June 23, 2008
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has been a harsh critic of violent games like Grand Theft Auto in the past.
But a report in Newsday suggests that Kelly's own officers may soon be using video game tech to train on firearm tactics. The training will include simulated shoot/don't shoot confrontations with game-like avatars who move realistically and have authentic facial expressions.
The recommendation for specialized video game training comes from the Rand Corporation. The think tank was hired in the wake of the NYPD's controversial shooting of an African-American man, Sean Bell, on his wedding day in 2006.
Rand's Bernard Rostker told Newsday:
[The NYPD's] current simulators are very good, but it's pretty old technology... [Video] gaming has gotten a bad reputation because they're all about shoot-'em-ups. But maybe a better way of looking at it is to look at something like the NBA basketball [video games]. The quality of the figures is very real and the quality of the facial expressions is very real. If you can give a student a lot of scenarios, it changes the nature of the learning experience.
Comments
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
If they want realistc tactics and strategy then they should play Rainbow six 3 or the prequals. For saving lives they should play SWAT 3 and 4. They are not true simulators but they should teach them what they need to know.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I have to say that this reeks of a cop out. "Oh our police offices weren't trained well enough thats why three of them unloaded 51 shots into an unarmed man." I'd be much more interested to hear that the officers in question were fired than "Were going to train them on when not to shoot". In all honest if you need to train your police when NOT to shoot you have a serious problem on your hands.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I was at a police-event-thing once when I was about 10, they had a pistol (with full weight and realistic recoil) hooked up to a device that was hooked up to a projector. For kids they had just a target-game,
But for adults they played a simulation. In the simulation, a video would be played of an event, and at a point in some videos, a bad guy would pull out a gun or something, and the person would have to decide if they should shoot, measure reaction time, all of that stuff. Seemed like a very good simulation and something cops could train on for knowing when to shoot and all that
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
this is old...
i mean, as early as 95 or 96 i've already seen on TV about such simulations (to a certain degree could be clasified or is similar to a video game) being used by the police (i just forgot where)
it's been 10 years and they're just going to use it now!?
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
The only people stupid enough to compare this sort of thing to casual gaming will be JT and...I dunno, some other assholes. This is much different from casual gaming in that the viewers are playing the game for the sole pourpose of learning, and they are certainly going to be trying to do the best they can on their side of the process, since they could die if they don't. For example, I sometimes play MGS games for the sake of political philosophy, whearas some may choose to stop short at viewing it as no more than a game, therefore, I will get what I take from it (a great gaming experience and political goodness) and others will get what they take from it.
-If shit and bricks were candy and tits, we'd all be livin' large. For information on games and psychology, look up: Jonathan Freedman(2002)Block and Crain(2007)Grand Theft Childhood, a book by Harvard Medical School researchers Larry Kutner and Cheryl Olson
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I can just see it now: "now even the cops are training on those cop killer games!" *cues ambulance siren*
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I can see using the games to train teamwork skills... but that's about it.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
this is horrible news! all these people know about video games is that there are ones where you shoot people and ones where you play basketball. that is just ignorant. its like choosing to hate all movies because you believe the only ones are cheap comedy flicks or dramatizations.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
cue Larouche: "the police are training using violent murder simulators!!!"
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I know it isn't quite popular to have a massively broad storyline going in many directions, but the potential to play a game where the PC can follow a path of "good" or "evil" is appealing. More so, the ability to slowly alter that perspective, not merely by a line graph moving from one end of the spectrum to the other but rather from subtle reactions of some NPCs is good too.
Imagine a variety of authority figures with various personality types being used as NPCs. Your character has been slowly taking a criminal type path. Your character encounters a police officer. Your character draws their weapon... and hesitates. One NPC would be gung ho and take advantage and shoot your character, while another may react to that hesitation. From there, the story, most notably with that specific NPC, could take a slightly different turn.
Perhaps even the same is true if your "good"/"evil" positions were reveresed.
The training of officers to recognize not merely "innocent" targets, but "not-quite-lethal but still potentially dangerous targets who might not need killing" targets and so on.
There are many situations that exist and police are trained on merely two options.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Nightwng2000 has also updated his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/nightwing2000 Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
It's sort of like the SWAT games where you have to secure a building without killing any of the civilians. Only this isn't so much about killing all the bad guys, but managing to keep them apart from the civilians in the first place.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
Hmmm, Police Trainer, anyone?
I enjoyed that game.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
A growing trend in the simulation industry is to provide more command and control scenarios. This means more emphasis on decision making, and less on overly specialized training.
This is especially popular in the emergency first responder section of the industry, which includes police, SWAT, fire fighters, hazmat, and other disaster relief organizations.
Clients and organizations paying the contract money want better graphics and deeper immersion, while retaining the serious training methods. This is what is pushing the industry to use game engine technology.
I can't say for sure, but I think the simulation they desire is not a Duck Hunt or COD4 experience where you "learn how to shoot." They want to further train their officers to make tactical and life saving decisions.
That's just my experience working in the simulation field.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
Exactly. Cops already know how to aim and shoot well (having learnt on firing ranges and having received training from instructors, not GTA :)). This is to increase response time and improve decision making in situations where you are unsure of a threat.
For example: A police officer is investigating a report of a gunshot in an aprtment block, a young man steps around a corner into the corridor suddenly and has something black and narrow in his hand. What does the cop do? Shoot and discover that it's just a cell-phone later on? Do nothing and risk letting someone who could be a criminal escape from the scene, or endanger his own life if the man is armed?
These are the kind of things that the police wish to improve. There have been many stories and tragedies where police officers have injured or killed members of the public who posed no threat. This training will hopefully stop that from happening in the future.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
"shoot/don't shoot confrontations"
Sounds a little like those old arcade shooters. The ones where you shoot bad guys when they pop up from behind a barrel, and you lose points if you shoot the scienists or supermodels hiding behind the same barrel as the guy with the shotgun.
The biggest problem I can see happening here is the police officers may start trying to reload by shooting "off-screen."
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
Could Hogan's Alley be making a comeback?
Now we can blame police mistakes on games!
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I think Duck Hunt is better. If they make a mistake, a special trained police dog will advice them with a special noise...
Police: -shots an old lady-
Dog: ha ha ha ha
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The cynical side of videogames (spanish only): http://thelostlevel.blogspot.com/
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I don't trust anything named after Ayn Rand. Objectivism is fine as a philosophy, but when you start injecting it into a governmental way of thinking that just scares me.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
RAND is named for Research ANd Development. Nothing to do with Ayn. Or with maps, if you remember Rand-McNally.
I think it's a bit silly to assume that you can't learn anything from video games. The simulations aren't expected to teach the cadets how to shoot better; they're hoping to train them in decision-making.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
Ah, wrong institute. ARI is the one I'm thinking of.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
So they think even playing a basketball game, one person can become a NBA star? This is like a Simpsons episode. Insert Royal Facepalm here...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The cynical side of videogames (spanish only): http://thelostlevel.blogspot.com/
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
The are planning to use the same technology as in the basketball game to create a specialised simulator for the police to use in training. They are not suggesting that all the cops have to do is play a cop game to get good at their job!
Anything that can possibly improve training to prevent tragedies like the one that started them looking into this is a good thing.
Don't construe this as the same thing that Jack thinks, that video games are simulators. There is a world of difference between them. This will be used to generate realistic looking simulations where police can train for these shoot/don't shoot scenarios, not a video game. It's not going to be fun, or marketed to anyone, or released to the public, they won't be using a joypad or wiimote to train!
A video game cannot train a person to do anything, but a specifically tailored and engineered simulation such as the one described above can.
Re: Video Game Training Recommended for NYPD
I know, but, for that people:
videogames = simulators
The named "NBA videogames", not training simulators.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The cynical side of videogames (spanish only): http://thelostlevel.blogspot.com/