The Making of an X Box Warrior opens with Clive Thompson’s experience in a virtual Baghdad, leading virtual troops in a game of Full Spectrum Warrior:
My job, as squad leader, was to order my soldiers where to go and what to do. First, I sent half of my men into an alleyway, where they immediately came under fire from insurgents hiding nearby. Scrambling for safety, I ordered us to duck into a building, pausing to marvel at the detail of the architecture. I then led us back out onto the street, directing my team to crouch behind a car while we tried to locate the snipers. This was a bad idea. Despite what you see in action movies and other video games, cars do not provide good cover from bullets. The snipers cut loose, and my troops crumpled to the ground. It was surprisingly distressing. In barely three minutes, I had led every single one of my soldiers to his death.
What makes Full Spectrum Warrior different from other video games?
Full Spectrum Warrior was created by the Institute for Creative Technologies, with help from the Army, to teach soldiers realistic strategies for surviving what the armed forces call ”military operations in urban terrain.”
It sounds like they made an effort to get the little details right:
Cummings’s job was to ensure that Full Spectrum Warrior conformed to military doctrine. He brought military manuals so that he could show the programmers the myriad details of how soldiers are really trained to act, down to the way they go into a room when they are entering and clearing a building. Particularly crucial, he said, was developing the ”nudge” — the player’s ability to physically grab a fellow soldier and point him in the desired direction. ”A squad leader is very physical,” he said. ”He goes up, and he grabs people literally on the shoulder and says: ‘Hey, knucklehead. Over here.’ He drags people around.”