When games are more than child's play

If you had tried to start a discussion about video game systems with me before the holidays, my eyes would have glazed over as I waited for you to move to a more compelling topic. I never really had time to burn playing video game systems, although I was intrigued by the idea of online gaming from a technical standpoint.

How can you guarantee a rich game-playing experience in a highly decentralized environment in which you have no control over network issues such as latency? Any CTO who has had to run a VPN with lots of mobile employees expecting a high level of service over many connections (from many different providers) has wrestled with these issues.

After visiting my brother during the holidays and playing with his kids’ new PlayStation 2, my competitive and geek instincts were simultaneously awakened. I quickly became obsessed with getting my own game system. After the visit, I hopped on a plane back to the West Coast, but not before checking the store hours of my local electronics superstore. As soon as my plane landed, I dropped off my suitcases at home and headed straight to the store to buy the Xbox, because I had heard from friends that the Xbox Live online service was the best way to play games over the Internet. (PlayStation 2 can be Internet-enabled via a network adapter sold separately.)

This is going to sound odd coming from a CTO, but before the Internet explosion, I had the same attitude toward computers that I had until recently about gaming. My brother and I used my dad’s Kayproto generate bills for our lawn mowing service and I played a few games on it, but there was no passion. In college, I sneered as I walked by the techies at their glowing terminals in the engineering building on my way to Shakespeare classes. My use of computers was limited to typing English papers.

That all changed when the Internet emerged. Suddenly, computers didn’t work in isolation, they connected actual people; they allowed people to communicate and collaborate. The same connectedness has been achieved with gaming systems and I’ve been sucked in once again, not just because it’s fun, but because I finally realize that online gaming is an intense expression of leading-edge IT innovation.

Online gaming systems such as Xbox Live provide an extremely rich collaboration environment that CTOs should be watching closely.

To hook up my game console to the Internet, I bought a separate 802.11b adapter to connect the box to my home network. Within the gaming environment, you can maintain a list of trusted friends, much like an IM buddy list. The presence awareness typically associated with IM is built in so you can see if your friends are online and ready to play. With a simple headset, you can converse with other gamers in real time as you play — a poor man’s VoIP (voice over IP) system. The only thing missing perhaps is a small iSight-like camera so you can see the gamers you’re playing against — but that might spoil the virtual mystique.

This CTO is now paying closer attention to the gaming industry as inspiration for enterprise IT innovation. In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out how to save hostages and defuse bombs in Counter-Strike. See you online.