Utiliser les MMORPG pour éviter un autre Virginia Tech

Le Journaliste Carl Charest s’insurge, avec raison, de l’association que l’on fait entre les jeux vidéo et les folies meurtrières telles que ce qu’a vécu Virginia Tech. Mais ces jeux vidéos pourraient-ils permettre d’éviter d’autres tueries? Je crois que oui et voici pourquoi.

L’utilisation des MMORPG comme outil d’apprentissage à distance

Dans les jeu de rôle en ligne massivement multijoueur (MMORPG massively multiplayer online role-playing game) comme Second life, il y a de plus en plus d’institutions supérieures d’enseignements qui y offrent des cours. Ironiquement, s’il y avait de la violence dans ces cours, elle n’aurait aucun impact sur la vie biologique des victimes. Il est vrai cependant que de s’isoler de tous les dangers physiques potentiels, réduirait substantiellement le plaisir de vivre en société. Cependant, outre la possibilité d’isoler les étudiants des tueurs fous potentiels, les MMORPG offrent aussi d’autres possibilités. Les étudiants perturbés par ces événements, peuraient se faire aider, à des fins thérapeutiques, dans le virtuel.

L’utilisation des MMORPG pour des simulations antiterroristes et de tactiques policières

Déjà, les jeux de simulations multijoueurs servent à des simulations antiterroristes pour l’armée américaine et la CIA. L’univers virtuel There, est déjà utilisé à cette fin tel qu’en témoigne son chef marketing Andy Donkin dans Gamespot.com.

GS: The San Francisco Chronicle reported that you were approached by the US Army to create an antiterrorist training simulation.

AD: As I mentioned, There is a platform. A second application is a military application. We signed our first contract with the military in June of this year. Down the road, you can imagine other businesses, from a third party developer business to an international consumer product, to name two.

GS: There have also been reports that avatar-based simulations, like There, are being developed to train CIA agents. Did you ever foresee your technology being used for such a purpose? Does politics play in role in your business plan, or is all business good business?

AD: Interesting question. Remember, There was started almost six years ago in what now seems like a very different world. Terrorist attacks were not part of the US mindset. However, the founders built There around some key ideas, and it’s those ideas that have put us together with the military. Ideas like: real-world physics, subtle detail of in-world conversations and body language, and the concept of There as a planet the size and shape of the earth. I don’t think any of this was done with the military in mind. Today, we live in a world where warfare is unconventional, and the military needs “real-world” simulations with all of its unpredictability. As we mentioned, because There is a platform, we can separate the consumer business from what we are creating for the military. We were very lucky with the military, and, frankly, our product spoke for itself.

Mais la simulation ne s’arrête pas là. Il existe aussi des univers qui font le pont entre la réalité et le virtuel, à des fins de simulation antiterroristes. Ainsi, il est maintenant possible d’utiliser la technologie de positionnement géospatiale GPS et des ordinateurs portables (dans le genre des blackberry) pour poursuivre les simulations dans des lieux qui sont désormais hybrides. C’est ce qu’explique le papier Trans-reality gaming (PDF) de la Institution Technology, Art and New Media, de University of Gotland en Suède.

From Virtual to Physical Games
The last main classification dimension to be considered here is that from virtual to physical gaming. By virtual gaming we mean games that have most of their mechanics processed within a computer and have their audiovisual content delivered by computer peripherals, rather than being played out and experienced in physical space. The continuum between virtual and physical gaming, like the fiction to non-fiction continuum, can be represented as the third dimension of a classification prism(…)

Sports games by this definition are very much at the physical extreme, while current computer games are predominantly virtual. New forms of location based and mobile gaming combine both virtual and physical gaming, often using a computational and mobile infrastructure to support game play action in the real world.

Only a small number of technology based games have been developed that use real-world location as a significant factor in gameplay. An example is Botfighters, developed by the Swedish mobile-games studio It’s Alive!

(http://www.itsalive.com/page.asp). The game tracks GSM-cell locations and allows players within range of each other to score kills and gather resources to buy upgrades.
Portugese company Ydreams have recently launched a Botfighter-like anti-terrorist game introducing the concept of physical sanctuary in certain locations, such as malls and restaurants.

The projects Can You See Me Now and Uncle Roy All Around You, created by the UK mixed-reality performance group Blast Theory (http://www.uncleroyallaroundyou.co.uk/), both use handheld computers, GPS location tracking, and invisible online players to construct games where fast physical movement and device-mediated teamwork are central to gameplay.
These are some of the first games to use location and mobility significantly in game play, rather than simply delivering games by mobile devices that could just as easily be played on fixed position PCs. Can You See Me Now and Uncle Roy All Around You are also early examples that can be categorised as trans-reality games.

Les applications d’affaires?

Comme vous le savez certainement, les applications informatiques développées pour l’industrie militaire sont généralement adaptées quelques années plus tard, pour servir l’entreprise. Je vous prédis que les applications de la « trans-réalité » pourraient avoir des utilités dans les systèmes de gestion de l’approvisionnement, dans les logiciels d’apprentissages (en sécurité au travail notamment), dans les systèmes d’ingénierie (tel que ce qui a déjà été utilisé pour la Pyramide de Gizeh) et dans bien d’autres applications d’affaires encore.

Pour en savoir plus

Al Qaeda and the Internet: The Danger of “Cyberplanning”
Virtual Homeland Security and Defense Center Established

Imprimez ce billet