SOLICITATION NOTICE
A -- Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) Feasibility Study
- Notice Date
- 11/12/2009
- Notice Type
- Combined Synopsis/Solicitation
- NAICS
- 541512
— Computer Systems Design Services
- Contracting Office
- N66604 Naval Undersea Warfare Center Simonpietri Drive Newport, RI
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- N6660410R0092
- Response Due
- 12/28/2009
- Archive Date
- 1/12/2010
- Point of Contact
- Irma S. Mattei 401-832-8479
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- TOPICAL BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) - Topic: Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) RESPONSE (CLOSING) DATE: December 28, 2009PRIMARY POC:Irma S. Mattei, 401-832-8479, irma.s.mattei@navy.milSECONDARY POC:Lori Rosario, 401-832-1487, lori.rosario@navy.milSOLICITATION NUMBER: TBAA 100092DESCRIPTION: Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging theInternet (MMOWGLI) Feasibility Study A.TITLE The Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport is soliciting proposals for Feasibility Studies for the Execution of a Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) B.TOPICAL BAA PROPOSAL PROCESS This synopsis constitutes a Topical Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) per FAR 6.102; technical and price proposals are being requested based on this announcement. This TBAA will follow a one-step process. Step I is a request for technical and price proposals. Any interested offeror is required to submit a technical proposal which 1) demonstrates the offeror's understanding of the problem; 2) demonstrates the offeror's experience with distributed simulation systems and military war gaming principles; 3) identifies at least one feasible approach to the execution of the MMOWGLI pilot described in section C; 4) discusses possible follow-on configurations to the MMOWGLI pilot described in section C for future possible deployment; and 5) describes the hardware, software, and networking requirements needed to support the MMOWGLI pilot described in section C. Technical Proposals shall not contain any proprietary or classified information. Technical Proposals should not exceed five (5) pages and shall be submitted by 28 DEC 2009. The Government shall have full disclosure rights to all documentation. Proposals maybe provided by electronic media, email (prefer), faxed to 401-832-4820 or U.S. mail. The Government's response to Technical Proposals will be complete within 15 days of receipt of the proposals. Multiple awards may be made in response to this announcement. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some or none of the proposals received. It is anticipated that an award resulting from this announcement will result in a Firm Fixed Price contract. Proposals must be received by the date and time specified in Section D. Selection shall be made as stated in Sections E and F. C.TECHNICAL CONTENT 1.0Background. The Office of Naval Research is sponsoring feasibility studies to determine the feasibility of a pilot project that seeks to extend the genres of Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming and Alternate Reality Games to scenarios of interest to Navy. The title of the project is "Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI)". By extending game play to a large pool of participants who can play out a scenario collectively online, it is envisioned that MMOWGLI will foster the exploration of many more novel combinations of ideas and interactions than available by traditional means. ONR plans on a crawl-walk-run approach to MMOWGLI, with the crawl stage consisting of a pilot. To that end, ONR is soliciting industry feedback on the feasibility of, and suggested approaches to, executing the MMOWGLI pilot, as described in the remainder of this document. Responses will be used by ONR to craft an eventual Statement of Work (SOW) which may, or may not, be competitively bid. 2.0 BAA Goals. This is a TBAA for a feasibility study to describe the execution of a pilot, designed to demonstrate the marriage of a number of existing component technologies, methodologies, and genres into a unified whole. As such, it is envisioned that the primary innovation, and the primary effort involved in executing the pilot, will be the integration of existing components, and their application in a new way, rather than in the development of completely new software, codes, technologies, or genres. It is envisioned that the MMOWGLI pilot will draw from, and integrate, elements of the following technologies, methodologies, and genres:.Alternate Reality Games.Massive Multiplayer Games.Large-n text based collaboration games and events.Turn based strategy games.2-D graphics, geospatial mapping tools.Wiki's.Web 2.0 collaboration tools The feasibility study will take into consideration the anticipated MMOWGLI pilot (which is anticipated to be competitively competed during 3rd Qtr FY10) will have a six month period of performance to complete, which culminates in a 3-move, non-deterministic, turn based strategy game, to be played by a large number of informed, but not necessarily expert, players distributed geographically while playing collaboratively online, over a period lasting up to several weeks. 3.0Technical Requirements for the Pilot. The feasibility study will take into consideration the following technical requirements: 3.1 Number and type of players: It is anticipated that the number of players will be between 50 and 1000. Players will be drawn from a pool that includes military officers, government civilians, and government contractors. It is expected that players will be generally knowledgeable but not necessarily be Subject Matter Experts.3.2 Classification Environment: The game will be unclassified; however it will not be open or available to the general public. Respondents should be prepared to address game play within a restrictive information assurance environment. 3.3 Graphics Environment: For the purposes of the pilot, the graphics environment should be just enough, but not more than, that needed to facilitate the play of a turn based strategy game. 3.4 Flow of the Game (respondents should refer to GFI for more ): The game is non-deterministic and will be played in three moves that are related to, yet still distinct from, each other. It is conceivable that insights gleaned from game play during Moves One and Two may be used to modify Moves Two and Three respectively. Respondents should plan on some level of effort being dedicated to being part of the game controller team during game play, and to making changes to the scenarios of subsequent moves. Each move is anticipated to last between one to two weeks of calendar time, with one to two weeks of calendar time between moves for game controller activities. Move One - Protecting the Sea Lanes: Move One is designed to get the players engaged in the game - collaborating and thinking strategically. Players attend a major International Anti-Piracy Conference being convened under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization. Players, representing various anti-piracy stakeholders, sign up as members of various working groups which are tasked with addressing aspects of the piracy problem. Once formed into teams/working groups, the players will have tasking to address activities related to military and operational coordination, information sharing, and the operational role of the regional coordination center. The complete player tasking is contained in the attachment. What the players produce: working as part of collaborative teams, the players will produce n-# of multimedia responses to the tasking they receive, where n-# corresponds to the number of teams. Assignment of players into teams: To the maximum extent practical, it is the intent that game controllers allow the teams to self organize and self manage. Thus, it is conceivable that a distribution of team sizes will exist, including some that are very small and some that are very large. Move Two - Attacks at Sea: The scenario is multiple near simultaneous attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa. Players would be self selecting and self organizing into collaborative teams of either Red (pirates) or Blue (US and Allied response). It is conceivable that players may have the option of signing up to be part of a third party as well, representing e.g. NGOs, other governments, etc, but this has not yet been determined. Players will be provided with a menu of Red forces to work with, Blue forces to work with, constraints on how much of each they can use, and a description of the targets. This will be government furnished information. The attachment has more complete details. The first action belongs to Red, who is tasked with developing a plan of attack, with a deadline. The players would then produce n-# of multimedia responses, where the response describes their plan of attack. Once the Red plans of attack are submitted, then Blue takes over. Blue teams may respond to as many of the Red plans of attack as they wish. Blue's output consists of n-# of multimedia responses, where the response describes their plan of defense/counter-attack to the various Red attacks. Move Three: The game continues with a final move consisting of a range of scenarios that are logical outcomes from Move Two. These scenarios include, but may not be limited to:.Conducting a hostage rescue ashore.Conducting a hostage rescue at sea.Dismantling pirate base camps.Disrupting the pirate support infrastructure ashore and/or overseas.Helping the Somali Transitional National Government and Puntland officials restore order and the rule of law.Developing a viable indigenous Somali Coast Guard.Providing humanitarian assistance.Others, potentially based on insights gleaned from play in Moves One or Two Teams will have the option of selecting which scenario(s) to play. The format of game play will mirror that of Move Two, this time with Blue owning the first action and Red having the response. The players would produce the same output as in Move Two, i.e. n-# of multimedia responses consisting of a plan of attack (for Blue) and a plan of response or counter-attack (for Red). 3.5 Unified User Interface (the MMOWGLI Appliance): As discussed earlier in this document, it is envisioned that the primary level of effort for the pilot will go toward integration of existing component technologies. To that end, respondents should address, to the maximum extent practical, having a unified user interface. In the ideal outcome, players and participants should be able to run a single program to participate meaningfully in the game. The term "appliance" is being used to mean a unified system consisting of an integrated hardware and software deliverable. Upon initial entry, users will be given the opportunity to create an account to enter personal information such as education and professional background. The addition of interests and hobbies will be encouraged to create a well rounded profile. Information should be organized in such a way as to promote social networking and used by others as Teams self organize. An online help system will be will be available to user along with basic system usage training. Player responsibilities will be explained in this system and it should be accessible at any time. Help topics will cover tools provided by the MMOWGLI Appliance. Players will be guided to documentation/media library where they are exposed to an initial presentation of the scenarios and background information. Users will be presented with questions to answer and are provided with expectations of minimum satisfactory responses to be completed by the end of each move. Game controllers are people tasked with the duty of guiding game play. Players may be provided with additional information, injected by the game controllers, at any time. Game Controllers may answer questions and encourage teams to gel. Key questions may be posed during a move in response to player inputs. Players will have the ability to create, edit, share, and compartmentalize all content created and archived within the appliance. Content may be defined as documents (text, word processed, spreadsheets, and presentations), audio, and video. Users will have the ability to send alerts via instant messaging or email to team members when content has been added or changed. Players will be provided a suite of online collaboration tools where teams would be allowed to create private forums. The team may assign moderator rights to the leader. Teams would have public and private chat capabilities, allowing polling. 3.6 Scoring, Ranking, Adjudication and Other Factors Affecting Player Engagement: Respondents should address having a scheme for ranking and scoring players and teams both publicly and privately. The scheme should combine elements that are objective as well as subjective (i.e. determined by the game controllers). It is envisioned that these criteria would be made known to the players. Since the game is non-deterministic, it is envisioned that the game controller team will have to adjudicate winners and losers for each Move (i.e. human-in-the-loop). In addition to the basics of scoring and ranking, respondents should address other aspects of game play that they assess as important to making the game experience meaningful. 3.7 Data: Data analysis will not be part of the pilot. However, it is envisioned that future ONR sponsored efforts may be aimed at conducting basic analysis of data collected during the pilot. Therefore, respondents should address a simple means of enabling the game controllers to tag data for later retrieval and analysis. 3.8 Future Considerations - Re-Use and Re-Purposability: The feasibility study should also address the re-purposing of this pilot into an eventual platform for ongoing experimentation and innovation. Topics to address include the following:.Data capture mechanisms and protocols.Data analysis tools.Modular design.Support for user authored games and user generated content beyond the scope of the scenario described in this document.Support for user generated real time changes in content, i.e. injection of excursions.Integration of 3-D graphics.Planned support for external connections to other simulators such as High Level Architecture Real-time Platform-level Reference Federated Object Model (IEEE 1516 HLA RPR FOM) or the Distributed Interactive Simulation Protocol. D. SUBMITTAL INSTRUCTIONSProposals are sought that address the requirements described in section C 2.0 of this announcement. Offerors shall cite specific paragraphs from section 2.0 that their proposals are addressing, and shall recommend quantifiable metrics for measuring the performance of their technology to address the cited paragraphs. The North American Classification System (NAICS) code applicable to this acquisition is 541512.Proposals shall include a period of performance. It is expected to be 30 days or 1 month. Offerors must state that their proposals will be valid for 90 days from submission. To be eligible for award a contractor must be registered in the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) database pursuant to Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) Subpart 204.73. An Offeror, who is not registered, may register at http://www.ccr.gov/index.cfm. Offerors not registered are highly encouraged to register immediately. Offerors must also insert the necessary Representations and Certifications on On-Line Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA website (http://orca.bpn.gov). Government Agencies and universities will be allowed to submit proposals for this effort. All routine communication concerning this acquisition should be directed to Irma S. Mattei, (401) 832-8479, e-mail irma.s.mattei@navy.mil. All technical related issues should be directed to Douglas Maxwell, (401) 832-6215: douglas.b.maxwell@ navy.mil. Organizations wishing to participate must submit proposals (three (3) copies of the Technical Proposal, three copies of the statement of work (SOW) and one (1) hardcopy of the Price Proposal) along with one CD-ROM containing digital copies in MS Word, Excel or Adobe of all requested information to Commercial Acquisition, Building 11, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Newport, Attn: Irma S. Mattei, Code 11912, Simonpietri Drive, Newport, RI 02841-1708 by 28 December 2009 at 2:00 P.M EST. Proposal length, exclusive of statement of work and price proposal shall not exceed 5 8 x 11 inch typewritten pages. Each proposal shall contain the offeror's Technical Approach and a Statement of Capabilities. Offerors shall submit a firm fixed price proposal for the feasibility study. Pricing should be based upon the assumption that work would begin no sooner than 60 days after proposal submission. The proposal should also contain offeror's point of contact information.Proposals containing data that is not to be disclosed to the public for any purpose or used by the government except for evaluation purposes shall include the following statement on their title pages:"The proposal includes data that shall not be disclosed outside the Government and shall not be duplicated, used or disclosed, in whole or in part, for any purpose other than to evaluate this proposal. If however, a contract is awarded to this offeror as a result of, or in connection with, the submission of these data, the government shall have the right to duplicate, use, or disclose these data to the extent provided in the resulting contract. This restriction does not limit the government's right to use the information contained in these data if they are obtained from another source without restriction. The data subject to this restriction are contained on sheets (insert page numbers or otherwise identify the sheets)". Each restricted data sheet must be marked as follows: "Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the restriction on the title page of this proposal." This statement may be in a small font and should be at the bottom only of each applicable page. All material submitted to NUWCDIVNPT under this announcement shall be considered Government property. The Government requires unlimited data rights with regard to any procurement, with the possible exceptions of (1) a negotiated position for data rights to existing concepts that may be further developed under a procurement and (2) for efforts conducted under a procurement that includes leveraged funds. The Government shall analyze proposals received in response to this BAA in order to identify potential organizational conflicts of interest. (If applicable, Organizational Conflict of Interest clauses shall be included in any resulting contract (see FAR 9.5). Specific deliverables, delivery schedule, and other terms will be negotiated with successful offerors. For purposes of this announcement, offerors should anticipate that contract awards will require a Contract Data Requirements List (CDRL) that will vary depending on the nature of the contract award. For planning purposes, all awards will require the following data items as a minimum:DI-MISC-805088Scientific and Technical Reports (Contractor format)DI-MGMT-80368AStatus Report (Web-based format per Test-Web - Government furnished computer program)DI-DRPR-81002DDevelopmental Design Drawings and Associated ListsDI-MCCR-80700Computer Software Product End Items E. PROPOSAL REVIEW Review of proposals will be accomplished through a peer review of each proposal using the four review categories listed below. 1) TECHNICAL Proposals must address the requirements contained in Section B, specifically: a) The offeror's understanding of the problemb) The offeror's experiencec) Offeror's technical approach is sound with regard to feasibility of the project, transition potential of the technology, and understanding of the scope of the technical effort d) Technical merit is easily identifiable e) Technical concept is clearly defined and developed f) The required resources necessary to support the pilot 2) IMPORTANCE TO NUWCDIVNPT/NAVY PROGRAMS: Value of product technology development and demonstration with respect to the stated goals of this BAA. 3) COST/PRICE: To be acceptable, an offeror's cost/price must be fair, reasonable and affordable. The offerors may be requested to submit cost or pricing data in accordance with FAR 15.403-4. F. SELECTION A scientific and engineering review will be conducted on all proposals received. The purpose of this review is to determine the merit of the technical approach proposed in response to this announcement. This review shall consider technical aspects and cost/price as related to technical effort. The selection(s) for contract award shall consider technical merit, cost/price and available funding. The Government reserves the right to select for contract award any, all, part or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement.
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