Development
In 2000, the US Army Science & Technology community was curious to learn if commercial gaming platforms could be leveraged for training. Recognizing that a high percentage of incoming recruits had grown up using entertainment software products, there was interest in determining whether software game techniques and technology could complement and enhance established training methods.
Having established a US Army University Affiliated Research Center (the Institute for Creative Technologies – ICT) in 1999 for the purpose of advancing virtual simulation technology, work began in May 2000 on a project entitled C4 under ICT Creative Director James Korris with industry partners Sony Imageworks and their team-mate, Pandemic Studios, represented by co-founders Josh Resnick and Andrew Goldman.
At the time, there was a great deal of interest in leveraging the stability, low cost and computational/rendering power of the new generation of game consoles, chiefly Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox, for training applications. Legal restrictions on the PlayStation (using the platform for a military purpose) combined with the default Xbox configuration “persistence” (i.e. missions recorded on the embedded hard drive for after-action review) led to the final selection of the Xbox platform for development.
A commercial release of the game was required for Xbox platform access. The team, however, quickly concluded that a viable entertainment title might differ from a valid training tool. The exaggerated physics of entertainment software titles, it was believed, could produce a negative training effect in the Soldier audience. Accordingly, the team developed two versions of the game. The Army version was accessible through a static unlock code; the entertainment version played normally.
The most radical decision in the game’s development was to limit first-person actions to issuing orders and directions to virtual Fire Teams and Squad members (see Gameplay). Given the popularity of the first-person shooter genre, it was assumed that all tactical-level military gameplay necessarily involved individual combat action. The application defied conventional wisdom, winning both awards and commercial acceptance. The game’s working title evolved to C-Force (2001) and ultimately Full Spectrum Warrior (2003).
As work progressed on Full Spectrum Warrior, ICT developed another real-time tactical decision-making game with Quicksilver Software entitled Full Spectrum Command for the US Army’s Infantry Captains Career Course, with the first-person perspective of a Company Commander. As the application was designed to play on a desktop PC (unlike the Xbox), no commercial release was necessary. Full Spectrum Command gave rise to a sequel developed for the US Army and Singapore Armed Forces (version 1.5). A related ICT/Quicksilver title, Full Spectrum Leader, simulates the first person perspective of a Platoon Leader.
Full Spectrum Warrior relates to the Army's program of training soldiers to be flexible and adaptable to a broad range of operational scenarios.
Read more about this topic: Full Spectrum Warrior
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