Tactical Iraqi, a serious game, offers English speakers an easier way to learn Arabic as spoken in the streets, which is what our soldiers need to survive in Iraq. All images © 2003-2006. Tactical Language Training LLC.

A new and growing application of animation is serious games -- videogames used for training soldiers, policemen, firefighters, medical professionals, retail clerks and a host of others. The market for such games has risen in the last five years from essentially nil to a few hundred million dollars annually. One of the most successful serious games is Tactical Iraqi, a game designed to teach Arabic to soldiers deployed in Iraq, and developed by a team from ISI (the Information Sciences Institute, part of the University of Southern California) headed by Dr. Lewis Johnson. The methods used to develop this game shed light on what really works in successful serious game production -- much of which is very different from techniques used for entertainment games.

Learning a language the conventional way tends to be painful and arduous -- just remember the boring vocabulary drills from high school or college language classes. It also requires a classroom and a teacher, something hard to find in Iraq, thousands of miles from the nearest Army language school. Arabic is an especially difficult language for English speakers to learn, according to Dr. Johnson, who is a linguistics and artificial intelligence (AI) expert, as it contains sounds that are hard to distinguish from each other, and dialects differ considerably by region. "People who learn literary Arabic in school often have a hard time on the street," he said. Unfortunately, "on the street" is exactly where our soldiers in the Middle East need to use it -- trying to pull out a dictionary during an altercation on a crowded boulevard in Baghdad is probably not a wise choice.

The game is not just about learning the right words, noted Dr. Johnson. It also involves a huge amount of nonverbal interaction; scientists claim that over 70% of communication comes from what some call "body language." In tense situations such as those in Iraq, nonverbal messages may be just as important as the spoken words, according to Dr. Ralph Chatham, the sponsor of this project from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the cutting-edge Pentagon agency that created the Internet, online gaming and modern satellites, among other things). Dr. Chatham noted that soldiers that first went to villages in Afghanistan were astonished to discover that they not only did not understand a word being spoken, but could not interpret people's hand and facial gestures. As "Sergeant Smith," a role you assume in Tactical Iraqi, you learn that when you start a conversation with someone important, you not only say, "Asalama Aleikum," but also cross your hand over your heart and give a slight bow, as a sign of respect.

Learning the proper way to greet and gesture in the Iraqi culture helps to prepare the soldiers for the Iraqi culture.

The Game Play
You are Sergeant Smith, an Army NCO about to deploy to Iraq. You have about 80 hours to learn the language well enough to interact with Iraqis, sometimes in tense situations.

You start with the first of three components of the game, called the Skill Builder, an interactive area where you learn basic Arabic vocabulary. You wear a headset with earphones and a mike, so that you can hear the words, and so that your laptop can hear you pronounce them. You get immediate feedback, in friendly form -- if you mispronounce a phrase, the computer gently urges you to try it again. Throughout, the game is easy on you, with different, more tolerant feedback for beginners, so you don't get discouraged -- it gets harder when you move up to "expert." After you're up to snuff on Skill Builder, you enter the arcade, where you practice select words and phrases, such as colors, military ranks or how to get directions -- and score points as you might in a pinball game, to make the process fun and competitive. You're now ready to enter the Mission Game, the actual 3D scenario you act out in the mean streets of Iraq.