How can computer games be useful?

[roid]

What if through skillful control and influence of maps, online multiplayer computer games could be (or ARE being) used to mock real world battles.

as a form of a massively distributed Tiger Team.

ie: what if the maps you were playing, had a real world counterpart that was strikingly similar, and the purpose for the maps creation was to secretly seed the online multiplayer community with real-life analog maps - so that we may be used as unwitting realworld battle simulations.

One could build up a detailed database of popular tactics and counter tactics with real-world implications.

hey why not?
(shhhhh)

[TIGERassault]

Right.
Roid, how many places, any places at all that aren't completely generic, can you name? Now, how do you expect people to not only make all of those, but get their target audience to play all of them too?
I mean, you can't just make only a handful of areas, because the chances that a person that plays video games and also wants to join your army and happen to be sent to fight in one of those handful of areas is VERY slim.

In other words, this is an absolutely ridiculous topic. Well done.

[Wheeze87]

This sounds like a military funded conspiracy. I mean in some gaming communites, many maps, following a distinctive middle eastern theme. So you could be right roid....

[woodchip]

http://www.goarmy.com/aarmy/

[Richard Cranium]

Sort of like in that movie 'Toys' when that crazy military guy was training kids to fly remote control bombers and drive tanks.

At least I think thats how it went. I haven't seen that movie since it came out.

[WillyP]

I seem to remember a movie that had a kid playing a video game and he became so good that he won and it turned out the game was some kind of simulation so he was recruited for a top secret mission or aliens or something or blah blah blah....

[WillyP]

I mean, you can't just make only a handful of areas, because the chances that a person that plays video games and also wants to join your army and happen to be sent to fight in one of those handful of areas is VERY slim.

I don't think roid means a simulation to train fighters, but a simulation to predict results and form strategy based on that. But the rest of what you say applies.

but, to answer roids question: "Why not?" I don't think the players would use appropriate tactics, teamwork, etc. It wouldn't be a fun game if it enforced such things.

[TechPro]

Years ago, there was a short lived television series called \"SeaQuest\". In their second season (of 2.5 seasons) a certain episode explored the possibility that society advanced to the point that the children no longer needed to go out and do stuff or even associate with others. The society they portrayed had gotten to the point where people were waging war with huge MechWarrior type bots that were controlled by kids with VR head gear, control chair and custom keyboards. They had gotten down to the last couple children (now in their late teens) and were battling each other because that was all they knew. The \"SeaQuest\" crew had been shoved through time to that point and they had the job of getting the two kids away from the game gear and to meet each other face to face (a boy and a girl) in a friendly setting ... and thus save the future of the planet.

Battling in that manner is totally possible, but would require enough information feedback to make it a bit unlikely. - IMHO - Simply because by the time you have that much situation information in real time it would be a simple thing to avoid most of the need to battle in that manner.

Eh.

[VonVulcan]

Have you read \"Enders Game\"?

[Kyouryuu]

I seem to remember a movie that had a kid playing a video game and he became so good that he won and it turned out the game was some kind of simulation so he was recruited for a top secret mission or aliens or something or blah blah blah....

The Last Starfighter (1984).

[VonVulcan]

Fun movie for it's time.

[ccb056]

Ender's Game

[VonVulcan]

Oh yea, wish I had tought a dat.

[roid]

I mean, you can't just make only a handful of areas, because the chances that a person that plays video games and also wants to join your army and happen to be sent to fight in one of those handful of areas is VERY slim.

I don't think roid means a simulation to train fighters, but a simulation to predict results and form strategy based on that. But the rest of what you say applies.

but, to answer roids question: "Why not?" I don't think the players would use appropriate tactics, teamwork, etc. It wouldn't be a fun game if it enforced such things.

YES that's what i mean. It would be a manner of studying commonly used tactics, and as with any map the BEST tactics will eventually come forward through trial and error. I mean, in every map the community eventually figures out the best lines of offence and defence.

the idea kinda came to me playing BF2142, while running around Suez Canal i started to wonder how accurate the map was. Because Suez Canal IS a pretty important military target in the real world - and everyday there are tens of thousands of people fighting virtual mock battles over it.
Arn't militarys doing this same thing already - with Tiger Teams and War Games?

Remember how recently that kid got busted for making a realistic CounterStrike map of his school? (i did that as a kid too).
Well i recon ppl would get even more freaked if we were making real world maps of TRUE targets (ie: Seuz Canal), coz you'd be accused of terrorist training or something. Would happen if we made these things real? Would we be shocked to find easy choke points and whatnot?
And what if it's already happening and we just don't know coz we don't know what maps correspond with what real-world places?

eg: the layout for some map could be eerily similar to the layout for proposed military building layouts - and we're all testing the design.


Various games require various amounts of teamwork. Some teamwork heavy game might better model an organised army. Other more lone based games might better model disorganised riot uprisings.

[ccb056]

Whats your handle in bf2142?

ccb056

[Sirius]

Um... there's an important issue to consider.

You can't do everything you can in real life, in a computer game.

Take Suez Canal again - 2142 doesn't let you actually blow up the bridge there. It also doesn't let you bring in different types of weapons than what the game already has (so no artillery, although it does have an orbital strike that is a little underpowered in comparison). You can't effectively block routes, e.g. by landmining or filling the path with debris. In the Titan game-mode, you for some reason can't just blow up the missile silos. And so on.

Once these sorts of games are a little more freeform - preferably with less artificial objectives - then they may show some promise there.

[WillyP]

I seem to remember a movie that had a kid playing a video game and he became so good that he won and it turned out the game was some kind of simulation so he was recruited for a top secret mission or aliens or something or blah blah blah....

The Last Starfighter (1984).

Ah! (It's on my netflix queue... thanks!)

[WillyP]

YES that's what i mean. It would be a manner of studying commonly used tactics, and as with any map the BEST tactics will eventually come forward through trial and error. I mean, in every map the community eventually figures out the best lines of offence and defence.

the idea kinda came to me playing BF2142, while running around Suez Canal i started to wonder how accurate the map was. Because Suez Canal IS a pretty important military target in the real world - and everyday there are tens of thousands of people fighting virtual mock battles over it.
Arn't militarys doing this same thing already - with Tiger Teams and War Games?

Remember how recently that kid got busted for making a realistic CounterStrike map of his school? (i did that as a kid too).
Well i recon ppl would get even more freaked if we were making real world maps of TRUE targets (ie: Seuz Canal), coz you'd be accused of terrorist training or something. Would happen if we made these things real? Would we be shocked to find easy choke points and whatnot?
And what if it's already happening and we just don't know coz we don't know what maps correspond with what real-world places?

eg: the layout for some map could be eerily similar to the layout for proposed military building layouts - and we're all testing the design.


Various games require various amounts of teamwork. Some teamwork heavy game might better model an organised army. Other more lone based games might better model disorganised riot uprisings.

As players playing a game, I doubt much military insight to the design would come forth, as the play is not played the way a real military operation would go. Players have different motivations and training. And for military strategists to play... well, the do, sorta, always have. To some degree of success or not, generals have played out battles on maps, with sticks in the dirt, with computer simulation. The difference is they don't need photo realistic textures and poly accurate collision detection, we might not even recognize their simulation software as such.

[roid]

Whats your handle in bf2142?

ccb056

i'm gigantic-f-agg

Um... there's an important issue to consider.

You can't do everything you can in real life, in a computer game.

LIES! the defibulator fixes everything... EVERYTHING!

Take Suez Canal again - 2142 doesn't let you actually blow up the bridge there. It also doesn't let you bring in different types of weapons than what the game already has (so no artillery, although it does have an orbital strike that is a little underpowered in comparison). You can't effectively block routes, e.g. by landmining or filling the path with debris. In the Titan game-mode, you for some reason can't just blow up the missile silos. And so on.

Once these sorts of games are a little more freeform - preferably with less artificial objectives - then they may show some promise there.

Yeah i guess BF2142 (for example) somewhat models a solely "capture areas" war model with little opportunity for hilariously innovative "hey what would happen if we strapped a bomb to that?" situations.
But this still has it's uses - as not all situations can be solved by dropping bigger bombs and making bigger craters. As much as "i give up, just nuke it from orbit" sounds neat and tidy, in reality it's unrealistic. Battles in Iraq are being fought door to door building to building in the best of times. Worst of times it's being fought with IEDs and shadow games.

Some of that might be inaccurate, but my point is that i often hear that no matter how much militarys advance - in the end, wars are still fought with soldiers on foot. So many situations just boil down to chokepoints and cover - and this makes the map central, as virtually this can be an identical simulation.
Even in BF2142, intel is very important.

iirc military tactics are still based around the capabilitys of soldiers on foot - so cover and choke points are very important. places can be easy to defend, or hard to defend. Easy to capture, or hard to capture.
I've been hearing a lot about soldiers taking cover in CAVES and URBAN BUILDINGS. With buildings especially it's all old-school using cover and choke-points that has barely changed for decades, no?


New virtual analogs of war-time capabilities can be incorporated into new games. But MAPS seem to be all important to many multiplayer games - and since they are often community made - i wonder if anyone "in the know" has ever tried it: making a virtual map of a real world situation to see what kinds of strategys the noobs use, and as time goes on and the map is played more - more sound strategies emerge.

You can use computer modeling and stuff like game theory for this kindof thing. But what about a million monkeys with a million typewriters. Gamers could arguably be seen as such - and with the nature of multiplayer games and the sheer EASE that they can be simmered down into usable numbers, stats and graphs - hey why not.

As players playing a game, I doubt much military insight to the design would come forth, as the play is not played the way a real military operation would go. Players have different motivations and training. And for military strategists to play... well, the do, sorta, always have. To some degree of success or not, generals have played out battles on maps, with sticks in the dirt, with computer simulation. The difference is they don't need photo realistic textures and poly accurate collision detection, we might not even recognize their simulation software as such.

i really don't believe that. The top players and "clans" in games would be using simply the BEST tactics. If military-like tactics are the best then that's what they use and win with. Afterall, this is a competition, and someone IS winning. And a lot of people are familure with advantages and disavantages of miliary tactics - there is no reason military tactics - if able to be used ingame - wouldn't be used ingame, if indeed the ingame world has been designed to reward such things (And i've found they are).

Noobs will neither win virtual games, nor realworld wars.

[Sirius]

I think I've been told it's good enough to be useful. As you say, 9 times out of 10 the mechanics of how a battle is fought will be similar, although the objectives will be different and they'll have a few more things up their sleeves if things go wrong.

Incidentally, games also have another two real-life uses; one is for modelling - whether in terms of simulations, or architecture, or related fields. Another is for cheap \"prototypes\" of movie scenes, which has already been documented a few times. Of course there is also machinima, which is more or less the same thing except it's not a prototype. Game engines aren't quite good enough to produce professional-quality cinematics yet though. But they get closer every year.

P.S. After reading the end of your post roid - I can vouch that military-style tactics actually tend to be quite effective in video games. I have previously played in two or three high-end groups for Mechwarrior 4, and learned the game well enough to know why we won most of the games we played, and the reasons why we lost the ones we did as well.

Then I happened to be watching a historical documentary talking about a \"Raiders\" unit within the Marines in the WW2 Pacific theatre - they noted that they were possibly the first special-forces unit in the army. One of the interviews recorded was I think with one of the commanders, who was trying to explain why they were so successful... and I started to realise it was eerily familiar - many, if not most, of the reasons were why those Mech 4 units excelled as well.

[Lothar]

It's possible the military already studies those games, etc. for tactical insights.

It's also unlikely the insights would carry directly over. The games don't exactly demonstrate what real-world weapons systems are capable of, or the sort of forces and resources real-world powers would bring to bear in various situations. Realistic war games aren't much fun because your team gets the other team pinned down and then 30 seconds later a UAV drops laser-guided smart bombs on your heads, and you don't get to respawn.

[Drakona]

Well, it's a nice idea, but it wouldn't work out well. True, there are a lot of gamers out there; if you get a lot of brilliant minds thinking about a problem, they might come up with a brilliant solution.

That's where the advantages end, though.

Here are some of the problems.

Gaming is something you do for fun, while combat is something you do for other reasons. Games are therefore relatively easy, glamorous, and interesting, because that's all they have to be. Combat doesn't have to be any of those things. There are hardcore wargamers out there, but it isn't a very popular genre. Like hard core science fiction, it's too hard for most of us. The realism doesn't make up for all the work.

A different major problem with public tactics development is that it's, well . . . it's public. Any useful tactics the gamers developed would be usable by any military, both good guys and bad guys. Because, well, they're publicly developed on the internet. A gamer wants to advance the state of the art, but the military just wants to get ahead of the other guy. Gamers like the public, but the military pretty much only profits from secrets.

Yet another type of problem with any simulation is that warfare is inherently fluid. You could spend three years developing a software program good enough to publish, and another three letting gamers on the internet tell you the most efficient ways to take or hold caves of a certain shape. But when real combat started, in days the enemy may have decided to engage elsewhere, and in months each side will develop or reveal new weapons that change the whole situation and invalidate all the previous research. Games are stable; war is fluid. Games involve developing tactics within given rules, but in war, the rules respond to the situation. There's no way to simulate that.

To be useful tactically, a game has to be a realistic simulation, and that's a problem in a couple other ways, too. First, most militaries have a habit of keeping their best capabilities and tactics secret, and what good's a simulation without the best weapons on either side? Second, truly good simulations of even a single system cost a lot to develop. It's one thing to program a 'game' radar that knows where all your enemies are. It's something else entirely to program a high-fidelity radar simulation that accounts for jamming and earth occulting and atmospheric attenuation and who knows what else. The tactical environment is awfully integrated and complicated to try to represent in a cheap, computing-efficient program.

Simulation fidelity is a very big deal to the military. When you're training, every simulation is just a tool, and while every simulation has useful things to teach you, you should always be afraid of training to the simulation. The military has some pretty high fidelity wargames they run--they get out there with the real guns and boats and planes and tanks and sattellites, and shoot at each other, and everything's real except that the bullets are electronic. Some people criticize those exercises as not a good enough simulation, and there's some merit to what they say. War is chaotic and difficult. It's hard to imagine how you could make a computer game good enough that any conclusions you drew from it would be taken seriously by the guys who train with real hardware.

Lastly, the military already has people to do tactics development. They study warfare with the best information, the best simulations, the smartest colleages available, and it's their job. They pull all-nighters to develop better tactics. They talk to soldiers to learn what conditions on the ground are like. They live and breathe technological and tactical details for years. It's really hard to imagine how a few folks fooling around on evenings and weekends, for fun, could compete.

America's Army is cool, and it's a tool like any other; maybe you could learn some tactical things from it. But it's not primarily a tactics development program, or a military simulation. It's a recruiting tool. There are good reasons for that.

[roid]

A different major problem with public tactics development is that it's, well . . . it's public. Any useful tactics the gamers developed would be usable by any military, both good guys and bad guys. Because, well, they're publicly developed on the internet. A gamer wants to advance the state of the art, but the military just wants to get ahead of the other guy. Gamers like the public, but the military pretty much only profits from secrets.

ya i said it would be secret. games wouldn't know they were being watched. You wouldn't nessesarily even have to code it into the game - you could just setup bots to "watch" the games in observer mode, track movements etc.

i have a personal hunch that blackops techs and psych warfare methods are oft (even unofficially) tested on civilians without our knowledge. A lot of things like UFOs, i wonder if the military just plain doesn't BOTHER too hard to hide some black tech - just playing the Roswell card and tell everyone it was a UFO. Or on the psych warfare side - testing of non-lethal mind altering techniques (not nessesarily even drugs, perhaps area effect radiation sources) that cause mass hulucinations. Afterall we all know about what the CIA was doing with LSD in the 60s.

Another example, i wonder how many of these "weird glowing orb that followed us" occurences in the Australian outback were actually tricksters doing high power focused laser plasma experiements (using a laser beam to create hovering artificial lightning balls). Officially that tech exists.

Yet another type of problem with any simulation is that warfare is inherently fluid. You could spend three years developing a software program good enough to publish, and another three letting gamers on the internet tell you the most efficient ways to take or hold caves of a certain shape. But when real combat started, in days the enemy may have decided to engage elsewhere, and in months each side will develop or reveal new weapons that change the whole situation and invalidate all the previous research. Games are stable; war is fluid. Games involve developing tactics within given rules, but in war, the rules respond to the situation. There's no way to simulate that.

i don't understand what you are saying here. Couldn't you use the same logic to say that ALL aspects of war planning is useless because situations change? The gaming community is not stable at all, new games, mods and maps are constantly being developed and old ones tweaked.
Also, Just like any intel method - it's not an END ALL simulation for all aspects of war. Why would it be? It's just for specific purposes such as analysing common methods of approach, defence, and their inherent success rates. It won't make you coffee. You seem to be implying that because it doesn't do everything - it's useless. ???

First, most militaries have a habit of keeping their best capabilities and tactics secret, and what good's a simulation without the best weapons on either side?

Yes, intel. Isn't that the same in games? Trouble is that games are being played constantly, all secret tactics will become common knowledge given enough time. Any battle has the same problem though. That's where games have their advantage that you don't get in reality - it's a constant war ALWAYS being fought. It couild be embraced as an ALWAYS RUNNING battlefield simulation that you just plug things into and see what results come out.

If you are suggesting that doing such things will reveal secret information to your enemys, i agree its' a risk. That's why i say it's important for it to be secret - to hide within plain sight, who knows what maps have been influenced by official sources? Who knows if it even happens? That's kinda why i'm suggesting it - such things would not be announced would they.

Second, truly good simulations of even a single system cost a lot to develop

EXACTLY! this is why i think it's a good idea, coz it's cheap.
*I eye you suspiciously as you soak in this information, as i realise you work for such a company that essentially LIVES through overfunded military programs - as such i wonder if you subscribe by proxy to the "throw millions of dollars at it!" mantra of howto solve problems*.
I really have no respect for the such leech companys and the general state of the industry. But then again, i'm not sure i'd respcet the industry no matter WHAT state it was in. I do think the state of things ATM reflects the general problems of society - Official secrets and conspiracies are the order of things, and it's all boys clubs, closed doors, exclusion, and who you know (and/or what billionare family you belong to). Military industries are basically elitist tax leeches with their politican buddies - as seen by the revolving doors between politics and the military industry. They waste money hand over fist. They essentially have Tenure


I'm not talking about America's army (game), i've never played it. My current game of choice is BF2142, but hey it could work with any game - incl america's army. But i doubt you'd want to seed AA with anything other than decoy maps, for reasons i hope are obvious (cointel).

[WillyP]

Then again, here's a story about a guy who applied a skill learned from AA to treat an accident victim.

And apparently the army is very interested in gaming on many different levels...

[Drakona]

A different major problem with public tactics development is that it's, well . . . it's public. Any useful tactics the gamers developed would be usable by any military, both good guys and bad guys. Because, well, they're publicly developed on the internet. A gamer wants to advance the state of the art, but the military just wants to get ahead of the other guy. Gamers like the public, but the military pretty much only profits from secrets.

ya i said it would be secret. games wouldn't know they were being watched. You wouldn't nessesarily even have to code it into the game - you could just setup bots to "watch" the games in observer mode, track movements etc.

You missed my point. It's not whether or not gamers know they're being watched, it's who can watch them. Developing tactics in a public video game would be like developing codebreaking tools using the Open Source community. It doesn't really profit a military to develop something anyone can use--it just changes the game a little for everyone.

A lot of things like UFOs, i wonder if the military just plain doesn't BOTHER too hard to hide some black tech - just playing the Roswell card and tell everyone it was a UFO.

Mmm hmm. You're right--stuff that's hidden in plain sight fools those red spies every time. "No seriously guys, that wasn't a top secret bomber. It was a UFO. You really don't have to send those high-res pictures back home for your intel guys to look at. Seriously. . . . Hey! Stop copying our wing configurations!"

Yet another type of problem with any simulation is that warfare is inherently fluid. You could spend three years developing a software program good enough to publish, and another three letting gamers on the internet tell you the most efficient ways to take or hold caves of a certain shape. But when real combat started, in days the enemy may have decided to engage elsewhere, and in months each side will develop or reveal new weapons that change the whole situation and invalidate all the previous research. Games are stable; war is fluid. Games involve developing tactics within given rules, but in war, the rules respond to the situation. There's no way to simulate that.

i don't understand what you are saying here. Couldn't you use the same logic to say that ALL aspects of war planning is useless because situations change? The gaming community is not stable at all, new games, mods and maps are constantly being developed and old ones tweaked.
Also, Just like any intel method - it's not an END ALL simulation for all aspects of war. Why would it be? It's just for specific purposes such as analysing common methods of approach, defence, and their inherent success rates. It won't make you coffee. You seem to be implying that because it doesn't do everything - it's useless. ???

Not useless, but less useful than better simulations and analyses. What I'm highlighting is the need for extremely agile analysis--battlefields change a whole lot faster than games do, and games are inherently limiting. In the real world, you can decide to dig a ditch, buy a cell phone, call for air support, or incite a riot. In a game, these abilities have to be programmed in one by one, *after* someone has had the idea. The real world is just too big to simulate all of it; a game can never be anything more than a special-case study. While special-case studies can be useful, it only takes a minor real-world thing to totally negate the analysis. And games take years to develop.

I'm not saying you can't do simulation and analysis. Well, okay, I sort of am, but for the record, that's a popular position on the topic. I am saying that for your analysis to be useful, your simulation has to be DARN GOOD and extremely agile. Massively distributed software with fancy GUIs and graphics that needs to run on Macs, PCs, and Rolexes? Not agile.

Plus, for compiling statistics in special-case studies on what works and what doesn't, the military already has the best possible source of data: actual reports from actual conflicts in which shots were (or weren't) fired. But even this has to be interpreted with a grain of salt because war is fluid.

First, most militaries have a habit of keeping their best capabilities and tactics secret, and what good's a simulation without the best weapons on either side?

Yes, intel. Isn't that the same in games? Trouble is that games are being played constantly, all secret tactics will become common knowledge given enough time.

Heh, I'm not talking only about tactics, but about technologies, too. In a publicly releasable game, you'd be playing with blue lasers and concs. Just how valid are your tactics for taking and holding tunnels when in the real world the good guys (or the bad guys, unbeknownst to you) have frags and napes?

If you are suggesting that doing such things will reveal secret information to your enemys, i agree its' a risk. That's why i say it's important for it to be secret - to hide within plain sight, who knows what maps have been influenced by official sources? Who knows if it even happens? That's kinda why i'm suggesting it - such things would not be announced would they.

Okay, let's do a mental exercise. You're an American intel guy and your job is to keep an eye on Russia. The Russian DoD-equivalent produces a video game, and releases it on the internet, and the simulation is hard-core. Real stats on the weapons. Integrated systems. Battlefields include a very recognizable Elmindorf Air Force Base. Monthly patches come out, introducing more accurately-modeled real-world weapons, including some you weren't sure the Russians knew you had. And also, the Russians in the game get handheld laser weapons. Armor-piercing, insta-kills. Totally game-unbalancing. Star Wars kinda stuff. Official story is, well, it's just a game; they're trying to keep the it interesting.

Quick question: Just how stupid, exactly, is our hypothetical American intel guy?

Second, truly good simulations of even a single system cost a lot to develop

EXACTLY! this is why i think it's a good idea, coz it's cheap.

No it isn't. That's my point. You're thinking video games are cheap, like $60 tops for a copy. But you know why they're cheap? Because when you fire a shot in a video game, it takes whatever path the game designer wants it to. He says it goes 1.5M, it does. A simulation is a totally different thing. You have to analyze real-world weapons, develop mathematical models (Eeek, hire expensive mathematicians?), test boundary conditions. I've studied the D1 source code, and I've studied decent simulation source code. And they are COMPLETELY different animals. The reason Real Software costs so much money is all of the analysis and all the math you have to do to build it.

Since it makes the point so well, here's one of my favorite comments from the original D1 Source:

// Player is moving. Determine where the player will be at the end of the next frame if he doesn't change his
// behavior. Fire at exactly that point. This isn't exactly what you want because it will probably take the laser
// a different amount of time to get there, since it will probably be a different distance from the player.
// So, that's why we write games, instead of guiding missiles...

*I eye you suspiciously as you soak in this information, as i realise you work for such a company that essentially LIVES through overfunded military programs - as such i wonder if you subscribe by proxy to the "throw millions of dollars at it!" mantra of howto solve problems*.
I really have no respect for the such leech companys and the general state of the industry.

<3 u 2, Roid.

For the record, I love what I do, and I love the high standards we're held to. Military types really know what they want, and are hardcore about it in a way few others are.

[roid]

i got about halfway thorugh this, and it's reading just like your reply before it. In the sense that it seems like you are purposefully not understranding what i'm saying - you seem to be trolling, coz i don't think you're this stupid.
maybe you're skimming, either way you're inability to understand is annoying me.
lets see if later i can be motivated to re-explain this again