Posted on 11/08/2002 7:36:03 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The Pentagon is taking notice of the latest advancement in video technology -- online games that can accommodate thousands of players simultaneously, sources say.Since the late 1990s, the industry has spun out more than two dozen massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Each game charges a monthly fee, usually between $10 and $13, which affords anybody with Internet access and a personal computer connectivity to the game and other players 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Popular MMOGs are attracting some 400,000 subscribers and have connected about 40,000 players online at once. The numbers are significant compared to early generations of the games, which were plagued with molasses-slow downloads and even occasional server crashes, knocking users off-line.
Industry experts say the past year has been marked with significant advancements in online gaming; next-generation games are aiming to sign up pools of 700,000 subscribers and accommodate up to 100,000 players simultaneously with fewer technical glitches and more sophisticated scenarios.
"Right now, you've got dozens of companies trying to put out these [next-generation multiplayer] games over the next two years," said Neal Wiser, president of UltraPrime Network. Because of the money that can be made with even a modest subscriber base, "all the large gaming companies are getting into this," he added.
Last month, Wiser's Philadelphia-based company announced plans to develop an MMOG that will allow thousands of players to interact with a new science fiction television series. While many of the technical aspects remain under wraps, Wiser said "The Evolvers" will link those playing the game on their PC with other subscribers to influence the outcome of a television show. Research for the effort has been so intense that players and viewers should feel as though they are actually traveling through space or landing on Mars, Wiser said.
The money being spent to develop these games is astounding, dwarfing many military research programs. Earlier game versions cost about $1 million each to develop; the next fleet of games will cost an average of $3 million to create, with the more ambitious ones requiring as much as $10 million. The Evolvers is expected to cost about $5 million.
"You get that many subscribers, the technology has to work," Wiser said.
Training and Recruiting
Sources say the technical advancements in recent months and investments being made by industry have attracted attention from the Defense Department's office of the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence.
Spokesman Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan said OASD(C3I) officials are "doing demos of various products and potential solutions," but declined to give specifics. He said DOD is "investigating massively multiplayer and other forms of online gaming for a host of potential uses including training and recruiting."
Turning to the entertainment and gaming industry to improve training and recruiting is nothing new.
In 1999, the Army partnered with the University of Southern California and the filming industry in the region to explore virtual reality and artificial intelligence technologies that might enhance training.
And this year, the service released "America's Army," a multiplayer online game intended to attract new recruits.
Researchers spent two years and $8 million to develop the game, visiting more than a dozen Army posts to record sounds and sights that would later be translated into digitized video.
Players must complete combat training, including basic rifle marksmanship, and earn adequate scores to advance. No one is allowed to play the villain; if participants do not adhere to military law or established rules of engagement, the player's game character will wind up in a cell at Fort Leavenworth, KS, accompanied by a blues-playing harmonica.
America's Army currently has 969,000 registered players, the largest number of any subscriber pool for a networked game, and up to 182,000 players can sign on at once.
The difference between the Army's online game and future MMOGs is the number of players that can interact together simultaneously. While the game allows for a high number of players to log on at the same time -- requiring up to 7,000 servers to accommodate them -- players must join 13-member teams, capping the number of gamers who can interact simultaneously at 26.
But with recent developments in server technology, the Army Game Project might be able to offer future recruits even more player interaction and more realistic scenarios, officials say.
The Naval Postgraduate School's Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulations (MOVES) Institute in Monterey, CA, plans to spend approximately $11.5 million this fiscal year to continue research on several efforts, including how to improve America's Army and develop new games.
The institute is specifically researching the infrastructure to provide "scalability, dynamic extensibility and semantic interoperability," as well as the ability to model human and organizational behavior for artificial intelligence "play" in networked worlds, according to its director, Michael Zyda.
"We are looking at how people develop strategies in a large-scale game and how we can learn from that play," Zyda said.
Industry experts speculate the attributes of the latest online gaming technology would transfer readily to the military training arena because many games require players to develop strategies, orchestrate raids on targets and form alliances with partners they cannot fully trust.
"You have to balance your assets [in the game] like you would a [military] campaign," said Doug Mealy, a spokesman for several online gaming companies and president of Online Marketing and Public Relations. Also, consequences can play out simultaneously, similar to the way it would on the battlefield, he said.
One example is "PlanetSide," a new game Sony Online Entertainment plans to launch next year. Thousands of players will be able to virtually "wage battle" against each other using ground vehicles and aircraft in a "globe-spanning, far-future war of epic proportions," according to a company announcement.
Sony promises lifelike graphics, changing weather and ambient sound.
"Tactical decision-making, adrenaline-inducing action and social involvement make for one of the most compelling game environments ever created," the company states.
Experimentation
The success reported by the Army Game Project and recent technological developments by industry has also lured U.S. Joint Forces Command in Suffolk, VA, according to officials there.
Last summer, JFCOM held the first large-scale joint experiment to test the efficiency of new warfighting concepts. One concept was a 55-person team known as a "standing joint force headquarters" that led a joint military campaign from various locations across the United States, including midair aboard a C-17.
The experiment involved approximately 13,500 people in live exercises and thousands more connected online or simulated.
The feat required a significant amount of collaborative tools, which JFCOM officials say were mostly commercial products tweaked to fit the purpose of the experiment. The intent was to move the military toward a highly collaborative and mobile planning environment by inspiring changes in training and doctrine. Experiment leaders say they accomplished their goal, increasing drastically the number of participants involved in creating a war plan and compressing the time it took to draft a major tasking order.
Annette Ratzenberger, JFCOM's chief of experimentation for joint experimentation, said the command is "looking very closely at the multiplayer gaming technology activity being conducted" by the MOVES Institute and other researchers, to determine whether the technology could be applied to improve military experimentation.
Under Wraps
Whether the next wave of online gaming technology has the potential to transform future war games and training practices remains unclear. OASD(C3I) officials declined to say what products they are examining and how they envision those technologies being used, if at all, except to confirm that demonstrations had been held.
Likewise, the Army Game Project was conducted with very little information provided to the public until its launch at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in May 2002. Officials wanted to wait until the technology worked and leadership granted its approval of the new recruiting game before going public.
"I am superstitious," Zyda said. "I believe it is very bad form to appear in the press until it's all real. We announced [America's Army] when the game was ready to play and show to the world and not before."
-- Anne Plummer
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.