Off Duty Gamers

What can new soldiers learn from this excellent game?

When I played through the first Brothers in Arms game as a wet-behind-the-ears second john, it was hard to ignore a growing notion: I could use this game to teach my soldiers the basics of infantry squad and team tactics. The game wasn’t like other shooters, where it seemed possible to take on the entire German (or Japanese, or Covenant) army singlehandedly.  It forced the player to use proper fix-and-flank tactics, encouraged initiative in figuring out alternate routes around enemy strong points, and even taught a few of the basic battle drills without the player realizing it.  It had an amazing story, largely based on real events, to boot.

Six or so years later, the third installment in the series (Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway) has been out for about a year and the fourth is in development.  The “authorized” training simulators, endorsed and in some cases developed by the Army, are either dismal failures or haven’t really caught on with command elements.  It is time to revisit commercial products as training aids, and specifically the Brothers in Arms series.

A Little History First

(Those of you who ditched History class to go smoke behind the gym can skip to the next section)

Games have been used by armies and societies to train for war for as far back as we have records.  Certainly there are many accounts, some certainly apocryphal or at least exaggerated, of strategy being taught to young men by having them learn and play chess.  The Greeks were famous for their sporting events, which focused more on physical prowess of warriors than their quick thinking.  The Prussians (who became the Germans) played a game called Kriegspiel (literally, “War Game”) on large tables of sand or rock, moving metal “units” a certain number of spaces each turn.  Reading about Kriegspiel reminded this former cadet of many afternoons spent on the fourth floor of the Mil Sci building on the campus of Texas A&M, hunched over a similar table with other callow youths and learning the nine basic battle drills—under the gruff tutelage of a crusty old MSG who’d been in on the storming of Noriega’s Comandancia.  The obvious successors of Kriegspiel were old nerd mainstays like Risk and Stratego.

Later came the scientist-soldier collaborations starting in the 50s, usually run by RAND.  These simulations were the precursors of the modern wargames, and while perhaps not notable for their impact on junior leaders, they contributed to strategic understandings of geopolitical problems that would plague the country for the next few decades.  They led to greater focus on game theory at RAND, which in turn would lead to greater acceptance for concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction.

Various no-name electronic simulators were sometimes used by regular army units starting in the seventies, but they will not be addressed here.  Suffice it to say they were mediocre at best and often looked down on by purist NCOs.  In recent years a few simulators such as the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) or the Virtual Convoy Combat Trainer (VCCT) have become somewhat more accepted and are now widely used in lieu of (or to supplement) ranges and live-fire exercises.  I myself can attest from personal experience the difficulty in securing a time slot at the EST at any divisional post on short notice.

The closest the military itself has come to a commercial-style trainer, however, is America’s Army (AA).  The game and its two sequels are remarkable in their insistence on introduction and reinforcement of Army Values.  However, this game is more of a recruiting tool than an actual trainer.  It has been claimed by the Army that the game does in fact help recruiting—the statistic given is 28% click-through rate from the AA website to the “Go Army” site, although no concrete numbers to be available.  There have also been a few incidents of players using the training they received on AA to help them in real life, including the remarkable true account of a young man who liked playing as the “medic” character in the game—and using the medical training he’d received while playing America’s Army, was able to treat and successfully stabilize the victims of an SUV crash before medical personnel arrived.  But these instances are rare; this game’s use seems to be largely limited to recruiting, and its online multiplayer, while going to great lengths to prevent cheating, does little to force players to use proper squad tactics.

We are therefore left with evaluations of commercial products.  What games can be purchased off-the-shelf to be used as training aids?  We will briefly consider and discard several possibilities before discussing our main focus, which if you’ve read the title of this piece you’ve already figured out.

Notable War Games of Recent Years

Do They Suck?—In General, and as Training Aids

The most obvious games to start with are the WW2 shooters.  Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and their seemingly endless sequels.  These are varying degrees of good to bad, depending on the developer.  Some have intriguing stories, the presence of which in the opinion of this author is absolutely necessary to keep a trainee interested.  Few, though, have anything like reliance on a squad—you are able to progress through the game figuratively and in many cases literally on your own, against wave after wave of enemy infantry, artillery and armor.  While entertaining and in some cases historically educational, they will likely not impart to a player anything that he can apply to his military career.

It should be noted here that the Call of Duty team released an “updated” version subtitled “Modern Warfare” several years ago, with which many readers will already be familiar.  The author has not played it (“You’ll love it,” my buddies said, “it’s just like Iraq.”  Having at that time been back from a deployment for less than a month, my reply: “Pass.”), but I understand that the single player campaign is very short and that while very beautiful graphically, the game has little to offer by way of training value.

The Ghost Recon games are very good—excellent story and an encouragement to use the overhead map and direct commands to position your team members.  The only problem with these games is that there is an emphasis on whizbang technology (the Mule, the surveillance hovercraft, the Future Combat System headset and satellite readout) rather than on straight tactics.  Yes, it is possible to play the game using only fix-and-flank.  It is possible and very easy, however, to just use your overhead surveillance to watch the enemy, and simply pop around a corner and drop them quickly when they expose themselves.  The temptation to use this mechanic rather than visually acquire a target and then use 7-8 methods is almost overwhelming.  Don’t misunderstand: the Ghost Recon series is both very fun and, in my opinion, an excellent argument for immediate fielding to all units of the Future Combat System (or “Land Warrior” or whatever they’re calling it this week).  But it is not a good way to teach kids about basic squad or team maneuvering.

Some may raise an eyebrow as I mention my next possibility: Army of Two.  Yes, it is a game about a couple of any-dirty-job mercenaries, and the story is pretty awful.  I’m fascinated, however, by this concept the developers implement in the game which they call “aggro.”  The way aggro works: one member of the duo attracts a lot of attention from the bad guys by making noise and firing a loud weapon on full-auto in their direction.  While the enemy is distracted, the teammate sneaks around the flank and attempts to quickly eliminate as many as possible without attracting attention toward himself.  It is remarkable in that they almost get fix-and-flank right, but then seem to completely drop the ball.  Fix-and-flank is not about distracting an enemy—it is about suppressing him.  Sure, it is great if the enemy doesn’t know he’s being flanked, but even if he does, he should be too suppressed to do anything about it until it’s too late.  It’s called suppressing fire, not distracting fire.

This is a nice segue into Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, which is the focus of our discussion.

The Brothers in Arms series as Education and Training

Excellent tactical simulation masquerading as “sort of” historical fiction

The Brothers in Arms series is based on a real unit in the 101^st during the European assault.  Many characters is the game are based on real soldiers—indeed, the main character, Sgt. Matt Baker, is based on Harrison Summers, a DSC earner (and MOH nominee).  Many characters appear as themselves, such as LTC Robert Cole (himself a MOH earner), COL S.L.A. Marshall, the famous Army historian, and COL Robert Sink (voiced in the game by Dale Dye, who played Sink in Band of Brothers).  The game’s developer, Dallas-based Gearbox, sent a team to locations in Europe to take pictures and measurements for the games.  Several of the unlockables in the first BiA game (“Road to Hill 30”) are then-and-now pictures of these battlefields; that is, real pictures of the terrain and buildings in 1944 compared with how they look when seen in-game.  The team really did a good job capturing the look.

The story is excellent—more so than would be expected from a cut-and-dry infantry story.  Sgt. Baker’s 13-man squad—“Baker’s Dozen”—takes part in the D-Day drop behind German lines, later links up with the 82d and helps that division capture Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, and in the latest installment, “Hell’s Highway,” drops into the Netherlands for Market Garden.  Baker is an excellent soldier and very tough, but losing so many of his soldiers, most of whom are close friends, begins to wear on him, eventually driving him to hallucinations.  The story is remarkably (for a video game) well told, and to add to the drama, Baker carries a nickel-plated M1911—which, the other soldiers widely whisper, is cursed.  Every time Baker lends it to someone, that person ends up dying very shortly thereafter.  This adds to Baker’s crippling guilt, and though he insists he doesn’t believe in the curse, he has also very deliberately stopped lending the pistol out, or even letting anyone else touch it.

More about the story and characters can be found online in various places, in addition to reviews focusing on graphics and plot and other things.  The issue at hand here, though: how can the Brothers in Arms games be used to train new or young soldiers?

Starting with the game manuals themselves, players are encouraged to think like a small unit leader.  There are full-page illustrations of basic concepts like the “Four Fs.”  A hand-drawn poster (easily envisioned hanging on the wall in an AIT classroom) exhorts soldiers to “Find, Fix, Flank, Finish” with accompanying pictures: two elements acting in tandem to suppress and flank the bad guys.  The game actually calls the two elements “Fire Team” and “Assault Team,” right out of freshman-level ROTC or the first week of basic.  The first level of each game, as is common in most products today, is largely a tutorial that teaches the player to implement these steps individually, and then all together to suppress and flank an enemy.  Brothers in Arms is different from any previous games along this vein, for the simple reason that it does not merely allow the player to carry out this tactic; it forces the use of this tactic.  It is absolutely necessary, even at the easiest difficulty setting, to use the fix-and-flank method.  Players who “run and gun,” disregarding these simple steps, are not likely to be killed—they will be killed.

The use of this mechanic is encouraged by several factors.  First, the command system.  It is fairly easy to quickly learn the commands for move, take cover, lay suppressive fire, charge the enemy, and rally.  Observant players will even realize that the character’s arms often make the appropriate hand signals for these commands.  In actual basic it would probably take soldiers several days to learn all the applicable hand signals, but the game teaches them in a matter of minutes.  Of course, in the field it would indeed be a little more complicated than “push A and forward” or whatever; but the basic intent would be the same, and soldiers used to giving these commands would quickly learn the real-world translation than those to whom the concept is entirely alien.

It is also interesting to note the effects of your commands when issued, well…stupidly.  When you tell soldiers to charge blindly into heavy MG42 fire, with no covering fire from you, they have no problem yelling back at you that they won’t.  As a leader who’s overhead subordinates say “screw it, it’s only MILES” and worried that their consideration for cover and concealment was quite low, a soldier (even an imaginary one) who refuses to do something likely to get him killed is something I can get behind.

For absolute newcomers to the concept of fix-and-flank, the easy setting even allows a little bubble that floats above enemy units.  This bubble represents the extent to which the unit is suppressed: the bubble starts out red and as more (and more accurate) fire is laid down on them, the amount of red winds down until the bubble is totally grey, indicating a fully-suppressed unit.  Yes, of course there are no “suppression meters” floating above bad guys in real life; but to introduce the concept to young kids fresh out of high school, this is an excellent way to demonstrate the effects that suppressing fire has on an enemy.  Three or four times getting killed because he moved when the little bubble was red—and then successfully flanking and killing the enemy when the little bubble was grey—and the situation is ripe for a trainer to then complete the intellectual connection by saying something like “You see how great it works when you suppress the enemy first?  Now remember that when we’re running this drill on our field problem next week.”

The series even “helps” you by making you a pretty bad shot.  This further hinders that player who is inclined to order his squad to “stay here” at the beginning of a level and then try to blast through the whole thing by himself.  If you’re thinking of going solo, remember: you’re not Mario van Peebles.  You may be able to move close enough to enemy units to engage them (unlikely, across open fields of mutually-supporting positions) but once you do, you will run out of ammo or be killed before being able to take out more than one or two enemy fire teams.  Sooner or later you’ll give up and bring your soldiers along, forced to move like a good infantry squad should.

The above may seem unimportant overall, but consider that your mediocre marksmanship gets much worse the more you are suppressed by the enemy.  That’s right: the enemy can suppress you, too.  On the harder difficulty settings, they won’t just stop there—they will use the “Four Fs” on you, and you better move your ass and flank them first or your commander will have to write a “Baker’s dozen” letters home.  This greatly encourages decisiveness, one of the most important qualities in a leader.

The map system is also a boon and a further subtle suggestion to plan your advance like you should.  The maps often illustrate useful and important terrain features and are sometimes even accompanied by photos.  On some maps, particularly on the easy settings, enemy unit last-known locations have even been marked.  All of this is similar to what you’d have seen carried and used by small unit leaders in Normandy.

The series in general is very good.  Hell’s Highway, the most recent, is particularly good.  The only real differences for training are likely to be minimal for the easy or normal settings.  Instead of yelling regardless of the situation, your soldiers now whisper if you haven’t yet been spotted by nearby enemy, which subtly encourages you to get them (and yourself, Mr. Assault Team leader) in place and ready before you initiate the action.  The AI has also been improved from the previous games, a change which is felt only slightly at the casual-gamer level, but at the most difficult is murderous.  You can almost feel the smug enjoyment of the console as it directs its digital Germans against you with great facility.

I hesitate to even mention this word in a war shooter, but the realism is also very good.  The development team from Gearbox also made visits to firing ranges and to the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, holding and firing the weapons portrayed in the game.  Having fired many of these weapons myself (excepting the bazooka and the machine guns, of course) I can personally attest to the excellent sound mixing.  The physics are also good.  Enemy soldiers don’t fly back like they’ve been hit with a train when you shoot them—they crumple like in real life.  There are games in which crazy ragdoll physics are appropriate and fun, but this is not one of them, and I appreciate the effort by the developers.  All of this realism, in addition to the geographical accuracy mentioned above, is due in large part to Gearbox’s military advisor for the series, retired COL John Antal.

One drawback is the few times where you play alone—sneaking through an abandoned village after a bad drop lands you far away from the rest of your squad, for instance.  These are not poorly done; it is just that there is little training value in these sections.  Another valid criticism could be that the game is inadequate for teaching every single one of the battle drills from 7-8.  There are a few instances of taking out bunkers, clearing trenches, and breaking contact.  Most of the teachable gameplay, however, is focused on only a few drills, specifically Squad Attack, React to Contact, React to Ambush, and (particularly in Hell’s Highway) Enter Building/Clear Room.  These ones it does very well; but the others are rarely if at all covered.  It could be argued, justifiably, that the unit on which the game is based just didn’t do any, say, obstacle breaching in the time period in question.  That is a valid point, and it must be remembered that the game was not intended to be a training tool.

There are some cosmetic or minor gameplay changes in the latest installment as well—slightly better graphics, and the very cool “bullet time” style slow-motion mechanic that activates when you make a particularly sweet head shot or grenade pitch.  This latter can be switched off from the Options menu if it annoys you, but anyone who doesn’t enjoy watching a Nazi’s head exploding in slow motion is un-American.  There, I said it.

The storyline in the third game continues to be excellent, as Baker’s decreasing stability starts to alienate him from the men and from his close buddies.  By the end of the game, the player is not sure whether Baker has any friends, or human emotion, left.

Implementation into Training

Make BiA the Icing, Not The Cake

To sum up, the series as a whole, and Hell’s Highway in particular, could conceivably be used effectively as an introduction to basic infantry squad tactics as well as several of the FM 7-8 battle drills.  Of course, no training aid, commercial or Army-developed, should be used without proper consideration of limitations and instruction.  As mentioned earlier, an instructor should probably be present to critique a soldier as he plays through a scenario, AARing him as needed and making fun of him (like a good NCO) when he fails to plan or effectively utilize his fire team.  And of course, any game is insufficient by itself—field training, buddy rushes, going over the basic battle drills during Sergeant’s Time, any number of other things can and should be used as primary training, with Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway as supplemental and morale-building instruction.

Our jobs are sometimes not very fun at all.  Running around in the mud and the heat are enough to eventually wear on even the most outdoorsy type.  It might help every once in awhile if instead of running battle drills outside, a squad leader gathers his guys into the day room with a couple of cold ones and—having prepped the battlefield by knowing which level or section in the game to skip to—he can teach his joes using a tool that is novel, realistic and fun.  Directed, well-supervised gameplay followed by thoughtful, well-led discussion would help solidify these concepts into the minds of our YouTube-generation recruits like little else.

Additional Reading and Information

For your further Gratification

It may interest some history-minded readers to research the game Kriegspiel, which is still played today.

Much of the history section was fleshed out by Avi Klein’s article “Couch Warriors” in The Free Library.  He takes the view toward the end that video games are not the way to go, and that we should instead have soldiers play chess—and that we motivate them by awarding “chess medals.”

An article called “From Sun Tzu to XBOX” was written by a guy named Ed Halter for the Village Voice and later developed into a full book.  I don’t care to buy a book about warfare written by a Village Voice writer, but somebody let me know if it’s any good.

I ran across several mentions of Brothers in Arms games being used as training aids at West Point while researching this article, but I can’t find any that I’d consider substantiated.  Any West Pointers who played this series while in school, I’d appreciate hearing from you, as well as hearing how you enjoyed last year’s game against Texas A&M.

For Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway official game site, visit http://brothersinarmsgame.uk.ubi.com/hellshighway/