Follow Me: Benefits

Easy to Teach
It takes about ten minutes to learn the use interface & another 10-15 to truly master it. This is a immense benefit in time constrained learning environments because it allows the student to quickly get to the heart of why they are using the program which is to learn, they are not there to become specialists at playing the game. Games such as first person shooters need the player to be proficient at the controls in order to play the game well. The game itself is an hindrance because of this. If a new player is thinking about the controls for example "what key do I press to get in to the prone position" they are not thinking about tactical decisions, they are more focused on game decisions.

Correct Echelon
Arguably of the most important aspects is what level will the player be "commanding" their units. They are producing platoon leaders therefore our cadets require to be making platoon level decisions. In a first person shooter game that would need at least 30 more players to simulate a whole platoon. In some FPS games you have the ability to control AI soldiers as part of a squad or team, in other words person could control a squads worth of AI soldiers. The issue with this is that it increases the learning curve immensely & would need significantly more time to become proficient at doing. Another more critical drawback is that the AI soldiers are not smart, they won't react like actual soldiers, after all it is a game. The issue is the human player will expect them to, & when they do not, the human player becomes frustrated & loses focus, another distraction. In our classes they usually have 18 cadets. In the hour of class time they have with them, they would like everyone of them to make platoon level decisions.

Resources
Lots of institutions & organizations have limited resources. ROTC units usually do not own their own computer labs & must depend on university resources. Time is another resource that few of us have, or hours being the norm. In our case they only hours of class time with our cadets over the work of a week. & last but not least is personnel. Follow Me does not need 30 players in order to do a platoon operation, a single player can play the game & still make platoon level decisions. Our classes are maxed out at 18 cadets. They do not have the ability to field a whole platoon nor do they have the time to rotate everyone through as platoon leaders. Follow Me lets us train all 18 cadets at the appropriate level in an hours worth of class time.

Flat Learning Curve
There's a total of 11 commands in the current version of the game. Unlike most games Follow Me was specifically designed for the classroom thus it had to be simple to teach & straightforward to learn. In designing Follow Me they made no distinction between the learning audience or their instructors. In most cases both groups would have tiny to know experience in using a game to learn or teach. They wanted the instructors to be comfortable using the game & they wanted the players to be comfortable playing the game. Keeping it simple was of the guiding principles in designing the game.

Turnkey Gambling Technique
Follow Me is a sturdy gambling "system" that allows the organization to personalize it based on their needs. Maps, icons, equipment, & special media, can all be created by the user. Maps are created using a paint program such as Paint Shop or Gimp which is a free shareware paint program & for the sake of this conversation as powerful as Paint Shop. Icons are created using an icon editor such as Axialis or a free shareware editor like IconFx. Special media files are pics, audio files, film clips, or text messages, that are used to generate events in the Follow Me. For example in a recent exercise they used events to generate role playing opportunities for the cadets to solve. First a picture would be displayed showing the situation & describing the event. If the cadet desired to act on it they had to move to the roleplaying area. A role player would then proceed to that role playing area & start interacting with the cadet.