War of words: video game teaches combat troops to communicate.

THE U.S. Army and the Marine Corps have started using a new video game for training, developed by the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. But the game isn't a first-person shooter like most military video games. In fact, it doesn't involve shooting at all.

The purpose of the game, called "Tactical Iraqi," is to teach players to speak Arabic, pick up body language and master nonverbal communication. That may sound like snooze-city for a typical video game audience--but the skills polished in the game are at a premium during the reconstruction of Iraq.

Even something as minor as wearing sunglasses can cause insult in a culture that values eye contact. The soldier earns points for small physical adjustments, such as removing sunglasses before speaking--and loses points for inappropriate behavior, such as talking to a female Iraqi character directly.

"Facial expression, language, intonation, habits--these are all really important cultural cues that our young soldiers may or may not be aware of," said Chris Chambers, deputy director of the Army Game Project, which focuses on developing video games for training and recruitment.

But what kind of a video game doesn't let a player use his machine gun?

"Game-based training, even if it doesn't involve shooting, is more enjoyable than power-point or just straight instruction," Chambers added. More than 300 soldiers have already been trained on the software, and it's being deployed at two more bases this summer.

The game opens with the soldier walking down an Iraqi street with his first task: finding the town's leader. His team's mission is to coordinate the reconstruction of a school in the Iraqi town. The soldier must interact with characters, use social formalities, and establish an appropriate rapport while gaining the information he needs to make it through to the next level. The town leader isn't at home, he discovers, but at the local mosque. The twist opens up a new set of skills for a soldier to conduct himself appropriately while searching for someone in a mosque.

The military currently provides intensive crash courses in Arabic and some cultural training, but that's not always enough.

"The difficulty starts when you leave the classroom and don't have access to that instructor anymore," said Hannes Hogni Vilhjalmsson, a Research Scientist at ISI and technical director of the project. "We've gotten the best feedback from the soldiers who have already been to Iraq, who say they really could have used this." The game has enough scenarios for up to 150 hours of play.

A player earns points on a "trust meter," which floats in the upper corner of the screen, showing the level of trust he has earned with the Iraqi characters in the scene. When he successfully navigates a situation, he can advance to the next level.

"It was interesting to see what the soldiers would get excited about," Vilhjalmsson said. "Like the trust bars. They were getting pretty competitive with each other about it."

ISI developed "Tactical Iraqi" for the Army's Special Operations Command under a 3-year project worth about $10 million. The institute spun off Tactical Language Training LLC into a private company earlier this year to license the software and develop more games.

"Tactical Pashto," the dominant language in Afghanistan, is the next scheduled release, and the company met with the L.A. Police Department last week about developing a tactical game in Spanish.