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Presented
on the first day of Serious Games Summit 2005, this fascinating session
explained some of the work carried out by the University of Southern
California-connected Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a
university-affiliated research center which is majorly funded by the
U.S. Army. It is particularly known in the video game community for
having produced the Pandemic co-created Full Spectrum Warrior
game for the Xbox, originally made for army training on the go, but
then released as a successful THQ-published game, but it also does a
great deal of other bleeding-edge research for the Army, DARPA, and
other government entities here and abroad on the intersection of
entertainment aand technology.
Thousand-Yard Stare
The
lecture started with David Wertheimer, managing director of the ICT,
who started by discussing the history of the Institute. It traced its
roots to a study in 1997, made by the National Research Council, and
linking the entertainment and defense industries - it was felt that the
entertainment industry had something to bring to defense, and vice
versa. Thus, the Department of Defense (DoD) and particularly the Army
wanted to put together a vehicle to allow the government to act on this.
Therefore,
the ICT was set up in 1999 as a university-affiliated research center,
which is managed by RDECOM/STTC. It has multiple goals, but in
particular focuses on immersive VR for simulation/training, research
into AI, graphics, and sound, and the need to build prototype
applications for cognitive decisionmaking, as a bridge between the DoD
and the filmed entertainment community and entertainment software
industry.
As well as major products such as Full Spectrum Warrior (produced for the U.S. Army), and strategy title Full Spectrum Command
(initially produced for the Singapore Army), Wertheimer points out that
there have been some interesting consequences of the ICT's reputation
as an interface with the entertainment industry, since the DoD has come
to them to help with concept development on the future of army
technology, and to help Congress understand potential for potential
funding purposes. He gave the example of the DARPA-funded film "Nowhere
To Hide," produced by the ICT.
Drilling Down
Nonetheless,
the majority of ICT's main research is into subjects such as artificial
intelligence, which isn't necessarily covered in the way that the Army
would need it in video games. For example, Wertheimer noted, in a
first-person shooter, every person is a shooter, and AI is more often
twitch-based, or strategy games are highly scripted - there's nothing
wrong with this, but ICT is looking to develop cognitive
decision-making for training purposes, and this requires simulated
people to people interaction.
Another
important area of research is graphics, particular elements such as
dynamic real-time lighting and HDR (high dynamic range) technology,
recently implemented in Half-Life 2's Lost Coast
expansion, using techniques partly pioneered by graphics guru Paul
Debevec, who works at ICT. Wertheimer noted that cutting-edge PC
graphics cards are fueling the growth, and art complexity is becoming
increasingly important, commenting that Electronic Arts mentioned to
him that last year, for the first time ever, the number of graphics
files created for their games exceeds the lines of code.
This
problem doesn't just exist in game industry, hence ICT's research,
since Wertheimer noted that 20% of a CG movie's $100 million budget is
spent on lighting. If ICT can solve these problems in an automated way,
it will mean a huge difference in our ability to recreate the world as
we know it, which is as important for military simulation as it is for
entertainment use.
Wertheimer
then cued a movie created after ICT graphics staff went to the
Parthenon in Greece, and scanned it in extreme detail with a laser
scanner. The movie, directed by Paul Debevec, is extremely impressive,
and almost indistinguishable from the real thing, even replacing
figures removed from the Parthenon that became the much-debated Elgin
Marbles, and finally, showing the roof replaced and the Parthenon
re-colored as it would have been in ancient days. As Wertheimer pointed
out, to train people for real-world activities, the feeling of being
there is incredibly important.
On Virtual Humans
The
lecture then went on to discuss the concept of virtual humans,
particularly important to ICT, since it wants ways to train the
military to interact with other people, without lots and lots of actors
being paid to play those people. Wertheimer then showed an example of
virtual humans in action, an exercise using the Unreal Tournament 2004
game engine in which a soldier has to persuade a Middle Eastern doctor
to relocate his clinic without revealing his operational plans. This
demonstration, shown in movie form, showcases a number of technologies,
including speech recognition, task and domain reasoning, dynamic
gesture recognition, natural language understanding, dialog management,
and emotional modeling. It's also pointed out that all of the AI
systems were talking to an ICT-designed middleware layer which itself
is integrating into a game engine, allowing for much greater usability.
Wertheimer
then posted the question - how do we build systems to make people play
and learn, and make things better for both the military and
entertainment sectors? He particularly referenced ICT's Full Spectrum Warrior,
which has you in-game and issuing orders, and was developed as a
training product, but looks visually somewhat like a first-person
shooter, and has since found success in the game market. In the end, it
was claimed, the military got the training tool for less than the cost
of the product, thanks to the commercial release of the game, and now
THQ is porting a version to the PC, the Army is getting that version
for free - effectively a win/win situation, according to ICT staff.
ICT
representatives also ran through a number of other projects it had
taken on in the "serious game" arena, including a "self-directed
learning Internet module" which allowed people (presumably military
personnel) to train to be more aware of threats (apparently
Iraqi-related ambushes, though Wertheimer could not directly state
this), all completed on a 90-day development schedule. Also shown in
movie form was a location-based entertainment system in a room modeled
after a Middle Eastern town, featuring helmets and binoculars with LCD
displays, so that trainees could look out of a virtual window and see
the same view enlarged in the binoculars, and train for deployment
without actually being there.
Lent's Concepts
The
lecture was then handed over to Dr. Mike van Lent, the research project
leader at ICT, who took the second half of the lecture, and talked a
little more about the serious game community and his vision for it,
covering some of the same touchpoints as Doug Whatley's keynote speech
earlier on Monday, but also expanding on many of them.
Lent's
first point is that "serious games" fit more into a community than an
industry - he counted 43 case studies but just 25 methodology studies
as being presented at the Serious Games Summit this year. His concern
is that developing serious games is still an art, and seen as a bit of
a black art - each effort is a gamble, and each title is a one-off.
Sure, it's not a science, but van Lent suggested that there aren't many
developers dealing with serious games as a long-term thing, developing
both serious gaming sequels and a larger infrastructure.
Another
important point that was made is that the researchers/developers and
the funders on serious games are often coming from very different
angles - game designers are extremely tech savvy, but some of the
military commissioners on products ICT works on are self-described
"air-assault typists," using one finger at a time from on high to type
out sentences, and there needs to be plenty of careful discussion
between the two sides.
Further Ruminations
Van
Lent went on to echo a comment made more than once at SGS, though it's
far from sure that it's actually possible - that developers need to
move towards a "science" for serious games, and need an industry-wide
baseline technique. In particular, it was argued, developers need to
avoid inconsistent deliverables for all customers, wasting resources,
and most of all, becoming a fad (van Lent worries about what happens
when games aren't "hot" any more as an emerging media, though he
believes that serious game creators can overcome this in the long-term.)
The
ICT employee also touched on what he thinks is particularly important,
new business models for serious games. While making this point, he
mentioned again that not many serious games/developers think about
sequels. As in the Full Spectrum franchise, ICT believes that developing a series of games for a customer can be much more valuable than a one-off.
Also
discussed was the toolkit of available technologies to ICT, and the way
they try to abstract the AI side from the graphics side. For example,
the previously mentioned Virtual Human is built in the Unreal engine,
whereas another project, JFITS is made in the Gamebryo engine. Thus,
the organization is trying to build an abstracted layer to make all its
serious games on.
Adaptive AI Issues
Finally,
Van Lent talked a little about a project that was important to him -
the concept of adaptive AI. In this case, this means that the AI would
adapt to the trainee's scenario history in ICT's work. Generally, game
AI is designed so that "gaming the game," finding loopholes to get
past, is part of the fun for the user, van Lent suggested, citing
conversations he had with the Halo AI designer at Bungie. But,
he suggested, if you learn one set of experiences that will beat the
AI, in training, that's no help for real opponents.
Thus,
ICT is working on military training software that adapts to the
trainee's training needs, and tailors meta-goals to the trainee. They
believe that the fixed AI model will be out of date quickly, suggesting
that "automated behavior generation is the long-term solution." Citing
the JFETS 05 example, which includes AI-controlled bad guys and good
guys, ICT has rigged this so that if the trainee does smart things, bad
guys may choose to lose. In fact, the whole simulation has variable
behavior, but previous efforts have varied individual behavior, whereas
new work is allowing the players in the simulation to coordinate their
variable behavior, making for much richer variations.
Van
Lent's central point was that winning isn't everything - most AI
opponents focus on trying to win. A great example of this is chess
computer Deep Blue, which is, according to him, just not that much fun.
ICT's goal for the bad guy AI in its training software is, simply: "How
can I achieve this training goal while appearing to be trying to win
this scenario?" Van Lent then showed a Pepsi ad starring chess champion
Garry Kasparov, in which machines ganged up on Kasparov after he beat a
Deep Blue clone, reinforcing the point that machines or machine AI
working together makes for the most effective training.
Conclusion
Van
Lent concluded by announcing that ICT is intending to host a workshop
on how to create a concrete pipeline for making serious games,
hopefully helping to contribute its expertise to the issue and
leveraging solutions that can be used over the entire industry.
Although
the workshop is not currently scheduled, ICT hopes to have it before
this time next year, and more details will likely be available on ICT's website.
Van Lent then wrapped things up with questions from the audience, and
overall, this was a very interesting lecture at SGS 2005, which helped
illuminate ICT's multiple projects and mission in fine form.
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