FBI, CIA Use Training Video Games
Intelligence Agents Apply Logic and Problem Solving in New Titles
The CIA, FBI and other government agencies may be starting a new trend. Can video games be used to teach students real-world skills?
Intelligence agents have a new toy available that is far different from anything that might have been seen in a James Bond movie or the 60s television series Get Smart. Intelligence agents working for the FBI and the CIA are now being trained using video games.
The idea of using a video game to train pilots it not new. Sophisticated simulators have been around since the early 1980s. Substituting a virtual world for a real one makes sense when the trainers are teaching the trainee to take charge of an aircraft that can cost several million dollars.
The CIA and the FBI are also starting to turn to video games to train their agents. Instead of worrying about the monetary cost of agent failures, which is considerably less than that of an airplane, these two US agencies are more worried about the much higher cost in human terms of an improperly trained intelligence agent.
Places to Buy the FBI and CIA Training Video Games
The three games that a recent Wired magazine article features as being used are not available to the general public, unlike the free Xbox 360 game that the Army uses as a recruitment tool, nor would many of these games designed to train intelligence agents appeal to the average gamer. Only one of the titles in use comes close to being an action game favored by most gamers. The titles of these games are Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust.
All of the games played by perspective and current intelligence agents use the multimedia nature of video games to help people with different styles learn the the principles of intelligence gathering. These games are a good start, but do these FBI and CIA commissioned video games represent a new educational tools that will allow students in classrooms to show how what they learn in lectures can be applied in the real world.
FBI and CIA Implementation of These Games
These games force the user to apply logical processes in order to beat the game, although they are hardly an action packed thriller. In many ways, it is an outgrowth of the once popular Carmen San Diego series of games, except that the games used by the FBI and CIA to train intelligence agents requires less guesswork.
But the design of the three games currently in use suggests a change over traditional methods of teaching children, or at least showing students real world applications of what classroom lectures have been taught. If nothing else, it might interest a new generation in the work of the FBI, CIA and other US intelligence agencies.
Sources
“U.S. Spies Learn Custom Video Games to Learn How to Think.” Michael Peck. Wired. April 24, 2008.
