The Future of Military Recruiting and Training
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| The America's Army Logo (image courtesy of americasarmy.com | ) |
With video games taking a front on how the average person interacts with their daily lives and the rest of the world, the military knew they had to connect with the current generation. How? They invested in creating a video game themselves. In 1999, Colonel E. Casey Wardynski came up with an idea to give the American public an insight as to what it was like to be a solider. The game America's Army was then born. The game takes real situations soldiers would face in the line of duty. America's Army has become very popular with gamers. It has over 9 million players. The game has catapulted to being one of the top ten games ever since 2002. For more information on the game. Go to the America's Army website. There is also an official trailer for the latest version of the game.
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| Screen cap from the military's video game (image courtesy of pbs.org) |
Training
The military has not limited their use of video games to only recruiting and giving every American the chance to see things from a soldier's perspective, but they also use them to train those currently serving. By using this strategy of virtual games as reality, it helps soldiers to put themselves right on the front line.
The Washington Post had an article back in 2006 in which a soldier had said that when he actually had to kill an enemy, he just thought of it as a video game. With that train of thought, it could also help the military lessen the chances of soldiers being unwilling to take down whoever may be the enemy.
