Navy Game Solicits Innovative Solutions

MarineLink.com October 30, 2013

Office of Naval Research sponsor Garth Jensen, left, and Naval Postgraduate School associate professor Dr. Don Brutzman present an overview of the Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI). (U.S. Navy photo by Joseph Bara)

The Navy is hosting an online collaborative event to solicit input from a broad, diverse audience in hopes of generating innovative ideas on how to best maintain the capabilities and capacity of the Navy and mitigate risks in an era of constrained resources.

cap2con MMOWGLI - or Capacity, Capabilities and Constraints Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet - seeks creative ideas to spread mission requirements across the active, reserve and civilian forces to keep "warfighting first."

The game will be played in two phases: Phase I - an idea discovery phase - will take place Nov. 4 - 10. Phase II, which will focus on further refining the ideas from Phase I, will be played Dec. 2 - 8.

cap2con MMOWGLI is sponsored by the Chief of Navy Reserve, Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), Office of Naval Research and the Naval Postgraduate School.

"Some of the best ideas come from the deck plate," said Vice Adm. Robin Braun, chief of Navy Reserve. "I believe this exercise will draw out ideas that can help the Navy best leverage the talents of our active and reserve component Sailors."

Results of the game will be used to inform high-level discussions about future Navy force structure, strategies and capabilities across the active, reserve and civilian components.

The internet "card-based" game is easy to play. Root cards start off the game, and players build on, counter, refine or seek further information by placing their own cards on top of root cards.

Promising "card chains" form the basis for action plans that further develop the participants' ideas. Participants can play for as little or as long as they want, 24-hours a day, from any internet browser.

For those competitive "gamers," leader boards recognize players with special achievements and bragging rights, all in good fun.

"Internet crowdsourcing games are gaining traction helping the Navy to address some of its more challenging problems," said Rear Adm. Scott Jerabek, commander, NWDC. "The CNO's Reducing Administrative Distractions (RAD) initiative received nearly 1,500 ideas, had more than 7,600 comments posted on these ideas, and 91,000 votes casted to help easily identify the top ideas. We are looking forward to similar collaboration in cap2con MMOWGLI to address this very serious challenge for all of us."

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