Hollywood to Give U.S. War Games "Razzmatazz"

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

May 2, 2003

A routine food distribution deep in the mountains of a foreign land suddenly goes awry when a local warlord shows up, demanding to take over security from the U.S. soldiers carrying out the operation.

As the aid convoy pulls into the camp, a stampede erupts. When a hungry refugee attempts to steal food off a truck, a militiaman kills him with a single gunshot. Now Capt. Young, the inexperienced U.S. commander in charge, must make a decision before the situation spins further out of control.

No, we're not in Afghanistan. This action unfolds on a movie screen in an inconspicuous office building in West Los Angeles. The film is called Power Hungry, and it's one of several virtual reality projects being developed for the US military by the Institute for Creative Technologies.

A training exercise follows the 15-minute movie in which game participants can ask questions of Capt. Young and the other characters by typing them into a computer. Advanced word recognition software allows the characters to respond to questions like, "What was your understanding of the mission?" A digital character, meanwhile, guides the review process.

Administered by the University of Southern California, ICT launched in 1999 with a five-year, U.S. $45 million grant from the United States Army. Its mission: To bring some Hollywood razzmatazz to Army war games and training exercises.

It's all part of the US military's mission to transform itself from the bloated behemoth of the Cold War era to a flexible fighting force suited to the kind of asymmetric warfare the Army has faced in, say, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The Army wanted the entertainment industry to add creativity to their world," said Dick Lindheim, a former television producer and now the executive director of ICT. "They wanted the Hollywood magic."

Emotional Connection

A few years ago, the U.S. Army invited Lindheim, then in charge of the digital entertainment division at the Paramount Television Group, to design a war simulation exercise. In Lindheim's scenario, participants were asked to advise the National Security Council in a crisis situation involving a brutal drug lord taking over Mexico.

While some participants were given interactive media to use, others were given only pen and paper. "The ones with pen and paper soon got bored," said Lindheim. "Those with computers didn't want to leave the classroom."

The Army hired Lindheim to run ICT.

The institute is housed in an office laid out by Herman Zimmerman, a Star Trek production designer, and it employs an army of "techies" whose job it is to construct training scenarios that will deliver a visceral wallop.

The greatest challenge is to give the games a kind of realism that doesn't exist in the Army's own training. The focus is on story and character, something the Army never paid much attention to. Each soldier and each enemy in the game must have his own personality and character development.

"If you can make an emotional connection with your learning, the learning sticks," said Lindheim.

Artificial Intelligence

ICT has designed several computer games. In one, "Full Spectrum Warrior," players assume the role of a squad leader in a dangerous urban warfare situation. But it doesn't work like a regular video game. There is no "shoot" button, for example; players can only give orders. They also must obey the laws of physics and the rules of engagement.

In addition to using sophisticated modeling and graphics, many of the games incorporate artificial intelligence. The goal is to have a virtual human that can be easily reconfigured to play new roles in virtual worlds and carry on dialogue with human users.

In ICT's virtual reality theater, viewers find themselves driving an Army truck down a Bosnian country road. They soon arrive at a city square where a collision between a US Army vehicle and a civilian car has left a Bosnian child seriously injured.

Assuming the role of the commander, the trainee must now make difficult leadership decisions: Soothe the angry crowd that is forming around the child or move on to stem a military confrontation somewhere up the road?

Wearing a special helmet, the trainee can talk to the virtual characters onscreen, who are able to logically respond to almost any command in either synthetic voices or using recorded voice chips.

"The artificial intelligence component is critical because it varies the degree of difficulty depending on how the trainee is doing," said Randall Hill, deputy director of technology for ICT. "The game adjusts to the player."

The Army will retain all U.S. Government rights to any technologies developed by ICT. But the entertainment industry can also tap into new ICT technology and may, for example, be able to use virtual sets and more realistic actors that could obviate the need for live actors doing dangerous stunts.

Learning From Hollywood

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Army even drew on its pool of Hollywood experts to come up with possible terrorism scenarios to help with training and preparedness.

The Army and Hollywood approach problem solving differently. Soldiers are taught to gather information needed to solve a problem and then devise a single solution. It's a very structured, careful and academic approach.

The Hollywood way, on the other hand, emphasizes people, character and story. "The question becomes, Where do we want to end up?" said Lindheim. "Let's back up and figure out how to get there."

Some Army officials argue that Hollywood's more creative approach to problem solving makes for better leadership training. "We can't always develop procedures ahead of time because sometimes there are many solutions to a problem," said Stanley Halpin, at the Army Research Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "We must learn to rely on men and women to make decisions as they go along."

A week into the Iraq war, the commander of the American ground forces, Lt. Gen. William Wallace, caused a stir when he told journalists that "the enemy we're fighting is different from the one we had war-gamed against."

In the future, thousands of troops worldwide may be able to participate together in live simulations devised by ICT. "When we first started this collaboration, the Army and the entertainment industry were highly suspicious of each other," said Lindheim. "That's now behind us."