The FBI joins other US agencies that will license the game engine under the Virtual Heroes umbrella.
Our friends at Epic Games have made some excellent shooters, including the Gears of War series and the old school favorite Unreal Tournament. But the greatest impact the company has made is in licensing it’s Unreal Engine 3 to developers around the globe to make their own. Now the American government is getting in on Unreal business, albeit through a complicated web of companies and agencies. As a result, agencies such as the FBI will soon be using simulations and games designed using the same code in Gears of War 3 to train agents in a multiplayer representation of a crime scene.
The deal announced today is for a group called Virtual Heroes – part of a thinktank called Applied Research Associates – to license and support the Unreal 3 engine to government agencies. That way, there is some separation from Epic Games, who would usually handle support of its game technology, and the Federal government. Regardless, Epic is understandably excited to have their engine used by the government.
“We recognize the growing market needs of our government customers and are excited to have Virtual Heroes provide a full spectrum of focused services and support using our game engine technology,” said Mike Capps, president of Epic Games, and a helluva tabletop roleplayer.
While most of the applications for the UE3 will be medical training simulations, some of the projects sound suited to special agents in black suits and thin black ties. The “Sirius program” will develop serious games to help decision-making by helping to recognize and remove a subject’s biases in making an analysis of a situation. The FBI Academy will build a multiplayer crime scene training simulation to train new recruits at Quantico.
Just think, if Fox Mulder had this technology at his fingertips, would he have still believed in alien life?
