This comes by way of Reuters:
The U.S. Army, in an unprecedented alliance with Hollywood and a major university, is providing funding and technical advice for video games that aim to hone the skills of the next-generation of military field commanders. The Institute for Creative Technologies, which is jointly operated by the Army and the University of Southern California, said Thursday it will develop two combat video games with financial and tactical backing from the Army.
The Los Angeles-based institute said it will partner with FCS, itself a joint venture of studio Sony Pictures ImageWorks and video game developer Pandemic Studios, and Quicksilver Software to develop two games to be released over the next two years. C-Force will be released for next-generation consoles, while ICT and Quicksilver will partner on CS-12 for PCs. The games will allow players to control entire groups of soldiers, with CS-12 allowing the player to take the role of a company commander and C-Force putting the player in the role of squad leader.
Pretty cool eh? As far as I see it, this is just validation for what us gamers have known for a long time: gaming not only exercises reflexes and hand-eye coordination, but it also exercises the mind. With the growing popularity of gaming within the entertainment mainstream and endorsements such as the one given by the US Army, perhaps in another ten years or so, gamers won’t be perceived to be the mega-geeks so much as we currently are. Hell, maybe one day you’ll even be able to pick up chicks by bragging about how l33t you are at Boob Raider XIII.
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