Do video games have any tactical training value whatsoever?

[stix213]

Counter Strike teaches you that if you die you could have to wait more than 3 minutes for the next match, which is an eternity when you have zero attention span.

[Coded-Dude]

actually tests show that video games are great for hand/eye coordination.

According to a pair of researchers at the University of Rochester in New York, such action video games train the brain to better process certain visual information.

Action video gamers tend to be more attune to their surroundings while performing tasks like driving down a residential street, where they may be more likely to pick out a child running after a ball than a non-video gamer.

The research also suggests that action game playing might be a useful tool to rehabilitate visually impaired patients or to train soldiers for combat.

"It is certainly good training for people in situations where they need to detect things in their visual environment at any time in any location, like ground troops going through uncharted territory," said Daphne Bavelier, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

Bavelier and her graduate student Shawn Green stumbled upon this field of research while testing the visual-attention skills of deaf people as part of their on-going studies into how experiences shape the organization of the visual system.

source - full article

as for real life tactics in the battlefield, you'd have to have one hell of a simulator to get any valuable skills IMHO.

[Untamed1972]

I am not a video game player.....but the only thing I can really think of that it might help with is things like quick identification of targets. other then that fiddling with a keyboard/mouse or a joystick/controller has no relationship to handling and operating an actual firearm whatsoever.

[Dion]

No.

[HCz]

My thoughs are that it is what you make of it.

As someone noted above, many hours of video games can hone the visual information processing. The faster you are able to process, better you will off be in a combat, at least in theory.

It is also a cost effective way of training in some areas. There are some simulators based off of games. Many years ago I read from a news website that the pilot trainees who played flight sims tend to be able to perform better upto certain level. However, it will never replace actual experience or training.

Whether those will be applied to current crop of FPSs is another issue. Most FPSs seems to focus on having aracade-type fun rather than realism. ARMA/OFP probably is the only game out there that doesn't really lend itself to gaming, and the complaints you hear about that game is that it is boring and you have to drive many minutes only to die in 30 seconds.

I've played on ARMA public servers, and there is very little tactic or teamwork involved. If you want any decent game play, you have to join a group that at least tries to play tactically, and they are very few in between. So someone may learn usefulness of teamwork, but unless it was done right, it probably will make it difficult for a lot of people to throw away their mentality acquired from video games. In the past, I've read somewhere that basic training had to take into account of kids who grew up with FPS games since they tend to think they know how to do it when they don't.

[Scratch705]

with motion controllers being pushed as the new/best thing for gaming, shooters for the next gen will improve hand/eye coordination at lot more and also visual processing.

[Adub]

I have played video games for a majority of my life. Starting out with games on 3.5in disks when I was 8 to now, 23, playing on 95% pc and 5% ps3. I was in competitive leagues for counter-strike, call of duty (every release), and battlefield (every release) all on PC. No military experience btw.

I feel that a majority of the "skill" I gained in any of those games has no practical use in real life scenarios. Mostly anything you do in that game (besides "camp" to ambush people), would not be very effective to use in real life. The way I played in pickup games (which I think most of the people play like) is very aggressively. You want to win, you want to be on top of the score board, so you actively hunt people down and when you can't find them, you make yourself a known target to get them to reveal their position. Randomly shooting at walls, throwing flash grenades, are just some tactics used in an attempt to find or flush out the enemy and the only way they figure out what just happened is by watching the replay. Once you get ded, you know where they are and now you go back to killing.

But that is all solo pickup game stuff, when it comes to competition, it's a whole new world. You know the people you are with. Most of the guys I have played with, I have played with for years. We know our strengths and weakness, we know how to cover each other and flush people out without getting ded, most importantly, we communicate effectively. We are all in constant communication using ventrilo or teamspeak, and learning how to communicate while the stress of a first place team rank is on the line is invaluable (yes, i said the "stress of a first place rank", we would practice every day for weeks and sometimes, it's the only thing you want, until you find hot woman, of course). I can see the military exploiting the teamwork/communication aspect of games more than anything else.

Another good thing I feel I have picked up on is situational awareness. Listening and paying attention to every aspect of what is going on is key to "owning" in any game and I have translated that to real life where I am constantly analyzing what's going on and where people are relative to me, etc. It's saved my *** while driving constantly.

Shooting guns in video games has taught me nothing what-so-ever, I have now been shooting for 3 years and I feel that I have learned more about shooting in 1 day (this past Saturday of spending time with a former member of the USMCR rifle team) than any amount of gaming can prepare you. Shooting a semi auto shotgun and dumping the 8 round tube through the barrel is easy in the game, doing in real life is a little more intimidating yet so much more fun. Since I started shooting more and more, I have played video games less and less. There is no practical use to me (expect as entertainment) once you shoot and go through motions in real life. I am practicing to get into 3 gun soon, and gaming has nothing to offer me in achieving the goal of being a competitor in that sport and I don't see gaming offering our mil much more than communication and teamwork skills either.

[locosway]

The question isn't do they, but can they?

Do most games give any sort of training? No

Can a game give you training? Yes

Depending on how the game is played, it can assist in forming tactics. However, don't expect to play Left 4 Dead and gain some useful knowledge on how to secure a room.

[Maddog5150]

In basic training we played a video game ONE day. It was pretty lame. It was set up for a whole squad but we only used a single team (2 riflemen, a saw gunner and a 203). we stood up in a booth with individule moniters, the saw was really a saw with buttons on the side and on the fore grip a little joystick and an extra one on the grip. same thing with m4's. Think the new cabelas video game but with a real 249, m4 and 203...
really really really lame. The drill sgts ran it too so they had god mode. we would get yell ad for not getting into cover or moving but it was a lame game that we couldnt figure out in the two minutes we played it so then they would just rain mortors on us. Even if we had a lot of time, it was really really lame and learning out in the boonies in the equal amount of time was 100 times better.

[Mr. Wannabe High Profile Banger]

Full spectrum warrior i believe was a war game, but instead of being a first person shooter you could only give commands to the squad or fire team

[tozan]

If your training is not based on reality then.... In reality you have no real training...

The important things to learn are not there, and your analogy of choosing an opponent is laughable at best. I wouldn't give it any thought if they were game experienced because they still have no real world experience.

I took my son out to shoot a real gun and he learned that he knew nothing about shooting from the game and hitting a real target was a real challenge.

[Mr. Wannabe High Profile Banger]

In basic training we played a video game ONE day. It was pretty lame. It was set up for a whole squad but we only used a single team (2 riflemen, a saw gunner and a 203). we stood up in a booth with individule moniters, the saw was really a saw with buttons on the side and on the fore grip a little joystick and an extra one on the grip. same thing with m4's. Think the new cabelas video game but with a real 249, m4 and 203...
really really really lame. The drill sgts ran it too so they had god mode. we would get yell ad for not getting into cover or moving but it was a lame game that we couldnt figure out in the two minutes we played it so then they would just rain mortors on us. Even if we had a lot of time, it was really really lame and learning out in the boonies in the equal amount of time was 100 times better.

I went to a training simulator that sounds kind of like this.
BUT....

It was in a huge room, with about 6 to 8 M4's hooked up to compressed air shooting at a Big White wall that acted as a projector screen.
Really loud surround sound and computers counting rounds fired and hits and misses.
The m4 with the 203 was basically a paper weight.

But you got to handle a real weapon and had to actually take out and re instert the magazine to reload and could hear and feel recoil...
So it was actually pretty sweet, I want that game in my house hahaha


OPERATION FLASHPOINT series of games are the best.

Targets out to 600 meters, almost the size of an ant on your screen, And you DO ACTUALLY have to comp for bullet drop.
And some times you might even have to shoot that far with basic iron sights.
I've had weapon malfunctions as well obviously can't problem solve that over the game with a controller but it does happen, like what might in real combat

[tuncas]

The important things to learn are not there, and your analogy of choosing an opponent is laughable at best. I wouldn't give it any thought if they were game experienced because they still have no real world experience.

It wasn't an analogy. I said given a choice of opponent, both of which had no real life experience, and one of which had extensive gaming experience, I would want to be matched up against the one without gaming experience.

To put it another way: You enter a road race. The prize for the winner is huge. You have your choice of opponent; Someone who has never driven a car but has played Grand Turismo extensively, and someone who has never driven a car and has never played a driving simulator type game. Are you saying that you would not factor into your decision whether or not the game might have given the other drive SOME advantage over the guy who hasn't ever played it?

[tuncas]

I see a lot of good points here so far. There is deffinitely no replacement for quality real life training. I think some people are so anti video games and see the unrealisms and refuse to see that there is posibly some good skills that can be learned like teamwork.

[Will Goes Boing]

NO.