BBN Technologies

An Assessment of the Potential of Massively Multi-Player Games as Tools for Military Training

Gorman's Gambit investigated the capability of existing MMPGs to support training, and to identify resources that would need to be developed to increase the training effectiveness of such applications.

The project was inspired by General Paul Gorman, USA (Ret.) who stated that the environment of instruction (e.g., a modern military setting vs. a medieval fantasy setting) is largely immaterial if the training objective does not require a high degree of realism, such as instruction on the fundamentals of effective teamwork. If true, then behaviors indicative of effective teamwork would emerge through the use of existing commercial games, and those games could therefore be used to teach teamwork behaviors with little alteration.

The participants were divided equally into two platoons, and then sub-divided into six squads; three per platoon. The attributes of the characters - or avatars - that each soldier controlled was manipulated to encourage cooperation among participants. For instance, an avatar who was strong but slow could be matched with an avatar who was fast but of limited strength to accomplish a goal that required both strength and speed.

The investigation yielded a series of lessons learned regarding critical technological, logistical, and pedagogical issues. These lessons learned reflected the goal of informing the development of a game-based training platformhy and shed light on the requirements gaps and capabilities necessary for moving from gaming to training.

A sample graph of results regarding communications and coordination within a team.