Full Spectrum Failure? Army Video Game Draws Fire

May 24, 2005 — -- The U.S. Army spent more than $4 million in taxpayer money to create a video game as a training tool, but gave itself no way to recoup its investment. When the game was a flop for training purposes, the game developers were free to market the product and rake in huge commercial profits at the stores. The Army got nothing.

Called Full Spectrum Warrior, the combat video game used official military battle tactics and doctrine and was supposed to help train Army recruits who had grown up playing video games, the so-called Xbox generation.

"We had subject matter experts assigned by the Army to the project from the very beginning all the way through," said Josh Resnick, president of Pandemic Studios, the company that developed Full Spectrum Warrior. "It was the only game that actually was commissioned by the U.S. Army."

But Army officers told ABC News that the battle tactics in the game were already out of date when they started using it, and its graphics and scenarios were too simplistic for use as a training tool. The contract the Army had signed gave all commercial rights from the game to the private Hollywood companies that developed it, including Sony Pictures Imageworks, leaving it with no way to make back the millions already sunk into the project.

In their defense, Sony Pictures Imageworks and its partners in Full Spectrum Warrior said they fully complied with their contract with the Army and gave the Army exactly what it called for, and now have the right to make as much profit as they can.

The Army officials in charge say they have no regrets over what happened, and that Full Spectrum Warrior was a valuable research lesson for the future.

But advocates for taxpayers weren't quite as pleased.

"They have a game and it is really sitting on shelves collecting dust and they are not really using it," said Keith Ashdown, who investigated the deal for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based taxpayers group. "They have sold a million copies at $50 a copy and the Army got nothing in return."