Boot Camp

From Gamers to Soldiers

Now consider this scenario, taken from Outside the Wire, a simulation developed for the U.S. Army Ordnance Center and Schools and now also part of the curriculum at West Point: You are Lieutenant Lisa Carter, whose maintenance platoon mechanics work around the clock in Falluja to keep vehicles on the road. Today you get an unusual mission to lead a convoy transporting potentially dangerous detainees. Your job is to protect them to the same level as your own soldiers. When you overhear one of your guards, Private Grimes, taunting a detainee with threatening gestures, you correct him on the spot, but there's a bitter look in his eye that raises a red flag. You learn that Grimes lost his best buddy in a recent ambush, but his leaders say he's never let them down on the job. Do you take Grimes off the mission and force another soldier to pull double duty; do you let him drive a truck he's not fully trained to operate; or do you keep him on the mission with extra oversight and take a chance on his stability?

The Department of Defense and Army leadership are increasingly turning to new technologies and serious games like Outside the Wire to prepare soldiers for these decision points. As Gayle Olszyk, Deputy to the Commander for Training at the U.S. Army Ordnance Center and Schools sees it, "just the opening scene of Outside the Wire, where you have people who are being shot and killed, [is] enough to awaken lieutenants, who [will] now understand the impact of their decisions - that they're responsible for lives under their leadership. That's a reality that is very difficult to present to an officer in a written scenario."

A Day in the Bam and Outside the Wire represent the cutting edge of military training technology. Almost half of the U.S. Military is currently under the age of 25, meaning today's soldiers grew up playing videogames. What better way to prepare them than by engaging them using the medium they love? Olszyk, who employs Outside the Wire to train thousands of officers each year, feels that, "at one time, putting materials out in a book format was appropriate, but this younger generation, they like the use of games and technology. They need to have their fear tightened through this type of environment because that's the reality of what they're going to face."

These gamers turned soldiers have exchanged their digital guns for live ammunition, but they have not given up their computer games; the games have just changed. Previous training methods (and a few consumer games) prepare soldiers for operational and tactical aspects of war, while serious games address a range of complex critical thinking issues and diplomatic solutions. First-person shooters attempt to increase realism and immerse the player in the role of the lead character by displaying the action from that character's perspective. Users see enemies approach them, become aware of guns and weapons in their hands and are able to briefly view the casualties they inflict. These fights generally exist in a PG-13 world of half-truths, where blood sprays, bodies fall and then disappear from the screen. After a fight, the player doesn't see the lethal consequences of his actions or need to react to the results; they move on or try again.