Terra Nova

Virtual Goods at GDC

Edward Castronova

Spent the day at LiveGamer's event. Virtual goods now a $6b business. Secondary market at $2b. Growing at 40% per year. Number of people with some kind of virtual world account in high hundreds of millions. Rumor that US states will begin charging sales tax on virtual item sales within the year. See RetailingToday.com, Dan Hansen, Feb. 26.

Build Your Own Sheldon Syllabus

Edward Castronova

There’s been quite a lot of buzz about Jesse Schell’s great talk at DICE. In it, he mentions the syllabus of Lee Sheldon as an example of how you could use game design to re-think the college classroom. I’ve asked Lee to share his syllabus, and he’s graciously done so. Check it out. Below the fold, some thoughts from Lee on how to administer the syllabus. And then finally, some more general thoughts of my own on how to build your own “Sheldon Syllabus” – your own class-as-an-MMORPG.

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Studying Game Studies

Richard Bartle

Recently, I did a review of Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft® Reader for Game Studies (no, it's not published yet; this is just setting the context, not trying to trick you into reading a book review). Although this WoW-related anthology of papers doesn't claim to be doing Game Studies, nevertheless the review was for a journal of that name, and all the papers in it could have been published in that journal.

It occurred to me, though, that individually almost all of the papers could also have been published in journals that specialise in other subjects. They could have found homes in journals for Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Communications, ... That being the case, what is Game Studies about? Is it merely an interdisciplinary holding pen for people whose object of study is games but whose subject is Something Else? Or does it have something unique at its core?

Put another way, what kind of paper could only be published in a journal of Game Studies?

Real Money Is Actually Virtual

Edward Castronova

Editors at a mainstream news organization have finally realized that US Dollars are no less virtual than gold pieces.

Lights Going Out in the Anti-RMT Bunker

Edward Castronova

For years I've argued that fantasy in virtual worlds is a special human joy and that everyone (courts, legislatures, players, devs, pundits) ought to do their best to prevent anything that breaks immersion. A chief culprit has been RMT, that practice of using dollars during games that some of us play in order to take refuge from the world of dollars.

This position of mine has gradually eroded and recently has taken some severe hits. The roof is cracking and the lights are dimming. It might be time to get out of here before it caves. Below the fold, the hits and what they mean for the future of living fantasy. There are also some implications for social theory.

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Horror Play about MMORPG

greglas

Has anyone seen Neighbor 3: Requisition of Doom? Currently playing in Chelsea, MA.  First time I've seen a play about an MMORPG.  Anyone aware of others?

Training & Games

greglas

Just a brief link & thought.  One of the oldest uses of game simulations is strategic training.  Tripp Robbins passed this Wired Article along, about how football players are learning new moves from playing Madden.  Of course, to the extent we learn things by virtually doing, isn't this just a bit troubling as applied to Grand Theft Auto?

Role Player Study released

Dmitri Williams

Given that they are the titular players, they don't get much attention, do they?

So, recently accepted for publication, and now cleared for posting on the Interwebs is our paper (no, sorry, not connected to the movie dotting this page) "Behind the Avatar: The Patterns, Practices and Functions of Role Playing in MMOs." You can find a pre-press copy here.

The paper combines the big trove of server-side data and quant analysis of our other EQII papers, with a full-on second step of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing. The result, we hope, is a pretty deep look into who role players are, why they play, and what makes them tick. The chocolate and peanut butter of combined qual-quant methods we think gives the paper good generalizability, but with depth to boot. As always, there were some obvious findings and some unexpected stuff, below the fold:

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Journal Adds Social Networking Focus

Edward Castronova

It used to be Cyberpsychology and Behavior, but now it's Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networks. The Editors say they welcome papers about Twitter, Facebook, games, and VR.

It's an interesting moment. You'll recall a decade ago when newspapers proclaimed that "Someday, computers will be everywhere! Your car, your fridge, your phone..." The funny thing about that kind of reporting is that there's never a followup article. "The day has arrived! Computers are now everywhere, you car, your fridge, your phone..." That's because once processors make their way into ordinary gear, the whole thing is ho-hum. Not news.

The same thing seems to be happening with virtual worlds. A virtual world could be defined as VR with other people, and since Facebook is a type of VR-lite, it is kind of a lite virtual world. The Editors of the refocused journal, and the comment-scape generally, are no longer piqued by the particular form in which virtual worlds first came to our attention: WoW and SL. Rather as media and the social have become blended everywhere, so the focus has become more general, on the idea of mediated sociality.

I sense also that there is less and less interest in the meme of gaming as a personality failure. The bugbear now seems to be (once again on the basis of some limited and methodologically questionable research) multi-tasking.

Now that games and virtual worlds are everywhere, they are increasingly unnoticed.

Full CNET Avatar Interview with Daniel Terdiman

Bruce Damer

Daniel Terdiman: okay...so why don't you start off by explaining your premise of how Avatar presages the future of 3D virtual worlds?

Bruce Damer: Cameron and his team developed a 'virtual camera' which as he walked through the set, he could see the virtual terrain. This was possible in a very crude fashion with the VR of the early 1990s, but today it is called AR (Augmented Reality). What Cameron was doing on the set of Avatar is possibly and probably a glimpse into the future of Avatars (multi user virtual worlds in Cyberspace)

Daniel Terdiman: how do you see this manifesting in future consumer-oriented virtual worlds?

Bruce Damer: So for example, if you combine the Wii or the new Microsoft system, with AR glasses or to some extent just holding up your smart phone you will "see" into the virtual world that is cast all around you.

In Vernor Vinge's superb novel Rainbows End, the characters use a kind of contact lens that gives them a parallel vista into the virtual landscape mapped around them on the physical landscape. Its a breathtaking vision for the late 2020s.

Daniel Terdiman: you think that far from now?

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Interview on how 'Avatar' (the movie) may influence the future of Avatars (the worlds)

Bruce Damer

Terra Novans, you might be interested in this interview on Daniel Terdiman's Geek Gestalt blog on how James Cameron's film may presage the future of virtual worlds (how we will interact with them beyond our current "keystone kops" era)...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10443265-52.html?tag=mncol;title

Virtual Goods Economy: Going Strong

Edward Castronova

Major James D. "Pidge" Fielder, USAF, points us to this report by CNET's Dave Rosenberg indicating that the virtual goods market, once confined to the insides of MMORPGs, continues to expand into all kinds of social software systems. Thanks Pidge!

Fortitude, Save Games, and the MMO

Edward Castronova

While wandering around the Catholic blogosphere I encountered Basilian Father Chris Valka discussing video games. Fr. Valka's concern is that games erode one of the cardinal virtues, Fortitude. As you know from your Catechism (see Para. 1808), Fortitude "strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life." As Fr. Valka has come to understand videogames, they seem to allow anyone to costlessly restart at any time. In real life, of course, there is no SaveGame. Mistakes, once made, create problems that cannot be avoided. Fr. Valka worries that coming generations won't be very good at overcoming obstacles in the moral life. Instead they will give in, on the (false) assumption that it will always be possible to go back and start over.

Forgive Fr. Valka for being like so many others in misunderstanding a cultural phenomenon from which he remains distant. It will not be that way forever. In 2010, though, his judgments raise important questions that only we who have experience in games can address. I'm particularly struck at the reliance of his thinking on the patterns of single-player games. In multi-player games, as in real life, there is no save button. Moreover, reputations in MMOGs take months and years to build up, and surrendering them is costly. I wonder if he is commenting on a rather transient feature of gaming.

Are the features of games, generally and over the long haul, conducive to the development of virtue? If a boy plays World of Warcraft instead of hiking in the woods or rebuilding old cars, is he more or less likely to develop prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as faith, hope, and charity? What features of games and virtual worlds contribute or detract from the virtues?

A Rainbow follows Clouds - Korean Supreme Court's Rule on some RMT

Unggi Yoon

* This post is a correspondence to Ted's recent post 'SCOSK Legalized RMT'

 Supreme Court of South Korea just interpreted game industry promotion act that I introduced in my old posting on Terra Nova: "Selective bombing of RMT in Korea" legaly literally.

 By the law and its implementing decree, in-game money banned for trading should be gained either by luck or thru illegal/abnormal play. In this case, what the accused resellers bought and sold were Aden, a virtual currency created and circulated in Lineage(a famous Korean MMORPG since 1998, its EULA rules out RMT of Aden). And throughout the trial, there were no evidence shown to prove those resellers bought the money from Bot-using sweatshops or hackers.

  Therefore, the critical point of the case was whether Aden is money of luck game to be banned or not. Public prosecutor asserted that attribute of Lineage is also a game of luck like a poker game, even though the former is less clear than the latter. 1st tier court judge found it guilty, but did not mention clearly about reasoning in the ruling.

  The appellate court overruled the decision and explained that Lineage is game of sweat, not a game of luck, considering that it takes lots of time and effort to get Aden by hunting & Aden can be earned not only thru hunting but also thru PVP combat and P2P market in lineage world. So appellate court acquitted the resellers from the conviction for violation of game law. Finally, on Christmas eve last year, SCOSK confirmed appellate court's ruling.

  I agree with Greg in that SCOSK's ruling itself does not mean total legalization of RMT. Definitely, The game industry promotion act in S. Korea selectively command to bomb the RMT of cyber cash of luck game and illegally/abnormally taken virtual money. Cause, the aim of game law is to protect 'Game' from 'Gambling'. Of course, it's not easy to detect and make a proof for selection. After the SCOSK's decision, korean authority announced its endeavor to ban abnormal RMT must go on.

 Yes, right now, there's no change in this long gray colored clouds even in S. Korea and the EULA of NCsoft will (if the company want to) survive though somewhat depowered. But I think, some day, this decision opens the way of rainbow and new world to evolve into. In S. Korea, where the Second Life was serviced as RMT castrated and now withdrawn from, If SCOSK decided to the contrary, and extended the word of game law to Lineage-like virtual world, then, Grabbing with the dead bodies of RMT intermediaries, looking over dying Bots, Koreans will never imagine and meet in EVE online -like, Second Life -like, and There-like futuredoms.

 Just same as lovable game, 'Gaia' of terranova to be kept.

SCOSK Legalizes RMT

Edward Castronova

Thanks to Ren Reynolds for passing this around the backchannel: The Supreme Court of South Korea overturned fines imposed by lower courts on RMTers in Lineage. Does this mean that you can't have a ToS clause forbidding RMT? We can't tell. Can anyone help? And from the what-does-it-mean-for-me department, do US courts use foreign courts for precedents?

Nelfs on Pandora

greglas

I still have not found time to see Avatar, but since I keep a running search query on avatars in the news, I have seen quite a bit of commentary about the film , including spoilers.  One thing I have been wondering about, for obvious reasons, is exactly how much Avatar has to do with avatars.  In particular, is this fantasy about new embodiment in a new society connected to a broader cultural moment, when World of Warcraft is now recognized as being a "mainstream video game" du jour?

Today, Ethan Gilsdorf, blogging at USA Today, explicitly states the thesis: 

Box office conquered, Avatar also proves the culture has shifted. Part role-playing game come true and part special effects masterpiece, its hybrid gamer-geek pedigree is as glaring as the blue skin of the Na'vi race that director James Cameron brought to life on the imaginary planet Pandora. Cameron's movie — alongside the rise of Harry Potter, the return of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, and the obsession with online games such as World of Warcraft — shows that fantasy is no longer a shunned or exotic side dish. The genre has become the main dish.

Gilsdorf suggest that the cultural drift toward the legitimation of escapist fantasy is a good thing, for a variety of reasons:

They give us hope in hopeless times. Indeed, when you read heroic stories such as Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, you sense that if a mere hobbit can withstand evil, why not you?

Hope is good, I would say.  Of course, there are some other readings of the movie, which aren't quite so positive about the messages it conveys.

So, I'm curious to hear about 2 things from those reading this:

1) To the extent that MMORPGs and escapist fantasies are becoming more mainstream now (are they?), what are the pros and cons of this trend?  What positive and negative roles does the fantasy genre play in society?

2) Avatar is certainly in the sci-fi/fantasy/escapism genre, but exactly how much is Avatar, the movie, really an expression of "gamer culture"? (Points for WoW reference spotting and links.)

It's 2010! Let's predict!

Lisa Galarneau

• What's in the pipeline?
• What are the major trends in MMOs and virtual worlds?
• When's the Star Trek MMO coming out?
• Who will be TN's next contributing author?
• What conferences will rock?

This is your chance to give TN all of your opinions, so please do!

Prior crystal ball gazing:

2004 Predictions...
2006 Predictions...
2007 Predictions...

I want to fall in love again

Lisa Galarneau

Was digging through my old socialstudygames.com archives, and found this post from 2005.  I am still waiting:

After spending a bit of time playing World of Warcraft together, colleague Gordon Calleja and I had a discussion by phone about how we felt about it.  We were impressed with the technological achievement and visual style, certainly, but we were perplexed as to why we weren't getting that spark, that feeling of really falling in love with a game (often characterised by fiending to get back in immediately after logging off, just like wanting to call your lover the minute they've walked out the door).

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Lehdonvirta on Virtual Consumption

Edward Castronova

I write to recommend Vili Lehdonvirta's dissertation, Virtual Consumption, which includes several academic papers with a thought-provoking introduction and conclusion. Vili has been an important source of energy in VERN, the Turku School of Economics, the HIIT, and no doubt many other organizations that I am unfortunately overlooking.

Vili gets it all right. He directly addresses the foolish notion that virtual goods are not real, and he does so using plain-language theoretical approaches in sociology and institutional economics rather than formal mathematical models and rational choice. In so doing, he situates virtual consumption in the ongoing discussion of post-material culture.

I would especially recommend his thoughts on the idea that virtual goods are real, and that indeed there are no virtual worlds. Rather, we all participate in play worlds and different spheres of interaction, all of which share in varying amounts of "fantasy" and "reality." 

Vili is not the first to say such things, of course (neither am I!!) but he makes the case extremely well and thus links the economics of consumption to broader discourses about the evolution of society in the digital age. 

Highly recommended.

Gender differences in MMOs

Dmitri Williams

The latest paper from the Virtual World Exploratorium group using EQ2 data is now out. "Looking for gender (LFG): Gender roles and behaviors among online gamers" covers gender differences in the player base, including their playing habits, attitudes and outcomes.

Highlights below the fold:

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FTC Report to Congress on Kids in Virtual Worlds

Joshua Fairfield

This morning the Federal Trade Commission released its long-awaited report on kids and virtual worlds.  You can read the report, entitled Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks here.  There are several things that strike me about the report, below the fold.

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Ask Not What Educational Games Your Country Can Design for You...

Julian Dibbell

From friend of the show Beth Noveck (founding impresaria of the State of Play conferences, now White House Deputy CTO) comes news of an Innovations for Healthy Kids Challenge, in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture invites "entrepreneurs, software developers and students to design a creative and educational game" that gets "tweens" eating healthier. The intent, it seems, is to wring some wholesome fun from a newly released nutritional dataset -- USDA's contribution to the White House's full-court Open Government Initiative -- and man, when they call it a challenge, they aren't kidding. Dig these judging criteria, as outlined in the press release:

"The Web-based games will help motivate kids to learn about healthy dietary habits and the importance of eating more nutritional foods. Using the foods dataset, the game should be centered on educational messages that emphasize one or more key nutrition concepts from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans ( www.dietaryguidelines.gov ) and the MyPyramid Food Guidance System ( www.mypyramid.gov )."

My fellow Terra Novans, you may say I'm a dreamer, but in my heart I believe that somewhere out there is a person possessed of both the perverse ambition and insanely brilliant skills it will take to turn these design specs into a game that somehow does not suck. Maybe it's one of you. Maybe it's someone you know. But to each and every one of you this day my challenge is to do whatever may be in your power to speed this person toward his or her rendez-vous with destiny.

For the tweens, of course.

Won't someone think of the tweens?

Game Design: The Art of the Human?

Edward Castronova

I can't get it out of my head or understand it when it is in there. Please discuss, share.

Artists :: Art as Game Designers :: People.

I dwell in possibility

Lisa Galarneau

On Monday I am defending my dissertation via video conference to New Zealand, a semi-public review of a five year effort. I even got written up in a tome on Internet ethics, after being interviewed on my made up on the fly research methods.  Awesome.  But I am a little cross about something.  The examiners have an opportunity to send me questions that arose for them while reading my dissertation. There is an insistence on positing that the digital world is scary and littered with bad intentions, faulty manners, some creep-o-rama here and there, and really nothing really good at all.

I am annoyed that this is a major question that appears in both examiners' reports, amidst all the possible questions and areas of possibility and exploration, I am criticised for not being negative enough.  One examiner accuses me of 'techno-optimism' or 'techno-celebration'. Therefore I have developed this statement:

Why is it considered mandatory in media studies and related disciplines to explore the dystopian perspective (see page 33 of the thesis), and why is my work considered faulty because I believe in focusing (while explaining rather comprehensively, I think) on what’s positive and possible and hopeful and different about digital spaces and my experiences within them?  I in fact did review and integrate all the major 'negative' or 'dystopian' literature, as well, because my committee wished that I appear ‘balanced’, however I am in rather violent disagreement about this necessity.  In fact, I think the focus on negative aspects of media culture are a bit of an albatross around media studies’ neck.  I think the Internet is the most amazing thing to have happened to humanity in several hundred years.  Not perfect, but amazing.  I find the constant nagging to explore and predict all of the horrible facets quite disconcerting, and rather a waste of time.  These aspects exist, yes, but are typically the outliers, sometimes sensational, yes, but I believe it is my right as a scholar to choose to focus on the positive aspects without being  taken to task for some lack of judgment or critical thinking.

Now, if it is mandatory that scholars of media studies take these stances: ‘the media are out to get us!’, then perhaps my ultimate disciplinary home will be a different one.  I understand the legacy, of propaganda, radio, Nazis, mass media, effects and impacts, and other drivers of thinking in this area; media studies considers itself responsible for informing and protecting the unassuming media consumer.   I suppose this is a useful task.

 But I am an unabashed techno-optimist, and I think our populous is becoming much more capable and empowered and broadly literate via these technological vehicles and venues, and I think that should be allowed with some suggestion that my decision to focus on what I believe to be the truth is somehow lacking.  My focus on the positive does not mean I am not rigourous; it just means that I have dismissed the writings of pundits such as Oppenheimer as I think they are a bit crusty, certainly dogmatic and prone to fear mongering, and often have no actual experience in the areas they choose to consider so critically.    In a way, I do not even believe they deserve any attention at all, however we continue to demand that their insight be heard and integrated.  I am not sure this is right.

I do make a point of reading them (know your enemies, right?), but I find their scholarship typically weak and their research projects built in order to vociferously and crossly prove particular (rather negative) points.  The world used to be so much better before were all interconnected.  Spam will destroy us.  Kids spend a little too much time indoors.  So do I. Yes.

Perhaps I am guilty of this coddling of my dogma, as well, but I believe that this area needs to be generally balanced, and that is why I took the approach I did.  Also, the cultures and environments I study are typically extremely positive cultures and ecosystems that thrive happily, even with some occasional ganking and bad language and homophobia (that’s gonna take a couple thousand more years to resolve, or so it seems).  I am taking an inside out approach, not the outside in observation and conjecture so typical of media effects research.  And as a participant observer of gaming cultures, starting at age 12 or earlier, I know intimately what I am talking about.  I also know several dozen gamers personally, in addition to the 10,000 surveyed in my study.  Despite some insistence that these sorts of entertainment must be folly, and that which will take all real culture down, I believe their gaming experiences constitute the development of critical and fundamental literacies that are critical to life in digital spaces, and the exploration of which is the basis of my thesis.

I hope this clarifies why I have not taken one of the more expected positions.  My focus is on habits, practices and opportunities, not a limited set of concerns or visceral reactions to our changing world.  ‘I dwell in possibility’, not a mere assessment of digital spaces’ less perfect or less savoury aspects.  I will leave that to others more concerned than I.  Change is not disconcerting to me.  People do some messed up things when cloaked in anonymity.  We will live.

Worldplay Research Initiative Survey

greglas

(this is posted on behalf of Ashley Funkhouser - greglas)

Dear Terra Nova readers,

I am an undergraduate researcher at Trinity University who is part of the Worldplay Research Initiative. Our collaborative research project explores transnational communication in virtual worlds. This project is connected to a course taught by former Terra Nova contributor Aaron Delwiche.

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Violins: Magic Items in the Real World

Edward Castronova

I have been discussing violins with my neighbor, violinist Alex Kerr (who is both classy and world-class).

Once made, a violin matures over the course of hundreds of years. It comes to produce sounds of unparalleled high quality: voice, sweetness, juice, subtlety. When played by an expert, the best violins produce experiences that approach a kind of transcendence for the player. For an eloquent expression of this transcendence, read these remarks of Thomas J. Beczkiewicz, founder of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. While we on the outside can detect the quality of sound, we cannot explain it, and we certainly cannot trace it to anything observable or measurable about the instrument. The instrument is, somehow, special.

The best violins have a known history: Who made them, who played them, for how long, and how they were transferred from one owner to another. As each generation of great violinists ages, speculation goes on about which members of the upcoming generation will inherit the great instruments. Once a great violinist has his hand on one, he does not easily give it up, as the instrument he owns becomes a part of his reputation vis a vis other violinists.

Violins become named for previous owners, such as the Strad ex-Gingold. While many violins sound about the same to an untrained ear, experts can detect minor differences in quality along many dimensions. Some violins are considered to be best in every respect; even though the quality difference between 'great' and 'best' may not be big, especially in terms of impact on the general audience, the price differences are huge. Since 1850, the price of fine violins has appreciated at 3.5% per year in real terms, better than US Treasury bonds.Given the high prices for the best instruments, fine violinists often enter into loan-to-play arrangements with groups of well-heeled investors.

Let me now describe violins in the terms game players apply to special items. Violins are magic items...

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New Facebook Patch Nerfs...

greglas

On many occasions, I've had to stress to people that Facebook really is not a virtual world.  Even Farmville is just barely in the virtual world category for me.  Still, the latest uproar over new interface changes reminds me a lot of the uproar over, well, just about every VW patch.  It seems to me we're dealing with similar, though not identical, concerns about social contracts and investment-backed expectations.  So, e.g., read these comments and try to connect the dots to your favorite virtual world.  As online "homes" and interpersonal networks grow richer in their media, it seems that the past of virtual worlds might have something to offer the future of social software.  They aren't the same, but they're certainly related.

Gamer Pride

greglas

Sort of apropos of Ted's post, take a look at this short essay in The Guardian: "To come out as a gamer is still to risk looking a social n00b: Even with sympathetic friends, we still speak low when we speak games."

This certainly is not true everywhere, and certainly is not true among communities of gamers.  We don't tend to speak low on this blog about games, and there are plenty of gaming blogs out there.  So I'm curious as to how this maps onto your personal social perceptions.  In what particular circles do you "speak low when you speak games"?  Work?  Family?  School?  Where isn't it cool to "come out" as a gamer?

Total Engagement

Edward Castronova

Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read have written the best book to date on games and work. Business people still seem hung up on the virtualization of the office when in fact WoW increases group productivity not because it is virtual but because it is a game. Reeves and Read try to right the ship. They describe practical ways for using game design to make work better: Not just for the bosses, but for employees too. Imagine if the workplace were no longer boring. That's where we're headed, and these guys are great guides.

 

Farmville = 56 million

greglas

In Ren's thread on virtual world history, Mike made the following comment:

But let's put it in perspective. In three months the number one social game on Facebook has gone from zero to over 50 million players. Not registrations, but actual unique monthly players (about 20 million daily uniques).

So, yesterday, USA Today noted the same.  Zynga's Farmville is at 56M:

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Virtual Parentalism

Joshua Fairfield

By way of background: about a year ago, W&L held a symposium entitled Protecting Virtual Playgrounds: Children, Law, and Play Online.  Lots of TerraNovans were there.  The panelists gave some really great papers, which we turned into an issue of the Washington & Lee Law Review (that issue goes to press this month).  And that's a good thing, because the papers were ready when Congress asked the FTC to report on the potential availability of adult materials to kids in virtual worlds.  (The FTC's report is due out in early December.)  More on my personal paper, which ended up with the title Virtual Parentalism, after the fold.

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History Version 3

Ren Reynolds

In the beginning there was mud.

We all came from mud.

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Taking a Gamble

Richard Bartle

The French government has proposed a new law regarding gambling. The idea is that sports have "betting rights" that they can sell. Unless they sell or otherwise release those rights, you can't bet on that sport.

Does this have potential implications for virtual worlds?

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…but we agreed, we have a contract! waaaah

Ren Reynolds

Not if you contracted in Second Life you don't.

Or do you...? 

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Me vs The Daily Telegraph

Ren Reynolds

I’m a really irritating person.

 

I irritate myself.

 

I’ve probably irritated you. 

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Great Big Monopoly

Edward Castronova

This week Google launched Monopoly City Streets. The concept is simple. You buy real streets, develop them virtually, and earn a corresponding virtual income. Like Jerry Paffendorf's million-inches-in-Detroit, MCS combines alternate reality, games, virtual worlds, and social networking.

Is it good? I have no idea. Can't get in, because massive user inflow has already crashed the product. I'm reminded of the way that Quake broke some parts of the network when it launched, and EverQuest clogged all the bandwidth of San Diego on its opening day. When somebody comes up with a good idea on the net, the user storm becomes awe-inspiring.

There's a lesson here in the contrast with Google's Lively, a virtual world of avatars and rooms where you could hang out. /yawn. The crash there was caused not by massive user inflow but massive user apathy. Merely virtualizing something is dumb. VR a necessary tool, not a sufficient one. To create new energy, you have to reinvent the game people are playing.

Thanks to Daniel Polonsky for pointing this out.

Space: The Boring Frontier

Edward Castronova

This year I fell for the Mars Hoax. Hard. I bought a telescope and planetarium software to plan a viewing of the red planet with my eldest son. As we scanned the skies using the software, we were able to look at anything and then magnify it into a large, beautiful image. We had a great time. As the image of Mars was growing on our computer, through magnification, we started to pretend that we were in the cockpit of a ship traveling there. "Mars needs women!" I shouted. We giggled with glee. "O Noes!11! we're gonna crash!!! AHHHH!" Great fun.

The software told us that Mars was to rise above Bloomington's horizon at 3:30am this morning, so yesterday we planned a breakfast and he came up with the idea of Solar System pancakes: Whipped cream for the Sun, M&Ms for the planets (Earth blue, Mars red, Mercury orange) and drizzled chocolate for the orbits. Yum!

Last night at about 6pm a friend suggested it might all be lies. Indeed. LIES! Those damn internets.

Now I had the dilemma of explaining all of this to a child.

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Virtual economy: As real as real

Dmitri Williams

Our first paper on the economics of EQII is now out in the current issue of the journal New Media & Society. There's a link to the paper on my research page.

We think the paper is notable because it is the first instance (as far as we know) of published, peer-reviewed, basic economic tests using actual large-scale data from a virtual world. No estimates, no samples, no bootstrapping--just all of the data, period. These data were anonymous and privacy protected, and what we analyzed were the macroeconomic trends and patterns. We have three main findings, below the fold:

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Xstreet SL Commerce Guidelines

greglas

Alas, because I have way too much to get done, this has to be just a short post.  But this recent post from New World Notes caught my eye -- Xstreet, which is a sort of Second Life virtual eBay, has issued some very interesting guidelines (see here, here) about the rules of Second Life commerce, at least such commerce as is listed on Xstreet. 

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CFP: New Journal

greglas

Call for Papers:  The Journal of Virtual Worlds and Education

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Me vs. The Archbishop

Lisa Galarneau

My dissertation is currently being examined, so I have been holding out on posting it.  But there has been a whole new round of 'the Internet is bad for you' talk that makes me get my knickers in a twist, so I will give you all a sneak preview.

The latest, courtesy of the BBC:

Archbishop Vincent Nichols said MySpace and Facebook led young people to seek "transient" friendships, with quantity becoming more important than quality. He said a key factor in suicide among young people was the trauma caused when such loose relationships collapsed.

"Friendship is not a commodity," he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He added: "Friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it's right".

The fact is he has this ENTIRELY wrong and I have data to prove it.  My research project involved, among other things, a 50-question survey that asked participants to describe the online gaming experiences (City of Heroes/Villains), with a focus on grouping, social dynamics, skills development, and yes, friendship and belonging.  The results were staggering, even to a gamer veteran like me.  For one thing, I got almost 10,000 responses in 3 weeks (this was in 2006).  For another thing, there were several open ended questions in the survey.  I got responses like this:

The long time it takes to progress during the later levels has greatly improved my patience as of late, allowing me to stay calmer under stress as a side-effect. Separately, forming and organizing pick-up groups has given me a venue to practice my leadership skills, and to a lesser extent my organizational skills. I've had co-workers and friends notice the improvements in patience and organization repeatedly, and the few that have been around during a situation leadership was called for noticed my improvements in that area as well. 

The fact that I am in charge of an super group in both City of Heroes and City of Villains has encouraged me to take a leap in my job: I've applied for a management position. I doubt I'd have ever even made the attempt had I not been in a position of leadership within the game.

Being in a super group comprised of people from all over the world has taught me to be patient when dealing with others and compromise my position on things. I often hold high positions in super groups/guilds and need to be patient with its members. This has transferred over to real life where I've learnt to be more patient with others in a work environment & a social one.

Needing to plan and prioritize has been a big thing for me, as has communication (though I've always found text-based communication much easier than face to face, which is easier than voice with no face a la Teamspeak). I've also found that I can deal with real life social situations better by being able to analyze them as if they were in game situations. (But I'm autistic, so my RL social skills have always been a bit lacking. Having a simplified model to compare them to has been a
boon to me.)

My chief reason for playing City of Villains was because I could not, physically, do much else. I was recovering from a traumatic brain injury and was going stir-crazy with the few hours a day I was actually conscious. This gave me a way to interact with RL friends because I was unable to get together with them. From there, it stemmed off into a way to communicate with them, and form other friendships. I have met several people from my super group at various locations, and that alone
is worth the playtime.

I have 10,000 of these comments, some even more poignant than those I just quickly grabbed.

Here is my proclamation:  digital game/social spaces have the power to be the most transformative social experiences some humans have ever had, indeed sanctuaries from our physical lives, as Ted Castronova has suggested.  This is sad, but it is true.  What Mr. Archbishop has wrong is the notion that because it's not physical it's somehow not real. Wrong!  This falls in the category of 'don't talk about things you know nothing about!'

I'm also gonna write Obama too and tell him to lay off the videogame criticism.  Wonder if he will read my diss?

You've Been Blerped! Now What Do You Do?

Robert Bloomfield

The web layering tool Blerp announced today that they are in open beta.  The basic idea is that members create a layer of user-generated content over any website; people who sign up for Blerp and join the layer-creator's group can see and add content in the layer.  Thus, any site--yours or someone else's--becomes the backdrop for social networking, casual gaming, whatever.  (See this Blerp video for an intro, and you can also see a Metanomics interview with the CEO and VP of Rocketon, which developed Blerp.   The interview is actually filmed in Rocketon, so you can see what that layer-as-virtual-world product is like.)

As someone who reads a lot of policy-oriented blogs, I can see a very simple application making Blerp as talked about as Twitter.  The conservative National Review blog The Corner doesn't allow content.  The National Review probably had  good reason for making that decision, but so what?  Some ambitious left-leaning Blerper can create a layer to allow anyone to pepper the pages with unflattering commentary. 

Which leads me to ask Terra Novans:  How likely are the following (not mutually exclusive) futures?

• This never catches on, because Blerp simply ends up being too clunky and/or intrusive.
• After a brief newsgasm of coverage about how "Left-Wingers Take Over Conservative Website", the left-wingers go back to what they are doing now...namely, criticizing right-wing posts on their own websites, so they get their own traffic.
• The Blerpers continue to build viewership on sites they criticize, but the targets don't mind, because they get the traffic.
• The Blerpers build enough viewership for their layers that they sell advertising viewable only by layer members, maybe making even more than the sites they target.
• The National Review calls their lawyer, who asks for damages from the Blerper, and perhaps Blerp itself, for activities that are different in form, but similar in substance, to pirating content and modifying it without permission of the authors.  (In theory, one could use Blerp to put a Hitler mustache on every picture of a Republican, cover up The Corner's advertisements with their own...or put Hitler mustaches on those too.)

The virtual census

Dmitri Williams

This isn't an entirely VW post, but it seems related enough to toss up here. Working with colleagues Nicole Martins of Indiana, Mia Consalvo of Ohio (and TN) and Jimmy Ivory of VaTech, we embarked a couple of years back on a content analysis of all game characters. It was kind of ambitious, but we thought someone ought to take a census of who is in all the worlds and games we study. We do a lot of research on effects and identity, but until you know what's there, well, it's hard to say a lot. The results are in and in print, available from the journal New Media & Society, or in a pre-press version off my site.

The highlights are that whites, males and adults are over-represented compared to the actual US population via US Census data, while females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly are under-represented. These numbers parallel similar research for TV. Breaking the findings down into primary (playable) and secondary (NPC) characters, the divides are stronger still.

More below the fold . . .

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Duffy: How Not to Experiment in Virtual Worlds

Edward Castronova

Economist John Duffy of University of Pittsburgh went to an experimental lab in Second Life and came away unconvinced. Some thoughts:

• The virtual lab he visited was a replication of a real-world lab. We've learned, however, that using virtual world technology to simply replicate a real-world thing is usually counter-productive. The utility of virtual worlds does not lie in their ability to re-do, in virtual form, what we do in the real world.
• He carries with him some honored norms about what an economics experiment must be. Participants must not know what the experiment is about, for example, so you ought to ask every participant "Are you an experimental economist?" and exclude them if they are. Otherwise they'll recognize that they are in a test of backwards induction or whatever. Duffy did not face that kind of question, nor anything that would allow the screening of participants based on expertise. There were other issues, other ways in which an attempt to replicate a real-world econ experiment, in traditional form, simply breaks when placed in a virtual environment.
• He properly noted that the incentives (couple hundred Lindens) are very low in terms of cash value. Why would anyone think hard in return for a quarter? However, this raises a debate about the utility of the Linden dollar. Some people seem highly invested in the state of their virtual things, despite low real-world values. This in turn raises big questions in economics about how things, utility, and happiness relate. Punt.
• He was able to lie about his age, a problem for the internet at large.

I come away convinced that there's little point in trying to replicate the standard micro-level lab experiments in virtual worlds. While you gain in terms of distance communication, you lose in terms of body signals and eye contact and such. In that kind of hands-on experiment, you can't automate much.

I would note, however, that Duffy's criticisms are cast too widely when he concludes that these problems also condemn truly macro-level experiments such as those proposed by Bloomfield and Castronova.

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Twixt

greglas

Dave Myers, a long-time games researcher and commenter here at TN, received some media coverage yesterday for his tale of Twixt, prompting 132 comments and counting. Scott Jennings has some snarky comments on his blog and thinks this is all about a game design flaw.

Personally, I find these kinds of social "flaws" and how they are fixed pretty interesting.  In my book, I'm using the story of Twixt to make a simple point that most readers of this blog will already appreciate.  The rules that are enforced in MMOGs, like the rules enforced in any society, are not limited to the formal rules set forth in writing or coded into the software.  Users decide for themselves how games should be played.

Update: Dave responds to all the attention here.  A few lines I find particularly interesting in relation to what Richard says below and the question of EULAs:

Most surprisingly of all (maybe only to me), game designers themselves seem no longer interested in their rules.  They seem to focus increasingly less on game rules and increasingly more on game rulers.   Rulers don’t like the game rules?  No problem.  Eliminate those rules.

Virtual Bank Robbery Redux

greglas

This July 2009 story feels sort of August 2006, doesn't it?  Or maybe even sort of October 2003? 

Like night follows day, it follows that if "virtual" currency X has a "real" exchange value of $Y, and the virtual world mechanics permit or even encourage player A to rob or swindle player B of a substantial amount of X, then we're going to have this sort of virtual crime. 

Q: When will it be old news?  A: Hopefully, sometime in 2012, after my book comes out.

Also, Reuters (or CBC?) doesn't seem to understand the recent Chinese regulations very well.

Update: Apparently, a blog on the New York Times thinks this is new stuff.

Social Network Adoption Effects Map From Real to Virtual

Edward Castronova

The broader mapping project (first identified by Dmitri Williams) has an new entry in the social networks field. The mapping project is a (unorganized) effort to find out where real-world behaviors map onto virtual worlds and where they don't. The Law of Demand maps; human response to deadly plagues does so only in part.

A new paper from Michigan and Santa Fe (Bakshy, Karrer, Adamic) (thanks Mark Bell for the tip) reports on social network adoption effects in Second Life. "Adoption rates quicken as the number of friends adopting increases and this effect varies with the connectivity of a particular user. We furtherfind that sharing among friends occurs more rapidly than sharing among strangers, but that content that diffuses primarily through social influence tends to have a more limited audience. Finally, we examine the role of individuals,finding that some play a more active role in distributing content than others, but that these influencers are distinct from the early adopters."

The authors don't explicitly associate these findings with mapping; that is, they don't ask or test "is this the same as we see in the real world?" But that conclusion seems fairly easy to make, in that the results don't seem (to me anyways, a person decidedly not expert in this field) all that amazing. In fact it all looks rather normal. That's a finding. The news is: Though virtual, it's pretty normal.

Bit by bit, the grid in Williams' paper is filling in. In many areas, the things we do offline are replicated well when we go online. 

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The Postnational Sodalities of Second Life: An Iconographic Approach

greglas

Jonathan Kinkley, who has just completed his Masters Thesis in Art History at University of Illinois at Chicago, ask if we could share his research.  We're always happy to link to new work on virtual worlds.

The full paper is available here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15860034/PostnationalSodalitiesSecondLifeJKinkley

His thesis analyzes the visual culture of Second Life and explores the complex spaces that online social networks create. Jonathan explains:

In Second Life's Caledon, we get a glimpse what an online social formation looks like. It is a society based entirely on shared interests - a themed community built of a patchwork quilt of Victorian-era iconography. Elsewhere in SL, artists like Cao Fei (SL avatar China Tracy) are fascinated with this idea of creating a sense of place out of virtual space. Her RMB city isn't about China, it's about China-ness - an amalgam of all the icons, stereotypes, and archetypes past and present of China. This paper is about the types of spaces in SL and how and why they are created out of the iconography of visual culture.

China to ban RMT, maybe.

Edward Castronova

Thanks to Andy Schwarz for tipping us to this article in Information Week reporting on a Chinese government press release supposedly banning the sale of virtual stuff for real money. In the backchannel, Julian Dibbell reminded us that Korea did the same thing a couple of years back to no effect. No effect because it is hard to do without redesigning the virtual economy, and also because the law's intent was not actually to ban RMT. As we all know, some laws regulating a practice are not really intended to stop it - whatever the preamble might say - but to control it merely.

So: What is China up to?

The Soul of a New Regime: Thomas Malaby's Making Virtual Worlds

Julian Dibbell

Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life, by our own Thomas Malaby, has its official release today, and the timing couldn't be better. I'm writing from the midst of State of Play VI -- "The Conference on the Serious Study of Virtual Worlds" -- where Thomas's book will be feted this evening and where the mood, in general, is that of a not entirely unwelcome intellectual hangover. The hype surrounding Second Life (and the broader phenomenon of virtual worlds for which it's been so imperfect a proxy) has come and, finally, gone, and there's a sense that only now can we begin to dig beneath the shiny, first-pass questions that provoked the hype and get a deeper handle on what we've been talking about. This is a challenging, exciting project, and if the thoughtful, game-changing ethnography Thomas has produced is any indication, it's off to a promising start.

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