Learning from Games Architectures: An Industry and Academia Collaboration

For some time, the training simulation community has looked to computer games engine technology for the latest innovations and games-based software packages successfully supports the current day virtual simulation training market. However, games are now much more than the games engines, with connected ecosystems supporting sometimes millions of players allowing them to share, collaborate, learn and compete together. This paper looks principally at Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and identifies how the design of MMOGs to promote serious competitive play has informed the new phenomena of eSports, and explores what can be learnt from such games for military training. It has been an industry/academic collaboration between Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), Ministry Projects, and Staffordshire University and has been partly sponsored by the UK MoD/Dstl through the SE Tower research programme. The study team have drawn from the expertise of over 100 people through interviews and questionnaires from academia, industry and MoD together with a comprehensive literature review.