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hyzmarca
One rather interesting aspect of child soldiers that tends to get overlooked is child riggers.

I recently saw on the news a report about an air show in Tallahassee Florida which included a group called the Young Eagles which, apparently, teaches children how to operate World War II combat aircraft, among other things. One thing that really struck me about the report was a short video chip which clearly showed a young girl, around eight years old, sitting behind a door-mounted .50 machine gun and casually playing with it. I honestly don't know if it was loaded o rnot.


Now, in this day and age, war is becoming more like a video game and video games are becoming more like the real thing. In fact, the people who are designing new interfaces for military weapons systems are attempting to make them as video-game-like as possible to harness skills that most recruits will already have which will reduce overall training time and cost.

In 2070, there literally is no difference between flying a drone plane in a VR game and flying a drone plane in real life. The 8-year-old suburban girl who spends several hours playing Microdeck Flight Simulator XXXXX after school every day can, in fact, be a superior combat pilot compared to the academy-graduate officer you spend millions of nuyen training and probably is.

Competitive video game players who specialize in vehicle-based games can and will outperform high trained elite military personnel on the battlefield after a certain point. A kid controlling a drone vehicle fighting in Desert Wars from the comfort of an upper-middle-class suburban living room faces no more danger or discomfort than she would controlling a virtual vehicle in the same circumstances, with the possible exception of being captured or killed by shdowrunners if she's too good.

Giving exceptionally skilled video gamers a chance to participate in desert wars, regardless of age, is a win-win for the corporations. It is free advertising, it makes them hip with the young demographics, and there is absolutely no real danger for parents groups to complain about. Even the violence would be no different from that seen in a regular VR game.

Kill from your couch, they could call it.
Cthulhudreams
Except that while we currently have highly realistic driving simulations, the biggest selling driving video games have deliberately unrealistic handling to make the game more 'fun'

It is reasonable to expect that the majority of 'future gamers' will play games with a similar 'arcade' style.

So at a fundamental level, the car you drive in project gotham racing 2070 will not handle like a real one.
Critias
That exact idea is used by the military to recruit kids in the cyberpunk/sci-fi (it sort of switches genres) series by Elizabeth Bear. I, naturally, can't recall the names of any of the individual books right now, but one of the main characters early in the series is a crime lord/ganger with an augmented jaw and cyber-teeth that goes by "Razorface."

So, I mean, you know it's awesome, even without me telling you about how the government is recruiting kids for experimental rigger hook-ups from piloting game MMORPGs.
Fuchs
There was an old SF movie, "Starfighter" or "The Last Starfighter" I believe, where a video game was used to test for pilot potentionals.
FriendoftheDork
QUOTE (Zak @ May 21 2008, 07:50 PM) *
The barrens are a fucked up place and people are fighting for their survival. Yet, they have to eat, drink and take drugs like everyone else. But since you don't have a Stuffer Shack at the next corner, someone has to control the supply chain.


Ah just had to chime in here. In my game there IS a Stuffer Shack smack in the middle of Redmond Barrens nyahnyah.gif Of course it's not quite the same as the regular ones you find outside the Barrens, as it has machine gun turrets and even magical security. The store doesen't really profit much from normal SS sales, but from selling guns etc. to gangs, as well as Fixer work.

Oh and keep in mind that even Barrenites can do business via The Matrix - I think the Rusty Stilettos (Glow City) actually lives by selling BTLs over the Matrix and uses the funds to live in and rule that part of the Barrens. There is also Redmond "Touristville" where there are actual SINNers, infrastructure, shops and even Lone Star.

But I do agree that Aks are fairly rare in the Barren gangs in general, while melee weapons and cheap pistols will be much more prevalent. Exceptions exists of course, from Corp-backed gangs to even ones backed by successful criminals settling down and even Runners. Heck in my game Trog has been collecting guns from runs, even buying a bunch of AKs and giving them to his favourite gang.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Cthulhudreams @ May 27 2008, 01:47 AM) *
Except that while we currently have highly realistic driving simulations, the biggest selling driving video games have deliberately unrealistic handling to make the game more 'fun'

It is reasonable to expect that the majority of 'future gamers' will play games with a similar 'arcade' style.

So at a fundamental level, the car you drive in project gotham racing 2070 will not handle like a real one.


One solution to that is to develop real vehicles that handle like their arcade counterparts. In the case of aircraft, with sophisticated unstable thrust-vectoring fly-by wire drone aircraft this should be a relatively simple matter of software design.

And I just had this beautiful mental vision of a soccer mom driving her kid to gang initiation. At some point someone makes conversation with the mother and asks if the kid is in Little League. The mom replies "No, he hates baseball." and the kid adds "The bat's to beat -insert racial slur- to death" as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Cthulhudreams
At some point you're probably constrained by the simple realities of grip and suspension. I suspect games would become more realistic over time though.... maybe?
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Cthulhudreams @ May 27 2008, 06:22 PM) *
At some point you're probably constrained by the simple realities of grip and suspension. I suspect games would become more realistic over time though.... maybe?


Since future video games will be direct-to-your brain VR experiences, more realism is a given.

These days, the biggest constraint on aircraft maneuverability is the pilot's body. With both thrust vectoring and a remote pilot sitting in comfort on the ground, you can have drone planes do some incredible baddass shit. Smart control systems and pilot programs can also potentially simplify control of the craft to an arcade level by performing subtle and minute behind-the-scenes adjustments in response to minimum player input.

Cars do have more pressing constraints but innovations like computer-controlled smart suspension can greatly improve performance.
Cthulhudreams
Yeah, but a 'realistic' F1 simulator is still about as fun as being punched in the nuts as you will come off in every, single, corner if you don't know what you are doing or don;t just turn on the 'cheats' buttons. Hell, even the flight simulator with 'real' fly by wire jet fighters with G forces turned off (a pretty close simulation of what you are talking about) can be about as much fun for the general populace as hitting themselves with hammers.

So I'm actually tossing up whether I feel realism is more likely or if people will just play counterstrike 2070 complete with health meters because escapism is the most pressing factor.
hyzmarca
The youngest winner of the Medal of Honor winner of the last century died this week. It seems germane to this topic. At the age of 14 he forged his mother's name and lied about his age to enlisted in the USMC after Pearl Harbor. When the authorities discovered his age, ensuring that he would never be ordered into combat, he stowed away on a ship headed to the front lines. Once there, they really didn't care who he was or how old he was, they needed every gun they could get. When a pair of grenades were thrown into his trench he, at age 17, jumped on them, saving his buddies' lives and absorbing more than 250 pieces of shrapnel. Yeah, he soaked a grenade and survived, a fact which probably saved him from court martial for committing several crimes under the UCMJ.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2004...ucasobit06.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacklyn_H._Lucas
PBTHHHHT
QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Jun 5 2008, 07:33 PM) *
The youngest winner of the Medal of Honor winner of the last century died this week. It seems germane to this topic. At the age of 14 he forged his mother's name and lied about his age to enlisted in the USMC after Pearl Harbor. When the authorities discovered his age, ensuring that he would never be ordered into combat, he stowed away on a ship headed to the front lines. Once there, they really didn't care who he was or how old he was, they needed every gun they could get. When a pair of grenades were thrown into his trench he, at age 17, jumped on them, saving his buddies' lives and absorbing more than 250 pieces of shrapnel. Yeah, he soaked a grenade and survived, a fact which probably served him from court marshal for committing several crimes under the UCMJ.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2004...ucasobit06.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacklyn_H._Lucas


The part that got to me was the blurb of how he was a paratrooper in the 60's and survived a training jump with both chutes not opening. wow, grenades and gravity didn't do him in.
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