ARTICLE

May 2004

Army Video Games Shaped by Growing Need for Junior-Officer Training Tools

by Sandra I. Erwin

To help sharpen junior officers’ decision-making skills in peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the Army is banking on its multimillion-dollar investment in video game technology.

Although not everyone is convinced that video games provide solid training tools—as opposed to just entertainment—there is growing evidence that digital simulations can be valuable supplements to traditional training, said William R. Swartout, director of technology at the Institute of Creative Technology.

The ICT, at the University of Southern California, was started with a $45 million Army grant for the sole purpose of transitioning technologies from the movie industry to military training.

The Army does “a great job teaching people specific tasks,” such as how to shoot a rifle, or how to work with a specific piece of equipment, Swartout said at an industry conference hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army.

To make the training more relevant to current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, ICT engineers are introducing artificial intelligence technology into video games, to make the training more realistic.

“What we want to do is move it up to a more cognitive level—create an environment where a soldier is under a lot of stress and things are going wrong. He has to figure out what to do,” said Swartout.

One project called “critical leadership analysis system” uses a case-study approach to teach captains how to make sound decisions. The trainee, in one instance, watches a video of food distribution operations in Afghanistan. The operation goes badly, mostly as a result of poor management. After watching the video, there is an after-action review. The computer tells him what went wrong, and the captain can interview the characters from the movie, both friendly and enemies, to get their views.

“There is no magic here,” said Swartout. “We envision in advance what the likely questions are, and we film the answers.”

As the trainee types in a question on the console, the computer’s text classification system automatically figures out the most likely answer associated with the question typed in. It only works about 70 percent of the cases, Swartout said. The Army concluded that this success rate is “good enough for this type of application.”

ICT also developed a so-called “mission rehearsal exercise system.” Rather than watch filmed actors, the trainee interacts with computer generated actors, whose “artificial intelligence” understands the human language as the trainee speaks. The computer generated actors reason about what is going on and respond back to executing actions. A key feature in this system is “emotional modeling,” said Swartout. The characters exhibit emotions and model emotions. “This turns out to be very important in building believable computer generated characters.”

Since ICT was launched in 1999, it designed two video games—Full-Spectrum Command and Full-Spectrum Warrior. Army instructors from the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga., helped ICT develop both games and served as subject matter experts.

Full-Spectrum Warrior, to be released this year, teaches a squad leader how to execute maneuvers in an urban environment. Developed for the Microsoft Xbox, it places the student in the role of a light infantry squad leader. The goal is to complete missions and come home safely.

Full-Spectrum Command was released in February 2003. As the commander of a U.S. Army light infantry company, the student must interpret the assigned mission, organize his force, plan strategically and coordinate the actions of about 120 soldiers under his command.

ICT engineers also have been asked to look 20 years ahead and envision new training tools for the Army’s future combat systems, an overarching program to replace aging equipment and to link every vehicle and weapon system into a common network.

In a program such as FCS, “training is a challenge,” said Maj. Gen. Robert W. Mixon Jr., deputy chief of staff for developments at the Army Training and Doctrine Command. Mixon predicts that FCS will have “embedded” training systems, so soldiers can train “anywhere, anytime.”

One significant obstacle in developing training programs, according to Mixon, is that they do not always reflect the needs of the war-fighting commanders. “We have a training infrastructure that we’ve invested heavily in, which is separate from the operational infrastructure,” Mixon told the AUSA conference.

“We have to figure out how to do the tactical training more effectively,” he said. “We are at least two to three years away from having a capability where you have a common training and operational framework.”

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