The Pentagon Goes to the Video Arcade - video games used as military training

Progressive, The, July, 1999 by Kara Platoni

When the Department of Defense went looking for its next generation of war technology, it took a trip to the video arcade. Thanks to massive improvements in graphics technology over the last few years, the video game software industry has produced shooting, flying, and fighting games that look so real they can be used for actual combat training.

In 1997, the Marines adapted a version of a game called Doom as a training device. (The game recently achieved notoriety as the favorite pastime of the students in Littleton, Colorado, who went on a shooting spree at their high school.) Doom and its spinoffs can be played as coin-op arcade games, but they are usually played over the Internet by people who may be thousands of miles apart. These long-distance players have to work as a team. The Marines say players learn teamwork and decision-making skills. It cost the Marines a mere $49.95 to buy and modify the Doom II CD-ROM, making a few changes so that instead of chasing demons, players shoot Nazi-like soldiers using M-16s. Otherwise, Marine Doom looks and sounds pretty much like the original game, and the Marines even released a free downloadable copy on the Internet.

One of the military personnel who modified the game became a consultant to Good Times Interactive Software, which developed a Doom-like game called NAM, in which you play (you guessed it) a rampaging Marine in Vietnam.

I recently visited Quantum3D, a San Jose company that specializes in three-dimensional visual computing systems used for everything from flight simulators to arcade games. To demonstrate just how lifelike fighting games can be, the staff started me off with Quake, a newer war game brought to you by id Software, the makers of Doom. Its finer points can be summed up as follows: 1. Kill. 2. Run. Quake is often cited as an example of everything that is good about 3D interactive games. With the right graphics accelerators, the game can be spectacular. Everything on the screen looks and moves like the real world. Always, at the bottom of the screen, you see the tip of your weapon, as though you were holding it in your hand. The rules of play are simple: You run through a labyrinthine castle, dispatching enemies with something that appears to be a bloody shovel.

"Uh, that's your battle-ax," one of Quantum3D's technical staff gently corrects me. He shows me how to change weapons for something with more firepower. Using the rollerball, I can rampage in any direction. I can even turn in circles while the animated world swivels nauseatingly around me. When I get close to a wall, the detail stays sharp instead of pixilating into blurry squares.

Company spokesman Peter Giordano points out that it is very unusual to be able to move through a virtual world this freely. Most animators cut corners by limiting how much you can see (if you can't run backwards, the animators don't have to design what's behind you). In Quake you can go anywhere, see anything, and kill in crisp, three-dimensional virtual reality. And it has to be fast, otherwise it's not fun.

The same logic applies in military simulations. To be effective, a flight simulator must react exactly as it would in the real world, giving the illusion of instant response. It must allow the user to suspend disbelief, to get caught up in the emotion of flying. "There is very clearly a psychoemotional component to training," says Giordano. "If it looks more real, if it carries more of an emotional charge, if it gets the blood pressure and heart rate up, it's more effective training."

To get this effect, video game players use graphics accelerator cards--plug-in devices that speed up and smooth out the animation. Graphics accelerators aren't expensive. You can buy one at your local computer store for $140 to $250. One of their leading manufacturers is called 3Dfx, the parent company of Quantum3D.

The Armed Forces have been using war games and simulators for almost two decades. No one wants to let a rookie fly anything as dangerous, or as expensive, as an F-17 until the pilot has logged some serious time on a simulator. "In the synthetic environment, when you get it wrong, you hit the restart button," says Mike Wright, an electronics engineer for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), an agency of the Department of Defense. "No one died, and you can practice a situation over again until the soldiers get it right."

Simulators are also the military's shining hope for fast, antiseptic future conflicts--the theory being that if troops can drill on realistic machines, during actual combat it will be a smooth ride from "go" to "game over."

What's more, the generation currently entering the Armed Forces grew up using computers and video games. By 1992, there was a Nintendo in seven out of ten households that included children between the ages of eight and twelve. The trend shows no sign of slowing. The Interactive Digital Software Association estimated last year that interactive games are the fastest growing form of entertainment in America, with sales surpassing those of books, CDs, and box office revenues. By making war more like the game Defender, the military can tap into a population that grew up shooting moving blips of light on a video screen.