2008 Defense GameTech Conference

The agenda and presentations for the 2008 Defense GameTech Conference are posted on the web at:
http://www.peostri.army.mil/PAO/pressrelease/20080425_gametech.jsp

[Note: This is a belated posting. Google does not seem to have indexed the link above.]

Microsoft Open XNA

In 2004, the game Full Spectrum Warrior for the Xbox was published. It was a long and difficult collaboration between the Army, game developers, and Microsoft. With the exception of this game, consoles have been off-limits to serious game developers. The expensive development platforms and licensing agreements focused on games with broad appeal that would be sold in the millions of copies. However, Microsoft has made significant changes to its development model. It is now possible to develop for the Xbox360 without a specialized computer. Microsoft has also just opened up its Xbox Live service so that any independent developer can create a game and get it distributed as a software download through this online service. Potentially, this may open up the console for serious games in military training. These downloadable games will be reviewed by a committee to determine whether they violate any IP or contain objectionable content. If cleared, then they will be posted on Xbox Live for customer purchase and download. This could become an avenue for serious games distribution as well.

Serious Games Hype Cycle

In 1995 the Gartner Group created and promoted a graph that they called the Hype Cycle. It describes the boom-and-bust cycle of media coverage and popular attention to a new technology. Once the seeds of a new technology become available, companies begin working on new products that exploit it. If the technology is sexy enough, the media covers it so aggressively that expectations far exceed what can be delivered in the near-term. At some point the real products fail to meet the expectations that were generated by the media, the media and the mass audiences tag it as a failure or disappointment, and wander off to pump up some other technology. However, industry continues to work with the technology and turn it into a product. A few years later the technology delivers successful products that everyone is interested in and customers wonder why it took so long. This Hype Cycle curve has been applied to many technologies and you can see some of these in the links below.



Over the last 2 years the media and our own community have gotten very excited about the promise of serious games. During 2007, the media was particularly enamored with Second Life. There was a point at which Second Life was appearing in the mainstream business press every single week (competing for attention with Facebook). Perhaps, we have gone over the peak of attention and expectation in serious games. We may be entering a period in which many people lose interest in the subject and it is no longer seen as the next revolution in simulation. But even as the media attention wanders away, there will be developers who continue to work in this area. If the hype cycle idea holds true for serious games, then in a couple of years we should see some successful products emerge and the media recognize that the industry is finally catching up with the hype that was generated in 2005-2007.

I have discussed this idea with reps from 2 different companies that develop tools for both the gaming and the military communities. One vendor believes there is no near-term growth opportunity in serious games and are ignoring it, the other vendor believes there is a good growth curve here but the market has to get past the fractured fiefdoms and love of legacy products before it can take off (beginning in 2008 or 2009 in her opinion).

• Gartner Hype Cycle Web Site: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=130115
• Wikipedia Hype Cycle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype
  

Microsoft XNA for Serious Games

Microsoft recognized that it was difficult for game studios to create both a PC and an Xbox version of every game. So they created the XNA Framework which allows a team to create a single code base that can be compiled for either the PC or the Xbox without changes to the code. The framework provides a great deal of the functionality needed for a game (similar to a game engine, but not the same breadth of capabilities). Microsoft has released all of this code to the public so that it can be downloaded and used by anyone to create a game (specifically first-person shooters and real-time strategy games). The games developed by amateur users can be compiled to run on either the PC or the Xbox and is an effective way to turning every aspiring game programmer into an Xbox developer – similar to the approach that they took in promoting DirectX over OpenGL ten years ago. Potentially, a serious game developer for the Army could use the XNA Framework to create a military game that is ready for either the PC or Xbox. We have not seen any defense contractors working with XNA yet. However, in order for the game to run on the Xbox, the developer must get a licensing code from Microsoft. Currently, Microsoft has made it clear that they intend to give such licenses to games that fit well into their Xbox Live (online) family of games. They are not interested in seeing XNA used to create serious games, though that might change in the future.

Desktop Game Client

Delivering simulations/games to the desktops of every soldier in the Army poses a number of challenges, one of which is the ability of the soldier on the receiving end to install a new application on his G-6 provided computer. Most users receive locked-down machines that do not allow any additional installation. But a library of games would require that the user have some ability to do something like installing a module/application unique to his needs. This is similar to the delivery of Flash-based or Java applet content in a web browser. If the Flash player is installed in the browser, then all Flash content that follows can be loaded and run without system admin privileges. To deliver game content to a controlled user, we need a trusted client application playing a role similar to the browser, while all games are handled similar to Flash content. If every game-based training app was built on a single game engine (such as RealWorld), then the specific content could be delivered as data (like a new level in a game). However, physics additions to a game engine would still require the addition of new code (as in a dynamically linked library). It is unlikely that all applications will come from a single game engine.

Universal distribution of simulation software in the military is going to require either installation by the system admin or the creation of a new kind of game client manager that can handle game applications in a manner similar to a Flash file or a Java applet.

Humans as Computing Devices

Louis von Ahn is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been studying the use of games to motivate people to do useful work. He refers to his tools as “Games with a Purpose” - very similar to “Serious Games”. However, his programs focus on image recognition and categorization. They create a playful environment in which two players compete to identify what is shown in a picture. The descriptions they type into the game are captured on a server and become the text descriptions of the images. Each image is used in a number of game rounds to validate that the descriptors applied are agreed upon by multiple players. In his experiments he finds that people played this game for many hours straight – some as many as 12 hours/day. My own experiments with my children showed the same engaging behavior with the games. Using his game and the number of players he has attracted he estimates that he could create tags for all of the images in Google Images in just 5 weeks.

This idea is huge. It uses a gaming environment to motivate people to do valuable work – for free. In the military it might be used to categorize all of the intelligence/reconnaissance imagery on file. It could also be used to train people to identify what is in the images.

I highly recommend watching his lecture (51 minutes) and playing the two games he has designed.

• Google Talk lecture
  
• ESP Game: http://www.espgame.org/
  
• Peek-a-Boom Game: http://www.peekaboom.org/
  

Server-side Rendering - Sun and Nvidia

Sun has been working with Nvidia to create a capability to do both the computation and any associated rendering on the server side. Then they stream the screen image to the client device. This is significant switch from what we do with the DIS and HLA federations now. But Sun’s goal is to make it possible to experience rich 3D scenes on lightweight client devices because all of the rendering is done on the server. They are also working on a capability to use new graphic chips to render “Pixar quality” images in real-time for display in CAVE environments.

If Sun is successful then it is an indication that network bandwidth is becoming plentiful enough that we can change the model we have used for decades of creating very small data packets and doing all of the scene generation on the client side. This is valuable for customers who do not want to have to hold a powerful graphic machine in their hand (like a cellphone). Instead, customers will be able to see rich 3D worlds on very minimal computing clients, e.g. something that is capable of playing MP3 movies today. This brings down a significant commercial barrier. Even the cheapest cellphones and pocket PCs would be able to play a rich 3D game because the game would really be running and rendering on the server. It is hard to imagine a world in which bandwidth is that plentiful for the consumer. Probably it would be rolled out to industrial customers for limited applications and private bandwidth first. Their product name for this is TurboVNC.

On the military side, we would be able to tap into any scene that anyone in the training event is seeing. We could see it on a regular cellphone (if/when it becomes available through a cellular network) or a wireless pocket PC.

The Long Tail in Training Systems.

Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, explains a new side of the economics of music downloads and other digital businesses. In summary, when a product is digital and requires no physical storage, production, and shipping, then it is possible to profitably deliver millions of songs, movies, games, and software apps. We are not limited to the Top 1,000 in each category because we have to recoup costs associated with physical products.

The idea can also be applied to military training systems. We have historically focused our training systems on the people who go into combat and have done so with projects that are $50M or larger. At this price tag we can only afford to address the needs of a small portion of the military – hence the focus on those who are in harm’s way. But if we could lower the cost of training systems significantly, we could potentially acquire training systems for every single Army MOS. In the future, when every soldier has a laptop computer and every unit has a decent network connection, there could be a training application on every single Army desktop. These applications could be as ubiquitous as MS Office. To accomplish this, the training systems must be much smaller and less expensive - $1M, $100K, or even $10K to develop. If we can create valuable training systems at these prices that run in a desktop computer environment, then we may be able to serve all 400,000 soldiers in the Army.

Anderson’s original article in Wired Magazine and his Blog.

Roger Smith's "The Long Tail in Military Simulation Systems" article which explores in more detail how this can be done.

Game-based training system lifecycle support

We see systems like DARWARS AMBUSH! pressing to become a program of record. But, with a game-based system that is burned onto a CD and largely self-explanatory, what type of lifecycle support will really be necessary for it? Perhaps these types of games can survive in the military with a much smaller organizational support footprint. Perhaps one Project Director could be responsible for 30 game-based systems deployed through the Army. What type of support does a game really need? Is it significantly different than our more traditional systems/devices?

DARWARS AMBUSH!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARWARS