On the Ground with Tactical Iraqi

Elizabeth Losh

University of California, Irvine

Mission Game

Skill Builder

Arcade Game

What are the core problems that Tactical Iraqi is designed to

solve?

A chronic shortage of Arabic speakers among military personnel

A combat environment in ambiguous urban warfare settings of occupation and reconstruction

A resistance to classroom language instruction in the planned population of learners

A Pre-History of Tactical Iraqi

It originated at the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. Researchers at CARTE had previously authored a range of imaginative but seemingly disconnected distance learning initiatives that featured computer generated animated agents, software capable of expressive speech analysis and synthesis, and programs organized around the presentation of pedagogical drama.

Social and Perceptual Realism

What common rituals make us more likely to identify a given situation as realistic?

A Pre-History of Embodied Language Learning

Georgi Lozanov: Suggestology and Suggestopedia

The Commercial Market for Language-Learning Software

The Living Language series models norms of politeness in which interactions are highly regulated and proprietary rights to the physical space is not contested.

“Knock and Talk” Missions

How do soldiers learn to follow very different rhetorical rules?

How is personal space negotiated?

How do strategies and tactics differ?

Is there a role for politeness?

The Concept of Politeness

Are there universals about politeness?

What constitutes a “virtual offense”?

Brown and Levinson

Negative politeness is generally the less risky strategy than positive politeness

“It is safer to assume that H prefers his peace and self-determination than he prefers your expressions of regard.”

But many serious games involve restricting the movement of others to quarantine, question, search, and sometimes detain them.

What are the norms of commercial game engines?

Hobbesian Realism as the operative principle in Unreal Tournament

Virtual Tourism

What are the effects of architectural pastiche?

How is the area of game play constrained?

A Rhetorical History in Classical Rome:

The Method of Loci / The Palace of Memory

Virtual Iraq

The Rhetoric of Walking

Secondary Literacy

Why present a relatively media poor environment?

What concepts get ejected during the design process?

1) Measuring success by “face”-preserving interactions is deemed too complicated.

2) A female player version with “Major Kate Jones” is never built.

3) A damaged water plant becomes a damaged girls’ school.

What do these “cryptohistories” show us?

What would a game based on face look like?

Multiplayer games and online environments involve cooperative action based on reputations earned in raids, from the creation of impressive digital artifacts, and virtuoso performances of skill or demonstrations of strategy.

Is the notion of fame or reputation different from face?

How are trust-based games different?

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The Closed Bag Exchange

Friend or Foe

The Common’s Dilemma

Byzantine Generals and Non Zero-Sum Games

The Trust-Meter in The Thing (2002)

The Trust-Meter onTom Clancey’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006)

The Trust-Meter on Global Conflicts: Palestine

(2007)

Trust in the Experimental Situation

The Value of Information Sharing

Reluctant Players

Cheat Codes

Good Subjects and Bad Subjects

Teenagers Added to the Mix

What about how identity categories of race, class, and gender relate to

linguistic identity? Narratives about professionalism and military

labor

John Smith as a cipher

Samia Faris as a cultural hybrid

Language and gender difference

“These guys aren’t going to sit in class learning Arabic.”

Mainstream Media Coverage and Secondary Audiences

• Newsweek• USA Today• The Los Angeles Times• The New York Times• National Geographic• Forbes • BBC• National Public Radio• ABC News

The Society of the Spectacle

Showing pervasive problems being solved

The shortage of Arabic speakers

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among the veteran population

The difficulty of locating improvised explosive devices

Ambush! from BBS, another DARWARS

project

How is the multi-lingual voice recognition of “Sergeant John

Blackwell” different from videogames and simulations?

This life-sized

projection claims to

Speak Farsi,

Pashto, Arabic,

and Korean

Making Things Public

The Debate in the Serious Game Development Community

Instrumentalism and the question of how a game functions as a tool for individual action

Functionalism and the question of how a game reinforces societal norms

Is linguistic competence an absolute good?

How are politics and serious gaming related?

Does the SonicJihad fiasco tell us anything about that relationship?