Navy Crowdsources Pirate Fight To Online Gamers

[Rex Brynen]

Navy Crowdsources Pirate Fight To Online Gamers
By Spencer Ackerman
Wired Danger Room, May 11, 2011

OK, so it’s not exactly Call of Duty: Somali Coast. Your avatar won’t get its SEAL Team Six on and shoot pirates in the head. But the Navy still wants you — yes, you, gamer — to join in its online gaming effort to figure out what to do about the scourge of piracy.

Starting on Monday, the Navy will host one of the least likely online games ever: MMOWGLI, its Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet, something it’s been building since 2009. In a literal sense, the game is about counterpiracy, as the game encourages players to offer their best suggestions for clearing the seas of the resurgent maritime scourge. But the real point of MMOWGLI — pronounced like the Jungle Book protagonist — is a social experiment.

“We want to test this proposition: can you get a crowd to provide you with good information?” Larry Schuette, the director for innovation at the Office of Naval Research, the Navy’s mad scientists, asks Danger Room. “Is the wisdom of the crowd really that wise?”

Some additional commentary via PAXsims here.

[NY2TX]

Regarding fighting pirates there's a company named Espada Logistics and Security Group:http://www.espadaservices.com/ that is doing just that - live, not games.

[Rex Brynen]

The Washington Post also has more on MMOWGLI:

Navy calling on gamers to help with security
By David Nakamura, Published: May 15

To combat Somali pirates, the U.S. Navy has relied on warships, snipers and SEAL teams. Now, it is turning to the heavy artillery: Internet gamers.

This month, the Office of Naval Research will roll out the military’s first-ever online war game open to the public, crowd-sourcing the challenges of maritime security to thousands of “players” sitting in front of their computers.

The project — named MMOWGLI (the acronym for Massively Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet) — is a video game for policy wonks. It aims to replicate a traditional military strategy session on an exponentially larger scale, bringing together a diverse mix of government and outside experts that would be impossible even in the largest Pentagon conference room.

I've got a few additional thoughts of my own at PAXsims--including some reflections on SWJ/SWC as a competing model of how to "crowd-source" innovative policy ideas.

[JMA]

Originally Posted by Rex Brynen

Navy Crowdsources Pirate Fight To Online Gamers
By Spencer Ackerman
Wired Danger Room, May 11, 2011

Some additional commentary via PAXsims here.

What is there to "game"?

The solution to the Somali piracy problem is to deal with the pirate sanctuaries. Nowhere to take the ships and the hostages and nowhere for the pirates to hide and the problem goes away.

[Ken White]

Originally Posted by JMA

The solution to the Somali piracy problem is to deal with the pirate sanctuaries. Nowhere to take the ships and the hostages and nowhere for the pirates to hide and the problem goes away.

It's to compensate for the fact that what you suggest is easily militarily possible but politically precluded. Unfortunately. Shouldn't be, perhaps -- but is.

The Navy's just looking for a little help in ameliorating that intractable problem. Not likely to have much success but gives the appearance of concern, may produce something and causes more people to give the matter some thought -- which might even lead eventually to your Plan A being seen as the best option...

[Rex Brynen]

Originally Posted by Ken White

The Navy's just looking for a little help in ameliorating that intractable problem. Not likely to have much success but gives the appearance of concern, may produce something and causes more people to give the matter some thought -- which might even lead eventually to your Plan A being seen as the best option...

In this case I think they're more interested in playtesting the software and approach than actually generating new ideas on the pirate issue. Piracy has likely been chosen because it is a complex issue (especially when one recognizes the constraints on military action), its catchy, and its naval.

In the PaxSims piece I also reflected on the relative merits of a flashy MMOWGLI-type mechanism for crowd-sourcing solutions, versus rather more traditional online fora such as SWJ:

Since MMOWGLI has been developed to spur the development of innovative policy ideas, and since its first playtest addresses a form of hybrid warfare and emerging security threat (maritime piracy), there is another point of comparison that ought to be made, one that has yet to be raised in the media and tech commentary: Small Wars Journal. SWJ is an online community which integrates traditional online publication with a blog, discussion fora, and limited social networking tools. It does so, moreover, in a way that flattens hierarchies and encourages everyone to participate: corporals and colonels are listened to equally, and their contributions judged on the merits.

SWJ, however, does NOT have a particular trendy interface. It has no “gamification” to it at all—no built-in systems for gaining thumbs-ups, for winning avatars, or for earning status points. Despite this, the website has been widely recognized as having had substantial effect on thinking about insurgency, stabilization operations, and similar issues, within the US and around the world. SWJ even made it (together with Lady Gaga) onto Rolling Stone’s 2009 Hot List, despite having the rear end of a donkey as the focal-point of its logo.

What's more, Ken, you'll be pleased to know you got a mention:

I’m not aware that anyone who studies online communities and crowd-sourcing of policy ideas has yet looked systematically at what makes SWJ works (attention graduate students: thesis topic!). As a fairly frequent participant there, I think it has an awful lot to do with the quality of the moderation. Trolls are soon banned. Most of the participants are respectful, and the bounds of productive and unproductive dialogue are fairly well understood. Plus, of course, the “Small Wars Council” discussion forum at SWJ has Ken White. Really, what more do you need? Certainly there are weaknesses with SWJ. As they’ve expanded their publication (and received ever more contributions) they’ve had to work hard to maintain quality. Some discussions can get a bit repetitive (suppressive fire, anyone?). The participant community is not as diverse as it could be (more NGO folks, diplomats, and journalists would be useful, as would more contributors from outside NATO countries). Overall, however, it is hard to see SWJ as anything other than a success.

[Steve Blair]

Rex, don't inflate his ego any more....

He might decide to make a White House run or something similar....

[Rex Brynen]

Originally Posted by Steve Blair

Rex, don't inflate his ego any more....

He might decide to make a White House run or something similar....

Well, with Trump out now, and Chuck Norris not running, who could stop him?

[Ken White]

Billy Sherman had the right attitude toward high office.

When accorded ambiguous accolades, accept them gracefully and under no circumstances pursue them to find out what, precisely, was really meant...

And, on topic, Rex is almost certainly correct. Mine probably reflected some wishful thinking.

[JMA]

Originally Posted by Ken White

It's to compensate for the fact that what you suggest is easily militarily possible but politically precluded. Unfortunately. Shouldn't be, perhaps -- but is.

I wonder why.

Somalia is a failed state with no state control over the sanctuary areas ... yet the US will act by conducting operations into the heart of a prime Pakistani military cantonment area.

So it is not a political problem preventing action against Somali pirate sanctuary areas but rather a lack of will.

[Rex Brynen]

Originally Posted by JMA

So it is not a political problem preventing action against Somali pirate sanctuary areas but rather a lack of will.

Or, perhaps, a fuller and more nuanced assessment of US interests, and the possible liabilities of US military action.

However that is really a discussion for the pirate thread, not the "cyber warriors" thread on MMOWGLI.

[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.

Originally Posted by Taiko

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?