U.S. Army Launches Game Technology Project Office

According to a report in the Training & Simulation Journal, the U.S. Army has recently created a new project office dedicated to training games, integrating video game graphics and technology into tactical simulators for military use. Colonel Jack Millar, director of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command's Project Office for Gaming, told the TSJ that despite a proliferation of military-themed games, current console titles don't address the Army's training needs. "I haven’t seen a game built for the entertainment industry that fills a training gap," he said. According to the article, Millar says the new TPO Gaming program will address "the visualization piece of those technologies, not so much the entertainment piece." TPO Gaming will reportedly develop its own Army simulation toolkit, allowing users to build and customize their own training simulations without relying on external developers, as the Marine Corps did when it adapted Bohemia Interactive's Armed Assault first-person shooter to create a tool called "Virtual Battlespace 2."