[Infowarrior] - Army Game Proves U.S. Can't Lose

[Richard Forno]

Army Game Proves U.S. Can't Lose

By Marty Graham| 
02:00 AM Nov, 27, 2006
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72156-0.html?tw=wn_index_2

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."