When Orcs Run Away: Serious Games, Simulations and Autonomous Actors in Evolving Worlds

Peter Jackson’s enormous success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy depended in no small part by the technical breakthroughs that create the complex world of Middle Earth. In particular, “Peter Jackson and his team made great breakthroughs in [artificial intelligence]” that made the orcs and other demons believable, according to Terry Borst, who spoke at this week’s WedTech in the Great Room at Santa Fe Complex. So intelligent, in fact, that Jackson found a small contingent of orcs in the rear of a battle scene that decide to run away.

These non-player characters are a key part of the believability of games and simulations, said Borst, who is a film and television writer who has also been scripting and collaborating on the design of entertainment videogames and (more recently) training and educational games for more than a decade. The co-author of Story and Simulations for Serious Games, a handbook for the design, representation, and production of digitally-delivered training environments, Borst is exploring the use of computer games for training and education.

“We are at the precipice of radically redefining the nature of story, narrative, and learned experience, and I’m interested in seeing how we can use new tools to further this leap into the unknown,” he explained.

To support his contention, Borst demonstrated Fully Involved, a game to train firefighters in incident command. “Firefighters get less training today,” he said. “but that’s a good thing.” Thanks to building codes and modern construction materials, there aren’t as many fires today and, therefore, firefighters have fewer opportunities to experience actual firefighting conditions. Small firefighting units get almost no practice, especially in small towns and rural areas, Borst explained.

Fully Involved is a modestly-priced, by game development standards, simulation of the decisions firefighters face. The NPCs and other components are not as developed as other games but it cost under one million dollars to develop. It walks firefighters through various scenarios to train them to look for dangers and make decisions as the simulated fire progresses.

A higher end game is Leaders, which Paramount and the US Army developed to training new company commanders. While it’s production values are significantly higher than Fully Involved both games serve the purpose of training decision makers on how best to protect their personnel in difficult contexts. As such, they explore the potential for virtual training to improve current education systems.

Find out more about Terry Borst and his work at http://www.terryborst.com.