The Virtua Corps

"What's surprising is the rigor with which the communities themselves select and train recruits for their virtual wars. 'Some teams will require you to beat the game environment with only bits of the GUI,' says my soldier sim insider. 'Applicants can use the in-game compass, read maps and have to navigate to a set destination in a certain amount of time ... if you can't go on maneuvers, then you're probably not going to be on the team.'"

Jim Rossignol joins up for the Virtua Corps

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Wow...this is deep, at least to me. I never realized that there actually good battle sims. These people seems to almost loose a grip on reality, taking gaming this serious.

I wondered if you were the same Jim Rossignol I know and love from PCG. Then I realised your article was about PC FPS games, and my question was answered (the answer was "It must be").

Planning on writing any more, because this is a great article and it might just persuade me to cave to the pressure of my friends and actually buy ArmA. We don't tend to take these things quite so staggeringly seriously, but the great thing about such games is that you can always choose exactly how realistic you want them to be. They're never going to be Duke Nukem, but you needn't eat only rations for a week prior to playing them, either.

Rob Inglis:
These people seems to almost loose a grip on reality, taking gaming this serious.

I can't speak for the group that Jim was primarily talking to. However, the one he references - Shack Tactical - is a group that I founded in January of 2006. I would not say that any of us have "lost our grips on reality". Our attitude is one of "serious fun", and you can find as many serious videos from us as you can find hilariously silly stuff.

For now, here's a look at what ArmA multiplayer is like, in montage format. All of this is MP gameplay with Shack Tactical.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ckYRIV2nYAQ

I'll post a bit more later (text, videos, etc) if you guys are interested.

It's neat to see an article like this show up, by the way - nicely written, Jim, just wish you would have contacted us during the creation so we could have thrown in our collective $0.02. :)

[quote=[HD]Rob Inglis]These people seems to almost loose a grip on reality, taking gaming this serious.[/quote]

I really don't know how to respond to that.

Taking something seriously doesn't make you insane. I like airsoft - does that make me a dangerous killer? I think not.

Different people find fun in different places.

[quote=[HD]Rob Inglis] These people seems to almost loose a grip on reality, taking gaming this serious.[/quote]

okay, who let Jack Thompson in? :-)

I doubt their grip on reality is any less coherent than those guys who do virtual air traffic control for flight sim communities, or the hardcore flight simmers for that matter.

They just want as accurate a sim as possible, like hardcore flight simmers, and the virtual air traffic controllers that route them. This puts them in a niche market.