Chinese Military-Developed Game "Glorious Mission" Being Used For Military Training?

When it was first announced, China’s Glorious Mission drew immediate comparisons to the U.S. Military’s America’s Army, and with good reason. America’s Army, a free online first-person shooter, had become a powerful recruiting tool and a respected game in its own right by the time China’s Glorious Mission was announced. But it now appears Glorious Mission will be charting some new ground, as the game is apparently being used for official military training.

According to a CCTV report from yesterday, the game is being used to train soldiers and officers, and the video report shows a (clearly staged) scene of soldiers in a drab room gaming on laptops while an attractive female cadet explains what’s going on:

“Oh, you thought our comrades were just playing a game? No. What’s happening right now is a squad-versus-squad resistance exercise.”

Hmm. Well that would certainly set it apart from America’s Army, which is used almost exclusively as a recruiting tool (the US military certainly does use software for official training, but not software that’s designed for fun). To be honest, though, it seems pretty unlikely that Glorious Mission is really being used for training in the Chinese military.

To begin with, it doesn’t seem like it would be particularly useful for training purposes. As you can see in the screenshot above, the version the soldiers are training with includes a heads-up display with a 360-degree map that shows where the player is in real-time. The soldier appearing in front of the player onscreen has big colored text over his head, announcing his name and team affiliation. In the screenshot below, a player soldier is even checking the score in the middle of the match! These are the sort of things that make for a fun video game but — one assumes — pretty poor training since in the field, enemy soldiers will not appear as dots on real-time maps, nor will there be glowing red text above their head indicating that it’s OK to shoot them.

Of course, those of you with an eye for detail may have noticed that in both images — in fact in every shot we see in the video — the computer screens are still wrapped in the plastic sheeting that comes after they’re first purchased. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything — the same is true of my washing machine; many Chinese prefer to keep the plastic on as a cheap protective barrier — but that, combined with the implausibility of the thing and the obviously-staged scene we’re shown in the video leads me to believe something else is going on here.

This isn’t training; it is, as my favorite Admiral would say, a trap! I think Glorious Mission is being used as a promotional tool; they’re trying to promote the idea that if you join the army, you just hang out with a bunch of your friends and play video games all day while girls in uniforms hover over your shoulder commenting on your sniping ability. I’ve never joined the Chinese army, but I suspect that’s not a particularly accurate picture of military life.

Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure. What do you think? Are they really using a shanzhai Call of Duty clone for military training? Or are they exploiting the state-owned propaganda goodness of CCTV for a little bit of the old-fashioned recruiting bait-and-switch? Personally, I’m not sure, but uh, neither of those really sounds all that great.

On the other hand, it can’t really be any worse than this.

[CCTV video report]