The chopper immediately started climbing, moving backwards and sliding to the right, further up the valley. "Charlie is clear," called our squad lead over the radio. Time to shut my mouth, keep my head down and prove I could handle this kind of gameplay. This was a training mission, a simple search-and-destroy. The chopper went silent.Ĭharlie squad poured out both sides of the Blackhawk in seconds and took up position in a circle, eyes and weapons facing outward just as we’d been taught. As our craft dropped lower the crew began traversing its door-mounted machine guns left and right looking for threats. Someone was trying to cut the tension with a tired old Predator joke, something about a Tyrannosaurus. We had crossed an invisible line on the map. Sitting around me were both fireteams from Charlie squad, our complement of leadership and medical support staff as well as pilots and gunners. Our Blackhawk was packed with nearly 20 people. I was here to experience their style of play, and also to feel what they felt. I joined ShackTac to find out what kept these men and women fighting, together, two nights a week for nearly eight years. I was there to document a kind of role playing experience that can’t be found anywhere else, and I didn't need someone showing off or holding back because I was there to observe them. To keep the experience pure I withheld my true identity as a writer. I was in Shack Tactical now, an elite Arma gaming group, embedded with them as a new recruit. I had spent more than 400 hours in this game world. Over the years I'd struggled with, and mastered, its bizarre user interface.
I'd spent hundreds of hours learning to navigate across its environments on foot through jungles with a map, over deserts by compass and once, while at sea, by using only the stars. I had plenty of experience in how to use the various small arms in the game, how to aim and reload and adjust them for range. I’d played Arma, the complex military simulation series, before. In the darkness I began to notice that my palms were sweating. Our pilot pulled us into a shallow valley and I lost sight of both the other chopper and the sunrise. In the distance, backlit by a sky purpling with the dawn, I could see Alpha squad beginning to descend, their rotors kicking up a huge cloud of dust. From my seat at the open door, the view tipped straight down for a moment before we leveled off. Army Blackhawk helicopters suddenly broke formation. Flying low above a pine forest, the two U.S.
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