Kotaku: War Games

Major General Hammond Invokes Pac-Man

Mike Fahey — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:20:14 MDT

U.S. Major General Jeffery Hammond, delivering a press briefing on the progress of the 4th Infantry's efforts in Iraq, revealed the inspiration behind their current strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda operatives and Shiite extremists.

"I believe they have been degraded, we continue to PacMan, like the video game, away at their efforts, at their different levels," Major General Hammond said.

While it's nice to see a video game reference made by high-ranking military officers, I have to wonder exactly what this means. I get this bizarre mental image of an overhead view of the streets of Baghdad, fruit carts spilling into the streets and the military struggling to pick up the produce for extra points. Are we the ghosts, or are we Pac-Man himself? Are power pellets sanctioned under the Geneva Conventions? With so many questions, one thing remains quite clear - we need to air drop Billy Mitchell into the war zone immediately, hot sauce and all.

4th Infantry Update from Baghdad [KXRM Fox 21]

Panzer Tactics DS Explained

Mike Fahey — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:30:58 MDT

One of the things that has always turned me off from straight-up war games has been the overall dry presentation. I mean, you've got a hex grid, some cutout tanks, and there you go. While I think Panzer Tactics, Conspiracy Entertainment's WWII strategy game for the Nintendo DS could very well usher in a new era of DS war gaming, this instructional video - the first in a series - does little to get me to want to play the game. I think it's the narrator, who is about as gripping as a ~~air waitress~~ stewardess reciting the airplane safety instructions.

Gamers: 1, Soldiers: 0 (For Now)

Maggie Greene — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:30:24 MDT

Militaries using games as training tools is nothing new; but here comes one account of a group of five gamers taking on five soldiers from the Netherlands in 'Virtual Battlefield System 2,' and scoring a resounding win (the author points out that the gamers were way ahead the soldiers in terms of familiarity with the software, which helped). It's entertaining, but also contains some musings on the future of such war games and gamers and the military. If you can forgive the typos, it's an interesting little piece on current applications and perhaps where this might lead:

Many people have been saying this for a long time, and i think we approach the point that more armies will see that 'Gaming' is not only fun to do. you can learn from it. - just like we did today. In the last years, technology has taken an enormous jump. the current weaponry has been benefiting from this fact, and its inevitable that normal troops will be trained with special simulation equipment. this can vary from radar observance to real field duty procedures. Gaming has been around us for many years for our pleasure. But yet since a few years, many countries have learned that gaming could be more than just recreational fun.
While real exercises are very expensive, simulations are quite cheap in comparison. Although today's artificial intelligence is possibly not sufficient for proper training, todays available simulations tecnologies are hard to neglect.

Field report : Gamers fight real Soldiers in VBS2. [ArmedAssault.eu]

Civilization Used For Iraq War Comic

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:22:40 MDT

You might remember those military and civilian units from Civilization 3. Alex Dragulescu has taken them and created an experimental graphic novel called What I Did Last Summer. Using software that harvested text from web blogs, the comic recounts cached versions of actual American army blogs. The result is a profound mash-up of images and words.

Watch it here via WMMNA

Video Games Tackle Saddam Hussein

lsmith — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:40:03 MDT

Over at 1UP.com has a story about Kuma Reality Games and their free, slightly strange Saddam Hussein game. The game places players in the middle of Iraqi history in positions with the ability to stop the horrors of Hussein (in some cases) before they start. It's part video game, part history lesson - but at least it's free.

Saddam Hussein: The Video Game [1UP]