Harrisburg University of Science and Technology Associate Professor Terrill Frantz, PhD, EdD, was a featured panelist in last week’s IEEE Computer Society’s online event “Panel: Standards Pathways for an Open Virtual World.” Online gaming and esports are two of the largest and fastest-growing industries. The panel explored the standardization issues challenging the industries’ continued growth with participants well past the allocated time for the planned one-hour event.
Prof. Frantz guided the discussion towards the importance of not only technical standards, but the even greater criticality of non-technology standards, such as ethics, business-models, broadcasting standards and norms, etc.
He commented, “With the broad and deep reach of eSports already in society and the anticipated engagement all will have with metaverse technologies, such activities will need to mirror the aims of and the wishes of our societies; this is where ethics, engagement, and business standards become essential.”
He continues, “Traditional sports and gaming have had decades to gradually develop their technology and then now developing non-technology standards and norms – look at the history of baseball in the U.S., for example – but online gaming, eSports, and the metaverse must develop both the technology and non-technology standards and norms all at once and at the same time. This makes for significant start-up costs for the industries, but a cost that must be bored to establish and prosper today.”
HU’s Frantz is the Vice-Chair of the IEEE Online Gaming Standards Committee. He was joined by panelists, Alicia Nie (China), of Tencent and Chair of the IEEE Online Gaming Standards Committee, Chester King (United Kingdom) Vice President of the Global Esports Federation, and Carter Wu (China), Director of CROS Game Engine Department of Tencent Games. The event was part of a monthly series of online events focused on emerging technologies produced by the IEEE Computer Society.
Frantz leads Quantum Science graduate studies at Harrisburg University. Additionally, he is associate professor of eBusiness and Cybersecurity.
For more about the quantum technologies work at HU, see https://harrisburgU.edu/quantum
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