Contracting With the Government: Paychecks, Patience and Jargon
One of the real advantages of creating military games is that you can get the game paid for up front — instead of having to wait for sales to happen before back-end commercial gaming revenues trickle in. If you want to get into the military gaming business with government funding, you can partner with a company or university that already has military contracts and thus has the paperwork trail established. If you want to go on your own, decide on what agency you want to work for — Army, Navy, DARPA, DHS and so on — and then go on the Internet and watch for what kind of RFPs (Requests for Proposal, also called solicitations) that agency is issuing. There are generally three kinds that small companies can realistically bid for (many others are buried in weapons contracts, and almost automatically go to large companies such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin). These are SBIRs, STTRs and BOAs.

SBIRs (Small Business Innovative Research projects) are programs for small businesses that are issued in stages, each with a different level of maximum funding. A Stage I SBIR awarded for a game idea would give you around $100,000 (the exact amount varies by agency) to write up your proposed game in detail, perhaps generating some samples for demonstrations. If your sponsor likes your Stage I output, you can get Stage II funding, which typically gives you around $500K to come up with real product; $750,000 is usually the maximum. If you go on to Stage III, you can get additional funding to come up with something that is “productized” to submit to a wider market; at this stage you must have a commercial partner, perhaps a game publishing company. The great thing about SBIRs is that you keep all commercial rights to the game; your sponsor gets to use the game for its purposes, but these are usually very limited, and don’t affect your selling your new game to the general public or other parts of the government. A new player in the SBIR game is HSARPA, the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (see www.hsarpasbir.com).

BreakAway Ltd. creates military simulations like Code Orange (left) and consumer games like Cooligans (right).

STTRs (Small Business Technology Transfer Program) are similar to SBIRs, but require that you team with a non-profit organization such as a university. For more details on SBIRs and STTRs, see: www.sba.gov/sbir/indexsbir-sttr.html. Universities often have great political connections with the military and other federal agencies, so check your local colleges to see whether any of them have ongoing contracts with the government that involve gaming. If you happen to live near the University of Central Florida, in Orlando, you won’t have to look far for this — the university has very close ties to, and many contracts with, the Army and Navy simulation and gaming centers, which happen to be located within walking distance of UCF.

BOAs (Broad Agency Announcements) are open contracts issued by organizations such as DARPA or DHS that state a general need and then invite good ideas to be submitted to meet that need. Budgets can range from around $100,000 to a million or so; the applicability of the idea is generally more important than the actual amount of the budget, and there is generally not a lot of hard negotiating if the agency likes your gaming idea. BOAs can stay open for one or more years, and will be found on the specific government agency’s website.

While we’re at it, there are a couple of other military terms you should know. CONOPS, the Concept of Operations, in this context is what your game is supposed to teach, and how trainees are supposed to use it. A CTX is a Combined Training Exercise, meaning that your game is to be played by both U.S. and Allied forces. The Battlespace refers to the virtual area the game takes place in, the forces involved, and any simulated support units, such as Artillery or Air. The Blue Forces are the friendlies (i.e., the U.S.), and the Red Force is the enemy; the Green Force consists of neutrals or civilians. MOUT (“Mao-T”), or Military Operations in Urban Terrain, refers to operations in cities, often with paramilitary forces involved. The SME, or Subject Matter Expert, is the military expert who knows how to do what your game is trying to teach — consider him/her your new best friend. Warrior is the insider term for what civilians call a “soldier” or “sailor.” A MIPR (Military Interdepartmental Purchase Request, pronounce it so it rhymes with “kipper”) is an agreement by which one government agency transfers money to another. This term is also used as a verb — a Black (secret) organization such as the CIA or a Special Ops group could “MIPR” funds to some more mundane agency if they like your game (you will almost never get a contract directly from such a group).

Summary
At a time when getting into Xbox-level games is becoming more and more difficult for game creators, due to insanely high production costs and the reticence by publishers to risk $10 million or so on a new idea (as opposed to the tried-but-true producing for branded properties such as blockbuster movies or sequels for existing games), creating games for the military and other branches of government is an exciting and growing opportunity. As always, it pays to do your homework, including trying out existing military games and attending trade gatherings such as the GDC and Serious Games Conference. With perseverance and a little luck, in no time you should be able to create your first MOTS for CTX MOUT CONOPS, funded by a BOA that you got MIPR-ed from Black OPS. Good luck, and in the middle of satisfying fussy program managers and training objectives, don’t forget the first commandment of gaming: it’s got to be fun, or no one will want to play it.

Christopher Harz is an executive consultant for new media. He has produced video games 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.