As video war games gain popularity throughout the armed forces, some military trainers worry that the more the games seem like war, the more war may start to seem like a game.

The possibilities of networked computers, combined with an increasingly remote-controlled military like the one Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has vowed to build, have spurred interest in adapting the architecture of multiplayer games like Everquest and Ultima to create a “persistent world” for training and perhaps more.