An interview of Dr Malcom Davis, a lecturer in Defence Studies with the Defence Studies Department of King's College London, in which he describes his research interests hugely relevant to modern combat game design. Most of the interview is about the spatial environment: the importance of urban environment ("Most warfare in the future will take place in complex urban environments, where house to house fighting") its realism ("What is missing is the chaos of battle"), the missing notion of embodiment ("consumer military simulations are never going to be totally realistic because ultimately people don't really die or get injured, and thus the fear element is never going to be there"), the lack of mixed settings ("what is missing, particularly in an urban environment, are civilians mixed in with military forces").

Also of interest:

" the enemies of the future will always be trying to threaten or degrade our military-technological advantage, and one of the best ways that they can achieve that is by attacking our information systems, and the networks which generate the 'sensor to shooter' link. Thus it is important not to make an assumption that the data-links and networks will survive for very long. We have to be able to fight and win when the networks go down."

Why do I blog this? some interesting ideas here about spatial environment (how is it lived) and translation from gaming to reality.