Entertainment R and D for defense - Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE

Council’s 1997 report that specified a research agenda for defense and entertainment, the Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (Moves) Institute proposed two games—America’s Army: Operations and America’s Army: Soldiers—to recreate the US Army for the benefit of young civilians. (For more information on the council’s report and how this idea came about, see the sidebar “America’s Army: A Background.”) Our goal within America’s Army: Operations was to demonstrate life in the infantry. The idea for the game took shape as a first-person mission experience that starts with training. For example, a player can’t use a particular weapon without first qualifying on the appropriate range. We conceived America’s Army: Soldiers as a realistic look at army personal and career opportunities via sophisticated role-playing. The player creates a character with which to identify, much like the popular game The Sims, and moves through an interactive story constructed spontaneously in response to the character’s goals, resources, and values. (The character’s values are based on the Army’s core values: loyalty, duty, respect, service, honor, integrity, and courage.) Moves named the overall project the Army Game Project (AGP). For the project, Moves envisioned a fully 3D, accurate gaming environment with technological efforts more complex than previous attempts. Our goal was deep immersion in stories that were sensible-yetsurprising, interactive, and nonrepeating. We also wanted to ascertain whether we could compute the aptitude of users by their proficiency in play. The two games were built in secret for 24 months until we obtained results, secured approvals from the Army, and debuted the suite at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) in May 2002. Building the R&D teams The first funding for AGP arrived in May 2000. At that time, a core group at Moves had constructed the largescale networked virtual environment, NPSNET, and we had brought in John Hiles (who had worked at Maxis on SimCity Supreme, SimAnt, and SimFarm). Moves began building a development team by networking with friends and consultants. We recruited veteran artists, designers, and programmers from industry giants such as Maxis, Electronic Arts, Sony, and Kalisto. Between them, their expertise had yielded some 31 commercial games. On the research side, graduate students from all branches of the US military and a number of allied countries worked with Moves faculty on the tough technical issues underlying the project. Practical support from the Army included unprecedented access to posts, equipment, and subject-matter experts. Twelve months from the May 2000 start, Mike Capps and Alex Mayberry led the Operations team, while John Hiles led the Soldiers team. The Operations team consisted of 18 developers (level designers, artists, and game programmers) and the Soldiers team consisted of 10. Moves Institute researchers and developers visited some 19 army posts and videotaped, photographed, and recorded audio of everything that moved—and didn’t. The team digitized video of soldiers in training, equipment and weapons, texture details such as chipping paint, and realistic minutiae such as the appearance of sand at Fort Benning, Georgia. The team learned to shoot M-16s and sniper rifles, hurl hand grenades, and fire mortars. They went on night parachute jumps with the troops and fed themselves to the K-9 corps (wearing padded suits). The post visits created an evermore motivated and informed group of developers, eager to attain higher levels both literally and figuratively.