Are Officers More Reticent of Games for Serious Training than Enlisted Soldiers?

Abstract

Video games are continuing to draw attention as possible Human Performance Improvement technologies that young people will be drawn to. Roger Smith highlights how game technologies have already and are poised to disrupt the military simulation. Further, Smith identifies five forces behind the adoption of game technology by diverse industries. One of these forces is social acceptance. Through two case studies, this research considers the contribution of two video games toward improving human performance on two different tasks as well as within two different social-cultural groups – officers and enlisted. Data is collected and analyzed on control and experimental groups to evaluate the performance difference for these tasks between traditional training approaches and various implementations of video games. In addition, data on the use and expectations about video games is collected from two social cultural groups – college educated military officers and high school educated enlisted soldiers – and analyzed to identify differences in acceptance of video games as technology for serious Human Performance Improvement.

Keywords

Serious games officers enlisted attitudes

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