Navy Crowdsources Pirate Fight To Online Gamers

[pvebber]

Moderator's Note: for background to ONR project:http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/201...rowd-to-solve/

Because response was too...massive?


PAXSIMS, a great blog on training and simulation has a very insightful related piece (Rex has many great posts here too, he posted this down on the Training and Education wargaming small wars thread - I'm user challenged at linking to another post...) on the issues related to the Military and gaming here:

Micheal Peck on the military and gaming

The military spends billions on simulations of things that deliberately remove the most important piece of hardware on the outcome of military endeavors out - the human mind.

Yes, I know the reasons why comparative simulations need to keep many human effects out so the differences between systems can be probed. The problem comes in the fact many in the simulation community has sold comparative sims (that tell you system a is better than system b) as PREDICTIVE sims (not only is a better than b, but its 7.8934234% better becasue the sim predicts that many fewer casualties.

On the other hand, we have games that can provide key insights into the decision-making that may reveal that 7.8934234% fewer casualties has little to no efffect on the actual military outcome, or that higher order effects and consequences may lead to system b being more desrable despite having higher "measures of performance" in cases where we do not appropriately map MOPs onto measures of effectivenss, or get the MOEs wrong.

Gaming can be a key part of concept development, and the idea of including those outside the military in that effort is an interesting area to investigate.

But when we label something innappropriately (MMOWGLI is not a MMOG in the sense the general public thinks of MMOGs - its a "good idea generator" and a limited one at that - 140 characters make it an "intersting tweet generator) and then have to do things like this, its sends the signal to the gaming public "how can they runa awar if they can't run a game" and to the higher ups "another game thing gone off the rails...see why we shouldn't do this!?!")

If the military wants to seriously do gaming, it needs to take gaming seriously and invest in these with the right expertise.

Can't see any susscessful MMO, with a specific focus on military training, coming online until developers and programmers work on ironing out A.I.

A.I. has/is/will always be the largest hurdle to over-come. That is why MMO were invented as it takes away the artifically controlled character (NPC) and replaces it with a human controlled character (PC) in a gaming world populated by other human controlled characters rather than A.I.

I would of thought that Multi-player based server games, either first-person or real time strategy, would be a better investment, as it does not rely on artifical intelligence to control the characters that populate the world, hence, you will have humans reacting to other humans, not A.I. However, reading your main points I'm not sure if I am understanding the problem correctly.

The biggest problem with A.I is that it teaches a gamer to be lazy. All you need to do is work out the A.I move set and the encounter is rendered useless for the gamer. The other problem is that A.I greatly deminishes the ability of the gamer to improvise as they learn by route how to over-come A.I move-sets.

Sorry for double post.

Friction: One thing I am curious about is how do developers propose to introduce 'friction' (external factors beyond the control of the strategist that impact at the operational and tactical level)) into a real time strategy sim?

I have only had experience (20 years, started when I was 15) with commercial RTS sims, so I am not sure how far ahead of the development curve military sims are to commercial developers. I would assume the military sims have a much broader range of assets/technology to work with?

MMOWGLI recently launched its prelaunch playtest of Turn 2 for invited participants. I'll try to post my impression when it is over (although my ability to participate is limited by a rather dodgy internet connection in my present location in Nairobi).

In the meantime, my take on Turn 1 can be found here.

I would also be curious as to how/if the developers can/will introduce the element of 'luck' into the simulation. Luck in war is one of the most difficult variables to measure, simply because it is very hard to define it into a mathmatical equation.

I know that there are a number of prominate table top real time strategy games that introduce the element of luck via dice rolls. There are also commercial sims that have tried to equate luck and friction into the game. The most notable would be Company of Heroes developed by Relic. If you have read CvC you would know that he used gaming metaphors through out his work. "Rolling the iron dice" is one of the best aphorism for understanding the element of luck/chance in war. Trying to replicate those wider intervening external variables in a sim would be interesting.

I would also be curious as to how/if the developers can/will introduce the element of 'luck' into the simulation. Luck in war is one of the most difficult variables to measure, simply because it is very hard to define it into a mathmatical equation..

Stochastic processes are integrated into a great many military simulations.

MMOWGLI, however, isn't a simulation or wargame. Rather, it is a crowd-sourcing/brainstorming platform, with some gamification.

Some further reflections on MMOWGLI after completion of Game Turn 2.

This past week, the Naval Postgraduate School ran a prelaunch playtest of Turn 2 of the MMOWGLI crowd-sourcing platform. Building on the earlier Turn 1 anti-piracy scenario, this time they advanced the clock to 2014 when a “Yemeni-Somali Union” had emerged to sponsor piracy in the area....

Incidentally, could a mod combine this thread with the other one on MMOWGLI?