May 2006

Telefónica I+D

Telcos & Serious Games

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Adolfo M. Rosas arosas@tid.es

Telefónica I+D

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Telecommunication Operators & ‘serious games’

There is a strong games market and a great interest in games from several industrial sectors.

One of these sectors is the communications industry : the environment of Telco operators.

The ‘Telco’ companies sell services as their basic product. Telcos own/exploit the network and are used to the financial facts of the networked businesses.

As many have pointed out Telcos may need to add value to their business : data connectivity and basic communication services are commodities nowadays so the ARPU may decrease if no added value services are exploited.

There are some ‘serious’ games that are interesting for Telcos

Networked games, communities , new technologies in media representation ,media communication , distance learning...

All of these technologies and businesses benefit from a learning process made possible through communication technologies

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‘Serious Games’ that may involve Telcos

E-learning for the corporate market : Telco companies offer learning and communication services for the corporate market. Learning in the corporate environment is increasingly important and new learning paradigms are emerging. Mobile e-learning is gaining momentum.

E-Learning in the residential market: Networked games : play for fun... But play also for knowledge. The player gains knowledge about other players , about the environment , about the service. Players obtain abilities than can be demonstrated in the community. Play for prestige.

‘Community generators’. Games are known to create ‘fan clubs’ or more generally speaking ‘groups of interest’. Even when a game is not networked, delivery of such a title to many users creates an increasing group of interested people, and groups need to communicate so services as forum lists, chats or ‘gaming experts advice’ are possible. Communities are good for Telcos.

Inside communities many communication activities may happen. Some activities involve new abilities. There is a learning process behind. There is a feedback process between player and community.

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Telco’s influence over ‘serious’ games industry

Turning the game into a service.

Every service needs a backend open to the service provider.

A backend facilitates the operator the following operations:

Classify the game experience in several billing concepts : time, matches, traffic, etc...

Monitor and account the usage of these concepts : matches, time, network traffic, purchase of game items, hostage of private matches, etc...

Spy the behaviour of the players ‘in public’ environments and possibly have censorship activities

Interact with gamers : through the use of avatars , automatic and not automatic bots, ‘gods’ and regular users with the purpose of helping them understand the game and have a better experience

Have marketing statistics

Enable side-services or ‘derived experiences’ based on the success of a community or a game

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Community games : a networked game may gather a small group of players in a single session, but RPGS and specially MMORPGS enforce the creation of communities. Communities and tools for building, maintaining exploiting them are a real ‘serious’ challenge inside a game or service.

Technologies that have an impact in ‘serious’ games :

3D and broadband networking are state of the art technologies but ...what about other network and media based technologies?:

Videoconferencing : a new possibility even for home gaming platforms: PS2/PS3, Xbox/Xbox360... Used in action and community games

Bidirectional audio, multiconferencing with SW mixed audio...

SMS, email, messaging, positioning,...

Telcos always ask for openness, reliability and scalability

Standards based: Audiovisual standards (MPEG 1,2,4), H.263, H.264

Videoconferencing standards: H.263/H.264, SIP, IMS

Elearning standards : SCORM, AICC

Reliability: Again:use standards for communications between components

Have redundancy in the server side : nowadays this redundancy is commonly deployed as fault tolerant clusters of servers

Scalability: Server must be distributable over a cluster and seamlessly multi threaded

Telco’s influence over serious games industry (II)

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Single Sign On : ability to authenticate the user only once and give access to many network resources (or resources that can be found online)

Presence: ability to communicate in real time our presence (our status) to others in the network using the same application or not.

Videoconference/Multiconference : ability to have conferences with other people transmitting and receiving video and audio even from multiple simultaneous sources

Messaging (unified) : create a channel that gathers all suitable forms of messaging (even legacy messaging systems like POTS voice mailboxes)

Online Communities : the goal of all ‘serious’ games and apps for Telcos. Group of interconnected users. A ‘sense’ of community is needed. Group Identity.

Online Learning : final application or side effect of any community. As a final service may be oriented to corporate or residential users. As a single user applicati

Streaming Media /VOD : another tool to help connecting users.

New services and technologies that Telcos would like to add to existing platforms, applications and terminals

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Any ‘set of people’ that is tied to a service could be make into a community... but some actions are required, and some way of thinking about the service and the business model.

Communication tools may change any regular game into a ‘serious’ game as far as there starts a community building activity. (For example it is possible to add communication through VoIP to some games, or chat lines...)

Handling Communities in Telco services

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Examples of communication services that implement ‘serious’ games

Mundo3D : 2002.

Developer : Silicon Artists. Owner : Telefonica

3D world. Interactive. Backend designed by joint team : developer & Telco.

Imagenio for PS2 : 2002

Prototype. Developer : Telefónica I+D

Video on Demand Services on a gaming console. (Developed on linux).

E-Videoteca : 2000

Developer : Telefónica I+D. Owner : Telefonica

Web Platform for video content creation

Interoperable DRM Platform :2006

Prototype. Developer : Telefónica I+D

B2B Backend that allows marketplaces for communities based on DRM

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Mundo3D

3D Virtual Community built for Telefónica ADSL platform

Fully integrated with other services:

Videoconferencing Audioconferencing Multi-videoconferencing Presence Instant Messaging SMS E-mail Payment System

Requires software installation

Pricing Part of 2€ / month package on top of

standard ADSL subscription Originally planned to charge for

game elements, virtual objects Quickly moved to same flat fee

package as other services

Information reproduced here with permission of the rights holders. Mundo3D is a product of Telefónica developed by Silicon Artists.

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Mundo3D

Information reproduced here with permission of the rights holders. Mundo3D is a product of Telefónica developed by Silicon Artists.

Interactive Content and Social activities

Virtual Objects For navigating (keys) For using Mundo3D features (party

reservations, real estate deeds) Games (packets of cards) Content (MP3) Marketing objects (leaflets, billboards) Bartering and virtual commerce built in

Avatar Personalization Sex Body shape Clothes Colours Textures

Reservation of party rooms Reserve room with built in multi-

videoconferencing Send out personalized fliers

House and Home Buy real estate with virtual money Buy virtual furniture and decorate Marketing opportunities

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E-Videoteca technology: Intended uses

Live eventLive event CodingCoding

HomeHomeuseruser

Deferred eventDeferred eventStored lessonStored lesson

AuditoriumAuditorium

Very High QualityVery High Quality

Very High QualityVery High Quality

High QualityHigh Quality

Medium/Low QualityMedium/Low Quality

Medium/Low QualityMedium/Low Quality

ADSLADSL

RDSIRDSI

ModemModem

Remote Remote useruser

Meeting Meeting RoomRoom

InternetInternet

Phone Phone NetworkNetwork

Intranet / Intranet / Virtual Virtual Private Private networknetwork

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Evideoteca : residential elearning service in a community

VídeoVídeo

SlideSlide

AudioAudio

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Imagenio (IPTV) on PS2

General purpose CPU not very powerful . Need to program the dedicated processors

No well known operating system available The goal is to use PS2 to visualise VoD applications decoding video

through the deicated processors, use PS2 for videoconferencing (implement SIP /IMS).

Community applications may be developed based on presence and interaction supported on VoIP

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There is a Linux kernel tuned for PS2 (de Sony) Suitable to ease porting of existing applications Helps developing apps that take advantage of native

capabilities of the PS2 architecture

MICA architecture:

Hardware

Qt

Browser

Player

LINUXFrame Buffer

Imagenio (IPTV) on PS2 (II)