Games, Guns, and '80s Films


By Eugene Baldovino
January 17, 2002


Should I take out the heavily armed guard standing at the front gate and raid this sucker or be a wuss and sneak behind the building and pick open the backdoor? My finger itches like it's got a bad infection. I order my troops to go psycho on the fool standing before us. Guns roar, and are soon followed by alarms screaming. A horde of enemy troops pours out of the base like syrup. They surround us and then suffocate us with bullets. The game restarts.


The engine in "Rogue Spear" and a modified version of the game "Operation Flashpoint" are being used to train our military. Today's videogames have come to a point where they feature photo-realistic graphics and complex artificial intelligence, so it's not surprising that our government is using America's favorite technological pastime to make our heroes correct. Joining the army sounds like fun right about now.


Do you remember the eighties? The film, "The Last Starfighter" tickled my imagination. It's about a trailer park teenager, Alex Rogan, who breaks the highest score in an arcade game called "Starfighter." But it isn't just any arcade game -- oh no. It's really a test by an alien being searching for pilots to fight in an intergalactic war. Could this be the future of army recruitment?


Well, life isn't like it is in movies. Videogames can't train us to live our lives, no matter how advanced they are. But we can put our lives into videogames.


A computer whiz, Flynn, got transported into a videogame in the film "Tron." The movie's "Light Cycle" game looks like "Snake," you know, that addicting game found in most cellphones where you guide a line that grows longer and longer and you have to avoid crashing into your self. When our hero gets transported into that two-dimensional game and wins one of the most exciting chase sequences ever made, Flynn comments, "On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy." Imagine playing "Pac Man" in first person.


The first-person shooter (FPS) seems to be a popular genre nowadays. I'm fortunate never to have had the experience of holding a real gun in my hands, but I have pointed a machine gun at a bad person and tore them to pieces with a few mouse clicks. Of course, the military understands the absurdity of this. It's using "Rogue Spear" to improve decision-making skills in a variety of situations, and not weapons training.


But how can videogames prepare military personnel in decision-making? Non-player characters (NPCs) in military simulations like the ones in the game "Operation Flashpoint" usually have artificial intelligence -- an inaccurate term, really. The only human intelligence an NPC can have is algorithms. When you choose to make a certain action against an NPC, it calculates the "most desired" programmed action to take.


AI can't compare to the power of human imagination. Take Davey Osborne, for example. His imagination took over his life in the film "Cloak & Dagger." Davey is a boy who is chased by spies because he has a videogame cartridge that contains government secrets. (If you've never seen the film, go watch it. The bad guy in sweats is one scary dude, for real.) One great scene is when, out of fear, our boy hero holds a real gun in his hands for the first time. He points it at an evil spy, blows him away, and at the same time, he tragically grows up.


Wouldn't the world be a safer place if grown-ups like President Bush and terrorist bin Laden fought a war in the game "Rogue Spear" instead of creating destruction in a real country? Well, human problems can't be solved through videogames. And videogames don't create human problems. That only happens in the movies.


In "The Last Star Fighter," after our hero, Alex, is reluctantly thrown into a space war in another galaxy, his reptilian-looking navigator notices that he looks out of place. Our hero wants to go home. Surrounded by chaos, his navigator tries to make him feel welcome and asks him what planet he's from. Our hero stumbles with an armful of battle equipment and responds, "I'm from Earth, and were not at war with anybody -- except each other."