December 24,2008:
For the last decade, the U.S. Army has been pioneering the use of video
game technology for combat training, especially for unusual situations. Since
the late 1990s, the U.S. Army PEOSTRI organization (which is in charge of
developing simulations and wargames) has taken the lead in using commercial
video game technology for military training systems. Noting that the civilian
action and adventure games now possess very life-like graphics, and have no
trouble holding the attention of military age males, PEOSTRI set up an
operation in Los Angeles (the Institute for Creative Technologies, ICT) to help
adapt these technologies for military training.
Many
simulation products have been produced, taking advantage of the movie and video
game talent available in California. Even the CIA noted the army's success, and
developed games for training CIA analysts. The army simulation that most
impressed the CIA was one that put the user (a soldier headed for peacekeeping
duty) in a foreign village or city. There (in the arcade like, but very life
like, game) the soldier had to deal with local civilians (friendly, hostile and
neutral) and various situations that are typical of peacekeeping duty. The
troops could interact with local civilians, who spoke the local language and
moved realistically. The body language is important, because different cultures
have a different set of physical moves. Some such gestures are similar to those
Americans use, but have very different meanings. The video game based
simulation proved to be very effective in teaching the troops this new
"language" before they encountered for real (and reduced the risks of
violent responses to crossed signals).
Troops have
long asked for a system like this, often pointing out that they see technology
that can do it on video games they buy and play in their spare time. The CIA
has lots of young analysts with no military, or peacekeeping experience, or
exposure to the nasty end of the war on terror. The CIA saw the army "peacekeeping
simulation" as an approach they could use to prepare their analysts.
Interestingly, the army, not the CIA, proved to be the best source of
information on foreign cultures in a combat zone. That's because two decades
ago, the army established CALL (Center for Army Lessons Learned). This
organization came about because of the growing realization that the army
constantly relearned valuable combat lessons. CALL provided a source of
detailed data on how things worked in combat, just the kind of stuff needed to
produce an accurate video game.
After
September 11, 2001, the army got a lot more money for this sort of thing. After
the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the video game technology enabled the army to
quickly develop training simulations to help troops learn how to deal with
roadside bombs and all manner of new dangers they encountered while fighting
against al Qaeda and Iraqi Sunni terrorists. The army went onto develop
realistic video game type simulations to aid recruiting ("America's
Army") and infantry combat.
Now, as the
army amps up operations in Afghanistan, a new bunch of simulations are being
developed to help deal with the complex tribal relationships, drug gangs and
religious fanaticism. As with the earlier video game training simulations, the
new ones do not replace actual training, but complement it. Troops can play
these sims on their own time, and be better prepared for training exercises
using real people playing civilians and Taliban gunmen. The troops have found
that these video game sims are very useful, especially because of the growing
trend of including scenario building tools in video games. This allows for
rapidly upgrading these military simulations. The army uses the Internet to get feedback from the troops,
especially those who have gone from simulated to actual combat. This made it
possible to constantly tweak the video games to keep the realism as compelling,
intense and accurate as possible.