Figure 1: AusGame System ModelMark A Gregory BEng. (Elec)(Hons) MEng., Senior Lecturer, Department of Communication and Electronic Engineering, RMIT University, m.gregory@rmit.edu.au
Steven Michener BSc. MSc., Interactive Entertainment Technology Pty Ltd ceo@ietec.com
Professor Paula Swatman BEc. PGDipBus. Ph.D., Director, Interactive Information Institute, RMIT University, paula.swatman@rmit.edu.au
Internet Entertainment, Social Issues, Ethical Issues, Training Developers, Industry Involvement, Case Studies
Growth in the development of Internet Entertainment applications and systems is likely to rival Internet Commerce as the largest growth area of the Internet in the next decade. Internet Entertainment is the application of programs and systems on the Internet to provide a means for Internet users to participate in an activity that is entertaining and more than cursory. Examples of Internet Entertainment are single and multi-player games played through Internet host systems, interactive video and multimedia systems and Internet "Infotainment" web sites.
This paper will show that the potential market for Internet Entertainment is considerable and to achieve even a small market penetration should provide a reasonable income. The Internet provides avenues for advertising and income derived from the provision of different forms of Entertainment.
There is significant demand for graduates who have considerable knowledge in the tools and techniques used to develop Internet Entertainment applications and systems. Research into Internet Entertainment systems is being used as a vehicle to provide undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology with the requisite knowledge.
The Interactive Information Institute [HREF1] at RMIT University [HREF2] supports the research project. Each of the research project activities relies on key technologies, such as web sites, user downloadable programs, client server components and databases.
The growth in Internet Entertainment has been largely understated in the media. A low-key approach is generally used to alert Internet users to new developments in Internet Entertainment. This topic is explored to provide an understanding of the forms of Internet Entertainment and the social and ethical dimensions.
The proportion of the total population to grow up since the beginning of the personal computer age is increasing. This section of the population is considered to be the "computer literate younger generation". As the computer generation grows we see some interesting trends developing. One of the trends has been a change in the leisure activities of younger people. No longer do we see younger people spending their leisure time as their parents did. Now leisure activities for the young are likely to involve some form of electronic computer technology.
The number of core creative people involved in the development and release of a major new CDROM game has now reached a level that rivals the number of people employed during the production of a medium-sized animated film. The games are a sophisticated example of an expanding entertainment form, using state of the art technology, massive computing power and involve plots that require more than a cursory effort.
The Internet is a recent phenomenon and there is already an unsatisfied demand for trained people who will participate in the development and implementation of new Internet Entertainment applications and systems. The growing effort required to satisfy consumer demands for more sophisticated entertainment is bringing many new people into the industry from nearly every professional category
The second part of this paper will report on the progress of undergraduate and postgraduate Internet Entertainment research efforts at the RMIT University Interactive Information Institute. The research being carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students is used as a vehicle to provide graduates with the requisite knowledge necessary to be successful in the Internet Entertainment discipline.
What is Internet Entertainment? Internet Entertainment can be defined as the application of programs and systems on the Internet to provide a means for Internet users to participate in an activity that is entertaining and structured.
Why is Internet Entertainment important? Internet Entertainment is important for the pleasure that it will bring to the Internet Users and for the revenue that it will bring to the service providers.
US Senator Jon Kyl [HREF3] recently wrote "$600 million was illegally gambled on sporting contests over the Internet last year. That is a ten-fold increase in this criminal activity from just a year earlier, according to the Department of Justice. Numbers like that support the prediction by law enforcement that "cybergambling" on the Internet will be a multi-billion dollar industry by the year 2000".
Microsoft has entered the Internet Entertainment industry in a big way. The Microsoft Game Zoneä [HREF4] Newsletter "IN THE Z O N E", March 1999 (#14) contained the following statistics:
Microsoft’s revenue streams from the Game Zoneä include:
The Microsoft Game Zoneä could be considered to be an indication of the future of Internet Entertainment. If this is so then revenue from the premium games alone would be more than US$25 million per year based on an average of 1500 participants per hour.
By reviewing the earlier newsletters it is possible to see that the number of people using the Microsoft Game Zoneä is increasing rapidly. The Game Zoneä statistics quoted show that at peak times over 31,900 users connected simultaneously to the Game Zoneä. If an Australian company was able to start their own interactive game site and to attract even a small proportion of the people currently accessing the Microsoft Game Zoneä then this company would achieve a reasonable income.
This example should not be considered in isolation. The prediction made by Senator Kyl that the US Internet gambling turn-over being in the multi-billion range by the year 2000 is an indication that a global prediction for all forms of Internet Entertainment may be in the multi-hundred billion range in the decade after 2000.
Forms of Internet Entertainment can be categorised and parallels exist with other forms of entertainment. Many forms of entertainment fall into one or more categories.
There is a synergy between Internet Entertainment and Electronic Commerce. Where Internet Entertainment involves payment by the Internet User to gain access Internet Entertainment becomes a form of Electronic Commerce. Electronic Commerce (Wigand R. 1997) is defined as:
The following is a discussion of some of the social and ethical implications of Internet Entertainment that may warrant the attention of social professionals.
Both individually and collectively, humans easily become enthralled and even obsessed with new concepts and ways of relating to the world such as with our love affair with television.
In "TV Mania: A Timeline of Television" (Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1998), Pavese and Henry track the history of American entertainment programming. They note that at the inception of regular network programming in the mid-1940s, television was viewed as a "magic window on the world" but over the years has received a broad spectrum of moral judgements.
Always controversial, television has been maligned as dangerous - due variously to its content or its command over our time - and praised as a medium that brings us together. It has empowered education, individual understanding, and a wealth of shared memories as diverse as the first walk on the moon and the last episode of "Seinfeld".
Today, with over fifty years of television entertainment behind us, the act of watching television is an integral part of everyday life in many, if not most, countries around the world. Yet we seem to lack the perspective to fully understand our relationship with this powerful and still-evolving medium, let alone make a definitive statement on the nature of its impact.
Worldwide, surveys are indicating enormous growth in Internet use. In Australia, an article in "The Age" newspaper of 2nd March 1999 notes that: "Data released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that nearly 4.2million adults - or 31 percent of the adult population - had Internet access in the year to November 1998" (Farrant D. 1999). The rapid growth in the number of users represented by this level of access cannot, of course, continue at the present rate, but there is clear evidence of a rush to obtain Internet access by obtain Internet access by people of all walks of life.
The Internet was opened up to commercial usage in March 1991, after the National Science Foundation lifted restrictions on the commercial use of the Net. Although the World Wide Web was released in the same year, it was not until the wider acceptance of Web browsers (such as Mosaic, launched in 1993) that interest in the Internet really took off. As Hobbes' Internet Timeline [HREF6] succinctly describes this phenomenon: "1993 - Mosaic takes the Internet by storm; WWW proliferates at a 341,634 percent annual growth rate of service traffic".
At first, it was not possible to interact easily in a direct, real-time way with other people, but this is no longer the case. With advances in Internet telephone, video conferencing, chat rooms and interactive Internet activities it is possible that the average person will have daily contact with more people that they were able to contact before joining the Internet. The difference is that the interaction is not a physical one. Does this matter? It is possible that this may affect Internet users who do not interact with others yet most people do not closet themselves away from the real world.
Isaac Asimov (Asimov I 1957) discussed the issue of virtual versus physical contact in a series of visionary novels published in the 1950s.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to resolve this contentious issue - but it is clear that this is a rich field for research into Internet usage.
While Australian governments are progressing legislation and regulations for interent gambling anti-internet gambling proponents in the US recently moved to have Internet Gaming prohibited.
The following quote is from an Interactive Gaming Council [HREF7] press release on October 21, 1998:
The general position that has been adopted by organisations supporting Interactive Gaming has been that an attempt to prohibit Interactive Gaming would be almost impossible and a great waste of precious resources.
That there are social and ethical problems associated with Interactive Gaming is not in dispute. The following quote is taken from an article written by U.S. Senator Jon Kyl called "Gambling on the Internet [HREF10]" and released on Friday 13 March 1998:
To discover the depth of the social and ethical problems associated with gaming one should visit the many organisations like 36 affiliate Councils and non-affiliated Councils of the US National Council on Problem Gambling, Inc [HREF11]. The US National Council on Problem Gambling defines Problem Gambling as:
One of the vast number of US problem gambler support organisations is the North American Training Institute [HREF12] (NATI). NATI is a division of the Minnesota Council on Compulsive Gambling Inc. The NATI mission statement is:
The evidence is fairly strong that people like to gamble. Should the individuals desire to new forms of Interactive Gaming be the overriding concern or that there is a social cost and ethical dilemma associated with Interactive Gaming? Is it simply a case of saying that trying to ban Interactive Gaming over the Internet would be nearly impossible and a huge waste of precious resources?
Although adult entertainment site operators may see themselves as providing a valuable service many people see adult sites as the most invasive form of Internet Entertainment.
The methods used by adult entertainment site operators to advertise are becoming more provocative. Junk e-mail from adult entertainment site operators abounds. A new approach is to use Web page redirectors. If an Internet user accidentally misspells a URL, for example http://www.microsofy.com/, the Internet user is sent to an adult entertainment site, http://www.babekiss.com/.
The end result of this behaviour may be greater regulation of the Internet - yet to some, any restrictions placed on the Internet may be abhorrent. Another approach is to promote development of Internet tools that will limit or prevent access to certain categories of Web sites from the computer on which the tool is installed. A good example of this type of tool is NetNanny [HREF13].
Unlike television, which in its original format has now practically reached saturation levels in the industrialised world, Internet technologies and applications will reach further into our working and entertainment domains. Some people see large screen 3D-video Internet telephony, virtual reality and other technologies taking us towards world community, eliminating isolation and prejudice. On the other hand, some fear the technology is leading us to real time pornographic gambling pestilence, with the concentration of development of expensive emerging technologies in a few countries, companies, or techno-tyrants.
The only certainty is that the technology is coming with social change to follow. Ignorance will serve the abusers of human nature. Serious research and education in Internet Entertainment will equip developers and users of the technology with the knowledge to make more informed decisions effecting the future of us all.
The initiative by Multi-Media Victoria to establish the RMIT University Interactive Information Institute, is a positive leap in the necessary research effort.
The Internet is no longer unsophisticated. There is competition in all categories of Internet activity. How do you attract Internet users to your web site? How do you create a "category killer"?
The answer to this involves understanding corporate history. Search for market niches. Be first. Create and maintain global alliances. Use the latest technology to make your site the most captivating. Take every opportunity as they come along.
Training Internet developers is not a simple task. The Internet developer must understand many things to become a leader in their chosen field and the most important of these is how to work in an Internet development team.
It is most unusual today for a single person to develop and maintain a web site. It is possible, however, it is likely the web site would be limited in the technologies used.
A typical Internet development team would consist of the following people:
There is a gulf appearing between the individual skills training being provided by traditional training establishments and the skills needed to gain good employment. Put simply, it is not sufficient today for a computer science graduate to have a good knowledge of "C++". The computer science graduate must have experience in how to write ActiveX controls, COM components, using CORBA, writing ISAPI filters, writing Microsoft Windows NT™ services and so on.
This problem appears for all graduates who wish to gain employment in an Internet development team. Most companies realise that graduates are generally in need of an additional training year to learn individual and groups skills beyond those being provided by the training establishments.
Whilst a traditional training establishment is usually very good at providing individual skills they are not very good at providing group skills. This is often because it is perceived that the types of activities required for the development of group skills are beyond the capabilities of the training establishment. A university is not likely to set up a car manufacturing plant so as to ensure that mechanical engineering graduates learn to work in the vehicle development team. However it is very possible for a university to set up Internet site development teams aimed at different Internet industries.
Put simply, the training establishments should provide students with necessary individual skills and then the students should be placed into an Internet development team for further training. The Internet development team should consist of undergraduate and postgraduate students who range from just entering the team through to those nearing graduation. There is a need for academic support and some professional staff who provide continuity. The students put into these teams should include all of the disciplines identified in the "typical" Internet development team listed above.
What should the Internet development teams do? The Internet development teams should work on real Internet sites that are either showcases of development or operating sites sponsored by industry.
The first two Internet development teams at RMIT University were activated in 1996 and there has been over 50 students involved with the two teams to date. In addition there are five professional staff working part-time on the projects. As time progresses more students are asking to participate and they are coming from a wider range of University Departments. The mechanisms to permit students from different Faculties and Departments to participate together on a single project are still being worked out.
An Internet Interactive Gaming site is being developed at the RMIT University Interactive Information Institute in conjunction with Pacific Casino Management Pty. Ltd. This activity can be found on the Internet at AusCasino [HREF14]. The original purpose of this research activity was to develop a regulatory model and core technologies that will provide security, user friendly operation and will satisfy government scrutiny. It is intended that this system will become an operational system in 1999. The system will operate in one of the Australian States that have recently moved to legalise Internet Interactive Gaming.
A generic Internet Entertainment site is being developed to showcase multi-player game technology. This activity can be found on the Internet at AusGame [HREF15] . This is an excellent ongoing activity. Students are interested in games, especially multi-player games. This activity could potentially continue forever.
The AusGame system model is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: AusGame System ModelThe key components in the AusGame system are:
The information flows shown in Figure 1 are:
Some of the important features of this system model are:
When each game client connects to the game server a new "thread" is created to manage this connection. The game server maintains a game state record that is used to provide the information needed to "freeze" the game at any instance. Users can opt to stop a game and continue the game at a later time.
A significant feature provided by this system model is to provide a level of reliability unmatched today to the authors knowledge. If one of the players is disconnected unexpectedly from a game the game server will shift the game state record to different memory, close the lost users connection thread and inform the other game player that their opponent has been unexpectedly disconnected. The player who was disconnected is provided with an opportunity to rejoin the game for up to 15 minutes prior to the game server cancelling the game and providing the player still active with a choice of storing the game for future play or discarding the game.
This level of reliability is considered very important to maintaining the interest of the average user. Internet lag, line dropouts and other communication problems are still reasonably common. If a user has been playing a game for a period of time the user will be most disappointed if a communications problem prevented the user from continuing. The most hated of all game errors is the dreaded "synch" error (a term used to describe all manner of problems) which usually accompanies a message saying your connection to the game was lost.
There is an associated processing and bandwidth cost when providing high reliability. Many real-time games may not be able to operate under this regime on the Internet today. With the introduction of Internet 2 it will provide an opportunity for all game developers to revisit this issue and to provide greater reliability similar to that implemented in AusGame.
The game clients are written in either Java or ActiveX depending on the degree of animation needed. The game clients communicate with the game servers using raw sockets. The game server is probably the most interesting of the components. The game servers are currently written in Win32 API as Microsoft Windows NT services. The level of expertise needed to correctly write and debug NT services is high. With the introduction of ATL 3.0 the AusGame game servers are being converted to ATL 3.0 and being re-written as NT services with COM objects.
The introduction of COM has prompted a rethink of the structure of all of the system components. The capabilities provided by the distributed task allocation possible with COM should provide productivity and efficiency gains.
Students learn a range of skills by participating in the research project. As this activity has been going now for about three years a routine has been adopted to ensure that students gain knowledge and skills in minimum time so that they are able to move onto completing tasks that are more demanding. The cycle described below is primarily aimed at the graduates who will fit into the category of "programmer" in the Internet development team. We have adopted training cycles for other categories of student.
To gain an understanding of the methodology to move programming students through the learning cycle several issues need to be explained and justified. The first of the issues is the choice of platform and development software. The development of Internet applications or systems can be achieved today with a myriad of tools on a number of different platforms. There was a need to reduce the number of tools used by the students. Students would be able to concentrate their learning by only using a few application development tools and for the research supervisors to provide support by gaining expert knowledge of a limited range of application development tools.
The choice was simplified further when RMIT University entered into the Microsoft University Select License program. The operating system for all development and operating platforms is Microsoft Windows NT™. The Microsoft Visual Studio™ suite of application development tools are used primarily, however there is a need to utilise the Microsoft Java Development Kit and the Microsoft Platform SDK for some of the development.
The first activity that programming students carry out is to progress through two of the "Teach Yourself X in 21 days" series of software books (Ori Gurewich and Nathan Gurewich 1996). The two basic application development tools used are Visual C++™ and Visual Java™ so programming students must gain rudimentary skills with these tools before progressing.
After programming students have completed this step they are ready to attempt the development of the client for a game. Students will work in teams during this activity. The team selects a game, such as chess or checkers and develops the client aspects of the game. Students are able to consider the source code for previously developed games to assist them with developing the client. Support is available from more experienced students and staff.
The next step is for students to develop a Microsoft Windows NT™ service written in C++. This Windows NT service is the multi-threaded server side of the game. The server component is the interface to the database and to the other game players.
When this is finished the students move the prototype onto the game site and test the game components to make sure that they work with the web site and the database correctly. This activity can take considerable time as students need to be shown how to debug Windows NT™ services - not a trivial task.
The students have now completed their first game development and should by this time have gained enough knowledge of the system to be moved onto web site or database development tasks. The web site utilises a large number of scripts and variables. These need to be updated regularly. The database is evolving to include more information about the users and the game play. The database is managed through the use of a front-end database management program developed using Microsoft Visual Basic™ . The database is Microsoft SQL Server™ .
Professional SQL developers have been utilised for the development of the AusCasino site database and students work on the AusGame database. Many of the features of the SQL database and database management system that have been developed by the professional programmers have been migrated to the student multi-player game site. It is hoped that the average student will have gained exposure to the web site development and the database development prior to completing their time with the project.
Some of the students have been given the opportunity to complete tasks on the AusCasino site. Students developed the existing slot machine and draw poker games. The two games available on the web site are constantly being modified to incorporate new features such as improvements to security, speed of operation, game play recovery in the case of system failure and other improvements.
It is important to interact with industry. Success for any training activity is to make it real world and thus to be able to interact with industry.
An example is the need for certified games for the AusCasino system. If Pacific Casino Management, the project sponsor, is to be able to operate the Internet Casino and thereby ensuring the continuation of the project the system must be certified. The system can be logically broken into two components. The first is the "back end" consisting of the web servers, databases, electronic commerce and other components. The second is the games. The games consist of two parts, the game client and the game server. The game client and game server should be designed to interoperate with other parts of the system through software interfaces.
A game software interface specification was developed to permit third party interactive games to be "bolted" into the system. The principle benefit of the interface specification is to provide a mechanism for gaming software suppliers to provide certified games ready for use. An Australian Interactive Gaming supplier is working on prototypes of new revisions of existing certified games for use with the AusCasino system.
A more recent activity has been a cooperative project with Company In Space. Company In Space are a Melbourne based performing arts group who specialise in interactive performing arts. Company In Space have been the recipients of several Australia Council grants and other research grants. This project aims to develop an interactive Internet site for the delivery of real-time interactive performances. The interactive nature of the delivery mechanism will permit the audience to alter a whole range of parameters associated with the performance. Some of the parameters may be for a member of the Internet audience to increase the illumination intensity of the set, to alter the music or to request real-time changes to choreography based on a range of alternatives. Company In Space have carried out many performances with innovations that have been highly regarded locally and internationally. This interaction is a welcome addition to the Internet Entertainment project.
Internet Entertainment is a rich and rapidly developing field of endeavour. There are a number of areas that remain unresolved, but the inevitability of growth in this field means that both the social and technical issues must be engaged. The RMIT University Interactive Information Institute has adopted a real-world approach to training undergraduate and postgraduate students for the rapidly growing area of Internet Entertainment, which has (inter alia) highlighted the benefits of using a team approach to training. Industry Interaction is a very important part of the methodology being used and industry participation is considered to be beneficial to both parties.
Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik (1998), Tom Clancy’s Net Force, Headline Feature, ISBN 0747260400
Weddings http://www.theknot.com/ or http://www.weddingchannel.com/
Wigand R. (1997), "Electronic Commerce: Definition, Theory and Context", The Information Society, 13(1), 1-16.
Farrant D. (1999) Internet Snares Players, Not Payers, The Age, 2nd March.
Asimov I. (1957) The Naket Sun, Doubleday.
Ori Gurewich and Nathan Gurewich (1996), "Teach yourself Visual C++ 4 in 21 days", SAMS Publishing, ISBN 0672307952 (There are many books now that fit into this category)
Mark A Gregory, Steven Michener and Paula Swatman, © 1999. The authors assign to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.