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March 13, 2004

The U.S. Army (more specifically, the National Simulation Center) is trying to find out how many troops are using commercial (bought in a store) wargames for training. In army lingo, these are called COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) games. Among the things the army is trying to find out are;

- What games are being used?

- What organizations are using the games?

- How are the COTS games being used (classroom instruction, exercises, informally in day rooms, etc)?

- What TLOs (Terminal Learning Objective)/ELOs (Enabling Learning Objective) are being addressed using these games? TLO and ELO are buzzwords used in army training to describe lessons to be learned and information and actions used to make that happen.

- Feedback on the success of using COTS games for training.

- How the games were acquired local purchase, private purchase, etc.)?

Include games developed under Army supervision/contract such as America's Army, Full Spectrum Warrior and Full Spectrum Command.

The army also wants to hear what uniformed users of wargames think about the potential for using COTS games in training (pluses and minuses).

This is an informal effort, but shows how important commercial games are becoming in training troops for combat.

If you are in the army, and have some experience with using COTS games for training, send you comments (before May 1, 2004) to lindstrc@leavenworth.army.mil.