 100% with this post and I expect that our colleague who first objected to these "games" may have broader experience than many as to how these "games" are used for training purposes abroad.

Please help me get my "head screwed on straight". I used to be pretty smart when I was in my 20's and 30's but I just seem to be getting dumber every year.

[baldeagle]

Violence in video games contributes to violence in society, but the root cause (imho) is poor parenting.

I disagree. While poor parenting can be a contributing factor, in my opinion, our society is what it is because we adults have allowed it to become that. We accept far too much (or simply don't object to it when we should) that teaches subjective morality and situational ethics. The end result is the current crop of "leaders" we have in our governments. Video games are more a symptom of the problem than its cause. It's no longer fashionable to stand up for what's right. We go along to get along while our country slides deeper into the sewer of human depravity. In two or three generations we have gone from a society that felt bearing children out of wedlock was shameful and should be shunned to homosexual and lesbian couples hiring surrogates to bear their children. We re-elect politicians who have been caught red-handed with their hands in the cookie jar and then wonder why our country is in such bad shape.

Call me old-fashioned. I don't care. I think a man who will cheat on his wife is telling you as loudly as he can that he cannot be trusted. If he will cheat on his wife, to whom he supposedly made a lifetime commitment, what in the world would make you think that anything he promises you is more than empty words? Yet we elect them as Presidents and Senators and Congressmen and insist that a man's private life is just that and we have no business prying. With morals like that, video games are the least of our worries. It isn't the violence in our society that bothers me. It's the lack of outrage.

[Oldgringo]

baldeagle wrote:

...in my opinion, our society is what it is because we adults have allowed it to become that. We accept far too much (or simply don't object to it when we should) that teaches subjective morality and situational ethics.

Isn't this what adult parents are supposed to be about?

[Yankee Girl]

A lot of "games" these days could be used (and ARE!) as training aids.

Totally disagree with that one. Ask any kid or adult who has played any of the "Need for Speed" series if it's anything like real driving - especially kids on learner's permits. Healthy kids have a pretty good handle on what's real and what's not ... they're not turning into Mario, or Sonic, or really driving the cars they jazz up, or keeping all the "shiny stuff" they earn in WoW.

This sounds a lot like the position I heard when I was in college about how playing Dungeons and Dragons was going to desensitize us to violence and make us all anti-social nerd-zombies, because we were swinging swords and lopping off heads and fighting the un-dead and such inside the game. Yes, a few already-shaky-kilter kids did go off the deep end and not come back - but most of us looked up, said, "oh crud, I have class in 20 minutes", and went back to the real world without causing +6 damage to anyone along the way to the Chemistry building.

[OldCannon]

Actually, I said that video games desensitize kids to violence and teach there are no consequences, only reward, for that violence. I didn't say it would train kids how to shoot guns, or infiltrate an enemy encampment.

Every study that claims that gets refuted, because pinning it on video games is like saying that french fries are the reason American's are overweight. It picks a scapegoat from a long list of symptoms and completely ignores the disease.

Yes, kids are more desensitized now, yes, exposure to violence of any kind without parental supervision/control leads to desensitization, but that's a broad cultural problem. Think video games are bad? Ok, let them watch TV instead: Cops, WWE, CSI, whatever. Block their TV? Let them listen to some rap music or certain types of hard rock. Take away their music? Let them read "illustrated novels" or comics...the list goes on and on. Want to "fix the problem" of exposing kids to too much video game violence? Maybe we should have video game ratings that help parents make decisions for their children? Oh, wait, we already do that. Ok, maybe we can be like Germany, where all blood in a game must be green. Or like China, who bans the appearance of skeletons in video games. Let's just keep it clean, like Football...no wait, that simulates battlefield line and formation combat. Where do we draw the line?

If you can't see that violence in video games and the media does exactly that, then you are fooling yourself. Furthermore, lazy parenting is why kids are learning right and wrong from a video game and television.

Now we have have something we can agree on. Too many parents, who themselves have been desensitized to violence (clearly we can blame the pre-1970's violence of Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote -- thank god those cartoons had all that edited out, because we're all much better for it now). Yes, parenting is critical. I have an 11 year old boy. I think nothing of taking him out shooting, but I would NEVER let him watch a rated R movie or play an M rated game, and I screen the PG-13 and T-rated games before he can play them (and his choices there are few).

Interesting anecdote: I watched the movie Kick-Ass when it came out. I knew it was going to be a hyperviolent satire about comic book heroes and it didn't disappoint me. But when I looked at the audience, I saw a LOT of children brought in with their parents. Some clearly as young as six! I was nauseated. For an adult to expose a child to a movie like that, which had a CLEAR "R" rating and stated "graphic violence" in it, made me wonder why we don't make people pass an IQ test before they reproduce.

lkd: Video games ARE being used as a training aid.

You're in an unfair fight. I've built space and military simulators (Space Station, Space Shuttle, F-16, F-22, Military Kinematics scripting and animation, and 3D military model interoperation code), along with working in the video game industry (first at Microsoft, now at NVIDIA, which probably explains why I'm so passionate about this topic ). I know about all the links you've referenced. There's two facets that you're attempting to cite:
1) Video games (like Amreica's Army) that are being used as _recruiting_ tools. They expose the player to approximations of the hardware they will use if they join the Army, but that's the extent. I'm sure you'll agree that shooting an M-16 in the game does nothing to prepare you for the mechanics and knowledge needed for a real M-16. These games are designed to appeal to the _image_ of being a soldier and the esprit de corps (the fact that you can tell when you're actually playing with active duty soldiers is a particularly strong recruiting mechanism, as it strengthens the social ties as you accomplish goals together)
2) Low and High-fidelity training simulations. These are effective for specific training scenarios, and work best when designed for specific purposes. Often they are designed to teach the reinforced motor skills that a person needs in a high stress scenario. I built an F16 simulator that had massive dome projectors in low fidelity with high fidelity insets for dogfighting. Not ONCE did a pilot come back from combat and say it was like the real thing, because we can't simulate high-G stresses or all the loopy things that happen as you jink around. What we _could_ do is get them to understand the reaction, button-pressing, alert recognition, etc. that all pilots must instinctively know. Calling these things a "video game" makes no sense.

The problem I have is that the media (and certain congresscritters) are equivocating video games to a) inciting terrorist/criminal behavior and b) useful as a training aid. They are neither, nor can be. They are _games_.