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I just bought an issue of Gamepro today, and one of the articles was about soldiers playing video games, here is a paragraph which I thought was particularly thought provoking:

Upon firing his .50-cal toward a group of insurgents in Iraq, Sgt. Sinque Swales, a fast-talking, deep-voiced, barrel-chested 29-year-old from Chesterfield, Virginia, USA, thought he was playing a video game.
"Shooting back didn't even faze me," remembers Swales, who was a combat engineer stationed in the northern town of Mosul for nearly a year. And like many soldiers in the 276th Engineer Battalion, whose Playstation 2s and Xboxes crowded the trailers that served as their barracks, Swales played games during his downtime. Halo 2 was a favourite. So was Full Spectrum Warrior.
"It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

What do people think about this? Is it benefical to these soldiers to play games and become used to killing and gain sharper reflexes when they do go out to live fire, or detrimental to their emotional and moral sides if they are out there thinking, 'This is just like Playstation *bang bang*'.

Hmm... well they're already making "crosshairs" for live weapons, to make things more akin to a FPS... so I couldnt imagine it doing anything but helping their response time on the battle field...
My friend who loves FPSs is really good at paintballing.. so I'm sure they're all related closely enough to recieve benefits from one another

They have been using videogames for soldiers since the original Doom came out.

I think being in an warzone is alot worst for the soldier than playing an videogame about war. I rather have to guy who plays videogames on my street than the dude in warzones.

When I was in Iraq, one of the few pleasures that we soldiers got, when we had down time, was to go to the Rear for a few days and watch tv and even play video games. There were numerous tv sets hooked up with PS2's, XBoxes, and Gamecubes with a limited, but enjoyable library of games. A lot of us played anything that didnt remind us of war or combat because we were so burned out of it. I remember that we spent the majority of our gaming hours on games like Tekken Tag Tournament, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Devil May Cry. While we were offered nice titles like Metal Gear and SOCOM, we preferred the titles that weren't remindful of the shit that we were in.

lol definently, even though I'm not in the armed forces if I was, I would have that exact mind set.

Coincidentally, I was doing some research on a similar topic for college. Kind of scary games are capable of desensitizing people to such an extreme.

However, is it beneficial for a soldier? Obviously, I can't speak from a soldier's perspective, but a marine I used to work with said that they were both a blessing and a curse. While he was stationed, games were effective in numbing them to the violence they were experiencing, but it also made it much more difficult to return to civilian life.