Playing reality in virtual games

For many years playing computer games
has been viewed
as a enjoyable way to spend time. But now a new generation of games are
emerging with a serious agenda behind the fun.
Cyber-Budget tries to make economics
fun
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For centuries, millennia even, we have learnt the skills
of life through play.
Chess teaches strategy, others teach
dexterity or even team-work.
This century is no different.
On a good day video games can sharpen our
reaction times and coordination, but they can also have a more earnest
purpose.
In fact, when it comes to video games it
seems everyone is getting serious, including French politicians.
Fed up of people continually complaining
about their
taxes, France's ministry of finance developed a video game, so now the
people themselves can have a go at doing the minister's job of
balancing the country's budget.
Cyber-Budget has been a runaway success
since it went online this summer.
The French public gets to do more than
just wander
through the corridors of power, they also get to play with the
controls. In the end they get to make decisions about how their
hard-earned Euros are spent.
French Budget Minister Jean-Francois Cope says: "The
principle of the game is to become the French minister of budget.
"For instance, you have to learn about
the price of oil,
a new war and so on, and of course there are consequences on the
economic situation.
"And then after that you have to make
your decision:
when you invest more, increase public spending, increase public debt,
what happens?"
Making economics fun, and French
economics at that, is a lot to ask, but the ministry's video game is
not all that bad.
It is nicely spiced up with little
touches of realism,
like the continual glances over the shoulder at how the press are
reacting to your decisions.
Jean-Francois Cope says: "I decided to
become a French politician. It is my job.
"I think it is important, it is my duty
to make sure
that the French citizens who want to know and learn more about public
administration [can put themselves] in the situation and feel how it is
to work under pressure."
Defence training
Not all serious games have the noble goal
of bringing economics to the masses.
They do, however, differ from their
lighter-hearted cousins in that the reality they portray is more, as it
were, virtual.
The company Kynogon puts artificial
intelligence into
security games and knows that unless crowds behave like the real thing
its clients will not be very interested.
Likewise, body guards can always be
programmed to
surround and stick to a subject, but unless they can analyse what is
going on around them they are not much more use in a gun-fight than a
raincoat.
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The
online game America's Army is partly a recruitment tool for the US
military and has itself come under fire, accused of trivialising
conflict
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Kynogon's Pierre Pontevia says: "It's how do I protect
my VIP?
"Well, first I need to understand from
the surrounding
point of view where could a threat come from and then position myself
between this threat and my VIP.
"In the demo...all the three guards are
identifying
potential threats in real time, organising themselves to get the best
[position].
"When you have that, I think you have 90%
of what you can expect as being clever behaviour in a game."
But being clever and serious does not
stop you getting criticised.
The online game America's Army is partly
a recruitment
tool for the US military and has itself come under fire, accused of
trivialising conflict, not least the one in Iraq.
The game has been turned from serious to
a solemn one by
a university art professor whose online memorial has been to sign in as
Dead in Iraq and then list the names of US soldiers killed in the
conflict.
While America's Army may obscure the ugly
truth of real
armed conflict, other serious games can give us an original insight
into what really makes the world go round.
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