Defence Magazine

Game creators: ADSO team members Robert Carpenter, Cliff White and John Loughhead deliberate their next virtual move. Digital imagery by Louise Butcher, Defence magazine.

Training military personnel is a costly and time-consuming activity but this is now a thing of the past, thanks to modern technology.

Maintaining desired learning outcomes using different, new technology is something currently being used by Defence by using a common, albeit previously unrecognised, form of education: computer games.

Although the idea of using computer games for education purposes seems, for some people, too good to be true, the idea recently became a reality when the Australian Defence Simulation Office (ADSO) in Capability Development Group was approached by Army with an idea to create a CDROM that could teach people about Defence history using multimedia and gaming.

ADSO games expert Robert Carpenter says until the branch had a request to develop a game for military education purposes, using gaming technology for these purposes was a mere fantasy.

"We were in a position where we knew that we had products that were of value from the military education viewpoint. We were in search of a customer and eventually we had a customer contact us saying, 'We have a requirement'. We had the technology already sitting there that we could use and we were able to say to them 'We have the solution for you'," he says.

Within two years of ADSO branch being set up in 2000, the branch started to expand its scope by looking at serious military applications for computer games.

Currently, ASDO has three CDROMs available to Defence personnel. These are Battle of Crete, South Pacific Campaign and TACOPS ANZAC.

The ADSO team, in conjunction with Australian-based learning solutions company Catalyst Interactive, produced the CDROMs (Crete and South Pacific). The CDROMs feature historical film footage and voice-overs, pop-up fact boxes, interactive buttons and options and an interactive game, which places the user in the commander's seat within the battle.

ADSO games expert John Loughhead says experiencing the game first hand helps to understand and learn.

"There is a history professor in the US who teaches his students military history using computer games that said, 'You don't really understand the texture of the battlefield until you have fought it yourself'. He said he never really understood how [the Battle of] Gettysburg unfolded until he fought it from both sides," Mr Loughhead says.

"He learnt who the commanders were, what the ground was like, what the various issues were, etc. He then understood more fully and remembered all the names, places and faces."

Director-General, Simulation Cliff White says that the ADSO-developed CDs are targeted specifically towards members of Generation Y, identified by their exposure to technology throughout their lives. The majority of people now entering to make a career in the Defence Force are in this category.

Mr Carpenter says that Generation Y are people who have grown up in a connected world.

"People from Generation Y (born between 1977 - 1997) can't comprehend not having mobile phones or going to an ATM. Generation X (born between 1969 - 1980) are a section of people in the transition phase between the baby boomers who are traditionally used to face-to-face interactions and Generation Y, who are far more interactive through digital media and telecommunications," he says.

Being part of a game and experiencing the same problems and scenarios as others have encountered in the past makes learning easier and is more natural.

"It brings together so many elements, such as old films, facts, statistics, etc, that would take days to compile on your own. When you drop down in to the game, it gives you a taste of the limitations of the battle, enabling you to immerse yourself in it. Even as kids, we learn through play. People learn through gaming," he says.

Mr Carpenter says an external research report looked at the value of military history in broader education. The report found people who studied military history learnt a lot of the fundamental tactics of operations. This was not done using direct training of a task but by encouraging understanding of why other people were successful at different levels, what led to it and what the situations were.

"This means in the future they will have an experience bank of issues that they can draw on," he says.

"If you talk to civil engineers, they have a broad educational background as an engineer that they can draw upon in addressing a problem. In the profession of arms, you also want to have a broad educational background that you can draw on. From a professional view point, education in the military profession is of vital importance."

Mr Loughhead says the future of gaming for training purposes will expand to see groups of people linked via headsets, working together as a team. By doing so, the game will emulate real life to a greater degree, enabling people to train in more comprehensive ways. "Instead of just having one person playing a first-person shooter game, you will be linking 20 or 30 people together. Each person in the platoon is playing individually but is immersed in a 3-dimensional environment with buildings, vehicles and planes," Mr Loughhead says.

"Everyone will have their radios on and be able to talk to each other. They are not there to learn how to shoot their weapon but to learn procedures and, in particular, learn socialisation with other players. That means looking at how other people react, what commands they are going to hear, etc.

Defence

Capability Development Group

Game on

Making military history come alive is all in a day's play, sorry work, for the Australian Defence Simulation Office. Louise Butcher talks to the team behind the games.