Features
Recruiting’s weapon of supreme air combat
By CPL Andrew Hetherington

Volume 49, No. 5, April 05, 2007
 
FUN AND GAMES: DCAF AVM John Blackburn shows ADFA OFFCDTs Chris Kourloufas (centre) and Matthew Gill the new Windows Live Messenger online game Supreme Air Combat, which was launched during the Australian International Airshow at Avalon.
Photo by SGT Mick Bott
 
DCAF AVM John Blackburn launched Air Force’s newest weapon in recruiting – the online game Supreme Air Combat at Avalon.

AVM Blackburn said the game was developed and launched for online use to attract younger people to the Air Force.

“There are about 4.4 million people using the MSN online environment,” he said.

“[We thought] let’s go and engage the young people of today where they are. They are not necessarily reading newspapers; they are playing games online, have mobile phones and are in the gaming community.”

“The game is an MSN Messenger, multi-player game,” said Brett White, co-owner and creative director of the Melbourne developer and producer Visual Jazz.

“It is a strategy, turn-based game where players get to control four aircraft against another online opponent in a dogfighting situation.

“For people to play it, they need Windows Messenger installed on their computer. Then they need to log on to the games menu in MSN Messenger.”

OFFCDT Chris Kourloufas, currently studying aeronautical engineering at ADFA, was one of the first to play the game.

“It was easy to play, fairly quick to learn and figure out and good fun,” he said.

AVM Blackburn said Supreme Air Combat was just the start to try to engage younger people to encourage them to join the Air Force and the ADF.

“We are looking at developing other options. We are talking to XBox 360 developers about how we could get an air combat game [produced] based on the Air Force,” he said.

“It would be based on what we did in Iraq and what we are going to do in the future and also what we did during WWI and WWII.”

After playing the game, people might be encouraged to check out the Defence Recruiting website.

For more information on how to access Supreme Air Combat, visit http://ninemsn.com.au and follow the prompts to MSN Messenger.