FEATURE ARTICLE

December 2005

Games Are Gaining Ground, But How Far Can They Go?

By Sandra Erwin

When it became clear that insurgents would interfere with reconstruction efforts in Iraq, Pentagon technophiles thought it would be a good idea to develop a videogame to help guide soldiers through the messy business of rebuilding war-ravaged communities. Thus came "Stability Operations Winning the Peace," modeled loosely on the commercial games "Tropico" and "Sim City." Players assume the role of local military commanders of a stability operation, and are exposed to the political, military, economic, social and intelligence levers they can pull in a particular situation, while they learn the consequences of their actions.

“It helps the player understand the many tradeoffs required in contemporary stability operations,” says a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency news release. The agency hired the firm Games2train to develop “Stability Operations.”

Although games by no means are considered valid substitutes for real-world military training and live-fire drills, they increasingly are gaining acceptance as “alternative training methods,” says Julia Loughran, president of ThoughtLink, a consulting firm that advises the Defense Department on military technology trends.

The fighting in Iraq only proves that “we need agility and adaptive training,” she says. “Large-scale exercises are not suitable for fighting this enemy.”

Videogame technology can fulfill many military training needs at a much lower cost than the traditional large-scale simulations, says Loughran. But it will be a long time before the military services begin to push this technology to its full potential, she adds. “We are trying to steer the Defense Department toward smaller simulations … It’s a cultural change.”

Much of the training that enlisted troops and officers receive today is either face-to-face seminars and tabletop games, or billion-dollar large-scale simulations. That leaves a “gaping hole” in the middle, says Loughran. “There is no alternative for small-team training, part-task training.”

The Army, to be sure, is ahead of the other services in trying to capitalize from advances in gaming technology, Loughran says. “The Army understands the need to include these alternative methods.” The service also has made a large financial commitment, including a $45 million investment in the Institute for Creative Technologies, a think tank and production studio created to develop advanced games for Army soldiers.

Videogames are lagging, however, in the area of “joint” training, she notes. Although the military services no longer deploy or fight in isolation from their fellow branches, videogames by and large are service-unique, and are managed and funded individually by each organization, says Loughran. “The problem is that there isn’t a joint command that is directing all training.”

Another area that is woefully neglected in military training is the “interagency” coordination between tactical commanders and the State Department and humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, says Loughran. “There is no good technology to train interagency interoperability and interaction.”

Among the latest products to address post-conflict operations is a game called “Foreign Ground.” Funded by the Swedish National Defense College, “Foreign Ground” is a “first-person thinker” game that focuses on communication with civilians and on how to solve tasks by non-violent means. The game is being adopted by NATO countries as a training tool, says Anders Frank, who developed the game for the Swedish National Defense College.

Loughran believes that the U.S. Joint Forces Command — which is responsible for joint training and experimentation — has yet to embrace the use of alternative, low-cost technologies such as videogames. “JFCOM is steeped in their culture of large-scale exercises,” she adds. “The problem is not technology, but the adoption of the technologies and how to apply them.”

The idea that JFCOM rejects gaming technology is off the mark, says Jim Blank, modeling and simulation division chief at the command’s Joint Futures Laboratory.

“To say we don’t have the right emphasis on games is not totally accurate,” he says in an interview. “We are looking at games, those that might suit our purposes.”

The reality is that most commercial games don’t meet the complex specifications of the simulations needed for military mission rehearsals and experimentations, he says. “First-person shooter games really don’t apply in this environment.”

Combat scenarios today are highly complex, and must reflect how political, military and economic developments can shape a conflict. “There are very few of those games,” Blank says. “I can’t think of one.”

Tactical training, meanwhile, is an ideal application for videogames, he says. These are more entertaining, which is a prerequisite to become commercially successful. “Games are really out there for entertainment and that is how they make the majority of their money.”

The traditional simulations and exercises that JFCOM manages are important elements of military training, Loughran asserts. “I am not saying large simulations or exercises should go away. But they should do fewer — they are too costly and take too long to plan — and do more small-team exercises.” Dozens of contractors are eager and ready to develop low-cost training solutions, she adds.

Although JFCOM continues to focus on large-scale exercises, Loughran says, the command is “starting to open the door” to gaming technology. It recently partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on the development of a game called “Ambush!” that was designed for players to practice convoy operations such as those conducted in Iraq. “That’s where these games can be very useful,” she says.

Researchers at the Joint Futures Laboratory are considering the possible application of the game “NetStrike” into a larger simulation that is being designed to test sensor technologies, Blank said.

NetStrike is a strategy game of hide and seek that portrays the intricacies of combat in the information age.

“In the larger operational context, we haven’t found a game that’s useful, other than NetStrike, to take a look at the sensor piece,” he says. Because the military works with classified databases, merging commercial games with sensitive technology is far from seamless. “It’s not plug and play,” Blank says. “It requires additional engineering work by the game developer and the government.”

The downside to gaming technology is that the developers tend to be commercial companies that may not understand military training, says Ben Sawyer, a gaming expert and founder of the “Serious Games Summit,” which promotes the educational value of videogames.

Several game developers have teamed with military agencies and have introduced a number of commercially successful games, but lucrative sales and training value are not always compatible goals.

“Commercial firms only worry about ‘will it sell?’” Sawyer says in an interview. “In the military market, we are worried about effectiveness and other measures we are just beginning to learn … We have not yet perfected that hybrid version of game-simulation,” says Sawyer. “We need game developers that can attack specific problems.”

Military customers want something “game-like,” a simulation that looks and feels like a game, but does not necessarily play like a game, he adds. The question with which industry experts are grappling is “What’s the right blending?”

The convoy trainer, for example, looks like a video game and plays like one, but doesn’t have all the elements generally found in a game.

“Game development studios are the closest thing we have to steady simulation talent,” Sawyer says. “Most successful firms are hybrid studios that do gaming and ‘serious gaming.’”

The war in Iraq has sparked new thinking in military gaming, he adds “The insurgency has taught people that they need adaptive thinkers, soldiers who are strategically adaptive.”

The Defense Department, he says, “seems to want soldiers to see what the enemy is doing and formulate strategies. They are now doing that in chat-rooms and via email with veterans who’ve been there.” Games have yet to catch up with soldiers’ needs, he suggests.

Some developers, for example, create videogames about combat scenarios they don’t really understand, cautions David Warner, an intelligence expert who advises the U.S. military on how to interact with civilian organizations during deployments.

“If you want to do serious games, make sure you understand the root of the problems,” he told attendees at the 2005 Serious Games Summit, in Arlington, Va.

While working on Defense Department projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, Warner noticed that commanders often lacked useful intelligence because the data available to them is not displayed in a coherent and simple “gamelike” manner. To create a digital 3D map of a commander’s area of operations in Iraq, Warner relied on data retrieved from the “America’s Army” videogame, because it was more reliable than the information available on military servers.

Much of the quick-thinking mentality that the services are seeking for their training is seen today in the U.S. Special Operations Command.

Videogames often may not be suitable training tools for the specialized missions that commandos must prepare to execute, often with just a few hours’ notice.

“Mission rehearsal requires some pretty hefty detail and accuracy,” says Blank. “The current game environment doesn’t provide that.”

Most of the terrain databases in commercial games are not based on the real world, he adds. “In our terrain databases, we have the real buildings, geo-located within the simulation to the exact spot on the Earth.”

Special operations forces are able to expedite their training by creating their own “mission rehearsal” simulations on their PCs. “Their timelines are short. They are called to action in a short time. They want to be able to rehearse very quickly,” says Chris Stellwag, director of communications at CAE USA, a supplier of military and commercial simulators and training devices.

Members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment in Fort Campbell, Ky., are able to create a customized simulation of the actual combat zone where they will be deploying. The unit, which has a new suite of MH-47 and MH-60 helicopter simulators, compiled a wide range of imagery, navigation, communications and radar data into a centralized database that makes it possible for aviators to request a specific mission scenario and to have a simulation developed for that particular part of the world. A process that normally would take six months can be done in hours or days, Stellwag says. “This unit doesn’t have six months.”

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