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Civilian gamers beat soldiers in video battle

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SinsFeelNatural

Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Location
Phx. AZ - USA
Just thought you guys would get a kick out of this-


Civilian gamers beat soldiers in video battle
Jim Court
Associated Press
May. 16, 2003 07:40 AM


FORT LEWIS, Wash. - The soldiers heading into battle were part of an elite group, a Stryker Battalion formed as part of a new Army built on technology and speed rather than slow-moving brute force.

They were trained with sophisticated weapons for lightning strikes. But in Thursday's clash, they were the underdogs.

Their opponents: a group of computer-game champions from the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles who nicknamed themselves "The Raging Rainbows."

The battlefield: A video game called America's Army.

In a spirited Internet battle, the civilians beat the soldiers four rounds to one.

"These guys that we played against were extremely experienced and very skillful players," said Sgt. Patrick McCormack, 34, of Jefferson, Ohio. "Their game skills basically outshined ours."

In Los Angeles, the winners denied they had an advantage over the soldiers, though they'd been training on the U.S. Army recruiting-tool game since it first came out in July 2002 and the soldiers had only been playing it for three weeks.

Two of the civilian players got knocked offline during the match, noted Berkley "Breezer" Richardson, 21, of Winston-Salem, N.C., who's majoring in computer science at University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

"The guys we had here are the best in the world," Richardson said in a telephone interview. "Two of them lost their connections. That made it extremely fair."

Other members of the winning team were Vadim "Blacksabbath" Zingman of Trumbull, Conn.; Sean "Hollowtip" Briggs of Redding, Calif., and Michael "Opsman" Remollino of Northridge, Calif.

They split the winner-take-all purse of $7,500 - $1,875 each.

"It's most likely going to go back into school," Richardson said. "I'm not going to spend it on anything."

The losing team was headed by Spec. David Hesson, 23, of Spearfish, S.D. Other members were Spc. Rick Calderon, 21, of East Los Angeles; Pvt. Brandon Powell, 19, of Vancouver, Wash.; and Spec. Joshua DeMunbrun, 21, of Evansville, Ind.

During the intense competition, Hesson told his team of young soldiers where to go in a combat situation in a building, where the enemy might be and when to throw their grenades.

"The first round I started shaking a little bit," he said. "I got an adrenaline rush."

DeMunbrun mistakenly shot Calderon, nicknamed "Crash" for the competition, and killed him. That probably was the soldiers' most frustrating moment.

"Yeah, he was sneaking out of the corner," DeMunbrun said.

Hesson admired the civilians' strategy.

"They kept together," he said. "They did good defense and good offense. They were all-around good soldiers. Of course, being a soldier is a lot different than playing a video game."

Calderon said he wanted to beat the civilians, but was not ashamed to lose to players who had considerably more time to prepare.

"What did I learn today? That people who sit behind a computer a lot are usually better than people who don't sit behind one too often," he said.

McCormack, an on-line gaming expert, was asked to put a Fort Lewis team together on short notice to face the elite civilian team. His real job is master gunner for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

After the on-line defeat, he issued a challenge of his own.

"Any time they want to come up to Fort Lewis and come out and do a few maneuvers with us, we'd be glad to have 'em," he said.

Capt. Jimmy Salazar, 26, of San Antonio, Texas, said the Army was a recruiting winner no matter what the outcome of the on-line match. America's Army, which is handed out free at U.S. Army recruiting offices, was designed to encourage young people to enlist.

"If a few people join the Army because of today, then it's well worth it," Salazar said.
 
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whooping_a_panda said:
good ol phoenix, this is why i dont read the arizona repulsive, someone will do it for me

You do not think this story is interesting? I certainly think it is because America's Army was developed with close ties to the Army to make it as realistic as possible. Then some gamers come alot and whip them up with two players losing their connection.
 
There is no way the Amry guys stood a chance. The game guys have a huge advantage considering they were "computer gaming champions" means they've been playing games forever and AA since its release. The Army guys were thrown togather with 3 weeks to practice. They didn't stand a chance.

That would be like taking your firends fathers that were in the military, giving them 3 weeks to practice and then having some of the best gamers in the world wiping them out.

No matter how realistic they try to make it its still a game and as far from the real combat these guys train for as playing pro football is from playing Madden Football.

Poor saps didn't stand a chance, lol.
 
OC Noob said:
There is no way the Amry guys stood a chance. The game guys have a huge advantage considering they were "computer gaming champions" means they've been playing games forever and AA since its release. The Army guys were thrown togather with 3 weeks to practice. They didn't stand a chance.

That would be like taking your firends fathers that were in the military, giving them 3 weeks to practice and then having some of the best gamers in the world wiping them out.

No matter how realistic they try to make it its still a game and as far from the real combat these guys train for as playing pro football is from playing Madden Football.

Poor saps didn't stand a chance, lol.

Yep. Now if they had played some REAL Army games and let the civilians have 3 weeks of training... :eek:

p\/\/3nd.
 
Yes, how about we place these same people in a real combat situation, can we say 4 dead civilians?
 
Yeah the ARMY team should of challenged them to a few games of Paintball. Or even use the ARMY's training grounds. None of the live fire stuff dont want to hurt the gamers. I do agree with eli and OC Noob the ARMY guys stood no chance at all i hope they new this going into it.

SlaughterUall
 
Yeah the ARMY team should of challenged them to a few games of Paintball. Or even use the ARMY's training grounds. None of the live fire stuff dont want to hurt the gamers. I do agree with eli and OC Noob the ARMY guys stood no chance at all i hope they new this going into it.

SlaughterUall

This important difference between the two teams is that one is used to dealing with situations where losing is not an option. eg. Gaming team would consider sending a playing on a suicide run to find out where the enemy were, or achieve a single objective. The army guys wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) have considered this - it's do or die, and die is definatly something you want to avoid in their line of work :).

While a paintball comp may have yielded different results, if you put a trained paintball team against the army guys I'd be worried if the army won, for the same reason I would be scared if they won the online comp - the army should NEVER think about what they do as a game. If they do they should be shot.... :)
 
I do agree with you but I do think its funny because on the Americas army website they said the game is based off of real strategies and you need to follows these if you want to be good at the game..

Maybe they should take these kids and train them to run the remote control predator drones


flux said:


This important difference between the two teams is that one is used to dealing with situations where losing is not an option. eg. Gaming team would consider sending a playing on a suicide run to find out where the enemy were, or achieve a single objective. The army guys wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) have considered this - it's do or die, and die is definatly something you want to avoid in their line of work :).

While a paintball comp may have yielded different results, if you put a trained paintball team against the army guys I'd be worried if the army won, for the same reason I would be scared if they won the online comp - the army should NEVER think about what they do as a game. If they do they should be shot.... :)
 
SinsFeelNatural said:
I do agree with you but I do think its funny because on the Americas army website they said the game is based off of real strategies and you need to follows these if you want to be good at the game..

Maybe they should take these kids and train them to run the remote control predator drones



I think thats just a line that they use to get bodies in the door. Not that some of the stratigies aren't involved, but I think they were more interested in making a cool game rather then a realistic training tool.

The drone idea is pretty good tho. I bet those gamers would be ideal for something like that.
 
in real life when you shot a person the person die's i respect soldiers for what they are what they are trained for .. they have balls to face dangers in every day life which most of us (civilians) don't have :)

but atleast we are beating them in something :p
 
The Army group did stand a chance, not a big chance but still a chance.

And the soldiers won't take risks that get them hit, while in the game being hit doesn't create pain or death or silly side effects like that so the gamers wouldn't mind it that much.

The remote controle predator drones would be a grate idea.... till the oposing army finds a way to hack in to them and take them over.
It would be rather irritating to see your men beeing slaughtered by one of your own drones.
 
Just because someone is good at a first person shooter game doesn't mean he would be good at flying a remote controled aircraft. For that, you would want someone who is good at combat simulators such as Flanker 2.5 or Falcon 4.

Anyways, the Predator is used mostly for reconaisance, I doubt it would take much skill to fly it, its not capable of dogfighting, only taking pictures and dropping bombs. Boeing's X-45 combat UAV on the other hand is something else:

http://www.boeing.com/phantom/ucav.html
 
flux said:

While a paintball comp may have yielded different results, if you put a trained paintball team against the army guys I'd be worried if the army won, for the same reason I would be scared if they won the online comp - the army should NEVER think about what they do as a game. If they do they should be shot.... :)

i would put my money on the paintball team for sure.
 
Now let them try a real battle with live ammo or lasers or something, means nothing to me, then who do you think would win?
 
Apilot21 said:
Now let them try a real battle with live ammo or lasers or something, means nothing to me, then who do you think would win?


I think the gamers would win because they have the 133+ bunny hp that the Army has yet to discover. You know how hard it is to shoot a guy when he is hopping like a 6 foot bunny?

:D
 
i think a good 'ole airsoft skirmish would have been better :D

do a search on airsoft, it's great. i just got back from a 6 hour game.
 
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