Remote Controlled Twisted Metal: Real Life Shooting From Home Computer Predated David Jaffe

The internet has been all a titter over David Jaffe’s part-brilliant/part-psychotic advertising campaign for Twisted Metal. On the off chance you have been living under a rock that doesn’t have a good internet connection, it was announced that people can sign up for an opportunity to shoot a real gun full of real bullet juice at a real replica of Sweet Tooth’s iconic ice cream truck from the comfort of their own home. David Jaffe might have a pretty crappy opinion on the importance of narrative in video games, but the man sure knows how to promote something. Over the last day, the Shoot My Truck promotion has been all over the place. Even actual news sites are picking up on it, although I’m sure they will eventually just spin it into another “violent video games something something we don’t really know what we are doing” sort of moralizing because, hey, this is the media we are talking about here. In any event, some people are doubting the validity and morality of letting someone shoot a gun from their uncomfortable office chair.

We can frame this debate quite simply, humble net denizen, because Jaffe isn’t the first person to show that computers can be used to shoot shit instead of just shooting the shit. There are precedents.

If you can remember all the way back to the distant past of 2005, you may recall a bit of a controversy over the idea of remote assisted hunting. It started through a website called LiveShot. LiveShot was run by someone with a lot of land and a lot of animals on it who decided that, with all those extra animals, he could afford to hook a gun up to a computer and let people shoot at them from home. I probably don’t even have to tell you what state this guy was from. The issue many people had with this, outside of the general issues related to hunting, is that it pretty much boiled down to a canned hunt. The animals were enticed into the range of the gun through automatic feeding machines, and then shot from the perfectly stationary target with absolutely no chance of mistake. The person who “innovated” this idea thought it would give people with disabilities the opportunity to enjoy shooting an animal in the face like a “normal” red blooded American. Not many other people saw it that way.

Almost as quick as it started, internet hunting was regulated off the face of this earth with 40 states now having laws on the books that ban internet hunting outright. Even the NRA got involved by saying they thought it was an awful idea since it takes the “fairness” out of hunting an animal with high powered weapons and advanced technology. If I were a cynical man, which I’m sure you all realize I’m not, I would hazard that the ban had more to do with the NRA’s disapproval than any animal rights or safety issue. So for those doubting if this is legitimate, before Jaffe hooked a machine gun up to a laptop to promote Twisted Metal, a dude from Texas already got that tech working in his own backyard so he could promote his radical anti-deer agenda.

Computer controlled weaponry isn’t just limited to guys who own a scary amount of guns in Texas, either – governments who own scary amounts of guns partake in it, as well. This technology is essentially the same that has been used in unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) and unmanned air vehicles (UAV, which probably just triggered something in the head of every COD player reading this), for a while now. Unarmed drones allow a number of tactical advantages, including shorter training times for personnel to control them remotely than use the equivalent manned technology, possibly saving money in comparison to conventional recon or attacks, and – more importantly – keeping actual soldiers out of harm’s way. Even this isn’t without its own controversy though, as many people object to the use of unmanned drones for missile attacks due to high statistical rate of civilian casualties. I almost have to assume that this publicity stunt isn’t using tech as powerful as what the military has, but who knows? Jaffe doesn’t really do much half-assed. If this turns into an international incident, at least it was over something important for once.

Hell, even Hollywood has taken a run at this subject. The writers of CSI: Miami thought it was such a sweet idea that they based one of their Totally Possible and Realistic Seriously Guys We Have a High Paid Research Department murders around it in a 2010 episode. In said episode, a high powered sniper rifle is controlled remotely by the killer using WiFi. The killer takes the shot without ever being near the rifle, except for when he had to go there and set the whole thing up without anyone noticing. Oh, and kudos to the detective for instantly recognizing that the sniper scope was WiFi enabled just by looking at it. That is the first thing I think of when I’m at a crime scene, too. I’m pretty sure that guy just says everything was controlled by WiFi at every investigation, and all the other detectives just nod and go “uh huh, whatever you say dude” until the law of averages caught up to him and he was finally right. Either way, the only thing more important than actual evidence in the military and, er, Texas, is television acknowledging the possibility. That should allay your fears about the legitimacy of this remote car destruction.

Hmm. Now that I think about it though, these are the same writers that gave us this;