Boundary between computer games and reality blurring

By PETER ELEY

Imagine playing a game where you are an airport security officer watching people and their luggage pass through an x-ray machine. They appear as a procession of ghostly black-and-white skeletons, hundreds an hour, thousands a day.

Every so often a knife, gun or even a bomb passes through and you get points if you pick it up. Doesn't sound like much of a game — but then, it isn't really one at all.

Airport bosses in the US realised the odds of a dangerous article going through a security point were so remote that staff became complacent. So they spiced up the day by adding computerised guns and bombs to keep staff on their toes.

And that's only one of the instances where the boundary between computer games and reality is becoming blurred.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator is used by flying schools and even by the American Navy to help train its pilots. The Navy found that pilots trained with the software scored higher than pilots trained conventionally.

A version of one of the most controversial computer games, the violently iconic Doom, has been used to train United States Marines for some time.

In an interesting aside, the creator of Marine Doom, Dan Snyder, has been hired as a full-time games developer.

His debut title, a gritty First World War game called Trenchfoot, is being published by Digital Sandbox.

An article in last week's online version of the Economist goes into the subject in some detail and provides links to downloadable reality games, including Marine Doom, which requires Doom 2.

Links:

Economist

peter_eley@herald.co.nz