Commanders, want to learn 'shaping operations'? Try playing a video game

By Jim Gourley

Best Defense chief video
games reviewer

Tom Ricks recently
asked me if I would review a war-based strategy game for the blog. The game,
titled STAVKA-OKH, had a
unique concept with the potential to give military officers cause for
introspection. The player takes on the role of either Hitler's or Stalin's
chief of staff and influences the overall strategy of either side for the
duration of WWII. The concept was to inject a sense of self-interest in the
player beyond simply winning the war for their "team" and creating an
environment of internal political tension between their dictator and
subordinate staff. The player could only choose from war plans developed by the
staff, but was also made aware of the likelihood of the dictator either
actually endorsing the plan or overruling the decision. Based on these factors,
and the choice to "support the party" in its respective campaigns of
genocide, the player accumulated "glory points" that would influence
their army's success and their own reputation. Between the two sets of
conflicting values, one could either end the game as a victorious but unpopular
tactician or escape the war crimes tribunal in defeat.

While the concept
resonates strongly with the dynamics of military staffs throughout history, the
game itself falls flat in its execution. It lacks the sophistication to make it
either enjoyable or informative. The problem has nothing to do with graphics or
artificial intelligence. It's that STAVKA-OKH
is that it tries to do too much. The program acts as the enemy, the staff, the
dictator and the ultimate evaluator of the player's performance. What makes
modern games successful, and what researchers wondering what military-themed
games can tell them about actual military leadership and action, is just how
little they do. Today's most popular games, both among players and scientists
of various fields, simply provide a construct within which the players can
interact with others and the environment. The concept of "free play"
has advanced to the point that even the concept of "winning" is an
open-ended proposition. Notably, many games orchestrate their framework to
foment conflict between players, and a large portion are combat-themed. Within
this genre, lessons abound.

Most recognizable
is the ubiquitous "first-person-shooter," or FPS. I have already
lodged my formal complaints about such games and their effects on gamers of all
backgrounds on this blog. Meanwhile, the Army and Marines have developed
versions as training aids for combat troops (originally created as a recruiting
tool, "America's Army" game actually became a commercial success). However,
there are unique examples that demonstrate positive lessons in both the
official use and entertainment varieties. The salient feature of the games is
that, as violent as they are, the player is removed from any actual physical
threat. This has a profound influence on a player's tactical decision making. What
cover does a soldier/player take, what rate of fire do they select, and at what
range do they engage with the enemy when their avatar never fatigues, never
runs out of ammo, and simply "re-spawns" if killed?  [[BREAK]]

DoD training aids
place more realistic constraints on a player to emphasize realistic decision
making, but what cannot be replicated is the individual player's fitness level
and tactical proficiency. The aim of a mouse-click rarely factors muscle
control, nor do computer avatars frequently collapse from dehydration. Understanding
what the individual fighter will do when unrestricted by their physicality may
yield insight on how to improve their conditioning.

Perhaps a darker
side to these games is the sense of accountability developed by players. When
relieved of adhering to rigid principles of conduct and given the singular
priority of "winning," players demonstrate an extraordinary level of
creative improvisation -- albeit in morally questionable ways. When observed in
the context of military weapons accountability protocols, one would be shocked
at just how quickly a game player will throw away their weapon in exchange for
that of a dead enemy in order to continue fighting. Depending on the game's
parameters, the matter of "collateral damage" might not factor at all
into a player's decision making. If there's no penalty for dispatching an
"innocent bystander," human shields are reduced to nuisances in the
player's calculus. There is also the matter of accountability within the unit. The
practice of fragging a member of one's own unit to prevent them from
compromising a group's mission is so well-known that the gaming community has
its own terminology for it -- "team killing." Interestingly, one persona is
equally feared and reviled by patrolling soldiers in both the real and digital
combat zones. Gamers refer to snipers in their hide sites as
"campers," and make special efforts to kill those players especially
quickly and brutally. Sometimes, the efforts go so far as to hack the game
program in order to "kick" the player from the server entirely.

It's the
"massively multiplayer" genre of games that provide the best
laboratory to study the dynamics STAVKA-OKH
initially proposed. The two games that have bared the most academic fruit to
date are the mega-popular World of
Warcraft and the lesser-known but perhaps more sophisticated EVE
Online. These games have no real end-state. Instead, they simply
provide a highly interactive environment in which players can live a virtual
life, selecting from a myriad of professions and pursuits. Each are based on a
conflict format, though. In World of
Warcraft, players are encouraged to join guilds, which act very much like
tribes, in order to seek protection and complete goals only achievable by large
groups. These roving bands go on set-piece raids, rescue missions, and even go
to war against each other based on group decision-making. Results vary, and the
impacts of individual idiosyncrasies immediately become evident. World of Warcraft has already shown 27 million people
what STAVKA-OKH is trying to
demonstrate -- and with real people, no less.

There have been
other profound events within the game that interested social scientists. Researchers
at MIT and Tufts University asked game developer Blizzard Entertainment for all
information related to a glitch
that produced an epidemic of "corrupted blood" in the game world.
Given that more people play WoW than
there are citizens of the state of Israel, it provided reams of information on
how epidemics could impact economies and societies.

More closely
related to military problems, though, is the case of how Blizzard dealt with a
heightening problem of violence in the game. While the game encourages rival
bands to bash each other to pieces in pitched battle, its success still relies
on players from all walks of life enjoying experiences outside of combat. However,
as more players signed up, the trend of countryside muggings increased
exponentially, reaching a particularly unsavory height with the slaughter of
participants in an in-game funeral procession for a fellow player who had
recently died in real life. That the deceased was a young girl caused
particular rage in the community, and there was an outcry for the offending
players to be banned. This put Blizzard in a bind to find a way to encourage
players to behave in a more ethical way without making them feel as though they
were being restricted in their choices.

Their solution was
to implement an "honor system" of scoring, whereby players would gain
or lose points based on the evenness of the duel. The idea was to discourage
more powerful players from preying on the weak. A player's honor score allows
them to qualify for certain weapons and equipment to improve their performance.
The implied consequence being that more ethical players become stronger, and
ostensibly more capable of dispatching malefactors. While it would be
impossible for the U.S. military to impose such a system for rewarding
individuals based on their decisions in Iraq or Afghanistan, the principle of
gamesmanship to influence behavior is worth further study to strategic planners
in a low-intensity conflict environment.

But with respect to
real-world parallels, WoW's
architecture pales in comparison to EVE
Online, a space-based game in which interstellar armadas battle for
conquest across the universe. The twist to the game is that these fleets serve
no emperor nor press for geographic control. Everyone works for an interstellar
conglomerate and the name of the game is economics. Negotiating a favorable
deal on the sale of a mineral-rich moon or the acquisition of a new merchant
vessel is just as important a skill as your aim with photon torpedoes. It's
become no trifling matter. The game's universe has a government -- the Council
of Stellar Management -- and each year since 2008 they've beamed down to
Reykjavik to discuss everything from exchange rates to crash issues with
Windows Vista.

The game's economy,
and how it foments armed conflict, shouldn't be taken for granted as a subject
of study. The developers themselves recently admitted they were in over their
heads and actually hired a professor of economics to help them understand what
was going on in their own game. In one of his first interviews
since taking the job, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson explained the EVE universe as
filled with resources and fraught with conflict, with multiple large powers
vying to collect them. It's possibly an analogy for Africa with the economics
of an arms race thrown in.

The key point for
researchers and military simulations specialists, though, is that all of the
aforementioned complexity came not as a result of ingenious programming or
oversight, but evolved in a truly organic way. Given that such primacy has been
placed on the "shaping operations" of counter-insurgency in modern
conflicts, we should reconsider how we approach the digital simulation
frontier. A game has extraordinary potential beyond a simple canned environment
for people to run around and shoot each other. It's a world for whom the
creator can be as involved, and as frustrated in their efforts to maintain
dominion over their fate, as any other player.

Viewing a military
commander as an environment developer, the perception gap between the battle
space and outer space suddenly closes, and one can appreciate the instructive
value of watching how gamers react to each other and the restrictions imposed
upon them by a higher authority. Games truly are no different than any other
society. Certain members will always find a way to defy what at first seem to
be ironclad edicts. It's also important to keep in mind that players of EVE and WoW come from almost every race, nationality, and age demographic. This
best represents the salient point for military and foreign policy researchers --
it's
not just kids' stuff anymore.