Participatory Games

There are a variety of new sports entering the scene made possible by GPS and Internet connectivity. "The first real GPS sport is, without a doubt, geocaching," explain Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, a renowned GPS expert and notable author on GPS. "Geocaching is a high-tech GPS treasure hunt where the participants load waypoints that they download from the Internet onto their GPS receivers and go out in search of the treasure." The "treasure" is often a tin or plastic box that contains a log book and small trinkets. Kinglsey-Hughes states that geocaching is the fastest-growing participatory sport in America and likely the world. The Clinton administration's removal of the deliberate accuracy error in GPS paved the way for many new GPS applications, including these participatory games. Participatory games...allowing the players a deeper connection and experience.

New sports that are born in the wireless technology era will be less subject to a sense of fairness when it comes to technology exploitation. Perhaps American football will never have full heads-up displays inside of every helmet showing all player locations and best-move suggestions, but brand new sports certainly could. There is a huge swell of people entering the ages of 20 to 30 who were just a couple of years ago our video-game fanatics. This generation was born when cell phones were invented and grew up with their ubiquity (unlike the rest of us over 30). This same generation understands the value and power of GPS, can read XML fluently, and uses handheld devices to communicate by text more than voice. The point is this: Their tastes for competitive sports could be different from ours and of generations past and will have a deeper expectation for the use of technology.

Related to the new generation, the old paper- and mail-based fantasy sports game is now a raging Internet industry complete withits own "Fantasy Sports Trade Association" (www.fsta.org). According to FSTA, there are now more than 15 million adults playing fantasy sports game and the number is growing dramatically. The growth is largely attributed to the Internet, which brings real-time statistics tabulation and automation to an otherwise laborious and slow game.

What Is "Fantasy Sports"?

Fantasy sports started many decades ago as a way for fans to get closer involvement in their favorite professional sport such as football or baseball. Through the mail (snail mail), virtual leagues were formed and each participant managed his or her own personally created team. Although their team names would be made up, the players on a given team were selected from the inventory of real players on the professional teams. The fantasy players act as general managers and draft players or trade players and eventually build up a custom team of their own (but comprised of real players).

Each week when the real world would play a game, statistics about the individual players would be tabulated (such as yards passed, yards run, sacks, interceptions, and so forth). For each "event," some numeric point value would be associated (perhaps a touchdown is worth 20 fantasy points, or each 9-yard run is worth 1 fantasy point). After all the real games had been completed, painstakingly the Fantasy organizers would tally all the points of the artificial team conglomerations and decide winners and losers. Today, Fantasy sports are all Internet based, which allows for all the scoring to be real time and automatic. Furthermore, the process of creating teams and leagues and drafting players is all far more convenient given the ubiquity of Web access.

Every major television network hosts Fantasy sports Web sites, from football to basketball to baseball and others (racing, golf...the list goes on). Many players participate in several leagues at the same time. Although there is no charge to join certain leagues, most charge a per-team fee, then pay out part of the proceeds to the winning team of a season.

Many leagues are self-run by average citizens who pay a television network site a fee for hosting the league and using the network's Internet tools. However, after the network "home" has been established, each league sets its own rules (regarding point scoring, trading, etc.), builds its own financial base, and establishes its own pay-out values...all done via the Internet and by your ordinary Average Joe. In a way, Fantasy sports is a cross between The Matrix and Dungeons and Dragonsthere are clear elements of the real world (and real data) coupled with a hefty dose of imaginary play, blurring reality and fantasy.

The average Fantasy player spends more than three hours a week managing his or her team and examining statistics. This is aside from the time spent watching televised games or doing individual research on players. The popularity is so strong and so synergistic with televised sports that many sport shows now will have an onscreen "crawl" detailing various player stats for the current game that are likely the key "scoring" metrics in the Fantasy games. Fantasy league Web sites are a community unto themselves, complete with blogs and trash-talk chat rooms, bringing together the various team managers in an ad-hoc society. Some sites are now sophisticated enough to send SMS text messages to player's cell phones announcing trades, new score additions, or changes in the team standings, as if the importance of such activities is as high as any business-class event. The users strive to be connected to their teams at all times, especially during game times when scoring is happening at its fastest.

The teams in Fantasy sports do not really exist. They are made from data of real-world people. They are managed in a fashion that mimics real-world transactions. They are fiercely competitive, and there is typically physical-world money at stake. Teams can even be bought and sold just like their real-world counterparts. Fantasy sports fills a void in the sports person's worldto be closer to the game, team, and players and to actually participate. Pervasive sports online data sources and wireless "everywhere" networks have enabled a sport within a sport.

Stepping back, is this any different from being a mutual fund manager?

Let's switch now to online gaming. The traditional video-console gaming industry is no doubt enormous, around $7 billion yearly in U.S. sales,^[2] but is slowing and even declining in dollar growth. The gaming market is evolving and widening and now has to contend with significant PC-based games and cell phone/PDA games, which are notably suitable for connecting to an online community.

^[2] http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_040722.htm.

The online gaming industry was a little slow in gaining significance. Broadband to the home is seen as the critical enabler and finally by the end of 2003 more than 81 million households (worldwide) had broadband connections.^[3] Demographically, the market for video games has been overwhelmingly male dominated (and typically under 30), but broadband has enabled a reach to a better-mixed audience. Services such as Yahoo!, MSN, and Pogo make online gaming available to a broader demographic, and some games now even have a 50-50 male-to-female following. Because the majority of online gaming is through a PC (versus a game console), the majority of the online crowd is older than the console crowd. But even consoles, such as Xbox, offer an online capability, but have had difficulty getting traction (partly due to the younger audience, partly due to the challenge of getting the console attached to the home network).

^[3] http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2004/08/03/prnewswire200408030702PR_NEWS_B_WES_LA_LATU034.html.

Predictions for growth are staggering. It is estimated that by 2005, the worldwide market for online gaming should be more than $5 billion and nearly $10 billion by 2009 (at which time there is expected to be 228 million broadband users worldwide). As interestingly, the "mobile" online gaming market (cell, PDA) is expected to reach nearly $2 billion by 2009 as well.^[4] The key to the growth is connectivity. Until recently, video games were a solitary entertainment formmore captivating and engaging than perhaps TV, but essentially an easy time-fill regardless of weather or time of day. Online gaming adds two new important dimensions: socialization and a more dynamic environment.

^[4] http://www.clickz.com/stats/big_picture/applications/article.php/3403931.

Early online games were essentially the same as their offline counterparts but enhanced by allowing other players (anywhere in the world) to be part of the scene and action. This not only allows the junior high kid a chance to play with his school friends without ever picking up a phone or messing up each other's houses, but also allows him to play with (or against) anyone else in the world regardless of time of day. This has led to the creation of what's known as massively multiplayer online role playing games, MMORPGS, where thousands of players are simultaneously in some grand adventure. Less of a peer-to-peer configuration and more of a central server one, service providers run the simulations in more powerful computers that can even keep players "in the game" when they are logged off. Similar to the old role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, MMORPGS sessions can last many days and even weeks. Notably, the sophistication of a "mission" is far higher than a simple "shoot 'em up" console game and can draw on an aging gamer population.

As games move more "into the network," the power of the games increases in both terms of dynamic scenery and complexity of the software. No longer is there just a single machine's worth of horsepower involved. There are networks of higher-end servers and thousands of endpoints, all of which can add energy to the environment. Essentially, federated computing. The newest trend, that of enabling mobile/cellular devices to the mix, will bring even more penetration to the market and perhaps further change the gaming mode. Games may start to be more like Fantasy Football, wherein users are continually "checking in" (all day long) and tweaking their characters and teams and in general monitoring the operation...from anywhere and everywhere they go.

Gaming is changing. It is no longer strictly for 8- to 15-year-old boys. It is no longer something that adults and managers can ignore or categorize as a momentary diversion for a young age set. That age set has aged (with replacements coming in as well) and has now evolved to a far more connected and societal life ...entering our work force in great numbers. They are living a life daily that is remote, high-excitement, sensory rich, and collaborative. Drop them in an undifferentiated office cube with a pile of reports to read and they'll fail. The power and importance of gaming (and in particular online gaming) among the young is not so much in its own contribution to GNP but rather what implications it has for us trying to manage this future worker.