In July, Wired.com and Wired magazine launched an online strategy game, to explain how Somali pirates attacked and ransomed off ships. The U.S. Navy announced Thursday that it's looking for an online strategy game centered around Somali pirates.
The military game that the Navy is seeking proposals for won't be exactly the same as Wired's Cutthroat Capitalism. Instead of a single player navigating the digital Gulf of Aden, the Navy wants up to 1,000 folks to be able to hit the virtual seas together. Wired's two-part game opens with a fun little hijacking attempt. The Navy's seems to have a different conception of fun for its three-part game.
Move One is designed to get the players engaged in the game – collaborating and thinking strategically. Players attend a major International Anti-Piracy Conference being convened under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization. Players, representing various anti-piracy stakeholders, sign up as members of various working groups which are tasked with addressing aspects of the piracy problem. Once formed into teams/working groups, the players will have tasking to address activities related to military and operational coordination, information sharing, and the operational role of the regional coordination center. The complete player tasking is contained in the attachment. What the players produce: working as part of collaborative teams, the players will produce n-# of multimedia responses to the tasking they receive, where n-# corresponds to the number of teams. Assignment of players into teams: To the maximum extent practical, it is the intent that game controllers allow the teams to self organize and self manage. Thus, it is conceivable that a distribution of team sizes will exist, including some that are very small and some that are very large.
SimConference! Ooh, I can't wait to play this one!
The contract for the anti-piracy game will be awarded in the third quarter of fiscal year 2010. The Navy hopes to have a pilot version of the software ready six months later. By that point, Cutthroat Capitalism will have been online for more than a year.
