Tactical Iraqi had an inordinate amount of prototyping and feedback. First the game was developed as a very rough version and tested by outsiders for feedback on the authenticity of both the content and context.

The Future
DARPA has been very happy with the success of Tactical Iraqi, which is now being used by thousands of troops in Iraq. In fact, this project received a DARPA "Significant Technical Achievement" award in 2005, the equivalent of getting an Oscar from the Pentagon, and all the more impressive when one considers that the agency (which has a budget exceeding $3 billion) handed out only two such awards that year.

The game has proved out a great deal of the research in memory formation, which suggests that people remember things much, much better when they are emotionally involved in learning -- when they are in a heightened state of mental engagement with their surroundings. I can vouch for this personally, having played the game and missed several cues, only to find myself being accused of being a CIA spy, and having people starting to rise up from adjoining tables staring at me -- I was definitely fully present at that point.

Tactical Iraqi has been a success and further versions of the game are being produced, both for different users (U.S. Marine Corps, Army and civilians) and other Middle Eastern languages.

Further versions of the game are being produced, both for different users (U.S. Marine Corps, Army and civilians) and other Middle Eastern languages, such as Pashto, for Afghanistan (presumably, the graphics for that geographical area could be called "Afghanistanimation.") The intent is that each game will deliver what Dr. Chatham calls "tactical" language skills, that is, linguistic skills for specific purposes, rather than generalized "cover the waterfront" knowledge of a language. This type of training is sometimes called JITT (Just In Time Training), meant to be delivered right before it is needed, rather than traditional training, which is delivered in a classroom and then (hopefully) recalled many months or years later. The demand for JITT, especially in the form of videogame-based learning, is expected to grow rapidly, with delivery platforms, including both laptops and handheld devices.

Other languages, such as French and German, are under consideration (you could play a game and learn the important parts of the language on the plane to Paris, for instance), and online versions of all of the games are planned. A spin-off private company, Tactical Language Training, LLC, has been formed to market and promote the games to both the government and the general public, as well as to provide training, support and customized content development help.

For a closing note, I can't think of anything more appropriate than what I was recently told by Dr. Anthony Tether, the director of DARPA. "The system's success can be summarized by one soldier's words: 'I learned more in one day with this game than I learned in my whole tour in Iraq.'" Dr. Tether added, "This will save lives."

Christopher Harz is an executive consultant for new media. He has produced videogames for films such as Spawn, The Fifth Element, Titanic and Lost in Space. As Perceptronics svp of program development, Harz helped build the first massively multiplayer online game worlds, including the $240 million 3-D SIMNET. He worked on C3I, combat robots and war gaming at the RAND Corp., the military think tank.