I remember growing up; my brother and I playing video games on our Commodore Vic 20. We had one game — Motor Mouse — and we liked it.

Boy did we like it.

We had blisters on our hands from playing hours at a time, and we wore out one of the joysticks in the first month we had it. It was one of those old-school Atari Joysticks with 4 dimensions of movement and 1 big red button.

Good times, good times.

The game was so bad, that I can’t find a single image of it on the web. Funny - you can download the game and run it if you have an emulator.

The simple fact is that it was great at the time, but not even worth remembering now (except by me). With time the video game has evolved from simply a form of entertainment to a tool to teach.

The make blog posted about a great example of a practical video game
used to teach US Soldiers to speak and understand Arabic in just a couple of months. I think that’s pretty amazing.

That’s not the first US Army video game produced. A couple of years ago they released another game called Americas Army : Operations. It looks like they’ve got a new version now called Americas Army : Special Forces. It’s a first person shooter that takes you, a new recruit, through the riggers of basic training. It caught some flak from consumers, but I still think it was a great concept.

But the army insists it is not just another shoot-em-up video game that glorifies violence.

Since Canada’s Army is best known for it’s Snipers and other special forces, it makes me wonder if the concept would be totally backwards if we developed it for our army.

Week 1 - peace keeping training. Say please and thank you, never take your gun out of its holster.
Week 2-51 - get a high-powered rifle and practice shooting apples off of trees from a mile away.
Week 52 - get bombed by American pilots in the middle of the desert while wearing your green jungle fatigues.

Both of these games are great examples of knowing and accepting the culture of today, and communicating a message to their target market.

Video games as marketing material??? hmmm. The movie industry has been doing it for a while, but mostly in an attempt to leverage the buying frenzy that goes with the release of a new movie. The sports game industry leverages the marketing and fame of popular athletes to sell their games. But what is the goal of these games?

They sell games to make revenue from the sales, and leverage the marketing being done for the movie or sport that they simulate. Makes sense; right? That’s the best way to make money isn’t it?

Think bigger.

The US Army’s got it right. The game is the marketing tool to promote their product. The game is the tool to build the soldier into a better, more well rounded soldier - a better product.

What if a game encouraged players to play the sport they were playing? Even if it encouraged them to go to a game the team(s) would benefit from the additional revenue. The teams would have better ratings on TV, which can be leveraged into better television contracts… If you’ve got a good game, people will play it. Promote the product with the game, instead of using the product to promote a simulation of the product.

Speaking of videogame evolution, the other day Jonathan Schwartz mentioned a video game demo from the 2005 Game Developers Conference that I thought was truly amazing. You’ll have to register to get access, but you can give them a bunk email address, it’s not required to access the content.

Check out the demo of Spores.

BTW - did you know that Sun Microsystems has a Chief Gaming Officer?

- Follow-up I picked up a copy of Wired Magazine this weekend, inside there is an indepth article on the US Army video games, and detail how the US Army success is being spun off into sequals to be released on all the major gaming platforms.

“Videogames are a cost-effective investment for the US Army. The military spent $12 million making America’s Army as a PR ploy to get kids playing soldier (for free!) again.”