There are hundreds of first-person shooter video games. But don’t take my word for it, wikipedia has a list:
I’m pretty terrible at all of the games I’ve ever tried. The only time I’ve been OK is when I had a rocket launcher in Halo… and I was still pretty bad then!
Oh you’ve opened the big can of worms @Dawn.
I don’t believe there is any training value for mature and healthy minded individuals.
Unless you had some high dollar simulator for scenario based stuff. But I don’t think that’s the video games your thinking of.
I used to be huge on Call of Duty growing up…
I can’t say it did me any advantage except knowledge of more weapons.
However, like @Sheepdog556 said unless it was one of those simulators. I have seen a video on Dallas PD using one in a real-life situation on when to use their fire-arm. It seemed pretty cool and possibly taught law-enforcement officials a lot.
This would be possible with VR with the right programmer developing it.
I agree with others, not first person shooter games.
But maybe activities like paintball might have transferable skills e.g. “pie doors” and quickly taking cover, importance of accuracy.
‘Paintball’ and ‘importance of accuracy’ in the same sentence? Has paintball changed in the last 7 years? I’ve never seen it as accurate. Fun to shoot a bunch of rounds but slightly better than hand grenade accurate in my experience. I did use rental equipment.
Fun to shoot a bunch of rounds but slightly better than hand grenade accurate in my experience
Exactly my point…failing to aim easily splatters your cohorts…or so it seems.
Full disclosure, I’ve never played, just observed.
Video games, maybe for hand eye coordination but if you want some good real life practice, go play paintball…
You dont want to be hit and you can really get your adrenaline going, and you will learn quick what can happen if you get tunnel vision.
If you really want a challenge, play magfed or pistol with a TiPX using 7rd or 12rd mags vs the others doing auto like fire with 200rd capacity.
Will teach you cover, how to look with minimum exposure, how to move and more.
I have to agree with paintball as a situational awareness tool and field movement technique tool. In the military I was introduced to “Simunition” which is paint loaded into “regular” rounds so that you could use a “modified standard weapon” to train in CQB and the like. Unfortunately VERY expensive to operate as a civilian. Paint ball is a good training tool if you keep it “round count” realistic.
OBTW, YES paintball has improved drastically in the past few years.
Cheers,
Craig6
@Dawn, I have a bit of a different angle to view the idea of video games as a potential training tool. It seems that everyone seems to be approaching the subject from the view points of use of defensive tools, observation of surrounding. How about we consider mental acuity, and decision making. Forget about VR, or simulation of a defensive senerio. There are a lot of postings here that fall in the “what would you do if” category. There aren’t many games that would help in this area, but there are some, and what differs them from the postings here is the amount of time you have to make a decision, and a visual outcome from that decision. An excellent option for this type of thinking would be the PlayStation game “Heavy Rain”. It is a decision driven game that involves tracking, and stopping a serial killer in which you play as 4 distinctly different characters with different backgrounds. If you either allow, or force yourself to approach the game as though you are the characters it will allow the decisions to feel personal, and the frequent switching between characters helps with viewing things from other perspectives. How potentially valuable could it be if you could shave a half second from your decision making process?
I believe there are some mental benefits, to some FPS games. Mainly in shoot/don’t shoot scenarios. But also in ammo management. Turn the HUD off so you have to keep up with ammo usage.
I’m a bit skeptical of the training value of video games. At our agency, we have a very realistic simulator. It responds to voice commands (because there’s more at play than just shooting), and uses weapons identical to our duty weapons. They even have the same round count, and need to be reloaded with a fresh magazine. After the scenario, we get statistical feedback as to number of rounds fired, and number of hits and misses. I personally think that you need this kind of interactive experience to be of any real value. Just my 2 cents. 