Collaborative virtual entertainment: (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?)

For years, the research community has tried to convince sponsors of the viability of CVE applications. In that same time, the computer gaming community has rolled out hundreds of "killer apps" each year - graphical, networked, social environments.Paying a handful of students to test one's research systems certainly has its charm. Regardless, researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School set out to learn if the computer games community might be leveraged in CVE research. The first such attempt, the Army Game Project, has thus far elicited millions of dollars of funding, hundreds of thousands of test subjects, dozens of television interviews, and zero refereed publications.This talk will present my experiences as a researcher masquerading as a game developer - and as a game developer pretending to be researcher. The evening will conclude with reckless predictions for the future of Collaborative Virtual Environments.