A video game is helping improve Marine Corps training

A 19-year-old video game is helping better educate Marines through a Virginia Tech-led project.

Researchers from the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech and the University of Memphis recently deployed a program that leverages a modified version of the 2007 game “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” at Marine Corps University in Quantico. Developed for the Sergeants School, the students engage in tailored scenarios that allow them to hone skills such as leadership, critical thinking, decision-making, and communication in real time. The modified game platform also collects player data to be analyzed by a large language model for ways to enhance after-action reviews.

“There will be a direct line from this investment into [the real world],” said Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy, commanding general of Marine Corps Education Command and president of Marine Corps University. “The actual skills translate directly into making good decisions under high stress.”

Funded by the Office of Naval Research and known as Research into Competency Acquisition with Novel E-gaming, the first cohort of Marines began in January and is already seeing the benefits.

“Traditional classroom and discussion provides the necessary knowledge while video gaming allows students to develop knowledge into skill through practice, reflection, and refinement – seeing how their thoughts, decisions, and interactions with teammates affect performance and mission success in real-time vice theoretical talking points,” said Lt. Cmdr. Mike Natali, Office of Naval Research program manager.

The concept for the project sprang from the desire of three academic researchers to make a difference beyond publishing a paper.

“I was trying to find research projects that could make a real-world impact,” said Louis Hickman, assistant professor of industrial-organizational psychology at Virginia Tech and principal investigator of the project.

Hickman recruited Ryan P. McMahan, director for the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, and Brandon Booth, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Memphis, to the project. The team’s mission to deliver a custom video game-based education module began with modifying the game to include 14 scenarios specific to the school. Modifications also allowed the game to collect player data that will be used in the project’s second phase to better inform a large language model to scale up after action reviews.

“The military considers after-action review one of the most important parts of training,” Hickman said. “After you’ve gone through a training simulation, you sit down as a group, you discuss what happened, what was supposed to happen, what went well, what didn’t, and what you will do differently next time.”

The team also added the ability to collect player telemetry. This allows the researchers to “tap into player positions, orientations, where the enemies are, shots fired” and other in-game data, according to McMahan, who is also a professor in the Department of Computer Science.

“One unique constraint on this project is that the software cannot be updated once deployed, so it has to collect data and function perfectly,” Booth said. “The game and supporting software consists of a lot of processes running in parallel.”

The decision to use this specific video game platform was not entirely random. Hickman is an avid player, which gave him the acumen to design the new scenarios. It also brought an added level of excitement among the team when they performed the weekly testing to ensure the game and software were coordinated.

“When Louis is there, it’s like having Rambo on your team, and when he’s not there, it’s like not having Rambo on your team,” McMahan said.

As a measure of the project’s success, Marine Corps University already has plans to install the software at the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms, California. Hickman said the students at the Sergeants School also support the idea of expansion.

“Many of them asked if there were ways to bring it back to their home unit because they thought it was so valuable that their units would benefit from it as well,” Hickman said.

For Tracy, the project is a “two-way street” of collaboration.

“[It] is indicative of America and our culture of ingenuity, trying things, bringing together an eclectic group. Our thrill as Marines is to partner with academia [in research] that is potentially ground breaking and historic in cognitive science and be part of that,” Tracy said.