Tactical Iraqi represents a fundamental shift in online gaming in which the design evolves from user interaction. All Tactical Iraqi images © USC Information Sciences Institute.

One of the common themes in recent Serious Games conferences is that many game designers are out of touch with their audience, the players or end users of their games. Surprisingly, this theme has also been echoed at entertainment game expos, as major gaming gurus spoke of designers thinking that they "know too much" -- that they design games for themselves rather than for the users. No less a person than Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Ent., called for a fundamental shift in online gaming, to games that were oriented to -- and heavily influenced by -- the user. "It's about community. It's about collaboration. It's about customization. It's about emergent entertainment powered by the audience, with the audience at the center of this universe," he noted at the recent GDC.

Designing a game (in either serious or entertainment genres) with heavy user involvement runs counter to the conventional wisdom, which calls for essentially finishing a game design and then -- and only then -- releasing a "beta" version for actual users to try out; the earlier "alpha" version is usually only tested with an in-house audience. By the time the game is at the beta stage it is mere months before "shipping gold" (sending the master to the DVD factory), far too late to incorporate any significant user input.

Designing a game of the type that Harrison and others are calling for involves a radical shift in thinking for much of the game community, a change that can be painful but could also engender a lot of success and new opportunities. Rather than use the cliché term of "shifting" paradigms to describe such a change, let's use the gaming term of "power-up" -- a gain in capability that can change everything that was once familiar. We need a paradigm power-up.

So what does a Serious Game that was evolved with user interaction look like? How do you actually get to the stated goal of "community, collaboration, customization?" To get some answers, let's look at three games that are successful (that is, that are actually being used by user communities to learn and train with), to see what we can learn from them. They are: America's Army, Tactical Iraqi and Hazmat: Hotzone (which has now been renamed Code3D).

Tactical Iraqi is a language game initially developed for the U.S. military to teach Arabic. Dr. Lewis Johnson was the pm at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC ISI), where it was first developed, and is now ceo of Tactical Language Training Llc., a startup company in the Los Angeles area. The game, based on the Unreal Tournament game engine, introduces the player into social settings in Iraq, where he learns and tries out both the Arabic language and his understanding of the various social symbols, gestures and cultural habits of that country. Players "win" the game by speaking and behaving correctly in different evolving social situations with computer generated Arab characters, who can quickly turn hostile if the player makes such gaffes as forgetting to introduce himself properly before asking questions or pronouncing Arabic terms incorrectly.

The game is in wide usage by the military, especially by the Marine Corps and units of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Before the game came into usage, U.S. soldiers discovered to their dismay that they did not understand local gestures and cultural attitudes in Iraq, and no one there spoke the classical Arabic that they had been taught -- the effect was like trying to speak Shakespearean English in downtown Brooklyn.

Tactical Iraqi is a game that introduces the player into social settings in Iraq, where he learns and tries out both the Arabic language and his understanding of the cultural habits of that country.

Tactical Iraqi was developed with the user community from the outset. "The feedback and support that we received from the Marine Corps and Special Forces were essential to the game's success," said Johnson. "We were trying out so many new things -- speech evaluation, an in-game AI-generated instructor, recognition of facial gestures -- that we could not afford to come to the end of the development and discover we had made major mistakes. We released prototype versions of the game to users as soon as we could, and listened to and recorded their feedback."

Close interaction between the design and users groups necessitates getting to know each other's terminology and habits. In order that his team understood the "language" of the users, Johnson took them along to real-life training exercises. "Our whole team went out in the field, to the 29 Palms Marine Corps base, to the Ft. Irwin Army training facility, and elsewhere, so that we could experience live role playing in areas that replicated the environment that the game would be used for," he said. "We also sat in on classes, to understand the role of the instructor within the learning community."

The design approach considered the role of the instructor to be paramount. Although the game can be played by a single user, the team made sure that it could be used in a normal class, with the instructor as facilitator. When the game is being used in the field, where a live instructor is not available, the user is guided by a type of in-game instructor, a game-created character driven by AI (Artificial Intelligence). Creating the software to support this "intelligent tutor" was one of the game team's most challenging (and expensive) tasks, but illustrates the primary role bestowed upon the instructors by the team.

In addition to getting "face-to-face" with actual users, the team also used experts that were conversant in both gaming and military training -- the use of such "agents" allowed review of very early versions of the game, where serious "holes" in the game might have confused users. Such experts also were able to clear up occasional misunderstandings between the designer and user communities, and helped the designers avoid wasting time on aspects which were not important to the military users.

A Serious Game of this type, where errors in the game could lead players to get killed, has special requirements for training accuracy. "An entertainment game can be successful without being successful for every user," noted Johnson. "Serious Games don't have that luxury. We can't be satisfied if half the users really dive into it and half think it's a waste of time. We have to get the support of the whole community, even from users who are not really experienced gamers. We had to take into account what the barriers for newbies were, and how they could be overcome. A lot of designers and gamers have disdain for newbies -- 'We don't need no stinkin' help system in our game!' Our perspective was different. We had to make sure all of the users were able to get into the game, that they did not get overwhelmed and quit. To make sure of that, we needed early and consistent feedback." The design team asked for numerical feedback from early testers. "When we got predominantly 4s (on a scale of 5) we knew we were in the right ballpark," Johnson commented. "It meant that they liked it and felt it was needed, but could be better with specific improvements."