Serious Games

Sea Power, Dec 2006 by Kime, Patricia

Increasing numbers of Marines and sailors rely on gaming as a training medium

In The Loop

Serious games place users at the center of battlespace scenarios.

* The popular game "Doom" was adapted as "Marine Doom" for use by Marine Corps fire teams.

* "Tactical Iraqi" is a highly successful Arabic language game.

* "24 Blue," with a virtual mockup of USS Harry S. Truman, is designed to teach sailors how to direct planes around a carrier.

* Games are low cost and attractive to young sailors and Marines - making them a training medium "that can't be ignored."

In the computer game "DARWARS Ambush!," Marines drive across the Iraqi desert in a Humvee, leading a convoy toward a distant village. The game is a multiplayer challenge, with players assuming the rules of driver, gunner and enemy combatants.

Along the way, the Marines contend with hazards including rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices and angry rebels. Oh, and if they aren't careful, they could be felled by snipers.

"DARWARS Ambush!" may not sound like much fun. But this PC-based game, produced through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and based on the commercially successful game "Operation Flashpoint," has its fans: thousands of Marines and soldiers who played it before deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"DARWARS Ambush!" is a "serious game," combining the visuals and excitement of a commercial game with the mental challenge, real-life scenarios and learning goals of a military simulation exercise.

"Never again did I want someone to ride blindly into a town in Iraq," said Ralph Chatham, creator of the DARWARS technology program at DARPA and manager of DARPA's tactical language program games.

Serious games are not intended to take the place of field training or classroom education. Instead, game developers and military officials hope they will fill a training niche, providing an additional outlet to prepare military personnel for their jobs.

These developers and industry officials, as well as government and military personnel, met in Arlington, Va., in October to explore the applicability and future of such games. The third annual Serious Games Summit allowed producers and users to further define the role of games in public service training and education.

"Gaming is different than modeling and simulation because game developers have really put humans in the loop. If there's no human, there's no game," said Brian Williams, a new media developer at the Institute of Defense Analyses' Joint Advanced Warfighting Program.

Games and war have gone hand-in-hand since the dawn of warfare. From chess to sand-table exercises, military planners have used games to train, plot and map out strategies and tactics. In the 1980s, these games moved into the mainstream digital realm. "Harpoon," a popular naval strategy game used by Navy personnel and civilian players, began as a paper puzzle before making the leap to digital in 1989.

In 1996, Marines from the Corps' Modeling and Simulation Management Office in Quantico, Va., adapted the commercial game "Doom" for use by a four-person fire team, called "Marine Doom." The first-person shooter game changed the face of the enemy from Martian monster to human. With more realistic training scenarios, Marines were willing to play it at home and in their barracks.

In 2002, the U.S. Army, facing record-low recruitment numbers, launched "America's Army" on the web. This downloadable, multiplayer, first-person shooter game allows players to "experience" life in the Army of One. To date, more than 3 million users have signed up - at least to play on the Internet as online soldiers.

These early successes have prompted the services to consider integrating game technology with traditional simulations to give simulations broader appeal and enhance learning. At the same time, the services see games as a money-saving educational tool, providing realistic work-ups before military personnel commit troops to training or combat.

Successful serious games aim to combine a commercial game's artistry, complexity and "fun" with a valuable learning experience. [See story, page 21]

"With our game, we believe we are creating something that is radically better than state-of-the-art [language] training, which still rests on hours and hours of boring classwork instruction," said Lewis Johnson, whose company, Tactical Language Training, created an Arabic Ianguage training game called "Tactical Iraqi" for DARPA.

As a serious game, "Tactical Iraqi" has enjoyed tremendous success. Eight hundred copies have been delivered to Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. Marine officers who attend Expeditionary Warfare School in Quantico, Va., use it and receive copies to take home.

The game also is being used at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and at Marine Expeditionary Forces at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Summit attendees say the game succeeds because it teaches much-needed, in-demand skills via an entertaining yet accurate medium. In the first-person game, players initially learn simple conversational Arabic, then head into a virtual landscape to practice what they've learned. Throughout the game, players also pick up tips on proper behavior and Arab culture.