BreakAway offers disaster simulation game free to cities

Ever since the invention of chess in 6th century India, military planners have looked to games to simulate real-life scenarios. During the cold war, military and diplomatic officers would gather at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California to engage in three-day-long exercises in which they would rehearse nuclear exchanges with the Soviet Union. By the 1980s, however, video games had siezed the imagination of civilians and military planners alike. “Watch a ten year old boy playing Space Invaders,” Ronald Reagan told a crowd gathered at Epcot Center in 1983, “and you will appreciate the skills of tomorrow’s fighter pilot.”

Video games did not turn out to have as much promise as Reagan had hoped. Attempts in the 1990s to train Marines using a modified form of the popular Doom shoot-em-up came to nothing. Skillfully deployed, video games can help develop practical skills, but the interface must be carefully focused on concrete tasks and expectation kept to a moderate level. The fun level cannot override the pedagogical objectives.

Game developer BreakAway games believes it has found the correct balance in Incident Commander, a training simulator “that gives players a lead role in managing crisis situations such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters,” and school hostage situations, according to a report in the Washington Post. Developed for municipalities with limited emergency response training resouces, players learn critical skills in developing emergency management budgets, allocating resources, and setting up commissaries to comply with federal requirements.

Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Breakway received a $350,000 grant from the Department of Justice to develop the game. Not available for commercial use, municipalities can contact the company to receive a free copy.

-read more in this Washington Post report; learn more about the company and how to get a free copy of the game at this Web site