ICT Games Featured in PC World Magazine Story

A PC World story about the Army’s increasing use of video games discussed ICT’s Virtual Iraq, UrbanSim and BiLAT applications. Noting that the characters in ICT games feel more human than in commercial games, the article stated, “USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has built a reputation for designing games that make commercial edutainment software look like child’s play—games that help treat post-traumatic stress disorder, let soldiers practice securing and rebuilding an Iraqi city, and even encourage them to develop their skills at negotiation.”
“[The Army is] doing a great job with weapons research,” said Randall W.Hill, Jr., ICT executive director.  “What they ask us is: ‘How do we raise [our soldiers’] cultural awareness?’”
Instead of worrying about how to make a game fun, people like ICT’s Hill and the U.S. Army’s gaming experts ask “How can we design this game to solve a problem?”
As members of the design team focus on answering this question, they come up with games that feel more realistic, more mature, and (unexpectedly) more fun to play, noted the article.
Read the full story.