Investigating the Use of Computer Games and Virtual Worlds for Decentralized Command and Control

Executive Summary This report serves to document results from a one year research study (July 2010-June 2011) that investigates how computer games and virtual world (CGVW) concepts, techniques, and tools can be employed to create an online virtual world (VW) that supports experiments in decentralized command and control (DCC). We refer to this project and the CGVW we have prototyped collectively as the DECENT project and system platform. DECENT is a platform for exercising and assessing the potential of a VW-based approach to decentralized C2, as well as to compare our efforts with others closely related. Overall, we find this effort gives rise to very promising results that point to additional opportunities and system extensions for new ways to consider the potential of decentralized approaches to C2 that merit further systematic investigation and experimentation. DCC is envisioned as a new approach and model for how to organize and experience command and control systems, mission planning and scheduling processes, and physically decentralized user practices using low-cost or free (no-cost) software technologies. Our choice to employ CGVW technologies is in part influenced by the growing pervasiveness of such technologies, their availability as open source software and/or in user modifiable forms, and their widespread use by a new generation of online computer users who may see/anticipate that such technologies will become ubiquitous in future enterprise settings. Next, our interest in not to simply replicate or mirror existing C2 systems, nor their traditional patterns of usage. Such usage generally assumes both centralized, hierarchical organizational authority and centralized location of users. Instead, our interest is to explore the alternative space where decentralized approaches to organizational decision-making and workplace location (e.g., top-down but physically dispersed versus peer-to-peer and physically dispersed) may be subject to experimental variance and study. We also find that a number of computer games also suggest system features applicable to C2, as well as distributed individual/group problem-solving, using popular card games. Again, these may be candidates for further systematic study that can shape how next-generation C2 systems can be designed to support/embrace future workforce interests, skills, and capabilities. We similarly identify and compare a small set of related technologies that could be compared to the efficacy of the VW technologies that we employ (OpenSim, an open source software toolkit for building, navigating, and socially interacting). OpenSim 2 provides many interesting affordances, some which are common to most VWs. But it is these affordances …