“We are honored to have two of our programs recognized by the International Academy of the Visual Arts,” WILL Interactive CEO and Co-Founder Sharon Sloane said. “We are very gratified to be recognized for this work and look forward to developing more programs to help men, women, and children of all ages in their quest to make better decisions.”

WILL Interactive uses a patented form of digital game-based learning technology called Virtual Experience Immersive Learning Simulations (VEILS®). This proprietary system of learning combines education and entertainment through a unique and captivating blend of technology, art, science, psychology, learning theory and game theory. WILL Interactive’s programs are often called a cross between a feature film and a video game because they allow users to play as the lead characters in live action, full-screen, full-motion, research-based movies that reflect real-life decisions and consequences in the safety of cyberspace.

The High Ground follows two playable characters in an Air Defense Artillery Battery deploying into a nontraditional mission environment. The VEILS® immerses the players in a world that they can recognize, engages them with a story and characters with which they can readily identify, and develops moral reasoning by giving them the opportunity to exercise ethical decision-making skills in a no-risk environment. The High Ground was produced by WILL Interactive using its patented Virtual Experience Immersive learning Simulation (VEILS®) technology. Development of The High Ground was funded by the Army Center of Excellence for the Professional Military Ethic (ACPME).

“WILL Interactive’s VEILS® technology combined with their outstanding creative, production, and technical teams has been a key factor in shaping improved moral development and values inculcation curricula for the US Army,” said Colonel Sean T. Hannah, Director of ACPME, US Army, Infantry. “More than any other method or technology available today, VEILS® supports the “practice-feedback-reflection-practice” process loop that is so critical to achieving authentic moral growth. We congratulate WILL Interactive on this achievement and eagerly look forward to our next opportunity to work with this outstanding company.”

WILL Interactive’s It’s Your Call is an interactive game that allows users to play out difficult situations in the safety of cyberspace before they live them out in real life. The game offers teens guidance about responsible cell phone behavior and teaches them how to use technology to enhance their personal safety. In the game, students become a live action character in an interactive movie and are presented with a series of difficult decision in a slice-of-life context. It’s Your Call was produced in cooperation with Web Wise Kids and partially funded by grants from Verizon and the ESA Foundation.

“These awards underscore the hard work that Web Wise Kids, WILL Interactive, Verizon, and the ESA Foundation have done in creating this invaluable simulation,” said Judi Westberg Warren, president of Web Wise Kids. “Our goal is to help create a safe, friendly cell phone and online experience for millions of young people. This award will help us in our mission to provide important answers to the questions that young people have about the new frontiers in modern communications.”

The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communications professionals. Founded over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards received over 9,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.

Young people in the United States start playing video games as early as age four or five.  Often the amount of time they spend at the games causes parents to be concerned. But now parents may have to encourage children to play more games.  Youngsters can find a promising career in the video gaming and technology industry as serious games are rapidly expanding along with games for entertainment.

The article also includes a quote from our own David Versaw:

David Versaw is chief financial officer of Will Interactive, a leading game development company in the Washington suburbs. The company has created video simulations for the Army’s suicide prevention programs, for FBI training on hostage negotiations and for the healthcare industry.  Versaw says there is a growing need for serious games.

“It is a great medium to reach people, people in academics started to understand the power of gaming,” he said. “The current state of the economy has slowed things down a little bit here recently. But we are busier now than we ever have been.”

Read the full article here.

Challenge
Imagine you are a non-commissioned officer (NCO) preparing for combat in a U.S. military operation and a new and unseasoned officer has joined your ranks. As a leader of your squad, it is your responsibility to be the proper buffer between the platoon and the new lieutenant. However, as you prepare for the upcoming mission, you realize you are going into battle with a variety of problems that were not resolved in pre-deployment. The necessary respect and trust for the platoon to function at its maximum effectiveness simply isn’t there—and as a result, things are about to go disastrously wrong. Deaths may occur because this critical relationship between your leadership team is malfunctioning. If you fail to resolve problems appropriately, you may even end up with a suicide in the unit.

The problem
The dilemma above is not an unusual one for a soldier serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. While traditional training programs in bases across the U.S. have prepared young soldiers well for day-to-day tactical and operational functions, there have been learning gaps that have left them equally under-prepared for issues involving leadership, improvisation, cultural awareness, and interpersonal relationships. Aware of this gap in learning, Fort Sill leaders in Lawton, OK, decided to address the challenge of how to teach soldiers to handle delicate situations, where they are forced to make decisions, the consequences of which could cost lives.

The solution
Increasingly the military is turning to virtual experience learning systems and advanced training simulations that stop and allow users to weigh their options at critical decision points, providing a safe environment in which to make choices before facing them in potentially life-or-death conditions. When military leaders at Fort Sill realized the need for their NCOs to enhance good decision making and build leadership skills they turned to WILL Interactive, Inc., a serious games developer that has now produced more than 55 VEILS (Virtual Experience Immersive Learning Simulations) for the Army, the National Football League, the FBI, large hospital systems, and other organizations. The result was a unique motion picture/video game hybrid training tool called Danger Close.

Read the full article here.

September 20, 2009
The Lawton Constitution
BY MITCH MEADOR

Fort Sill soldiers recently participated in the making of WILL Interactive Inc.’s newest training simulation, “Danger Close.”

According to Sharon Sloane, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based enterprise, “Danger Close” was shot here over a three-week period. Professional actors were used for the most part, but Fort Sill officers and non-commissioned officers appeared as extras.

“We had just wonderful support from Fort Sill in terms of production. They provided locations, equipment, subject matter expertise and just excellent general support for the production itself,” Sloane said.

“This was really and truly a post-wide effort,” said Joe Kirby, now chief of NCO Enlisted Education at Fort Sill, but at the time of the project senior instructional designer in officer education.

Sandra Pokorny, Fort Sill’s Design and Evaluation Branch chief, said Col. Dan Karbler, commander of 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, had to play a scene two different ways, angry and frustrated with the way convoy operations were going in one outcome and happy and content in the other. The Impact Zone was used for a fight scene, Comanche County Memorial Hospital offered space to shoot a hospital scene and Range Control was involved on a staged medi-flight. The Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security and the 479th Field Artillery Brigade also had a big part in the production.

An Oklahoma City agency advertised an open casting call, and auditions were held in Lawton and Oklahoma City. Some 40 actors tried out for parts. Once it was cast, Col. Allen Shell ran a Friday evening boot camp for the actors, showing them how to salute and which pieces of body armor go where. The next day the actors were taken to get haircuts.

“We’re very proud of the way they behaved. They were very respectful. They got into the script,” Pokorny said.

Maj. Brian Anderson, formerly with the ROTC program at University of Central Oklahoma, portrayed “Capt. Anderson” in “Gator Six” and was so committed to the concept that he returned to serve as a technical adviser on “Danger Close.”

As always, it takes a lot of postproduction work to create the finished product. Balanced against the video portions of the simulation are text screens asking roleplayers to make choices.

“There are actually two playable characters whose roles you assume in the simulation,” explained Sloane.

One is a platoon leader — a bright young lieutenant who has the benefit of schooling but doesn’t yet know the ropes. The other is a platoon sergeant who represents the wisdom that comes with years of experience.

“The overarching goal of the platoon sergeant is to bring everyone home safely. The sergeant brings to his job seasoned experience,” Sloane explained. “They each have their storylines which intersect among many common issues.”

“Danger Close” emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the two. It’s important they have a positive working relationship, because that’s critical to unit functions and how they will perform their missions.

But this simulation opens with what Sloane calls “the spine.” The leadership team has gone into combat with problems that were not resolved in pre-deployment. The necessary respect and trust for the platoon to function at its maximum effectiveness simply isn’t there — and things are about to go disastrously wrong as a result. Deaths occur because this critical relationship between the leadership team is malfunctioning.

“From our point of view, from the instructional side, if you don’t grab the students’ attention right up front, he’s lost. So with the big bang and everything going wrong, and all the action and the fear that’s engendered … then it stops, and you can change it,” Pokorny said.

“Danger Close” was designed with second lieutenants in Fort Sill’s Basic Officer Leader Course in mind. It’s currently being used by NCOs at the NCO Academy. Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Bliss, Texas, use it in their classrooms as well.

The WILL Interactive motto is “play it out before you live it out,” so students get to back up the simulation and make better decisions to alter the outcome. Sloane said there is a continuum of possible outcomes, from the best possible to the worst, and anything in between.

“If you fail to resolve problems appropriately, you can have a suicide in the unit. You can have an individual with performance problems,” she said.

“Everything in these simulations happened somewhere, to someone. We don’t make up random things. Everything comes from extensive focus groups,” said Sloane.

Personnel from WILL Interactive conducted some of these focus groups at Fort Sill with a broad range of senior officers, NCOs, soldiers and lieutenants, so that they could bring different perspectives to the shaping of the training tool.

“We’ve had really good results from the field,” Pokorny said of the finished product. Three military transition teams have given it excellent reviews. The NCO Academy instructor who used it as a lesson said he had trouble keeping it to his four-hour block, because students wanted to go on talking about it for up to six hours.

Kirby said the video is exceptionally good from the standpoint of keeping students emotionally engaged.

The simulation uses the same behavior modification platform as in previous Army programs. It’s one that has been proven to impact the choices that people make, particularly under stress, and improve those decisions, Sloane said. The lessons learned in the simulation may not have immediate consequences, but because the role-players remember what decisions they made and the outcome of those decisions, it personalizes the learning experience and makes it real. It provides a “reach-back” that students will remember and apply, in some cases, years later.

Something similar to what was in the simulation happens in real life, and it kicks in.

“It’s what we call ‘sticky content,’” said Sloane.

“That’s the engagement part — the emotional engagement, and it’s an area that’s not often explored, but the Army with its Army Leadership Program is moving towards that now. We’re hoping that this research that we’re doing will help advance that leadership training. It’s not just soldiering. It’s leading, it’s critical thinking, it’s more on ethical decision-making,” Pokorny said.

WILL Interactive has now produced over 50 VEILS (virtual experience, immersive learning simulation) for the Army, the National Football League, the FBI, large hospital chains and many other organizations.

A soldier in Iraq is getting valuable intelligence information from a clan leader with whom he has cultivated a relationship, when he hears screams in the leader’s enclave that he fears could be from someone being tortured.

What action should he take, and how?

That’s one of the moral dilemmas being filmed at Fort Indiantown Gap this week and next that will become part of Army training videos being produced by WILL Interactive.

Read the full story here.

They’ve also posted some behind the scenes footage of the production:

Referring to the title of the video, Jones said, “The ‘front’ stands for the battlefield, but ‘ front’ also stands for the face that a Soldier may put on to disguise the stress they are dealing with.”

“You can make a difference,” Jones emphatically told the audience. “This training shows you how to recognize the warning signs of suicide and more importantly, it shows how to deal with it, how to talk openly about depression and suicide and how to help Soldiers.”

The “Beyond the Front” training is part of the Army-wide Suicide Prevention Campaign. Major elements of this program are designed to decrease the stigma that Soldiers feel when they’re seeking help and encourage Families not to hesitate to ask for help. It is also designed to enhance coping skills and let Soldiers know that seeking help is actually a sign of strength and will not be detrimental to their Army career.

The training is conducted to inform all Army personnel, to include Families and civilian employees, of key issues that The Army’s leadership believes are of value for everyone to know about suicidal behavior and to help recognize warning signs and risk factors of those persons who might be considering harming themselves.

Read the full article here.

Local Army installations haven’t experienced an increase – since 2003, two soldiers stationed at either Fort Eustis in Newport News or Fort Story in Virginia Beach have taken their own lives. None have killed themselves while deployed, and 96 soldiers made suicide gestures or attempts over the past six years.

But like Army installations around the world, they’re wrapping up a month of mandatory suicide prevention training.

By the end of next week, every soldier and government employee at the two bases will have completed an interactive scenario called “Beyond the Front,” which is a cross between a feature film and a computer game in which participants choose how a soldier responds to certain situations.

Read the full article here.

“It wasn’t an after-school special,” said Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Correll, 35, a member of the Bear Mountain Recruiting Company in Middletown. “Some of it hit home to some people. You could really tell.”

His unit screened “Beyond the Front” last week during an Armywide recruiting stand-down day. The video follows soldiers through a series of emotional pitfalls and stops, at critical moments, to ask the audience what to do.
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“Remember the “Which Way Books” when we were kids? It was kind of like that, but in digital form,” said Correll.

And instead of scary literary adventures, the suspenseful turning points were eerily familiar to soldiers gathered around the big screen.

Read the rest of the article here.

The simulated exercise isn’t a cure-all for a fighting force stretched thin, but it will let soldiers practice making tough decisions, said Sharon Sloane, president and CEO of WILL Interactive, the Maryland-based company that produced the project in cooperation with the military.

“What this does is basically compress experience,” Sloane said. “It lets them play it out before they live it out.”

The exercise requires soldiers to make choices on behalf of Spc. Norton: Does he talk out his problems? Does he try to tough it out? Is there a middle ground?

You can read the full article here.