Casual weekend: FPS BS

IN THE NEWS
Like other bloggers interested in national security, I'm also a gamer. I got into the hobby through board games that depicted historical conflicts, a.k.a. wargames. That led to computer games, which are the topic of today's "casual" post. It's not off-topic, since it's important to understand the difference between entertainment and the reality it purports to depict.

Computer games have seen periods of great innovation. Unfortunately, this year isn't one of them. While the Internet has opened new possibilities, such as massively multi-player role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, the games themselves are largely what they've been for years and years. In fact, they're so fossilized as game motifs that acronyms like MMORPG and RTS are familiar to every computer gamer. You can really see this problem with "first person shooters" (FPS) games like Doom and Quake. The graphics get better, the designers add some scripted events that add more of a plot to the shoot-em-up, but the game is basically the same.

I like games that I can drop into at any moment, which is one of the hallmarks of FPS games. The single-player mode usually lets you play for a while and save your progress. The multi-player mode, where you cooperate and compete with other players across the Internet, lets you jump in and out at any time. However, it's the "cooperate" part that's conspicuously missing from these games. Not only don't people cooperate very well, but players don't cooperate in ways that are necessary to fight the kind of small unit action they depict.

Case in point: Call of Duty, the wildly popular WWII-based FPS game. Yesterday, I was playing online, practically begging the other members of my team to use basic infantry tactics. Each round, the British (our team) could win either by eliminating all the German soldiers, or planting explosives on a German halftrack parked at the end of a street. Just before the cul-de-sac where the halftrack is located, a cross-street ended in a "T" intersection. Half of the Germans start down that street, and the other half starts by the halftrack.

What's the right thing to do in this situation? Since some of the players have smoke grenades, the answer is obvious: cover our assault with smoke grenades tossed both into the cul-de-sac and the cross-street. Under this impromptu cover, toss fragmentation grenades into the area around the halftrack, then rush in to eliminate any survivors. Hold this position while we plan the demo charge and wait for it to explode.

The one time we actually followed this plan, our team won. We lost the other ten rounds because squad members refused to follow the program. Instead, several of them tried playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Germans. Since this type of player usually likes eliminating the enemy at as long a distance as possible, we had a disproportionate number of snipers effectively fighting the battle on their own. The Germans were better at this tactic than we were, so we got to watch our team get picked off one by one over and over again. Hence my begging that we try the tactic that demonstrably worked instead of the one that demonstrably didn't.

The moral of the story is, Don't for a minute believe that computer games like Call of Duty simulate war. They don't. War at that level is fought by squads trained and equipped to fight as a unit, instead of an armed mob. Until you can plan an assault like the one I describe, receive orders from your squad leader, and execute the plan as a unit, you're not seeing anything like real warfare from the first person perspective.

[If you want to get a better feel for what small unit tactics are like, each issue of the magazine Armchair General features a few tactical challenges for the reader to solve. There's usually at least one from WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf War, or some other modern conflict.]

Comments

[J.]

I know what you mean, I saw this behavior way too much in Battlefield 2 (where good teamwork REALLY makes a difference, and they even set up squad formations and cmd communications to support this) and Joint Operations. In Day of Defeat, usually people are more team-oriented and goal-oriented (because of the capture the flag aspect and smaller maps, I'm guessing) but even then you get your campers all over the place who want to go solo in the gameplay. I have Call of Duty but prefer the DoD maps and teamplay.

Steam has an incredible 200-meg video file out there right now demonstrating their new lighting techniques they hope to implement in DoD. In the video, they use the donner map to illustrate a tactical furball that happens in the middle. As I was watching the two teams fire and manuever (and it is a beautiful sight), I was just thinking "yeah, as if. Never see that in an on-line game." But it showed the potential... I often thought about joining a clan but no time for that.

Right now I switched to focusing on X3, a scifi explore, expand, exterminate computer game. It's a bit buggy but very long-term minded - you could play this game for months - www.egosoft.com if you're interested in learning more. But every now and then I can spare 15 minutes for a rumble...

[Ckrisz]

There is occasional coordination of effort in DOD: Source, but it's rare. Good luck every trying to get a coordinated smoke & 'nade barrage. You're lucky to get someone to help you cap a flag here and there, or set up an MG. On the maps with no weapons limits, you'll always see 4-5 snipers.

[Dean Ob]

I'd like to make some points regarding your argument that war is not like video games. 1) Apparently the army is looking into using video games more in training. Probably they think it will be cheaper
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw051212_1_n.shtml
2) I am just finishing Sean Naylor's "Not a good day to die", the account of operation anaconda in afghanistan. If you haven't read it, do. Commanders tried to run the battle from 1000 miles away, relying on the new network-centric model of battle management, a massively multiplayer warfighting system. No clear chain of command, units patched together from various services and commands doing what they wanted, over-reliance on certain weapon systems, friction, confusion, failure.

I think that your experiences in Call of Duty in some respects actually does reflect the unfortunate way our country fights, and if anything, it looks like warfighting will look more and more like a game than anything else.

[Joseph]

I have never played Call of Duty but I have played Brothers in Arms:road to hill 30. I liked that because it forced you to use squad tactis as opposed to doing it all on your own. The multiplayer game was similar with missions like blow up the AA guns and such though I have never played it with anyonw else. Another game was Full Spectrum Warrior(which is a little dated now) that I liked that didn't allow you to kill everything byyourself. The best part of the game was that you couldn't really shot anything yourslef, you only gave the order to shoot. I know that playing it I would hear fire coming at my suad and I would instanly start moving the stick looking for the shooting like I was gonna return fire like halo or something. It took me a while to learn that my first reaction (which was pull the trigger) wasn't all ways the best one.

[Countergang]

Hi,

For the most part, I agree with the post. However, I do have a couple of comments. I do have some experience as an infantry EM/NCO, but am not a combat vet.

1. Video games do not necessarily "copy" the reality of combat. We can, however, learn lessons from simulations that might be useful for soldiers in combat. Your conclusion is exactly that kind of lesson, i.e. if we fight as individuals and not as highly disciplined, coordinated teams, we will die in combat and fail in our missions. This is a fundamental of soldiering, but it is worth reiterating in every possible way.

Of course, simulations of many kinds can teach many other lessons as well. You seem to allude to another one in your post, i.e. you can bet on a highly disciplined small unit of infantrymen defeating a large armed mob under most circumstances. And you can bet that one highly disciplined small force will have better chances of defeating another highly disciplined force. Further, once battle panic sets in or discipline breaks down, even the best equipped and trained unit will turn into something even more ineffectual than a mob. Under these circumstances, you will die in combat.

The lessons learned by means of creative wargaming are many, e.g. what happens when civilians are involved, how mobility affects the tempo of combat ops, the effects of artillery on unit cohesion, and so on.

Again, games don't simulate combat. But if used intellligently they might offer opportunities to learn lessons about how to deal with some situations that just might arise in combat.

2. This might sound like nitpicking, but smoke provides concealment, not cover. Cover stops bullets; concealment does not. If you forget that distinction, you will die in combat.

Best,
JM