US Gives Raytheon $10.5M For 'Serious Games' 108
coondoggie writes "These aren't your basic video gaming systems here. The U.S. government gave Raytheon BBN Technologies $10.5 million today to develop what it called 'serious games' that feature an international detective theme developed by game designers, cognitive psychologists and experts in intelligence analysis."
In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Good also seeing my tax money bailing out rogue bankers who then turn around and slap big "bonuses" onto themselves.
The 99 gets screwed once again.
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Bankers paid back all of the money from TARP with interest. It netted the US treasury a profit to spend on Pell Grants, food safety, and whatever other benevolent things you think government does.
The portion of TARP that did loose money was that which was invested in GM and Chrysler. Many billions lost - but that was solely to bail out the unions, not the companies. If they had gone into bankruptcy, they would have shed their union obligations and continued making c
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But the government won't reciprocate. Try explaining it to them when you stop paying on Apr 15.
Re:In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's time to remember not to forget what the bastards did.
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It's called the Streisand Effect, methinks.
Re:In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, that's a pretty small budget for a modern AAA game, seeing how this is a government contract it'll probably be based on the old Infocomm text game engine.
HA! catchpa: derision
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A snapshot of one of BBN's other training games (VESSEL) is available on their website. While not quite on the same level as Farcry, it does a little bit better than text only :]
http://bbn.com/technology/immersive_learning_technologies/vessel [bbn.com]
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It's done with delta3d / OpenSceneGraph. The trainer is probably more than 5 years old. Dynamic lighting is really not important for the training effect. The static lighting was probably calculated in 3ds max and exported.
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A snapshot of one of BBN's other training games (VESSEL) is available on their website. While not quite on the same level as Farcry, it does a little bit better than text only :]
http://bbn.com/technology/immersive_learning_technologies/vessel [bbn.com]
This is true, and additionally most military grade simulators generally don't look like Farcry, I've worked on a $30 million dollar Lockheed flight simulator, and in the early 1990s it had probably graphics on par with microsoft flight simulator 98, or thereabouts.
I've also played with an Infantry simulator that was built on the operation flashpoint engine..fun stuff.
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Re:In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite snarky ignorance, even during a deficit, training for various Federal employees and various research efforts continue. The world doesn't stop just because we're in a deficit (as we have been for decades).
Re:In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:5, Insightful)
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In Pakistan, the drones have killed 2000 militants and 138 civilians.
That is a fucking phenomenal record. There is no valid argument to be made about whether or not drones work well and minimize civilian casualties, the only argument is whether the US should be in Pakistan at all.
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I am surprised 138 of the killed were classified as civilians. I would expected everyone killed to have been named as a terrorist (afterall no one can really prove someone is not a terrorist)
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Maybe some of your assumptions are just plain wrong and should be reconsidered, in light of actual facts rather than guesses?
Naaaaah, cant be.
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They came from wikipedia, and were cited in the article, so yes. I did check. Apparently you STILL havent, so the only one still fumbling around without the facts is you.
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I am surprised 138 of the killed were classified as civilians.
Under 2s I suspect.
Re:In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:4, Insightful)
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In Pakistan, the drones have killed 2000 militants and 138 civilians.
That is a fucking phenomenal record. There is no valid argument to be made about whether or not drones work well and minimize civilian casualties, the only argument is whether the US should be in Pakistan at all.
phenomenal record of what? pakistani is full of civilian militants.
where'd you get those statistics big guy? (Score:3)
because , as far as our government is concerned, the drone program doesnt even exist?
or are you dealing in CLASSIFIED material here? oh, then, expect a knock from the FBI to take you away any day now
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Id assume he got it from this classified website [wikipedia.org]...
According to the Long War Journal, as of mid-2011, the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2006 had killed 2,018 militants and 138 civilians.[501] The New America Foundation stated in mid-2011 that since 2004 2,551 people have been killed in the strikes, with 80% of those militants. The Foundation stated that 95% of those killed in 2010 were militants.[498]
Im sure that info is TS/SCI, and that agents will be around to nab us all shortly.
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Despite snarky ignorance, even during a deficit, training for various Federal employees and various research efforts continue. The world doesn't stop just because we're in a deficit (as we have been for decades).
Keep those printing presses rolling, boys and girls. And when it takes a wheel-barrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread, maybe the new Hitler will come along and set you free.
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Is ignorance that great painful? Or do the drugs you're on keep it under control?
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Is ignorance that great painful? Or do the drugs you're on keep it under control?
The only thing that keeps our economy going is war, bankster war. A war that the banksters fund, both sides. Regardless of who wins or loses, the banksters win.
If drugs or stupidity are involved, then it's to the banksters advantage to maximize them. Occupy Wallstreet is NOT about supporting the banksters.
Get with it Slick!
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It's good to see one of our largest employers giving more opportunities for work in the middle of one of the worst spates of unemployment in our history, yes.
Jeez, do the "Government should spend less" people not know that in times of economic hardship, government is supposed to spend *more* to equalize the less spending done by companies/consumers? If the government decided to chop their budgets by trillions tomorrow, you'd see the rate of unemployment spike due to all those federal jobs being cut which wo
waste is not the same thing as stimulus (Score:3)
gimmicks, it should be spending it on something that provides actual value to someone, somewhere, hopefully that the private economy isn't producing. it would be like if the government decided to start manufacturing bottled water. 1. nobody needs any more bottled water, the shelves are overflowing with it 2. its a pointless, idiotic product in the first place, and 3. its a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. wasting money is not the same thing as stimulating the economy.
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You should be pleased then - because this software meets both criteria. For training and research, it provides actual value to me the taxpayer. And nobody in the private sector is producing these kinds of 'games'.
No it isn't. You, like so many others here, are getting hung
Serious games are actually useful ... (Score:5, Informative)
In the middle of the greatest deficit it's good to see our government spending money on games.
Serious games are actually useful and they can save not only money but lives. One area of serious gaming are training simulators. Think beyond flight simulators. They are serious games that teach soldiers how to interact with members of a very different culture. There are serious games that present fire fighters with different types of chemical spills to see how they handle it and react to unfolding events. This particular game also has a very serious and seemingly worthwhile goal:
"The goal of the Sirius Program is to create experimental Serious Games to train participants and measure their proficiency in recognizing and mitigating the cognitive biases that commonly affect all types of intelligence analysis. The research objective is to experimentally manipulate variables in Serious Games and to determine whether and how such variables might enable player-participant recognition and persistent mitigation of cognitive biases. The Program will provide a basis for experimental repeatability and independent validation of effects, and identify critical elements of design for effective analytic training in Serious Games. The cognitive biases of interest that will be examined include: (1) Confirmation Bias, (2) Fundamental Attribution Error, (3) Bias Blind Spot, (4) Anchoring Bias, (5) Representativeness Bias, and (6) Projection Bias."
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=1793ab48906acabaf923c76486c29c0f&_cview=0 [fbo.gov]
wow, that has worked so well for us (Score:2)
in iraq, in afghanistan, in the BP oil spill, in Katrina, in the Texas refinery explosions, in the West Virginia coal mine explosion, ... i can see "useful" and "saving lives" right around the corner with all this "training" and "education" we give "the warfighter" and our "men and women in uniform".
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Wow. That is actually quite awesome. Considering that overcoming cognitive bias could be beneficial to pretty much anyone in any environment. And that lessening cognitive bias on a large scale could only be beneficial to our species and planet.
Sadly, a great many people will oppose the concept or resource allocation toward it due to cognitive bias.
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Raytheon is part of the military industrial complex. There's no such thing as "deficit" for them.
If murder and oppression are your business and you've got connections to the government, you'll sooner see more taxes for lower/middle class citizens before you see a rejected project proposal worth millions.
games are also propaganda tools used to promote (Score:4, Funny)
a certain ideology or a certain model of the world that may or may not actually resemble reality.
if the '21st century' wants to abandon the '19th century' notions like, say, empiricism, and the scientific method, (which actually go back hundreds of years BC) then i think the 21st century may be the last century.
Re:In the middle of the greatest deficit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of all the crap they blow money on at least this actually makes sense; video games have proven their worth time and again as a training aid. Are they still using that system with an M-16 and an NES? Hilarity.
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This isn't just a "Video Game", it's an intelligence platform. It's coming from IARPA, cousin of DARPA, you know that wasteful part of the government that blew all that money on some stupid thing called "the internet". I hear it turned out to be nothing more than a series of tubes that dumptrucks get stuck on.
-Rick
Unconscious Conditioning? (Score:1)
Although the biases they show are true problems, it almost seems like it could also do conditioning, unaware of the player's conscious mind.
Secondly, it really seems like our government is going out in all directions(such as pizza) just to avoid the money problem. They're in constant denial..
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Games and meds before and after the stress of combat could make for a much better death squad.
So... (Score:5, Funny)
They just spent $10.5 million to remake Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
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obligatory YTCracker (Score:2)
"She might even steal your heart, so I might warn ya / She's so damn hot when she rocks her red fedora" - from YTCracker's verse on Carmen Sandiego Has Really Bad Morals
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Lets hope she's naked in this one ... it'll be worth the money then.
Where in the FUCK is Carmen Sandiego?
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A suspicious looking person was at the docks. (Score:1)
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They had to make sure Rockapella was going to get back in on this one... ...money well spent.
Link (Score:5, Informative)
I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either. So here. [bbn.com]
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Raytheon. Not Raythorn. *smacks head against wall* But the link is correct.
Re:Link (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either. So here. [bbn.com]
you would have lost the bet. BBN is pretty well known for networking related developments (first packet switch/router, first machine-to-machine messaging/email) and acoustic developments (UN Assembly Hall, forensic analysis of the JFK dictabelt & the Nixon Tapes, `Boomerang').
In fact, your computer probably has a fair bit of BBN code & configuration in it. Grep for 'BBN' in /etc, see what comes up.
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In fact, your computer probably has a fair bit of BBN code & configuration in it. Grep for 'BBN' in /etc, see what comes up.
Apart from contents of various SSL certificates, I only get one hit: /etc/protocols (for windows users: that's a list of TCP and UDP port numbers).
You said they were famous or something?
Link to their article (Score:2)
Actually it looks like a good idea to me from that.
Re:Link (Score:5, Informative)
I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman basically built the first generation of the internet.
Raytheon is the single largest private employer in the state of Massachusetts.
Apparently Raytheon purchased BBN - although for a while during the dotcom crazy they were called Genuity.
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I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either. So here. [bbn.com]
Actually, I knew about Bolt, Beranek, and Newman [wikipedia.org] long before Raytheon acquired the company.
Disclaimer: I've actually studied the history of the Internet ... so I'm cheating.
No sex scenes then? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I don't see why not - simulators of varying sorts and fidelity have been doing just that for decades.
And fun is where you find it, I loved lab time when I was in school in the Navy - the simulators were a hell of a lot more fun that lectures. Later, when I was an instructor in the same school, if I had
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Since these games aren't intended for a general audience, and are intended to train a specialized audience (read TFA), your objections don't really apply. And no, simulators aren't just for 'improving performance on specific tasks', they're also for improving general skills within a specialized field. For example, when I got to my boat, I already knew what the FCS sounded like when it powered up - having powered one up in the simulator a hundred dozen times while performing other (specialized) task traini
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Now you're moving the goalposts - first you claimed they were bad because they were meant for general audiences (which they aren't), now you're claiming they're bad because they're [some kind of vaguely] 'general'.
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game a chess? (Score:1)
Or maybe tic-tac-toe?
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3D tic-tac-toe was popular with our family. But it was the table board version rather than a computer game. Four glass planes stacked above each other, with marbles of different colour, with enough for three players. Similar to http://www.sircollectalot.co.uk/images/uploads/space_linessmall.jpg [slashdot.org]">"Space Lines" in the UK.
Why not hire a game developer (Score:1)
Somehow I can't help but feel this money would have been better allocated to a game developer instead of a defense contractor.
Defense contractors aren't typically know for their user friendly software, with cutting edge graphics, written by a talented team of passionate game programmers/artists using off the shelf software, built on a low maintenance proven code base, with a reasonable budget and delivered on time.
But hey what do I know.
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The military couldn't deal with the DRM,
The piss test ... (Score:3)
Somehow I can't help but feel this money would have been better allocated to a game developer instead of a defense contractor.
Nope, many employees at game development studios won't pass the piss test.
That is not a joke. That is reality. More than one non-gaming corporation that diversified into gaming was asked if the bought the game studio for the brand name or the talented people. If the later then they were advised not to bring certain aspects of their corporate policy to the game studio, in particular the piss test. It was explained that they would end up firing much of the value behind their investment.
Besides, what mak
All this... (Score:2)
just to make L.A. Noire playable?
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Yeah - talk about a serious game. What a disappointment.
Why so cheap? (Score:5, Interesting)
Average game development costs are estimated to be around $20M-$30M
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_development [wikipedia.org]
..over 20M in 2010
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/108/1082176p1.html [gamespy.com]
Obviously the forces driving commercial games and games for the public sector are different, but the relative cost shouldn't be ignored.
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Art, animation, audio, distribution, marketing, first-party licensing. When you reduce or outright cut these sections, what happens to the game's budget?
Looking at game teams I've been on, non-coders made up well over half the dev team, and that's not including marketing/licensing/etc.. These games obviously don't need a big budget presentation.
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haha.
that's not the average.
that's just the average for a big budget game that costs 20 mil.
most games cost something like 40-300 thousand. that's just going by numbers. most of them aren't hits.
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That's total game costs, for big budget blockbuster projects. Game *development* budgets dropped significantly during the GFC. (Which is the reason I'm no longer a game programmer after almost 20 years in the industry, I'm far too expensive compared to US college grads with loans to pay off.) What didn't drop was the budgets for marketing, IP licensing, publishing, senior management junkets, etc. In fact, those have increased recently to take up the slack from the slashing of development costs. (Why waste m
Good idea ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can use more serious games in my life. A hundred percent serious, nitty gritty political or economically serious, and even technically or ideologically serious. I don't even care if the game violates my world view. Just give me something to think about when I drop the controller and rejoin the real world. Until that happens, I will spend most of my time in literature because a good author will do more to challenge me than the typical mass media title (regardless of the media).
Re:Good idea ... (Score:4, Informative)
Deus Ex wasn't bad for that.
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Also used in military, finance, air traffic, etc.. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Serious games" is a term open for laughing at - but they are used for training in a lot of domains. Another term might be "simulation" and if you start thinking in those terms you're into pilots learning to fly 747's, air traffic controllers managing crisis situations without anybody actually dying, doctors practicing surgery, and so on. These are all out there. I think the game vs. simulation definition might boil down to a simulation with a win scenario, in which case you can bring in the military using variants of Doom and other shooters to train soldiers in team work, financial traders playing sims that improve their trading behaviour, and so forth.
In all the above, if you take data from the player, either by a sensor measuring heart rate, or just by the style of their game play, it's theorised that you can deduce emotion /cognitive biases and help people improve upon these, either by playing games in a diagnostic mode and then giving them feedback or live feedback in a didactic mode.
Currently I am working on EU project which is investigating (amongst other things) whether serious games can be used to overcome emotion bias in financial investors: http://www.xdelia.org/ [xdelia.org]
You couldn't design a lollipop for 10.5 million (Score:2)
Flash News: (Score:1)
I think the 1990's have returned. (Score:1)
Carmen San Diego anyone?
Jim
thread a perfect example of corruption in action (Score:2)
look at all these people whose livelihoods depends on the defense-industrial-natl'security complex.
do you expect any of them to have a reasonable, disinterested attitude when it comes to analyzing this question?
when such a large percentage of society is corrupted by the corrupt system, then real change becomes very difficult. the body of people receiving the largesse of the greed and corruption (the nomenklatura) will continue to support it, regardless of all evidence and facts, while the people suffering u
Kiss that money goodbye... (Score:3)
Unless it is a radar or a missile, Raytheon couldn't find its a** with both hands - especially regarding software (yes, I have experience dealing with them, know people they have hired to run software projects for them, et cetera...)
wow (Score:2)
I'm glad to see the money go to that stalwart of games innovation... Ratheon? The missile people?
of course when the government wants to burn money, it dumps it into the military industrial complex.
There are dozens of companies more qualified.
This was done already! (Score:1)
This was done already in the past - it's a game called Carmen Sandiego! Think about, "International Detective theme" just says it all!
Raytheon? Really? (Score:1)
All I want to know is if they're hiring :) (Score:2)
nt
This is going to be one expensive (Score:1)
Nothing new (Score:2)