Terra Nova

Virtual Comedy Stages

Got an email (copied after the break) from a comedian seeking to drive traffic to a charity website. He and his buddies are playing games in Iron Man Mode: One death. Nice, funny premise. It's consistent with Yogscast, the effort by two Brits to perform through Minecraft. My kids watched Yogscast as much as they played the game. "O Lewis! O Simon! AHHHHHH" It was funny.

When serious game content goes over the top - see Tera - it's too, too funny to knock it down. Drives role-players mad, of course. In this ironic age, we're all looking for a lore we can believe in and whatever is produced is just not good enough for some people. So everything gets griefed. I suppose that's healthy.

Healthy or not, if we treat all virtual worlds and everything on the internet as sites for mockery, we do get a heck of a good laugh out of it. Just don't take yourself too seriously out there.

After the break, read the appeal from the Iron Man.

Smithsonian Art of Video Games

So I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of the Smithsonian's Art of Video Games exhibit last week by curator Georgina Goodlander. If you're in DC, it is worth a visit, plus it will be venturing off on a traveling tour at the end of the year.

What I found curious, but not surprising, was my mixture of excitement and disappointment at seeing video games displayed as "art" in the Smithsonian.  During a long stretch of my adolescence, I trained as a visual artist, with the hope of one day producing something worthy of placement in a museum.  At the same time, I spent a significant amount of time (perhaps too significant) with video games and early computer graphics programs.  At that time, it never struck me as strange that video games were not in museums, since the divide between fine art culture and gamer culture was so wide and clear.

So now, in 2012, I get to stroll through a gallery of screenshots and video captures of the Atari VCS, Intellivision, C64, Sega Genesis, etc.  On the one hand, it's thrilling to see the Smithsonian take these small steps into categorizing and curating examples of the video game genre.  (Curiously, in a way that Ian Bogost and Nick Monfort might appreciate, the major room in the exhibit adopted a platform-based taxonomy, with genre-based subcategories.)  And surely, that was my dominant reaction to the exhibit -- it was really great to see the genre put on a pedestal, so to speak, as art.

My slight disappointment: how much was not there.  It struck me that it is impossible it is to put the art of the video game in a small exhibit, or perhaps even to conceptualize this art form as fully expressive in the museum context.  Video games are often such rich, interactive, social, and contextual experiences -- how to capture all of that in a few rooms of exhibits?

Perhaps, though, this is not unique to video games.  I can only imagine what an ancient Egyptian might think, confronted with the average museum's scattered artifacts under glass.  How much does an exhibit on ancient Egypt really give us a sense of what it meant to live in that culture?  You can get a glimpse, perhaps, but not much more.  The odd thing for me about the Smithsonain exhibit, I guess, is that all that you glimpse inside the exhibit is still very much alive outside of it.

Anyway, there's a website that goes along with the Exhibit which has some interviews with game developers -- I have yet to watch them, but I'm sure they're fascinating: http://www.americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/artists/

Update: Gamasutra does a piece on this topic, featuring Henry Lowood's efforts.  Must be something in the air this week.

Go visit Petra's Planet

Petra is a Finnish girl who, in the storybooks, is able to fly around the world and see many different cultures. On the Petra's PLanet MMO, the player does what Petra does: Go to different countries. There's nothing special or amazing about this, and that's what's special and amazing. In a decade, we've gone from 4 MMOGs and perhaps 6 immersive world-type games, to the point where a small country's story for children spawns its own immersive virtual environment.

Remember in 1995 when the headlines screamed "Soon there will be computers in cars and refrigerators!" Well, today there are indeed computers in cars and refrigerators, but there's big headline. It happens without noticing.

Therefore, take a moment to notice Petra's Planet.

***

Substantively, is this a good thing? You've walked through Epcot and enjoyed the sensations induced by faux-France and faux-Norway. You tink, hey I learned something about France and Norway today. But did you? Maybe you actually lost knowledge about them.

New name same cast

Just to let TN readers know - I changed the name of the Virtual Policy Network's podcast to: Social Change Technology. That seemed to best sum up what it's about. 

We've done a few shows recently that TN'ers might like - they are also a bit of a TN All Star cast: 

• TL Taylor on e-Sports
• Mia Consalvo and friend-of-the-show Ron Miners on the social aspects of so-called Social Games

 We've also had a preview of this year's Federal Consortum for Virtual Worlds conference; Burcu Bakioglu talkiing to Michael Andersen about transmedia story telling and me talking to Rita J, King about Science House, robots and stuff. For all of 'em you can grab the iTunes feed or RSS.

Bitcoins can be stolen

Couple of reports from the world of the virtual currency Bitcoin indicate that it has become a hacker target. A BTC is worth about $5 at the moment; the thefts are in the 6-digit area in terms of dollars.

What do we have here? A real-world currency who holders are subject to extraordinary attacks? Or is it a virtual currency that is necessarily more vulnerable to security risks? Or, are the holders of Bitcoin small-scale operations with insufficient security? I can't tell; I don't know enough about security. I wonder how this hacker-theft rate compares to the theft rate for Chase's electronic dollar holdings.

The fact that the thieves have acquired a good with stable value - $5 a unit - indicates that Bitcoin is alive and healthy, though.

New Book: Virtual Economies and Financial Crime

I thought reader must be interested in the forthcoming title from Edward Elgar:  Virtual Economies and Financial Crime, by Dr. Clare Chambers Jones.

Here is the description from the publisher:

Virtual economies and financial crime are ever-growing, increasingly significant facets to banking, finance and anti-money laundering regulations on an international scale. In this pathbreaking and timely book, these two important issues are explored together for the first time in the same place.

Clare Chambers-Jones examines the jurisprudential elements of cyber law in the context of virtual economic crime and explains how virtual economic crime can take place in virtual worlds. She looks at the multi-layered and interconnected issues association with the increasing trend of global and virtual banking via the ‘Second Life’ MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game). Through this fascinating case study, the author illustrates how virtual worlds have created a second virtual economy which transgresses into the real, creating economic, political and social issues. Loopholes used by criminals to launder money through virtual worlds (given the lack of jurisdictional consensus on detection and prosecution) are also highlighted.

Looks very promising and timely!

Is it gambling?

So, you do something in a virtual world and you get a random item. Say, you kill a dragon. The item has real-world value. You obtained it as a result of three things: You paid or registered to play the game, you performed an action that may have required skill or maybe not, and the system executed a random item generation process. Still, it's not gambling. Right? It's monster-raiding.

OK, now you go into a social network and do something and you get a random virtual item of nontrivial value. Say, you 'Liked' somebody's pic and you got a free virtual rose. Or you wrote something that 100 other people 'Liked.' But you joined the network, you did something that may or may not have involved skill, and a random process of the system gave you an item of value.

Well, Japan says thats gambling. So does Korea.

We need to be firm at some point that there's a difference between killing monsters in games and 'Liking' things in social networks. It's not a technical or functional difference, its an aesthetic and experiential difference for which there is no bright line distinction. If we don't work to clarify this difference, courts will start calling monster loot gambling income. Not good.

Game worlds need to be identified as such and then tightly walled off, to the extent possible, from reality.

Uncharted's Designer Heads to the Ivory Tower

We've talked before in this space about academia and industry working together, and how much the academy needs to hire expertise from game developers. In perhaps the biggest such hire ever, USC has hired Richard Lemarchand. I wish I knew how much they had to pay him, as we are trying to come up with a way to do something similar. Any guesses?

Facebook Credits Under Attack

Earlier we reported that Google decided not to have a virtual currency. Facebook's Credits may face legal challenges, as Joystiq reports.

Virtual Currency Exchanges on the Upswing

Back in the day, say 2004 or 2005, some far-seeing folks tried to set up virtual currency exchanges. Traffic was too light at the time, but now it seems to be a sustainable business model with some venture buy-in. See this article in Forbes. Here's the skinny: The exchanges stand ready to transfer balances in either direction for a large number of currencies, including $. It's a natural next step in the evolution of this space. When there were a zillion European currencies, banks made a lot of money just helping you switch from one to another. "If it's Drachma, this must be Greece! Therefore, Tuesday!" Followed by "O Noes it's SPARTAAAAAaaaaaaa......." -Splat-

Latest Virtual Currency: $C

Everybody in Buffalo and Detroit jokes about their northern neighbor's "play money." But it may soon go digital in a way that looks more like Yo-Ho-Ho money than than Euros.

No Google Bucks

Google was thinking about making a virtual currency but did not, apparently due to regulatory concerns.

Gamer Nannies!

One Debbie Denard of Nanny.net has identified nanny characters she'd like to see in video games. I guess there'd have to be kids in games first. Wonder how The Sims nannies stack up.

Babykiller Gamers

Mike Fahey of Kotaku may be hitting rock bottom. He writes movingly that he can't take it any more, this pattern of stories in which gamers kill their babies. 

To gain perspective, let's count the babies who have been sent prematurely to their final rest.

• Globally, since 2001, due to problemtatic game use: 10? 20? (judging from news reports).
• In England, since 2001, due to abuse and neglect generally: 1,500 (3 per week times ten years; source).
• In the US, due to abuse and neglect, since 2001: 15,000 (about 1500 annually times ten years; source).
• In the US, since 2001, due to abortion: 12 million (1.2m per year times ten years; source).

Not sure what it all means, but I'm inclined to think that there is some root cause, or rather a glaring absence, or perhaps presence, of something, in modern culture, that produces both bad gaming and bad parenting. You be the judge!

 

 

 

 

 

Oh EVE, of course you're not a freeman's paradise

On its face, EVE Online seems such a paradise for the independent person. No laws, no restrictions, no way forward except individual merit. Can't handle it? Die or quit. Completely predictably, the resulting society does not consist of thousands of yeoman farmers but rather strong-man rule in the form of player guilds (corporations). Over and above this emergent oligarchic tyranny, the owners of EVE established a first-of-its-kind player governance, a parliament of sorts whereby the players would supposedly be able to have a hand on the game's development. This only replays once again the farce told eloquently by our own Julian Dibbell many years ago in his My Tiny Life. Another famous example was Peter Ludlow's and Mark Wallace's experience in the "freedom-loving" confines of Sims Online and Second Life.

For, as correspondent Marcus Carter reports, there ain't no freedom in EVE after all. He writes:

BEGIN QUOTE

Something just happened in EVE Online that I thought TerraNovans might be interested in.

EVE has a player elected council, the CSM. The election for CSM7 just finished. The winner, ‘The Mittani’ is a bit of a controversial figure in EVE, and got most of the votes. It doesn’t hurt that he is the head diplomat for the Goonswarm Federation, probably the most powerful (and controversial) alliance in the game (Goonswarm made TerraNova last October).

Voting for CSM7 finished at around about the time EVE Fanfest began. At the Alliance Panel hosted by CCP, near the end of fanfest, The Mittani made some controversial comments.

I’ll just copy/paste from the massively article

During a Q&A session after the presentation, he said something that has become the focus of a great deal of controversy. "Incidentally, if you want to make the guy kill himself, his (in-game) name is [redacted]," The Mittani said, adding that "he has his own corp. Find him." The talk was watched by a packed room of Fanfest attendees and streamed live to thousands of players at home. 

In the community, there was/is serious uproar. Many were quick to point out that what The Mittani had done was in strict violation of the EVE EULA and has been described as cyber-bullying. He soon apologised, and later offered his resignation from the chairman position on CSM7, but not the CSM itself.

However, CCP just announced that his conduct on the day was a “clear violation of our Terms of Service” and “According to our existing policies, we have issued a 30 day ban from EVE Online to the panel speaker” which removes him from the CSM entirely. See more from that statement here.

What I find most interesting is that *a player broke a games EULA while not even playing that game*. In the thread on the forums, several users were quick to jump on this, some more flippantly than others, “You guys should ban me because I am sitting in my room saying EULA/TOS breaking things out loud in front of the monitor”.

Now while this situation is clearly different, occurring at a hosted CCP event and live-streamed online, but if the boundary for a game EULA isn’t at the end of the game – where is it?

END QUOTE

Interesting question.

Serious Games Association Launches

A Serious Games Association is being launched, and they want to compile a directory of all the games for good out there. Please go to SeriousGamesAssociation.com to sign up, help out, and add your serious game to the list.

Advice for young academics as the US university system contracts

You're hearing it more and more: There's a higher-education bubble. Remember bubbles? They're those things that pop and cause catastrophes. In 2008, the housing finance bubble popped and we're still dealing with the effects. Personally, I think the 4th straight year of economic molasses has a lot to do with long-run trends in technology and the negative effect of the internet on aggregate demand. People who spend all day surfing and tweeting and playing just don't buy as much stuff. They're certainly exposed to a lot less advertising. But still, even when long-run trends are downward, the economy tends to contract via bubble-pops, not smooth decline.

Why is the university system in the US about to pop? I first thought about this future back in about 2000 when I was working at a Cal State school. The tone of the place was entirely vocational. There was no student life. No spirit. No mentoring. Nothing that I would associate with higher education. It was a group - albeit a large and at times hard-working group - of young people seeking a certificate by the easiest possible means. A university in name only. Naturally, the thought occured that the whole thing could be done online at a fraction of the cost. And that someone out there would do that. And when they did, the Cal States of the world would go under.

Apparently these days are upon us. I've heard that 3,000 US colleges and universities will fold within the next 10 years. This gloomy forecast comes from the people who sell grotesquely overpriced textbooks to these schools. What a small lifeless campus can do, Phoenix University Online can do better. Thus, good-bye Direction-State University; good-bye Dead-Guy's-Name College.

Moreover, a good chunk of a big university's money comes from cash cow courses (the 1100 students in Economics 101), and these are easily done online as well. Revenues at big university will contract dramatically. There will be cutting; there will be blood on the tile. All those hyphenated departments, majors, and programs, created only to satisfy political demands or the power-lust of big-name professors, will go away.

The contraction in higher ed has distinct consequences for young people hoping for an academic career. If your advisors are telling you to ignore all this, follow your passion, and everything will be fine, my advice is: Find new advisors. Everything is *not* going to be fine.

More From GDC

Once again we point to Motivate.Play for reports on game experimentation and creating social glue. I have got to go to GDC every year, there's more going on there in terms of research than you can shake a stick at.

Bitcoins, Human Rights & Forbes

The latest Virtually Policy podcast is part two of the Jon Matonis interview. In the second half of the interview Jon focuses on Bitcoin and we cover everything from human rights, Bitcoin as a cross platform gaming currency and Dr Castronova's post on this very blog: Bitcoin (see also my summary of what it's about: A Bit too far?).

Jon is contributor to Forbes.com and has just published a written companion to the podcasts, also titled  Virtual Currencies and Roach Motels.

Virtually Policy 3: Virtual Currencies and Roach Motels

Virtually Policy 4: Bitcoin

GDC Updates: The Elusive Player and the Happy Worker

The guys at Motivate.Play are taking in GDC and have posted their first notes. Travis Ross comments on the unstated stance of many serious games speakers that making a game fun an easy part of a project. As if it's easy to attract players...yeah. He also says that an emerging norm for game academics is to learn how to code, and that Unity is becoming the game engine of choice.  Jim Cummings relates the latest efforts of motivators to make work fun, a project that, well, makes a body think.