Game Boys


Local Software Firm Helps U.S. Troops Prepare for Iraq


George Carvalho
Photo by Lori Eanes

My squad fans out around me, as the Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter that landed us here on the outskirts of the village flies away. As the noise from the tandem rotors subsides, we set off on foot down a ribbon of paved road through a dusty desert landscape. Up ahead is a ramshackle collection of broken buildings. I pause briefly to scan them with my binoculars. Our mission is to clear the area of enemy combatants. The sound of my own labored breathing fills my ears as I jog forward a bit. There’s also a sense of sweltering heat, but I don’t really feel it—because this is a computer training simulation.
    I’m sitting in front of a PC in an office at Marina Village. The sailboats just outside the window provide a stark contrast to the Middle Eastern milieu displayed on the screen. My squad consists of two people from Total Immersion Software including Stephen Blankenship, the CEO. We’ve been running through the latest version of DARWARS Ambush!
    Blankenship, 50, launched Total Immersion Software from his dining room table in Alameda back in February 2003. He assembled a half dozen people with expertise in producing video games and signed a $1.3 million contract in March 2004 to develop software for the U.S. military that simulates convoy operations. They completed the first version of DARWARS Ambush! in less than six months, and then committed to adding a second module designed to mimic the rules of engagement. Grinding out a quality product, however, was easy compared to other more mundane things like mastering the military’s arcane accounting procedures.
    “My biggest challenge has been learning how the government and military work from a business perspective,” he says. Combined with the day-to-day management of his company, this keeps Blankenship busy 60 to 100 hours a week. Even so, sitting down to dinner with his family remains a priority, and so he tries to return home by 8 to enjoy his wife Stella’s home cooked meals.
    Outside the office, Blankenship enjoys flying his classic 1949 Navion airplane, attending productions at the Altarena Playhouse and eating at the Gold Coast Grill on Park Street.
    DARWARS Ambush! is a squad-based tactical trainer with 24 roles: 16 friendly forces, three administrators and up to five bad guys. The graphics on the screen accurately depict terrain, villages and road signs in the Middle East. The simulation is set in a fictitious country, and the imagery is not photorealistic, but that’s OK because the emphasis is on teaching teamwork. Soldiers review standard operating pro-cedures and practice their communication skills as they respond in real-time to a variety of threats. These include improvised explosive devices (IEDs), insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and suicide bombers.
    At the Mission Support Training Facility at Fort Lewis in Washington state, 200 regular Army soldiers have used the convoy module of this software. Most of them are with combat service support units—the troops who deliver beans and bullets. They spend half a duty day—about two to four hours—running through scenarios with the software. Priority is given to those who are about to ship out for Iraq, where the insurgency remains a deadly force and convoys frequently come under attack.
    This program is not a replacement for live exercises: Soldiers are not taught to shoot a gun or dial a radio via the software. “It’s more about getting people mentally spun up to speed,” says Blankenship. The goal is to prepare soldiers more quickly while simultaneously avoiding accidents and saving money. The staff of Total Immersion Software has traveled to military bases around the country to demonstrate the software’s many features and benefits.
    The Army’s top brass is still evaluating DARWARS Ambush!, but Lt. Col. Tony Schmitz, the chief at Fort Lewis’ Mission Support Training Facility, says younger officers are generally pleased with it. They understand that modern recruits from the “Nintendo generation” often spend a considerable amount of their free time playing video games and are thus comfortable with software simulations set in virtual environments. Schmitz cites the software’s ability to generate highlight films as one of its strengths. These allow a training session to be reviewed from multiple perspectives: the squad commander, the first vehicle or even an enemy combatant.
    The 1st Brigade 25th Infantry Division—aka the 1-25 Stryker Brigade Combat Team—took the software and a set of 15 laptops with them to Iraq. Each of the software’s built-in scenarios can be reconfigured. This ensures that training with DARWARS Ambush! stays fresh and relevant.
    Total Immersion is the second company Blankenship has co-founded. He sold the first one to Playmates Interactive. Remarkably, though, launching high-tech business enterprises is actually his third career. He was a police officer for 12 years, before switching to the computer gaming industry. Eventually, he joined Electronic Arts where he produced video games based on Tiger Woods and James Bond.
    Total Immersion’s long-term goal is to market a commercial video game for the general public based on military training simulations. With this in mind, Blankenship attended the four-day Game Developers Conference in March in San Francisco. The Institute for Creative Technologies, an Army-funded R&D group at the University of Southern California, has already released a game called Full Spectrum Warrior based on work they did for the military.
    Flush with the success of DARWARS Ambush!, in April Total Immersion Software received a new $500,000 contract for a more ambitious project that allows soldiers to rehearse actual missions based on recognizance photos and the latest intelligence. This prompted the hiring of additional staff and confirms the vision outlined in Blankenship’s original business plan.