Thursday, September 09, 2010

War Games

Military bases across the U.S. have banned the sale of a new video game that lets a player pretend to be a Taliban fighter and "shoot" U.S. troops in Afghanistan. [More]
So are field exercises are out, too?

[Via Ed M]

5 comments:

Sean said...

Talk about losing your balls.........

Defender said...

Playing as OpFor (opposition forces) can be very educational, especially since our troops are fighting irregulars, not an army. You can play Alien vs. Predator as a human, an alien or a predator. It doesn't mean you want to obliterate mankind.
The military has also confiscated and burned Bibles troops had in Afghanistan in the local languages. Maybe Karzai got irritated that his people were being exposed to Western Christianity, like the Saudis when we protected them from Saddam.
Add to this my young relative who said of illegal orders; "Obey them anyway. It's my JOB."
A recipe for failure.

Pat H. said...

This is an overall positive.

First, it pushes sales of this item to off base outlets in private hands, a plus for them.

Second, it may reduce the training level of those who will be ordered to attack freedom advocates all across the US in the future.

Anonymous said...

That's interesting. In the MASSIVELY POPULAR (in caps, because, yeah, it's that big) x-box video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" - you play an American military spy who embedds with Russian terrorists to pull off a false flag attack. The incident, which the player carries out in the game, is the slaughter of hundreds of civilians - where YOU (the player) walk through an airport and open fire with an M240 machine gun. The player kills hundreds of civilians who scream and run in the most realistic manner possible in modern video games. In the game's story line, this ultimately results in a full scale ground war, eventually a nuclear war, and the destruction of Washington D.C.

Oh, I <3 the DoD.

Anonymous said...

That's interesting. In the MASSIVELY POPULAR (in caps, because, yeah, it's that big) x-box video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" - you play an American military spy who embedds with Russian terrorists to pull off a false flag attack. The incident, which the player carries out in the game, is the slaughter of hundreds of civilians - where YOU (the player) walk through an airport and open fire with an M240 machine gun. The player kills hundreds of civilians who scream and run in the most realistic manner possible in modern video games. In the game's story line, this ultimately results in a full scale ground war, eventually a nuclear war, and the destruction of Washington D.C.

Oh, I <3 the DoD.