SysAdmin: the videogame

■"Virtual Manuevers: Games Are Gaining Ground, But How Far Can They Go?" by Sandra I. Erwin, National Defense, December 2005, p. 44.

Interesting article about new videogames that work the SysAdmin function on an individual-training level. One's funded by DARPA and it's called "Stability Operations: Winning the Peace." It's modeled loosely on SimCity and Tropico. Players get to role-play commanders and "are exposed to the political, military, economic, social and intelligence levers they can pull in a particular situation, while they learn the consequences of their actions."

Remember when I spoke in Canada last winter at a big defense conference and some Canadian officer said somebody should write a great book or make a great movie about peacekeeping to inspire young people to join their military? Well, I told them then that their best bet was a videogame, if they wanted to attract the right age range.

So much for my staying much ahead of the curve on that one. Just goes to show you how fast the market can provide if properly incentivized.

Gamer expert says the military likes either table-tops or huge live exercises, so there's a gap at this level of training. True, but getting less so. Still, no question that military wants to embrace such technologies. As one Joint Forces command guy put it in the piece, they're just very picky on the details. Fine and good.

Interesting though that videogames lag in the same places where the services' lessons learned lag, as do their own live training: more in the interagency and multinational and non-governmental and inter-governmental cooperation. As the gamer expert put it here: "There is no good technology to train interagency interoperability and interaction."

Based on our performance in the real Iraq, it would seem that the games reflect reality all too well.