DOD plays games with acquisition education

The Defense Department is looking for a few good gamers. This week, the Defense Acquisition University launched what it describes as the DOD’s first casual games site, which can be accessed by anyone interested in playing games.

There's a higher purpose, though: All of the games on the site are in some way related to logistics and acquisition.

Dr. Alicia Sanchez, the DAU’s games czar, wrote on DOD’s "Armed With Science" blog that university officials became interested in launching a gaming site when they realized that DAU students were in the same demographic as the users of other gaming sites.

Visitors to the games site will find many similarities to other games. They can collect awards and achievements for successful game play. They can rate the games, comment on them, and store their own saved games.

"The rationale behind the site was to serve as a place where professionals in the acquisition workforce could go to play games that were related to the core competencies that are central to acquisition,” Sanchez wrote.

There are currently 13 games on the site. Of those, four were created specifically for the site and have titles such as "Select-A-Cell," "Acquisition Proposition," and the "Invasion Prevention Corporation" CPI game. According to Sanchez, all of the games are designed to educate players about various aspects of logistics and acquisition. Visitors can browse the games by category, such as acquisition, contracting, logistics and system engineering.

To keep visitors returning to the site, the DAU plans to release a new game each month.