Can Video Games Help to Prevent Culture Shock in War?

War themed video games are common, and the general consensus is that these types of games actually desensitize youth to the empathy required in real world conflict situations.  However, Alelo is looking at ways to use gaming technologies to do the opposite, to prepare military members for other cultures and actually prevent culture shock.

Alelo's VRP MIL (Virtual Role Players for Military Training Environments) provides an immersion experience to provide troops with a culturally and linguistically challenging scenarios.  The games allow players to practice communications, including non-verbal cues, before deploying to places like Afghanistan.

Andreas Gruendel, a former soldier in the U.S. military, now leads the VRP MIL division. Since leaving active duty, Gruendel has worked extensively on virtual military training scenarios. Prior to joining Alelo, he was the Senior Military Analyst on the Future Immersive Training Environment (FITE), which was used to train ground troops being deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.

PCMag visited Alelo at its Los Angeles headquarters (it also has offices in Virginia, Washington D.C., and London) for a look at VRP MIL in action and to learn how it came about.  Here's the full article.

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