Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!hlab
From: autodesk!robertj@uunet.UU.NET (Young Rob Jellinghaus)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Wargames and Virtual Worlds (Was Re: Questions about BattleTech)
Message-ID: <1991Apr27.234459.14903@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 91 02:20:27 GMT
References: <1991Apr25.080804.14090@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991Apr26.072659.1
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu (Human Int. Technology Lab)
Organization: Autodesk, Inc., Sausalito, CA
Lines: 79
Approved: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu



In article <1991Apr26.072659.17771@milton.u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.
washington.edu (Bob Jacobson) writes:

>I won't go into the details of the Virtuality game (which Harry Fearnham
>has done ably here, before), except to remind readers that it permits
>users to shoot down airplanes that are either machine generated or
>"piloted" by other players.  The price for use is approximately one pound
>sterling for two to five minutes of play.
....
>My own inclination is to call these systems devices of the Devil, but
>merely bashing technology doesn't get to the ideas and persuasions that
>leads to such aberrations.  How do you feel about the virtual wargames?

Your posting uses a lot of very negative terms to describe what seems
to me to be a simple arcade game using VW technology.

Would any of us argue that Space Invaders glorifies xenophobia and
inter-species warfare?  Electronic blips are, in the end, just electronic
blips.

But that's not relevant to sci.virtual-worlds; maybe soc.something would
be more appropriate.  The reason wargames are and probably will always
be popular applications of new technology revolve around the realities
of keeping the virtual voyager involved and engrossed.

An airplane simulator that's designed as a game, a toy, doesn't need to
meet any standards of interactivity.  If you just put someone in a
virtual room, and let them run around, they'll quickly begin to run up
against all the places it's "not real enough".  But if you define the
space as a game, they'll go into it with a wholly different set of
expectations; what was cumbersome and limiting will become dazzling and
exciting.  Games only need to entertain, they don't need to imitate
reality.  (In this sense, games are more "cinematic" than more plebeian
(sp?) applications of VR, and therefore more conducive to the tricks
that make movies so enjoyable.  Game programmers are way ahead of the
reat of the computer industry in terms of using tricks and hacks to
get people involved in a system.)

A game is designed to suck you in, to be fun to play.  A "real
application" is boring by comparison.  Although walking through a VR
building may be mind-blowing if you've never seen anything like it,
after a while you'll grow tired and start to notice the shortcomings.
But a game keeps you on the edge, reacting to what's happening to you,
and you don't have time to notice how slow the frame rate is.

>From my perspective, the more game-like and entertaining a VR system
is, the more fun I'll have using it, and the more likely I am to
enjoy it.  If more VR designers took hints from the game designers,
VR would thereby grow and prosper.

And anyone who sincerely believes that wargames are "creations of the
Devil" is living in a different sort of artificial reality altogether.

>Bob Jacobson
--
Rob Jellinghaus                 | "Next time you see a lie being spread or
Autodesk, Inc.                  |  a bad decision being made out of sheer
robertj@Autodesk.COM            |  ignorance, pause, and think of hypertext."
{decwrl,uunet}!autodesk!robertj |    -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_

[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  To save the space of an additional Re:, I refer back
to my subsequent comments regarding virtual wargames and their practical
implications for fundraising and corporate support.  The moral issue 
exists but is not my central concern.  I encourage Rob to actually see
the presentation for Virtuality, rather than speaking in generalities
about games.  (I play wargames myself, Rob, but portraying screaming 
users -- apparently in either agony or bloodlust -- is another game,
entirely, and that is what W Industries is doing in its demonstrations
and videotapes.)  It's really weird.

[We do live in different realities, those of us who get to tinker
in laboratories and those of us who have to go out and raise the bucks
for the tinkerers.  It would be useful to hear from others who are 
laboring to market virtual technologies and what they hear, in turn, 
from people outside the field. Could be I'm all wet.  I hope so, but
it hasn't been my experience.  The legacy of "electronic LSD" hangs on.
--  Bob Jacobson]