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October 3, 1997

World Game Achieves Inventor's Vision of Global Play
By DAVID J. WALLACE
PHILADELPHIA -- More than 30 years ago, the philosopher and physicist Buckminster Fuller envisioned a "World Game" played simultaneously around the globe, using computers to help solve problems of population explosion, hunger, disease and allocation of natural resources.


Credit: Bonnie Goldstein DeVarco

Buckminister Fuller's Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map

The only thing missing was a way to link all the computers. When Fuller debuted World Game at the Montreal Expo in 1967, he assumed that it would involve a handful of terminals around the world, hard-wired to each other in a dedicated network.

For the past 25 years, the Philadelphia-based World Game Institute has published research materials and held workshops that share Fuller's view of the world and his Dymaxion map, on which the continental landmasses are all portrayed in accurate scale.

Today, the Internet offers a global network linking many millions of computers, so Fuller's vision has finally been realized in a way even he could not have foreseen. In late August, the beta version of NetWorldGame was unwrapped on the World Wide Web.

World Game Workshop players assume roles as citizens of various nations and take on responsibilities for solving regional or local concerns through trade, negotiation or political discussion. The workshop takes place on a giant Dymaxion map, like one shown at the World Game Institute homepage.

Players talk with each other and exchange symbols, such as candles that represent energy resources, to reflect their actions, said Medard Gabel, executive director of the World Game Institute.

On the Web, players use links to actual embassies, political dissident organizations, interest groups and research sources for help in researching real-life issues. Perhaps a medical secretary can help reduce hunger armed with data from UNICEF. Or a wannabe ambassador will advise an environmental group on protecting endangered species using a report from the World Bank. Other links take players to search engines, global newspapers and additional resources.

"There's a richer data stream and a chance to play for more than a few hours," Gabel said, of the NetWorldGame compared to the workshop.

"But the downside is that you lose the social interaction. Some of the solutions may be very good, they may be implementable in the real world. And they may come from a high school student, a corporate lawyer or an expert," he said. "Besides reaching the current world leaders, we'd like to reach the future leaders."

A sample game of World Game Institute's NetWorld Game

NetWorldGame players choose which of 10 regions they want to represent. Or, they may be a multinational corporate executive or a "judge" who coordinates the game and monitors the action. Early beta games attracted players from Israel and Australia just through word of mouth, said World Game project director Stephen Pyne. Each round, or turn, represents a year in the region and the results are tallied after a specified number of rounds. Players themselves select the winners, usually those who make the greatest progress toward solving their region's concerns.

Implementing the online game took nine months longer than expected because some features differed significantly from the live, in-person workshop. The number of concurrent games will increase as the server capacity and data sets are updated. Early games were limited to a few dozen participants and the site tells visitors whether games are full or if players can still join.

"It's real tricky. I didn't want to be overwhelmed," Pyne said, adding that capacity will be added as popularity dictates. But the game is already taking on a new personality than what was originally envisioned by either Fuller or by the game's programmers.

"Real-time chat can't work because people are in all different time zones," he said. "So it functions more like a bulletin board, with people taking turns," he said. "We're going to be changing things, adding new material and expanding from 10 regions to 100 countries."

The game was tested last year in several high schools, and by Congress and the United Nations, Gabel said. Instead of just an educational exercise, Gabel said, the NetWorldGame is intended to spur real change in the status quo. He has been pursuing corporate sponsors to underwrite cash prizes or air travel to assist players to implement ideas on subjects from reducing pollution in China to eliminating the threat of land mines.

Another development that may be added is a password-protect element, that would allow individual classes, corporations or groups to limit a game to their own members.

As the online world has expanded, so has the audience for networked or Web-based games, said Steven Jacobs, assistant professor of multimedia development at Rochester Institute of Technology. Most games are distributed on CD-ROM because of access speed and reliability concerns on the Internet, but interactive Web-based "software toys" are growing more popular and commercial. He mentioned Dogz where people "adopt" virtual puppies and kittens and watch them grow over time via their PC.

"The standard audience for online games," Jacobs said, "is the standard audience for computer games in general: young, white males with lots of testosterone who like to shoot things." But he said that SimCity, an urban planning game, had demonstrated "a great interest in other things" as well.

"I think there are a lot of people who have an interest in politics or the environment who aren't normally computer people," Jacobs said.

As an example, he pointed to the SimHealth exercise created by the game developer Maxis. In 1994, amid the national debate over healthcare reform in the United States, SimHealth provided a means for players to operate their own healthcare company and to access various databases to learn about regulations, costs and other details.

Other games and contests are proving popular on the Web. You Don't Know Jack, an online trivia game, gets 150,000 players a month, according to Business Week.

The NetWorld Game initiative was partly financed by a $90,000 grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, said Mark Walters, who oversees the foundation's public issues grants. Because of the World Game Institute's use of technology, the leap to the Internet is a logical next step, he said. World Game was ahead of its time and had to wait for the vehicle that would best serve its global view with a real-time, worldwide reach.

"It's as if evolution created a new animal that's different in its structure," Jacobs said. "The Internet offers a structure of organization we've never seen before. The only thing that would let them achieve this is Internet. Faxes won't do it. Phones won't do it," he said.

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