FORT BENNING, Ga. — The US Army made a bold leap this week, completely phasing out the Ranger School at Fort Benning, and replacing it with a multiplayer role-playing game (MPRPG), completed entirely online, called "Ranger Games."
Col. Dustin Dorne, the Ranger Training Brigade commander, insisted that the program will still teach leadership and patrolling, while also increasing the school’s reach and lower the price per student, like many existing Army classes that have already gone digital.
“Every single task from the former Ranger School schedule has been made into a digital feature,” said Dorne in a recent interview. “To complete these missions, students will develop their stats of strength, endurance, and intelligence in a multiplayer teamwork environment. Levels and attributes will hopefully carry over to future Army expansion packs, like Sniper School and Air Assault.”
Ranger Instructors (RIs) have become non-player characters. Originally, real-world RIs were going to be actual players sitting at computers, but during test runs the RIs either behaved like robots, or created extra problems to troll the student players.
