Government training has been using video games for years, but it’s always fun to get a look into exactly what the government is up to with polygons. Especially since it’s usually not very good gaming, but it is very informative.
Kotaku has a look at the video games the FBI makes its trainees play, and it’s actually pretty fascinating. Apparently, FBI trainees spend two hours a week learning by playing video games, and they’re bumping it up to eight.
Depending on what Congress authorises, the FBI trains 1000 new agents from various backgrounds each year. The agents may be former accountants, lawyers, doctors or engineers from all over America – few of them have an existing law enforcement background – so the FBI cannot assume anything. The new agents are taught skills ranging from investigation to law enforcement to firearms proficiency. The training aims to give them the ability to talk to anyone – from hardened criminals to the CEO of a corporation – in a way that makes them comfortable enough to give the agent information that might lead to a confession.
“Most of the agents that are coming in have never fired a gun before,” says Pargman.
“We have to bring them up to a very high level of proficiency and if they don’t meet that, they’re gone, because you can’t have people who are carrying around firearms in life-threatening situations who can’t hit what they’re aiming at.”
Most of their job? Ruining the romance of being an FBI agent by showing what an FBI agent actually has to do in their job. Well, we guess somebody has to do it.
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