Robert Brown on Pragmatic Solutions and America's Army - Jason Dobson

America's Army is one of, if not the most successful serious game yet released, serving as both a training and recruitment tool for the U.S. Army, as well as an entertaining game for both PC and console players. Recently Serious Games Source spoke with Robert Brown, vice president of Business and Legal Affairs for Pragmatic Solutions, a development partner on America's Army, to discuss the company's role on the project, as well as how Pragmatic Solutions is continuing to provide support for America's Army.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. Can you highlight in brief just what Pragmatic Solutions does, and specifically what your role is within the company?

Pragmatic Solutions, Inc.’s focus is on database driven gaming and the surrounding infrastructure that enhances that environment. From our Matchmaking and Statistics Systems to our Digital Distribution Network, our software enables gameplay while creating a snapshot of a games’ virtual environment, which allows for a better understanding of the gaming community. We view the primary consumer of our technology to be not only consumer titles but also the serious games industry. Serious games have been at the forefront of utilizing data for After Action Reviews and are poised to take the next step of incorporating the data into regular gameplay.

I am the vice president of Business and Legal Affairs, and as such am responsible for working with our remarkable development team to create business development opportunities to showcase our software. My focus is also on looking for voids in the marketplace that our software can enhance, and creating opportunities for us and for our business partners.

What has Pragmatic Solutions' role been with regards to America’s Army, both in terms of development as well as ongoing support?

Pragmatic has been a software development partner with America’s Army for almost two years now. In the beginning we were focused primarily on creating the Authentication system for the game, but with each successive release of the game, more and more of our software has been included, from our Matchmaking System and Statistics backend, to our Dynamic Content Delivery System which will first be introduced in the upcoming release.

We also are partners with the Army in the Honor program, a program designed to sell servers directly to the America’s Army Community, as well as through our Preferred Providers. This program has been successful in not only promoting the game both domestically and internationally, but also in helping the Army reduce costs by having their proceeds be invested directly into the development of the game.

Regarding America’s Army specifically, can you talk a bit about the penetration and scope of the game from the standpoint of unique user accounts?

The first installment of the game, America’s Army: Operations, was released on July 4th 2002. More than 7 million registered users have played America’s Army for more than 160 million hours since its debut. On average, players complete more than 120,000 hours exploring the Army in America’s Army each day.

What have you seen regarding the demographics of the America’s Army userbase that that most surprises you and those at Pragmatic?

We recently launched a new statistics reporting site that is available to everyone to monitor their server and players on that server, the site has been a valuable tool to show that America’s Army is truly a global phenomenon. Not only are Americans playing the game in record numbers here in the US, but also abroad. We are also seeing tremendous penetration by Non-Americans as well that simply enjoy the game as an FPS.

Since the Army does not collect personal information, we do not track demographic data specifically, so we have to tell our “story” in different ways by giving the user as much information as we can about their server, and gameplay information, and allow them to compare and contrast their own user experience to others. This is one reason the Honor system has served the game so well: by allowing users to compare their levels of success against one another, the spirit of competition is introduced along with the other values the Army promotes.

Regarding this recently launched statistics reporting site (AA-MBS), can you describe what this is exactly, and what the response thus far has been from the userbase?

As a data company, we view what our technology does is tell a “story”. A story about the user, the gameplay, the server, etc… As such, we are excited about our AA-MBS site, in that it allows us to take the data that we collect, and not only tell the “story”, but more importantly provide the tools for our user community to use the data to tell their own “stories”. They can choose their favorite servers, or save a buddy list, or search for the lowest ping.

All this information allows for the user to have an individual gaming experience, which not only enhances their gameplay, but keeps their experience fresh and exciting. The feedback we have received to date has been overwhelmingly positive. The America’s Army community is a loyal and vocal group, and the ability to get information so easily, and then be able to incorporate it so seamlessly into their own gameplay has been a tremendous success.

As this site is still in Beta, what changes are planned going forward with AA-MBS?

Probably the single biggest question we receive is why is the site still in Beta? We decided to follow what we felt was a very successful philosophy popularized by Google in letting the site out to the public, but by labeling it as Beta, it allows us to be somewhat innovative and responsive to the community as a whole. This gives the users the feeling that the site will not remain static, but instead, be as dynamic as the other aspects of our software. In the coming months, we will see new levels of statistics as well as more ties to gameplay. We will also see some promotional tie ins with business partners that we are in discussions with now, that we feel will be very beneficial to the community as a whole.

How has the group of users playing America’s Army within the U.S. compared with the international userbase?

America’s Army is still made up of a majority of U.S. users, but the global phenomenon that I mentioned before has allowed for different cultures to assimilate into the game, and more importantly enhance the social networking aspect of the game. Users can not only choose which server they wish to play on, but can also see who is on the server, and often choose to step outside of their normal Clan structure to play with other players from around the world. The ability to communicate with those players as well as play with them cooperatively as one of the hallmarks of the game, fosters the community as a whole.

Your website describes the “pragmatic advantage” as one that highlight's your company's ability to “collect data, infer traits and behavior, and integrate near real-time predictive modeling to enhance the virtual landscape.” Could you expand upon this in a bit more detail?

Each aspect of our software individually is quite impressive and would add tremendous value to most games, but where we feel the biggest advantage, or the “pragmatic advantage” comes from is in using the pieces together. The full cycle of our products, from enabling your game to a multiplayer game via our Leverage Master Browser System to the collection of data via our Leverage Statistics Tracking System, to the ability to dynamically deliver customized assets via our Leverage Dynamic Content Delivery System, allow us to use data to enhance the game.

By collecting data on a user’s gameplay, we are able to not only deliver customized content such as Ads or other types of in-game assets based on that gameplay, but we can also make more sophisticated inferences or predictive modeling of how that user might play certain scenarios, and thus enhance the gaming experience. All of these things coupled with the ability to secure those assets, or provide the mechanism to sell assets via our Asset Pay system, gives the developer another level of gameplay from the one that they originally conceived.

Specifically with regards to dynamic content delivery, some players have voiced concerns regarding dynamic in-game advertisements as something that is becoming perhaps a bit to intrusive to the gaming experience. What is your take on this, and how has Pragmatic made sure that its technology that drives dynamic content delivery adds to the gaming experience rather than hinders it?

It may sound odd for a company like ours that has developed technology that delivers in-game advertising to say, but we agree: the technology has to be a means to an end and not take over the game. In-game advertising serves a purpose in that it keeps costs down and helps ancillary funding of games, which in turn, fosters innovation, but it is important that it always be done in the context of the game and what is appropriate.

If in America’s Army, for instance, you saw a soft drink ad plastered on a hill as you were running through the desert, that would serve no purpose. What we think our technology does that is different than a lot of what is currently in the marketplace is allow for the advertising to be driven by data, which in turn allows for the experience to be customized. We feel that users will be more accepting of marketing that speaks to them, rather than marketing that is generic in purpose or meant for a different demographic.

Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you would like to add?

The tagline for our company is “without us, it’s just a game”. We are very excited to be rolling our products out, to enhance existing titles as well as titles that will be coming out soon, and are confident that the level of gameplay to gamers, and the return on investment to developers and publishers will become the norm for next generation gameplay.