Lessons learned: tactical command and control studies with first person shooter games

The purpose of the study was twofold. The first was to test and examine if First Person Shooter, FPS, games could be used for studying Command and Control, decisionmaking, situational awareness, cooperative work and communication individually and in groups. The second has been to examine the game engine, game functionality and the enclosed scenario development tool. To be able to study these questions were three scenarios developed in the enclosed scenario development tool. In these scenarios were Swedish tactic and operational art implemented. Lessons learned from this study prove that questions used when studying Command and Control and decision making during staff- and field exercises have demonstrated to function equally good in a game based environment, studying the same issues. This indicates that First Person Shooter, FPS, games could be used as an aid for training, education and research in tactical command and control decision-making. However, to be able to use commercial PC-games for this kind of micro simulation good knowledge regarding tactics and operation art is required. It also requires well-defined scenarios, careful evaluation and examination, which is a more time consuming effort than using for example traditional war games. The most important lessons teamed from the experiments with the developed micro simulation are the need for oral simulating as a complement to enhance, correct and elucidate vital information and reduce the recreational gaming part in it. Is this not done will the micro simulation being regarded as a game, not as a micro simulation. The continuous work will be aimed to develop methods and tools to render data management effectively and to improve data acquisition during this kind of game based micro simulations. Further evaluations of commercial computer games, such as Fleet Command and Operation Flashpoint are aiming to study interactions, presentations and visualizations principles.