Training Amphibious Forces with Video Games

The The U.S Marines have been the pioneering military service with respect to using COTS video games for the purpose of training. The MCMSMO strongly touts the benefits of some commercially available games for training, however; it warns that characterisitcs of many games can lead to negative training because they depict unrealistic combat interactions. MAK Technologies, the world's leading supplier of DIS supplier and a commercial game developer, will design and build a video game to be used for both Marine training and the commercial sector. The game will be a custom-designed part-task trainer for several Marine areas with minimal negative training aspects. By working in conjuction with a game publisher, the game will be guaranteed to be entertaining, and will enter Phase III commercialization in parallel with Phase II. For Phase I, MAK will develop a storyboard and game play scenerio for a game which actively exercises specific activities form the Universal Joint Task List (UJTL). The game will provide user selectable reality enabling an expert mode which portrays accurate military tactics and a novice mode which provides instant gratification and jumps into the heat of a battle. In expert mode, the game will not introduce improper cues or unrealistic combat events which will result in negative training. MAK will take the UJTL, and with the help of Marine Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), trim the list down to those tasks pertinent to Marine Amphibious Assault operations. MAK will gain an understanding of the stimulus and desired responses for each of the tasks and will string together a series of combat scenarios. A game story will be developed to support each of the combat scenarios in a larger environmental context. After a few iterations, a creative technical design document will be produced. At the completion of the Phase I work effort, MAK will deliver a creative desing document for a realistic and educational Marine Amphibious Assault game. The creative design document will provide a blueprint for Phase II implementation. MAK also proposes a Phase I option to create a technical design document.