Terra Nova

Life c. 2000: The Massively Single-Player Game

Jason Wall sent me a note explaining that World of Warcraft (you've heard of it?) is doing even more to encourage the formation of ad hoc raiding groups. Back in the day, he notes, the only way you could get raid-level gear was by being in a raid-level guild and by raiding, a lot. Much was said back then (not least by me) about the way MMORPGs seemed to provide a communal experience for people isolated by contemporary society. If society gave people anomie, then online community, it seemed, was the antidote.

How pollyannish! We (I) also said that online environments were really no different from offline ones in a number of ways. "It's a strange theater, but the players are still human," I would say. I should have followed up and asked myself, if this is so, then why should we expect society to look any different in there than it does out here? How could game designers eliminate an anomie that is so pervasive elsewhere?

I suppose if I had challenged myself that way, I would have responded that game designers have the advantage of consciously designing a place. Or perhaps they have the advantage of vast dictatorial power over both the rules and the physics of interaction. These advantages would surely enable some designers to discover how to generate community among people who (I assumed) desire it.

The assumption that people want to have community, indeed that they would agree to be forced into it, is denied by tale of the suburb. Housing prices are highest in the suburbs, places that often look very village-y but are in fact built to provide each person with solitude. Soft barriers protect suburban residents from too much interaction. Yet unlike residents of rural areas, suburbanites are not completely alone. Suburbanites are alone together.

"Alone together" - we've heard that before. Over the past decade, online game communities have evolved from forced grouping models to alone-together models such as we see in SWTOR and in WoW's new pick-up group mechanisms. We've moved from massively multiplayer online games to massively singleplayer online games. Our virtual worlds are becoming like suburbs - places where most people, most of the time, are doing whatever they please and having no effect or interaction with anyone else. Protected from others, but not separated.

The neo-liberal in me says, 'this is apparently the life people want to lead.' It is striking that game designers have created environments that so perfectly match the isolating ethos of urban development that so many people bemoan. It is striking that the forced-grouping model has fallen away and been replaced by solo play. Both online and off, the villages went away and were replaced by cul-de-sacs. Both were developments - someone developed them to be what they ended up being. And people like it.

The whole thing smells of irresistable social and economic change, of dynamics that are unavoidable. The massively singleplayer outcome is perhaps a very solid equilibrium between the competing tensions freedom and community.

If that is so, and I think it is, it spells doom for all kinds of social engineering projects. The New Urban neighborhood? The Global Village? The online game that purportedly makes people into good citizens? These will all remain as empty as the dead little towns that dot the rural landscape, or as decrepit and bully-plagued as the once-vibrant urban neighborhoods that dot the cities.

In the end, people just want their space. The Buddha was told that the monks were squabbling. He replied, "Like pebbles in a small bag, the monks polish each other." But if they can get out of the bag, Wise One, won't they? And keep their rough edges?

Dutch Court recognizes Runescape items as legal "goods"

The Dutch Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Runescape theft case today.  You can find the ruling here, and here's a Google-translated version.  The ruling cites to the work of Professor Arno Lodder (who guest-blogged here), who has been keeping close tabs on the case, as well as to my book and to my work with Dan on virtual law & virtual crime.

One thing to bear in mind is that this case involved real violence and the theft of virtual goods.  The victim was beaten and threatened with a (real) knife, with the defendants demanding he hand over a mask and an amulet within Runescape.  As the court notes, the violence occurred outside of the context of the game.  So at the very least, this was a case of criminal assault.  The only issue was whether the crime amounted to theft, which hinged on whether or not the virtual items could be classified, under Dutch law, as goods.

The lawyer for the defendants argued that Runescape's virtual items are not goods because they are not tangible and have no commercial value.  The Dutch Supreme Court disagreed.  Citing to the size of virtual economies as well as to specific sales on eBay of Runescape items, it rejected the argument that the goods had no economic value.  It also observed that the victim had invested time and effort to obtain the value of the items, that the game gave him exclusive rights to the items, and that the defendants had, by violence, acquired that value and those exclusive rights from the victim. 

In my opinion, the reasoning of the Dutch Supreme Court is roughly analogous to the reasoning in the U.S. decision of Kremen v. Cohen, which found that domain names were subject to civil conversion in California despite their intangible nature.  Though I have mixed feelings about the Cohen case, I believe the recognition of the items as goods is the right result in this case.  As the Court explains, the victims here were clearly motivated by the prospect of acquiring the virtual items of the victim and they used violence to obtain that value. 

Additionally, as the Dutch Supreme Court explicitly notes, the violence here was not in the context of the game.  As I explain in Chapter 6 of my book, there can be cases where legal prohibitions against in-game theft of virtual property may be in tension with the rules of a game.  (In essence, this is the question of the "magic circle" which we have discussed here for some time.) In this case, however, the theft occurred completely outside the rules of Runescape.  Given this, I think the Dutch Supreme Court's recognition of the economic and status value of virtual items is entirely appropriate.

I may have more to say once I get a better translation of the ruling -- Google Translate is great to get the gist of the matter, but I have a feeling I'm missing plenty of nuance.

Update: I should clarify that the cites mentioned above are actually contained in the AG's opinion accompanying the Supreme Court decision.  The Dutch Supreme Court apparently does not do cites in its opinions.  The AG's office is attached to the Supreme Court and offers advice to the court.

My Cup Runneth Over

Holy hellions, Batman, 2012 is off with a bang.

Too bad about SWTOR and the LEGO Universe, but Guild Wars 2 might actually ship this year, and there are some other exciting things brewing.  Tera Online might emerge unscathed from its legal machinations and make its promised launch date of May 2012.  Blizzard is making a 'casual' MMO (with product placements)...

But here's what I'm waiting for...

The Secret World (April 2012) - This one is exciting even among the 'I'm not an MMO person' crowd.  To me, it's like the game I've been waiting for.  Here's why:

• The lore is wide-ranging and accessible, if you're one of those people who has paid attention to mystery schools, secret societies, fairy tales, monsters, alien conspiracies, black ops, and the like.  Basically 'everything is true' in a rich 'what if?' environment.  Tied into history, popular culture, etc. 
• The game is set in the modern-day world, and takes advantage of all the amazing beauty of this planet, its cities and its citizens.  The details and how they are leveraged are really incredible-looking.
• There are threee factions - the Templars (England), the Illuminati (New York)and the Dragons (Seoul).  The initial experiences are very different depending on the chosen location.
• Visually STUNNING, based on the Dreamworld engine used for Age of Conan.  Feels like a quantum leap.
• The game takes an alternate reality (ARG) approach by embedding the game with puzzles that must be solved via research online.  Building information literacy, of course, and mimicking the skill development that all we digital denizens need. (BTW, here is a podcast I did recently on this topic...)
• Character classes are thrown away in favor of a flexible abilities system.  It works a bit like a card-based game like Magic: the Gathering - the player has the option of selecting 7 active and 7 passive abilities and can re-organize them at will.  There are also templates that allow the player to map abilities toward certain configurations (like the Monk, a healing/magic using hybrid).  But the player is never locked in.  So if I want to tank today and heal tomorrow, I can do that with the same character.
• The creation of characters seems to have some of the fun aspects of creation in games like City of Heroes/City of Villains.  Many of the characters portrayed in the trailers are female, too, and cute/powerful without the mega boobage and bare assed armor we progressive women balk about.  Clothing is customizable and stat free, but your abilities also progress with equipment and items.
• Players affect the environments via their actions.
• There are various mechanisms for rallying players into group pursuits.
• Quests involve exploration of the world to uncover what needs to be done, and NPCs lead players through the locations.
• The developers (Massively) are based in Norway and were also responsible for Anarchy Online and the Age of Conan.  The interviews make it clear that this game has been really well thought out.
• This one is for Ted - the algorithms for NPCs and monsters are based on population mechanics rather than respawning rules.  I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but it sounds very interesting.
• The learning curve is well managed with in situ introductions to the game mechanics, lore and skills.
• PvP is well supported.  Guilds are called 'cabals'.  Encounters involve all 3 factions.
• Quality writing and voice acting!  Cut scenes that I might actually watch!  Clever/funny dialogue! OMG!

Want more?  Check out the initial announcements at PAX 2009, or more recent trailers and interviews.  Register for the beta, if you haven't already.  Watch out for the government.

Also, don't forget that DiGRA (the Digital Games Research Association) is holding its semi annual conference in Tampere, Finland (where all the very cool kids are).  They need papers and reviewers, so get in touch!

Minecraft and Intellectual Property

Gamasutra just posted a rather longish essay of mine about Minecraft and what's wrong today with the intersection of games and intellectual property law.  Here's the link.  In some ways, I think I'm echoing Ted's criticisms of the new Star Wars MMORPG in the last post .  In short: the more games become like movies, the less interesting they become.  On the other hand, the more games let us express ourselves artistically and socially, the more interesting they become. 

One significiant problem, as I see it, is that the current trajectory that intellectual property law is pursuing is much more supportive of the the former (games on rails) than it is of the latter (games that let players become authors).

Star Wars: The Dead Republic

How did we get to the point that an online multiplayer game feels less alive than a single-player sandbox world? Like many of you, the past couple of months have been spent in Skyrim and SWTOR. A decade ago, Elder Scrolls games were large, empty spaces. They had many actionable items but still - the NPCs you encountered were rather quiet and mindless. You were the only person alive. But the genre of open-world RPGs has gradually added more and more life-like elements. Fallout 3 was an eye-opener for me. And now Skyrim, with conversing people, merchants on a budget, reputations. I've spent much time in that game just living there, poking around, taking a nap, getting up, seeing what's in that cave, knowing it was all there for someone to find and hey - why not me? That world feels much more alive than those games did 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, MMORPGs have made a turn for the hearse. SWTOR somehow feels dead. Rather than explore everything,  you get specific quest lines. You're on rails. You're instanced away from others. They still haven't solved the ancient problem with MMOGs - quests that don't actually change the world. SWTOR adds cutscenes and narrative for each quest, but eventually you pattern-match to it and realize that you're doing the same thing every time: Running out, killing 8 rats, interacting with four boxes, and bringing back the jewel. Over and over and over.

You can't just run where you want in SWTOR. They actually have a region map clearly showing that area A is over here and area B is over there; they exist on the same planet; they are within running distance of one another; yet when you try to hoof it from A to B, you hit an 'exhaustion zone' that will kill you. You're forced to get on the rails and ride there.

SWTOR has managed to do something very weird to its markets. Players don't do crafting, rather, you have a crew to do it. Sending the crew on crafting missions involves a simple click. Player labor input is minimal. Naturally, as a result, the net monetary proceeds from doing crafting are near zero (labor theory of value works here - zero labor input implies zero profit on sales of things labor produces). So the market feels dead.

Grouping and social activities are no better than other games, and perhaps worse. Warhammer and Rift made advances in terms of allowing legitimate peripheral participation; you saw some people beating down an instance, you auto-joined it. Not in SWTOR - you have to do the LFG holler, and I noticed that as I advanced in levels, there were fewer and fewer of those calls going out.

So, once again, there are parts of the experience that you can only get if you either bring friends into the world or work hard to make friends there. This makes for unpleasant surprises, like WoW's questline capstones, where you would solo 95% of the storyline only to find that you had to team up for the last part. Does that make sense? Either make it a solo game, where solo players can do everything. Or, make it a multiplayer game from the start, so there are social norms under which everyone feels completely normal meeting strangers and playing with them. With systems like WoW's and SWTOR's, you solo along as the path of least resistance until, YOU have to be the one who breaks silence and asks for help. Remember EQ? You'd wander into a zone and immediately shout "34 Cleric lfg." That's how everybody played. In today's MMOGs, somehow it's become like the junior high dance - everyone standing around against the wall, nobody dancing.

On top of this there was some serious design weirdness in my particular class (Scoundrel). Why they made the stealth class a healer, I'll never know. It seemed that difficulty was poorly balanced - you'd destroy everything easily and then suddenly would come a quest that was impossible. Talent tree for Scoundrel was odd - you got all these punching skills (Punching? Really? In a world with lasers?) and yet, I found my DPS was better when I ignored all my talent tree talents, sat back in cover, and shot.

SWTOR's big innovation was the addition of thousands of filmed cutscenes to the game. As in Mass Effect, you're watching a movie and playing some game during the breaks. If you love Star Wars, this does let you immerse yourself in the Star Wars universe. And this is an important, critical goal; I remember Raph saying this was his main goal in designing SWG: Let people live in the Star Wars Universe. Thing is, I don't love Star Wars all that much, and I don't really like watching movies. As I wander the latest version of that galaxy, I don't feel the world responding to my touch. It's got a hard-plastic feel. And somehow, Skyrim does not.

 

 

Movies Stink

I can't count how many times a casual social conversation has led to someone looking at me incredulously, blurting "You haven't seen [Movie X]? How could you not have seen [Movie X]? You have to see [Movie X]. I'll loan you my DVD. In fact, come to my house next week and we'll watch it." I have a stack of DVDs of "essential" loaned films that I have yet to watch. Not to mention "essential" TV programs and "essential" books. I'd like to take this opportunity and tell the world: No. I don't consider it essential at this point in my life to watch or read any particular narrative. I'm sick of narrative. The vast majority of "essential" narratives stink. Most of them are lies. A few are entertaining lies, fewer are entertaining and useful lies, a very small number - very small - are interesting, shocking, and true. Well, I've read or watched those, all three of them. The chances that Hollywood's offerings in the last 20 years constitute anything important for a contemporary mind are vanishingly small. Same for fiction, indeed, almost anything made to be looked at in the last generation of creativity. Largely a waste of time. So - please stop giving me this worthless homework.

Some of you may have noted that Hollywood keeps losing business. Others lament! and write soulful essays advising Hollywood on the road back. Phooey. Go away. I'm sick of stories.

We moved the lines online

 

In 2004 (yes we’ve been around a long-ass time), I wrote Bah, Humbug & Digital Distribution, talking about the tensions between getting physical and virtual gifts. I’m yet to see a break down of the stats from Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) but I’m guessing the physical : virtual is going to break new ground. 

Back on ’04 I was musing about the impact of virtual gifts on xmas – I still do, how many of you bought someone a dead-tree-book rather than a kindle edition so you could give someone an object (do they sell some kind of token you can give, like a card with a code on it, if not why not?)? 

The ritual I’d either forgotten about or something that was not such an ‘event’ in ’04 was the midnight launch. As the guys (and they all seem to be guys) on pod casts such as Mos Eisley Radio were lamenting many game stores did not have a midnight release event for SWTOR, which as the people are starting to note is a gamer ritual that some of the hard-core are starting to miss. 

There are multiple reason for why midnight release was not a big thing in the case of SWTOR: Digital Download / Amazon et al pre-ordering; but possible most of all the phased early entry process that was used. There are god management reasons for having phased entry, though for those of us that sat in popcap queue for a long time last week load balancing did not go perfectly (though possibly as well as it could). But, there did seem to be a lack of an event, a communal moment for many players – though as podcasters have noted some people shifted from standing in line to waiting in server queues on vent with their buddies – we always find a way to be together I guess. 

May the force be with you^TM….

Simulating the 2012 Election: Bitter Choices

We tend to focus so much on the digital that we overlook wonderful simulation engines right under our noses. Sometimes the best simulators are also simple games. Dress up chess a little bit, and you're doing combined-arms warfare. The game does not have to be digital or massive. Rather, the key contribution of Game is that games represent systems really well. It is very hard to write a book or give a lecture about a system. (Test: Explain your city's zoning system to a friend.) It is comparatively easy to create a simulation of the system, then add objectives to create a game. It being just as important to grasp systems as much as narratives or personalities, games belong in every literate person's toolkit.

Be that as it may, we can now note that board games have grown up and now present opportunities to simulate extremely pwoerful and difficult systems. Labyrinth is a maddeningly accurate and convincing demonstration of the impossibility of rational foreign policy in the Middle East. Play the game to understand why our only choices seems to be flavors of madness.This game is also cool for being a simulation of history we are still living. Helpful, that.

Another wonderful board game is 1960: The Making of the President. This is a robust articulation of the US Presidential Election system. Just for kicks, I updated it to simulate the 2012 Election. It wasn't that hard. In 1960, Civil Rights were a big issue. Today, we have the Culture Wars. Defense then was about frosty fellows in porkpie hats. Today it is about bearded gentlemen in the hills. Is the Economy still an issue today? Yes, yes...going out on a limb here...I think so. YIKES of course it is. Speaking of permanent things, the game has an Event Card called "Late Returns from Cook County" that gives the Democrat player some mystery votes in Illinois on Election Day. As we observe yet another Illinois governor heading to jail, what can be said of this game mechanic other than - COOK COUNTY WILL NEVER CHANGE. KEEP THE CARD.

I uploaded the 2012 variant to BoardGameGeek, a great site for anyone seeking effective system simulations. Having played the 2012 election variant a couple of times, I come away with at least one recommendation: Watch Pennsylvania.

Notehall: RMT Comes to the Classroom

My colleague Mark Deuze just let us know about Notehall. The site allows students to sell their class notes. My faculty looks upon this with a negative eye. They say, You should write your own notes. The notes on the site can be stupid or outdated. Many of our faculty release the lecture notes for free anyway.

Compare:

"The site allows players to sell their gold. Designers look upon this with a negative eye. They say, You should grind your own gold. The gold on the site can be counterfeit. Much of our game releases gold practically for free anyway."

How long before we have "note farmers" - people who go to class just to take notes and sell them?

If you want to control black markets in the digital age, how do you do it? If they have a website you can shut down, shut it down (Napster). If they don't, you spam the network with bad content (Kazaa).This is an example of force projection within networks; controllers must always project force within the network where the important assets live. The Prussians projected force within the rail network, the Nazis within road networks, and digital powers must project force into things like Notehall.

Advice: If you don't like Notehall, you have no hope if you rely on admonition and warnings and ethics codes. Rather: Announce to your students that you will be releasing fakes notes on Notehall. They will contain wrong answers. The fakes are designed to ensure that students who study from Notehall will fail the class.

 

Dynamic Narrative Difficulty Adjustment

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's something missing in game designs. You may have noticed or read about dynamic difficulty adjustment systems. Basically, if the zombies eat your brains, the system spawns fewer zombies. What strikes me this morning is the degree to which these systems focus on  combat. For one thing, it does not seem that puzzles go up or down in complexity based on how well you do. On the other maybe they do - do we get hints when we're stumped? I can't recall. But I do know this: I've never seen the story of a game go up or down in complexity and nuance based on the revealed literary competence of the player. Rather, the plots seem pretty fixed, and usually not too deep at all.

It would be neat to get a choice when starting a game: Do you want the bare-bones Good v. Evil plot, or do you want Dostoyevsky? It would be even better to have the narrative sophistication change as you play. I'm sure it's impossible now, but who knows.

Paizo veterans to make a Pathfinder virtual world

In tabletop RPGs, nobody is better than Paizo, makers of Pathfinder. Pathfinder is an incredibly significant game. Here's why: A few years ago, the then-owners of Dungeons and Dragons decided for some reason to radically change the game, trying to invent a new genre of card-driven, software-supported role-playing games. This failed. Meanwhile, the then-current D&D ruleset (3.5) was left without a developer. Paizo picked up the rules, made a few changes, and released them as Pathfinder. Thus, Pathfinder is the current holder of the intellectual and artistic vision of D&D, which makes it among the most significant games available today. As such, Pathfinder is required gaming for all of my students.

Today we learn that some veterans from Paizo and CCP (makers of the massive space sandbox EVE Online) will be creating an MMORPG based on the Pathfinder/D&D ruleset. Previous attempts at direct computer implementations of D&D have been a mixed bag. Temple of Elemental Evil was great. D&D Online, not so much. Neverwinter Nights - fantastic.

Perhaps the industry realizes that the grind game market has been tapped, and exhausted, by WoW. The troubles of Rift and Lego Universe, contrasted with the success of lite visions like Minecraft and the newcomer Realm of the Mad God, certainly suggest a new direction. Happily, the Pathfinder MMO press release speaks of lots of user content, sandbox elements, and a world that users can change. On the other hand, we've heard that before. It will be interesting to watch.

Happy Thanksgiving.

CFP: Barcelona Conference on Law & Politics of Online Entertainment

Of possible interest to readers: On July 9-10, 2012, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia) is having its 8th Annual Conference on Internet, Law & Politics in Barcelona.  The theme this year is "Challenges and Opportunities of Online Entertainment," which would include much of what we cover here at Terra Nova. Deadline for abstract submission is December 20. The call for papers is here.

The Billion-Dollar Game

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare just launched and in 5 days it's earned $775m. Xbox Live had more than 3m players from the first day.

Some thoughts. First, we're close to seeing a game raise $1b in a weekend. Second, what kind of a game is it: A first-person shooter. Physics, realism, destruction, kill-or-be-killed, but all in good fun. Play war. War play. The experience has such a broad and deep resonance with the hairless ape. Homo sapiens is built to like it. Third, by capturing the spotlight yet again, FPS games reinforce their status as the representative of the medium. For better or worse, when non-gamers think of games, they think of FPS. Fourth: It's a dusty game. The olive, blue, and feldgrau of European and jungle war has been replaced by sandy brown gear. War is now a dry desert thing.

Why Second Life failed

Not my headline -- I took it from this article published Tuesday in Slate.  (You may want to take a look at it before reading further, since I'm reacting to it here.)

Once upon a time, I posted about my consternation that our blog was insufficiently interested in Second Life vis-a-vis the amount of media attention it was receiving.  I personally wanted to like Second Life more than I did, but it just didn't grab me.  This was despite my deep respect for Cory Ondrejka and my intellectual interest in the IP-related aspects of the platform. 

But now times have changed, at least in the media consensus.  Second Life has spent five years in the trench of the Gartner hype cycle (though perhaps, despite this Slate article, it may be climbing out). The media's souring toward Second Life was no surprise.  Ren suggested in 2006 that the media's love of Second Life was so strong that it was doomed to burn out in 2007.  So this week's article in Slate is about five years late to the "why Second Life failed" party.  In fact, it's pretty much a 2011 repetition of what Ren said people were going to say (and then said) in 2007:

In 2006, the future was Second Life. Business Week put Second Life on the cover. American Apparel, Dell, and Reebok, among many others, rushed to build virtual storefronts. Reuters even created a full-time Second Life bureau chief. People rushed to sign up and create their own avatars. Blue hair and Linden dollars were the future.  Looking back, the future didn’t last long. By the end of 2007, Second Life was already losing its fizz.

Note that the inset video in this article is about Second Life prostitution -- points 1 and 2 of Ren's prediction. 

The gist of this article is the claim that Second Life failed because it doesn't fill a consumer need.  Brilliant -- welcome to 2007.  Actually, maybe 2003, since this is basically the same criticism that many of us had when Second Life launched (do we really need a Metaverse?) and the reason the more game-focused set of us always had a little trouble liking Second Life.  It seemed like a very cool tool that was not particularly fun to use.  Without a game mechanic that lended purpose to your presence on the platform, what Second Life offered seemed a lot like an avatar-populated uncurated 3-D art gallery.

Today, though, my feelings have flipped (at least a little).  I still don't hang out in Second Life very much, but I do respect the technology and community in a way I failed to do in 2007. 

Part of this is probably that we are now entering a gamification hype wave, where not only is it the kiss of death to have a virtual world with no game-like elements, it is the kiss of death to sell anything (e.g. toothpaste) without badges, trophies, and epic wins.  I have no idea how long this gamification bubble will last, but in any event, the spread of game mechanics everywhere makes me more interested in those virtual platforms, like Second Life, that deny that they are games.

The other thing that has changed my mind about Second Life is that, almost against my will, I have gotten to know it better.  Part of this is simply from reading about it.  Academic interest in virtual worlds has often congregated, for understandable reasons, on the virtual world with the real economy that was not a game.  So it is hard to participate in academic conversations about virtual worlds without tracking the state of Second Life.  After all, some of the most interesting books about virtual worlds are about Second Life -- I'm thinking particularly of TN author Thomas Malaby's book, and Tom Boellstorff's book. 

But more importantly, I've now used Second Life on many occassions to speak with audiences.  The Slate authors say that Second Life is a neat technology that no one wants to use because it meets no consumer need.  Actually, it really isn't a bad technology for certain forms of distance teaching and collaboration, as IBM and other firms have learned.  Other forms of social software are more popular, but spatial simulations make possible certain forms of interaction that a technology like Facebook does not provide.  To put it in the framing of the Slate authors -- there are actually some useful milkshakes in Second Life.  Not everyone needs them, but some do.

So Second Life has not failed, really.  Wired and the tech pundrity seemed convinced that we would all be logged into Second Life working virtual jobs in 2011.  We're not.  The tech media in 2006 bubbled over with the belief that all these companies seeking free publicity by launching offices in Second Life were going to make big profits within Second Life. They didn't.  So, in my view, Second Life never failed--the media reporting on Second Life failed.

Additionally, the Slate authors aren't so graceful when they stumble on a key fact about Second Life:

In the first half of 2011, the company reported that an average of about 1 million users logged in every month—which, you have to admit, is about 999,990 more than you expected.

Really? Why should we have expected that? Oh -- I know why -- because it has been common knowledge for five years that Second Life "failed."

Actually, it seems to me that if Second Life has 1 million users each month, the company is actually serving some need for some market.  The question is: what kind of milkshake are those 1 million users drinking? 

Based on my admittedly limited experiences, I'm sure that some of them are using the technology as a distance collaboration tool, because I know it works well for that purpose.  John Carter McKnight raises another possibility -- maybe Second Life has "failed" to the extent it has systematically failed to realize the rather peculiar flavor of milkshake that it offers. Perhaps, like the Slate authors, the creators of Second Life think they haven't got a milkshake to sell, or perhaps they don't think it is a milkshake that the world wants to buy.

And perhaps, in terms of broad demographics, it isn't: Second Life is a tool for those users with the passion and ability to make and customize their own fantastic worlds.  That's a pretty niche interest, isn't it?  Sort of like a Shamrock Shake.  But obviously, and perhaps suprisingly, a million people today are willing to buy it.  If I were Slate, I think that's the story I'd want to run in 2011.

Lego Universe to Close

Lego Universe is a traditional MMO, requiring a subscription to play. Apparently they were not seeing enough revenue and had to close. It has wonderful graphics, seems quite smooth, and uses the same kind of combat mechanics s the immensely popular Lego Star Wars types of games (everybody's a lego dude and you break your enemies). Just not popular enough with the target audience.

Lego is a hugely successful company and their decision argues for the limited appeal of the EQ model. Maybe the thrill of being a character in a world is a one-time affair (I think Richard Bartle has argued as much). After you get over that, what keeps you engaged? I'm an explorer type, and I burn out when I can sense the boundaries or the world or, alternatively, when I can tell that getting to the boundaries (such as the highest level) will take far too many hours of repetitive gameplay. I dream of a world that is called into existence by my footsteps. At the same time, mere land and sky is not enough. I want to come across villages that no one has seen before and find that they need me somehow.

 

Do you build a game like a machine?

Who should make games - artists or engineers? We've bemoaned in this space before the turn that WoW took, from the kludgy 3d mock-up of a D&D campaign that was EverQuest, to the very refined, very polished, and to some dead, grind that was (is!) Azeroth. We bemoaned it. Then we went out and played the heck out of it for years.

Students come to game design with passion and see themselves as creators. It's a lot of work to get them to finish, polish, and refine to a degree the industry might respect. It's important pressure, though, according to a surprising source. Ernest Adams, a game design artist, tells us that passion is overrated.

Constructing these large-scale engagement systems - is there a method to it? Is it scientific, like the building of ships and cars? Come to think of it, what's an example of an "indie car" or an "indie ship" or an "indie building" akin to the indie games that many say are the only soul left in the business? Are these examples apt at all?

Goonswarm Shocks EVE Markets

More evidence that an MMO can look like the real world! Compare the Enron saga to the following story sent in by Goonswarmer endie. Thanks endie!

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Basically, this is about some emergent gameplay that we in Goonswarm (it's always Goonswarm) are running right now.  It requires a touch of background for the non-Eve player, but is fairly easily comprehensible to the non-Eve constituency.  There are three basic things to understand:

1- In Eve, "POS Towers" (essentially small space stations) are at the core of much manufacturing, being used to react various compounds to make the building blocks of advanced construction.  Of the four Eve races' towers, by far the most efficient for this task are Gallente.  Gallente towers are thus used almost exclusively for high-end compound reactions.  Without the results of these reactions - many essential items from interdictors to jump freighters - simply cannot be built.

2 - Gallente towers use a specific type of ice which is predominately mined in Gallente empire space (it spawns in a few other places but is economically unrewarding to mine there until prices become vastly higher).  By filtering on various criteria, we were able to determine that only seventeen of all of Eve's thousands of systems were suitable for the methods used to mine almost all Gallente ice (automated botting by large numbers of ice-mining accounts).  I'll spare you the details of what those criteria were unless you are particularly interested.

3 - The automated bots use ships that themselves require at least thirty or so hours of mining to pay for their own capital investment, when fitted.  Ironically, they rely on CCP's own mechanics for protection: if you shoot them in empire space then "Concord" (an external, invincible force of NPCs: essentially town guards) will spawn very quickly and destroy you.  However, it is possible to fit certain ships so as to deal sufficient damage sufficiently rapidly to destroy one or more miners before Concord arrive.  For obvious and predictably tasteless Goonswarm-cultural reasons this is known as Jihading.

We have therefore announced and begun a campaign aimed at preventing anyone mining for Gallente ice in Empire space.  Since we have thousands of members, we have proved able to shut ice-mining operations down almost entirely.

GDC Online Coverage

Our friends the psychogamers are covering GDC Online over on Motivate.Play. Can't wait to hear what Neal Stephenson has been up to.

Minecraft as Web 2.0

I was recently invited to write a book chapter about the intersection of amateur creativity and digital games. I just posted a draft of that chapter here. It's half about Web 2.0 and half about Minecraft.  Feedback is welcome.

I have been interested in amateur creativity for over a decade now and it has been one of the things I have found most interesting in studying virtual worlds.  As I explain in the draft, I think digital gaming is itself interesting because it is intrinsically aligned with solicitude for a certain group of creative amateurs (players).  So I've been fascinated following the phenomenon of Minecraft and how it works as both a tool for creativity, a game, and a locus for other forms of creativity.  I'm going to keep watching to see how it evolves.  So if anyone reading is doing academic research on Minecraft--or knows of anyone else who is--please let me know.

Minecraft is set up like an adventure game, but unlike in World of Warcraft, you're not on a roller coaster ride to level 85.  Instead, Minecraft embodies what I once wanted Second Life to be.  Second Life is supposedly all about user creativity, but it seem that many users don't take much advantage of the creative tools it offers. In Minecraft, though, user creativity is baked into the gameplay.  That makes it a more satisfying experience for amateur creators.  Not to knock Second Life, but based on the numbers, it seems that many people (I'm curious about how many are kids, btw) are finding Minecraft's sandbox more fun than the sandbox of Second Life.

As I explain in the draft, I'm not sure what Minecraft says about the future of user-generated content in games.  I imagine the industry is paying attention to Minecraft and how it became what it is.  But I'm not sure the mainstream games industry is anywhere near ready to create a Minecraft clone, for reasons I discuss in the paper and in this prior paper.

I don't imagine it is going to happen, but a massively-multiplayer version of Minecraft would be really interesting, wouldn't it?  Especially if it allowed some sort of client-level code-modding as you moved through regions, so groups of users could add new layers of functionality to their spaces. I wonder what sorts of things would emerge from that?

Back to Ontology

Happy Monday, world! Let's do some philosophy!! Correspondent Freek Rijna has sent us a monograph applying Searle's concepts of social construction of reality to the ontology of virtual items. There's a nice, tight little point in here: Virtual things are real simulations. Simulations are real things, after all. They have physical existence as images and sounds. If you accept this, you don't have to get bogged down in debates about whether virtual things are real or not real. Look at it this way: A rook in chess is a real simulation of a castle. It takes its place among the set of real things labeled {simulations}, not among the set of real things labeled {buildings}. Therefore, asking whether a rook is a real castle is like asking whether a fish is a real bicycle. The fish and the bicycle are both real. And the construction "a fish may NOT be a real bicycle" is not very interesting at all.And so when people buy and sell virtual items, they are not doing so as if those items were real. Rather, they are treating them as the real things they are - real simulations.