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Friday October 19, 2007
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Dan's latest Costa Living column explored the concept of video games as a warfare recruitment tool both for the United States Army and Hezbollah. It's a fascinating story, to be sure, but if the old stereotype of a gamer still holds any water, even in these days of the casual gaming explosion, then perhaps the folks that spend 14 hours a day rocking the LAN parties would be better suited to aspects of warfare that extend beyond the battlefield.
Britain's intelligence agencies are working on an alternative, if similarly dystopian approach to the matter, using games like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent to recruit "computer-savvy, technologically-able, quick-thinking" gamers, according to the Associated Press.
The agencies are embedding ads as billboards in games, via the Internet connection of gamers' PCs or Xbox 360s.
"We will monitor the results from this campaign and are ready to change our recruitment methods, " a spokesperson for England's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told the AP. "We know we can't stand still." In a particularly dystopian moment, she added that the agency was looking to, "plant the idea in the heads of younger players."
Like the America's Army game that Costa wrote about, this method will likely cost tax payers some hard earned dough, somewhere in the low tens of thousands of pounds, according to the GCHQ.
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October 22, 2007 10:27 PM
Very interesting. Seems that this is a case of "life imitating art". Remember the movie from the '80's called "The Last Starfighter"? The video game "test" was the premise there too.