Abstract

We introduce the motivations, history, technical approach, and design choices behind DARWARS Ambush!, a game-based, convoy operations trainer that was heavily used by the U.S. Army and Marines for five years. We discuss a number of the practical deployment concerns we addressed and discuss how we cultivated relationships to build a community of committed users. As one of the first large-scale, successful serious games for learning, DARWARS Ambush! broke new ground and led to many lessons learned on how to best design, develop, and deploy a serious game. We discuss some of our experiences, decisions, and lessons learned, and conclude with some recommendations that may help new efforts attain success as well.

Introduction

In late 2004, DARPA Program Manager Dr. Ralph Chatham asked BBN Technologies, who was already under contract on his DARWARS Training Superiority Program, whether we could quickly – within six months – deploy a training system to help soldiers better respond to convoy ambushes then prevalent in Iraq. At that time, convoy ambushes involving small arms, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were a leading cause of casualties. The U.S. military had recognized the need for increased training for convoy operations and aggressively pursued a variety of training solutions, including live-fire training exercises, marksmanship trainers, and driver training systems (see Steele, 2004; Tiron, 2004 for examples). Dr. Chatham recognized the need for a squad-level team trainer that would focus on situational awareness, communication, and coordination.