Not the praying bit but.. yeah, pretty much.

China doesn't really have any enemies though. They don't really need to worry about Terrorism.

Cue Jack Thompson post, press release, another disasterous public nuisance declaration attempt, or all of the above in 5...4...3...2...

Couldn't they just use nerf guns? In real life?

Someone who used to be on the site. Stop showing up sometime early this year.


Some of your comments remind me of him, and its not a good thing.

If the video game training theory was true then I would feel pretty ripped off. As after many hours with Half-Life, Fear, Stalker and other games I still can't hit the broad side of anything with a real firearm.

know how to tell if an chinese anti terrorist squad is near you?

just wait for someone to yell "boom headshot"

if i had to take a guess here

id say this was used to teach formation without a chance at the recruits (im guessing again) getting injured

how to figure out which direction opposing fire is coming from and other things, these kinds of things

Here it comes.. Get ready for Jackie's post..

Video Games are no way to train Policemen. They just don't work that way.

Still, i'm assuming the PRC trains it's Police how to shoot. CS is probably safer than Wargames in the Ural Mountains too..

"supplement to their traditional means of training."

Good. That puts me at rest.

@Dexee

It's good fun. You should try it some time. Uh... I mean, those Communist Pigs.

And preemptive for Jack.

Mr. Thompson have you:

A- Fired any real firearms at all in your life.

B- Played any of these claimed "murder" simulators


If your answer is no to either one then your knowledge of being able to compare the two is moot.

As tactical training, it's perfect.

the 'weapons training' comment is going to be hilariously taken out of context though.

the only weapons training you can get from a game like this is an approximation on the capabilities of the weapons in real life: range, reload time and so on.

though all the politicians/crazed lawyers on the anti-games bandwagon are going to take the 'OMG IT TEACHES PEOPLE TO SHOOT GUNS!¬!¬!¬!' line of thought -_-

@Koichan


Tactical? Perhaps.

But the assumption by Jack and those who listen to his tripe that the majority gamers (the ones who aren't in the military mind you) could fire fight their way out of a damp paper bag is hilarious at best. And as Far as Harris and Klebold: What kind of training does it take to gun down unarmed, unexpectant people at point blank range?

@Citizen_Snips

Console sales are banned in China. No consoles= no games.

@ BlackIce, Leftie

Console sales banned? But I just bought my PS3 this summer at Zhongguancuan, in Beijing. I don't think it was illegal, cause' they were being fairly open about it.

It's like comparing Tactical Wargames to Nerf in a way, if you play counterstrike or any other tactical game under controlled conditions, you can learn strategy and teamwork, I think even the American Army use them for that purpose. However, there are two important factors, firstly, these men are soldiers, the actual skills and mental conditioning required to use a gun on a living target are being given separately. Secondly, those controlled conditions are nothing whatsoever like an on-line game of Counterstrike etc, where people are playing it as a game, not as a training exercise.

There's still nothing about the game that compels people to go out and commit those in-game acts, in fact, it's real life compelling them to play the game.

@GoodRobotUs

As me and several other posters can tell you, no army uses CS to train it's troops.

Secondly, the Police force are not Soldiers. Sort of. Ish.

Thirdly, there isn't actually a third point to make.

@Citizen_Snips

Or not.

@Citizen_Snips

Are you stoned? Or is it me? I really don't know..

No, not stoned. Just trying to deal with a flaming idiot.

@Citizen_Snips

Calm down mate. It's been a while since I read that article - I've probably mixed it up a bit somewhere.

Well, China has come a long way. Granted, still they're horrifically oppressive, but, just look the Olympics Game. Mario and Sonic. Nuff' said.

I think that online addiction clinics aren't unique just to China. I heard that there were programs and clinics being opened in South Korea, Amsterdam and Canada. Plus, y'know, people are dying because of online addiction. Measures need to be taken.

@Bertand

Thank you :P

I think Armed Assault or at least Operation Flashpoint would be better, cause the US military uses them to help train soldiers from what I've heard ;) .

This is absolutely retarded. I don't beleive that this was the point of the story at all.

It sounds like a competition and a way of humanizing the police to the Chinese Populace.

Having real combat skill, I can assue you that bunnyhopping in real life menas you'll fall flat on your face.

This doesn't help with communication.

Real ARMYS have much more useful and tactically relevant simulations, things like MOUT or Shoothouses, which take the place of games like Counter Strike

@Austin Lewis

The Chinese Police Force is not an Army. CS is only used as an extension of traditonal methods.

Calm down mate, it doesn't help you by being pissed off at another country's methods.

Afterthought:

Damn, that does sound retarded. I want a show of hands. How many of you blokes and blouses think that this story is retarded!?

(Saying "Aye" can replace sticking your arm in the air infront of a computer, thereby saving you the means of looking like a jackass infront of whoever is with you)

@brokenscope

What feeling would that be?

*Face changes*

Dude, back off.

No idea who that is.

Started posting in... August?

Trouble is, I don't know what he was like. So I can't really help it if I do turn out like him in whatever way.

Don't be an ass.. easy enough.

I was joking. But it is really hard to take this story seriously at all. Using Counter-Strike for any kind of training whatsoever is humorous at best, suicide for your soldiers at worst.

well, seeing as how this is only to train in communication (i hope), theres not really any humor inherent in the story. however, the same levels of communication can be achieved in skirmishes on a course, but with cs, not only is it cheaper, but there are so many environs that can be simulated that each run through would be different, forcing communication and not falling back onto old tactics.

[...] Via:Game Politics [...]

Maybe it's also a false lead planted to undermine terrorist abilities.
Think about it. This site seems to have a fair number of people with experience in both video games and actual firearms and who vehemently deny that skills in one will help with skills in the other. So, if the only weapons training you had prior to actual combat was via CounterStrike, you'd probably be a piss-poor soldier.
So, the Chinese police forces say they train on CounterStrike. "CounterStrike is great for training our men! It is the ultimate training tool!" they say. The terrorists catch wind of this. "The Chinese anti-terrorist squads train on this 'CounterStrike.' If we do not train on it as well, their skills will quickly eclipse ours and our cause will be doomed!" In an effort to keep up with the anti-terror squads, terrorists train night and day on finely honing their CounterStrike skills.
Meanwhile, the Chinese anti-terror squads secretly do, y'know, real training stuff. And when conflict between the two actually happens, the terrorists' CS skills prove to be completely worthless and they fail horribly, or, if you prefer, 'get pwn3d.'
As an added bonus, if this happens the terrorists might assume that their failure is due to having insufficiently trained on CS, and they'll redouble their efforts.

....wow.

@cpt crunchie

I don't think it's used for training communication, more coordination and ... combat sense? What I mean by that is although I don't think CS can ever be used to train you in accurate firing of a gun or turn you into a hardened killer or other crap that people like JT say, I do feel that it makes you more aware of the capabilities of weapons and what to do in certain situations.
To be brief, I mean things such as ammo capacity (judging how much ammo you have left in the gun by only the amount you have fired), ways of firing (short controlled bursts and single shotting compared to spray firing) and weapon switching (guy charging round the corner when you're out of ammo). While these things can never compare to real life, using CS as a cheap method of reinforcing the techniques that they are already being taught seems like a good idea to me.

Others may feel differently, but thats my opinion.

Plus... being paid to play CS? How awesome is that? And they don't even have to be good at it!

I've seen what can be classified as hand signals used in CS. Such as when your teammate knows where an enemy is but doesn't have a mic and need to pass this information quickly, they wiggle their gun at you to get your attention on something, or look at you and then fire a couple shots at a specific point. I've seen tactics like that used over and over. Of course real hand signals are way more expressive.

@Wolfiej
you make a good point, but i still think my original point stands.
@DavCube
thats right. playing a game can teach tactics, as in, load a random cs map, make a quick analysis of the battlefield, like choke points, possible enemy positions, sniper coverage, ways that leapfrog patterns can be employed in advancing, also smash and grab tactics would be something learned. all im saying is that, in the ever changing environ(as long as not everyone complains and they switch to de_dust) quick decisions and thinking ahead to what the enemy might be doing is an integral part of cs, and a major part of an anti-terrorism unit's daily operations, be they skirmishes or drills, or a real situation.

Soooo......

I'm more "Trained" in counter terrorism than the Chinese counter-terrorism unit because i "Own" at CS?

Theres something wrong here...

@Amarkov
well, like i said in my earlier post, my clanmates and i play paintball together and pwn the opposing teams (usually a bunch of people just thrown together arbitrarily from a group) and we, being a clan who play online games together frequently, know each other well enough to gauge reactions and follow through with strategies weve done before, with the barest of communication. we throw together tactics on the fly, which usually work. not to say, if we were thrown into a real battle wed be able to do much more than cower in fear, but we work together well in that situation.

So... how long until we get a news story about how badly this "training supplement" failed?

This seems like it was made for the same purpose as marine Doom. Coordination, strategy, communication, teamwork, that simple.

"Training in the use of weapons", especially as paired with awareness of terrain, doesn't actually mean training to use weapons. Especially if the person speaking learned English in school as a second language rather than at home as a first language alongside one of the Chinese dialects, a pairing of those two phrases by "and" actually connotes "training in what weapon is most effective for taking advantage of [specific types of] terrain."

In other words, the games teaches the officers (far from perfectly) how to take advantage--or at least not give the full advantage to the terrorists--in varied terrains they can't practice in so easily in real life. Nothing to do with actual firing of the weapons, but rather choosing the weapons to use.

Note to self:

If invloved in a police shootout in China:

-jump a whole bunch of times
-never use the chat function
-be a camp-whore
-remember that the "b" button is where I can get my weapons from
-call them "Noobs" every 12 seconds
-if I loose, the map was lame and they cheated
-if all else fails, hax the hell out of the map

LOL

Well I would rather read this news a million times over than that stupid RE racism article.

I've played CS before. I'd have to say I'm pretty good at it...but i would get my ass handed to me if I had a shootout with terrorists.

I heard about this while watching the news here. On the news here it said they wanted to train their officers in teamwork but didn't want to place them in drills that would present too much danger or something.

I dunno, CS as training? I played CS for years and I'm no police officer or army recruit - not even close. :P

Hmm...No matter how I look at it, I don't think the game will help the policemen. Deciding on hair's breadth is very different from deciding while sitting down, thinking that you have another life after the current round.

@Pirra:

Yeah, you can go on GP in China. While there are censorship issues, it's not like something out of 1984. It's bad, to be sure, but not THAT bad.

Lots of different opinions here...so does the US train its troops with video games...or not? It's not that easy. It's neither yes nor no.

See, a lot of these kinds of things (and this report from China is just one city), are experiments. Heck, I remember a mod to Quake that got circulated that ostensibly was for "US Marine training." It was really an experiment, to see what, if any, benefit could be gotten from the new media. They did see some stuff that they liked. One of those things was its use as a tool for propaganda.

A lot of them are just individual base commanders who are sort of helping themselves defend their entertainment budget. These guys don't get a lot of money to spend every year, so when you can bullshit your way through a conference call with the brass and say that the entertainment expense - to keep a console and some games in the rec area - also provides some benefit in training strategic thinking, you keep them from taking a bit of cash.

And then there's 'America's Army' of course, but that's really a matter of training recruits.

But what a lot of this boils down to - quite a lot I think - is that when you look for someone who does a job that's important to you...like you might look for a guy to take care of your car, if your car is important to you...then what you want is someone who goes home from their job working on cars to play...with cars.

It's not surprising that the guy you want joining you on a battlefield is one who goes home to play war.

[...] I’ll let that sit for now and move back to reading about China’s new Counter-Terrorist training program using CounterStrike and the commentary being provided on it. [...]

@HCF

Good points but don't forget that China can get you in trouble for calling bullshit on your superior's head and since most of the top brass and reds in China are older that Alexander Nevski, it is quite possible they have no idea at all of why it is called a video-game.

[...] I’ll let that sit for now, I know it’s crap and confusing, but I want to move back to reading about China’s new Counter-Terrorist training program using CounterStrike and the commentary being provided on it. It’s much more interesting [...]

The thing about bunny hopping sprayers probably doesn't have anything to do with it. If this was official, they would probably either be playing with each other or playing against advanced bots.

Obagi Blue Peel...

I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you....