Taking Gaming Seriously

It is over quarter of a century since serving US Marines from the Marine Corps Modeling and Simulation Management Office developed “Marine Doom”. Based on id Software's Doom II, it was aimed at training rifleman who did not have access to expensive simulators. Fast forward to vIITSEC 2020 and Alan R. Shaffer, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment told his audience that they “must adapt” to the considerably larger gaming industry and use its tools. Why should such a senior official feel that they still need to encourage the military S&T community to exploit gaming technology? Is there still reluctance to take video gaming seriously?

My own journey started some 20 years ago. Although a keen gamer myself, I did not at first see how such technology could be exploited for “serious” training. However, after seeing a Half Life engine based urban experimental trainer, I was convinced it could. The positive evaluation report confirmed my observations; I could see and hear that the soldiers were immersed and learning, and that it was being taken seriously. A group of supportive stakeholders formed across defence, and we went on to establish a unit to monitor and exploit games technology as well as collaborating with many NATO nations who were also seeing the potential. The UK Minister for Defence Procurement of the day took a direct interest and the work led to accelerated training support to the Iraq and Afghanistan operations of the day.

However, in spite of the progress, many in the research and procurement communities were sceptical, sometimes hostile. Perhaps taking a middle path, new language was developed to embrace gaming technology but somehow make it sound different to established military terminology, for example “LVC-Gaming” and “Serious Gaming”. Ultimately of course the objective was and is, more cost effective and agile training.

Over the last decade the gaming industry has consistently grown at a pace far greater than the military S&T domain. Today, with widespread connectivity, it has transformed from when games were predominantly played once, to where games provide an ongoing focus for large communities of players and spectators. Gamers are motivated to continue playing and share and connect, with a trend towards games as a social platform. Like wider digital trends, gaming trends have accelerated during the pandemic with all the tech giants, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft having major stakes. Importantly, a whole generation of warfighters have grown up with gaming and might well expect similar quality capabilities.

Today’s gaming industry can be thought of as a large, complex, evolving, and interconnected ecosystem of very many companies and communities.

In this issue we report on games engines which are growing in importance in the S&T community, but there are also other important trends of interest within the gaming ecosystem. Cloud gaming is not new, but the tech giants now have significant stakes as they see market opportunities by reaching new audiences from the “Netflixisation” of gaming. Could we make S&T as frictionless and accessible for the end user? Data and analytics are making a significant impact in the gaming world, from “big data” to better understand gamers’ behaviours and needs, through to player data capture and analytical techniques to support player development. These developments echo the emphasis being placed on military training data. And could S&T communities embrace the sharing and vibrancy of those in the gaming world and break down defence procurement stovepipes?

There remains so much to learn from the gaming world and technologies and practices to be exploited. Does the military S&T community need to reinvigorate and demonstrate its commitment to exploiting this twin world? Can it provide agile training services that are stable and efficient but also dynamic and nimble, exploiting the gaming world wherever it can to improve training? Ultimately, be a community where future Mr Shaffer’s do not feel the need to mention video gaming, everyone already takes it seriously.