Terra Nova

What Are You Missing?

New Scientist (dot) Com details recent studies on "game addiction."   Studies analogizing computer game cues with "drug memory" triggers is discussed.  Additionally, some interesting work with "startle reflexes" is introduced.    However, the fascination of the neurological with the computer game (in a manner of speaking) is likely complex...

By way of a simple illustration.  A very long time ago I used to play too much Tetris.  So much so that I suffered after particularly long sessions the visual memory illusion of falling blocks - a  ghostly phenomenon well written up in the literature at the time.

I too used to play combat games and found myself missing the adrenalin.

A harder example is the MMOG. Yes, there is tremendous evidence that some folks play them too much, likely for a variety of reasons. Nick Yee has done some excellent work documenting this.   Can there then, somewhere in the mix of the prosady of disorders, exist a compulsion based on an inspiring ideal.  A Glory Days, some day, in your past? 

I declare.

Once upon a time (in a true but hardly unique story) I and a party of an underpowered few including one supremely gifted enchanter camped in the basement of Unrest in (the old) Everquest... and there we stayed (alive) one very long real night...  We fell by sleep at our keyboards, and since then I have never seen a moment quite like that one.   

Were I seeking to repeat this, would I be addicted to glory?

The Horde is Evil

In the Terranova backchannel, an ugly debate (I've been creating most of the ugliness) has erupted over the significance of avatar choice. I've advanced two controversial positions: that avatar choice is not a neutral thing from the standpoint of personal integrity, and that the Horde, in World of Warcraft, is evil. Nobody agrees, but it's been suggested that the community could chew on this a bit.

So here's my view: When a real person chooses an evil avatar, he or she should be conscious of the evil inherent in the role. There are good reasons for playing evil characters - to give others an opportunity to be good, to help tell a story, to explore the nature of evil. But when the avatar is a considered an expression of self, in a social environment, then deliberately choosing a wicked character is itself a (modestly) wicked act.

Then when we look at WoW, it seems to me obvious that the Horde races are on the whole evil. One element of this is the fact that the words 'troll' and 'orc' and 'undead' have implied evil creatures for as long as those words have been in use in the English language (since the 9th century in the case of 'orc'). No one, not even mighty Blizzard, can un-do the meaning of a word in a matter of a few years. But more importantly, all you have to do is look at the values expressed by the cultures, and it should be apparent which sets of values are worthy of praise. The human race is the only one with children, and charitable giving, for example. Orcs, on the other hand, value warfare and power. In terms of public ethics, this is a no-brainer to me, really.
So it's been fascinating to me to see the counterarguments. For example, it was said that because Warcraft's orcs have some noble features, and humans some ugly features, the two races are ethically equivalent. And there were many other, similar arguments, which to me have had very little merit.

But what made me feel most isolated from this community of scholars was the general indifference to the entire issue. To choose orc, it was said, does not carry with it any particular moral or ethical baggage. It was a matter of playstyles, tastes, personal interests.

Goodness, I could not disagree more. My view is that in a social game, these choices are laden with all kinds of implications for personal integrity.  Avatar choice is fraught with broader meaning.

Two concrete examples of where the choice matters:

1. I am a father. A guild of colleagues chose to play Horde. I rolled an Undead. My son (age 3) was afraid of my character. He was afraid of the Undercity. And that's just from the imagery - he would know nothing of what the Undead actually do in terms of kinapping, imprisonment, and torture. He's afraid, and he should be afraid, and as his father, my only defense in this frightening choice would have to be that I am just trying out evil, just getting to know it, just using evil instrumentally for some greater purpose. He abviously can't grasp that now, but even if he could, these are the only possible  justifications for me to inhabit such a wicked being. And my point is that the inhabitation would indeed require justification. If my undead warlock were an extension of myself, something I was pursuing for mere enjoyment, then it ought to be a troubling question for me, sholdn't it? Why am I finding pleasure in expressing myself in a form that frightens 3-year-olds? My assertion is that this is a genuine and significant moral issue that everyone who chooses an avatar needs to think about. Morally compulsory.

2. I give talks and interviews. I'm often asked what avatar I play. People then draw conclusions about me from what they see. It's one thing if the conclusion is "when this guy plays Fable, he goes to the dark side." Fable is a single-player game. To go evil there is implicitly to explore some aspect of evil. It affects the well-being of no one but me. But if being evil involves the well-being of others, as it well might in a social game, then the conclusion might change. Questions might arise. "So when this guy plays World of Warcraft, he plays on the evil side, and he goes out and eats the flesh on the dead bodies that had been played by other people. Wonder why he does that?" For those of us versed in gameplay, maybe that's not a big deal. But imagine you had a completely fresh perspective about gaming and characters. The choice of undead warlock, or orc, or troll, would at the very least raise questions. A reporter might laugh and ask, "why are you playing on the evil side?" And what is my answer? It better be something about exploring what evil is like, etc., because if it's just self-expression, it's an open and public acceptance a patently evil society. Which would be wrong - it's wrong, when you are a public figure, to say that evil acts are OK. And hence the choice of Undead, by a scholar, as an act of self-expression (rather than study, exploration, serving as a foil, etc.), is questionable from the standpoint of personal integrity.

In advancing these positions, I am upending a number of apple carts. One is the ostensible objectivity of academic research. I know many people here feel they are fully in touch with the ambiguities of value in the academy, but it's amazing how little prepared people are, when it comes to the practical example of avatar choice, to accept that morals and values and Right and Wrong do play a role. As scholars, folks here are convinced they are not swayed by their passions. But what I sense is a passionate and arational commitment to denying the presence of ethics at all in the choice of how we play.

Another is the role of designer as god: if Blizzard says orcs are noble, then they are noble. I'm saying Blizzard does not have that power, that there are fundamental forces  at work that prevent anyone from creating a thing, calling it 'orc', and then assigning to it a broad social goodness. Those forces are partly social, and to the extent that they are, they are exactly analogous to the forces that dictate prices. But I have faith that those forces are more than just social construction. Orcs are ancient representatives of a bad, bad thing, and one cannot undo the power of that association in the course of a single videogame, even one played by millions for a year. Orcs are still evil, even though Blizzard says they are not. If Blizzard wanted to make orcs un-evil, then they would have had to associate their culture more closely with commonly-accepted notions of what a good society is: orcs would have to have children, they would have to value love over war, would have to see little nobility in bloodshed, would have to reject alliance with undead beings, would have to be charitable. But they didn't do that; they endowed orcs with a savage culture and then said that there is some nobility in savagery. Well, just as my five bushels of apples are not sufficient to change the world's understanding of what an apple is and what it costs, Blizzard's game is not sufficient to change the moral loading of their orcs.

Third, I'm defending a point of view that I'm disappointed is not more widely-held among academics, which is that these worlds are not mere play-spaces, nor mere extensions of the real world. They are a place where we can hear a faint echo of things unconscious, even mystical. What happens in these places is deeply significant; their symbology carries genuine religious and spiritual meaning; they are (or ought to be held and protected as) different, fundamentally different and distinct, from life as usual. To treat these environments as mere platforms for fooling around or making money, is in my view bordering on sacrilege. These places are precious and vulnerable. That's my mindset when I make an avatar choice - that it is a very serious affair, and how I choose to be in the world reflects who I am very, very deeply.

I've argued that there's deep ethical significance to what Terra Novans do in-game, and that's met with universal rejection in the backchannel. I doubt it will fare any better out here. But Cory suggested the discussion was worth carrying over, so here it is.

One Room School

National Public Radio recently revisited the One-Room School House (ref. Wiki).  Emphasized in "Maine School Binds Isolated Island Together"  is how a one-room school binds community on Monhegan Island (10 miles off the coast of Maine).  To many of us these few remaining places are a legacy of a distant rural  America  (in 1919 there were reportedly 190K one-room schools, now barely 400).  Undermined by modern transportation and the brutal efficiencies of consolidation, I wonder if they are worth noting here...

Reaching to the Monhegan Island illustration,  are there examples in virtual worlds where 'education' coalesces communities?  One possibility might be the "guild" and how in many online game worlds such serve as  institutions of information sharing.  Yes, related,  Asheron's Call had a vassal system that claimed a mentoring dimension. I also hear the VATSIM (Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network) folks have established a testing process in their world.   

However, what feels missing though in most of our game worlds is the need for a substantial partnering relationship: the chat channel seems sufficient a teacher.

What then about the in-world partnerships that do exist in MMOGs?   Well, starting with this account of Irene Helmich's experiences teaching in a one room school:

Another way in which the teacher could make sure she had time for each class was by having older students act as teaching assistants for lower grades. After introducing a new lesson she could move on to the next class and let the some of the older students help the younger children with their questions. This not only helped the teacher be more efficient, but it also reinforced the lessons which older students had already learned and it gave younger students one-on-one attention.

What seems enriching from her example is how necessity can lead to a virtuous improvisation:  individuals have to interconnect with other age groups to bootstrap an educational process.  I have heard of this technique in other accounts of one-room schooling.

This feels antithetical to a core design principle for MMOGs where "levels" and the resulting artifacts such as "level banding" work to rank and stratify players in their world.   I suspect this weakens the richness of social networks that form.  Yes, there are good game design reasons for this.  But then I muse, too bad about the game designs.

Also ref. One Room School House Project. 

The Solution to Griefing is... The FBI?

There have been several recent reports of high-profile incidents of griefing and even an effective "denial of service" (DOS) attack within Second Life.  The worst of these shut down the system entirely due to the behavior of in-game scripted objects.  In this incident, a self-replicating object did just that: replicated by doubling itself to the point it brought the servers down.  DOS from the inside, apparently intentional, using the tools provided by Linden Labs to its users.

According to reports Linden Labs first changed the capabilities of the scripting language to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, but then rolled back that change due to the outcry from honest SL citizens, as it effectively disabled many of the scripted objects they had come to depend on.

So the ultimate solution?  Not content with banning the individuals involved (generally acknowledged as ineffective in SL and other virtual worlds/games, given how easy it is to come back again), Linden Labs has called in the FBI. 

The only thing that surprises me about this is that more of this level of griefing hasn't been more evident already  Early on in Second Life, Randy Farmer made an invisible repeating auto-cannon that fired a hunred rounds per minute and teleported people away, just to illustrate what could be done with the scripting tools available.  He could have been much nastier with his creation, but chose to limit the gun's abilities.  Since then there have been reports of other local griefing tactics using scripted objects, but nothing major.  Perhaps this latest event is an example of a network effect in action: as SL's user numbers climb, the probability of such "attacks" approaches certainty (ref: Hanke's Law). And certainly the attacks won't be this simple or overt in the future. Will the next griefer-object be a cute Trojan puppy that's given away to people, gently self-replicating only when there's no other copy around (so that you can give one to a friend!)... but which, at a pre-appointed time "explodes" -- deleting your clothes, teleporting your character, changing into a bloody pile of gore, or worse?

So here's the bind: in Second Life, the attraction for many is that you can create whatever sort of functional objects you want.  And you own what you create... except you really don't.  You retain the intellectual property rights, but not surprisingly Linden Labs explicitly retains the ultimate right to delete anything you make in their world.  They also retain the right to change the underlying script language, in effect retroactively changing the physics of the world and what can be done in it. 

I'm not by any means taking LL to task for providing such open-ended scripting capabilities, nor for protecting themselves by retaining the ultimate ability to change or delete objects.  If nothing else this is a courageous experiment, as it gives users abilities unparalleled in any other major virtual world. But what does this say about the relationship between user-created content, user-ownership of content, and corporately owned virtual worlds?  Can these truly co-exist?  Can a virtual "country" (as SL likes to consider itself) exist without an operative constitution and in-world laws and enforcement? 

Is there a happy medium that lets people be creative and gives the virtual world the enormous benefits of user-created content, but which protects the bulk of the user populace and doesn't leave them open to self-replicating data bombs, pushed porn objects, teleporting auto-cannons, or even more nefarious objects?  Or, despite the siren-song of distributed, freely created content, does the risk of user-created content with scripted functionality ultimately outweigh the potential benefit to the user base and the corporate owners of the world?

TN Welcomes Mike Sellers

In my mind, Mike deserves credits at the level of a Bartle for his role as lead design in the first 3D graphical MUD, Meridian 59 (which lives on under the direction of frequent commenter Brian Green).  Consistent with that start, Mike went on to found and direct a number of projects in the industry, and has to be counted among the elite when it comes to both theoretical and hands-on understanding of the strange thing we're all studying. His most recent work on believable AI is likely IMHO to create yet another singularity in this space; the immersive quality made a discontinuous leap when 3D came about, and it will do so again when NPCs begin to acquire credible social and emotive behaviors. Mike's also got a crafting focus in interfaces, and has degrees in cognitive science as well as AI.

We're very lucky to have people like Mr. Sellers, people with actual talent and experience, continue to join our happy band. I increasingly feel that Greg, Dan, Julian and I are playing the role of stone to the fine soup that's being brewed here.  Welcome Mike!

And so as not to miss out on Richard's "Which TNer" quiz, we might ask everyone to guess which of the following things Mike Sellers has NOT done:

Mike Sellers never did which of the following:

- ridden an elephant
- body-surfed in a typhoon
- played an extra in "Apocalypse Now"
- had six kids (and several family members in the games industry)
- eaten dog and deep-fried beetle
- been a circus roustabout (for one long stinking day)
- defended others against real pirates
- created a practical joke that culminated in catapulting a sheep's brain at someone
- terminated a romantic relationship with a roundhouse kick to the head, a la Chuck Norris, whose #1 export is pain

Guess!

Which TNer? - Answers

Those of you pacing the floor in expectation need wait no longer! Here are the answers to the "Which TNer?" quiz!

FOOD
Which TNer has eaten sheep’s eyeballs? [Greg]
Which TNer has eaten sheep’s lung? [Thomas]
Which TNer has eaten zebra? [Dmitri]
Which TNer has eaten hard-boiled silkworm pupae? [Unggi]
Which TNer has eaten ground-up turtle jello? [Nick]
Which TNer has eaten roasted turtle? [Julian]
Which two TNers have caught and eaten a rattlesnake? [Jess and Cory]
Which TNer ate one of the last hundred of a particular variety of sea slug before they became extinct? [Richard]

ON STAGE
Which TNer has performed on stage at the Lincoln Center, Boston's Symphony Hall, and
the Kennedy Center? [Thomas]
Which TNer played The Wicked Witch of the West in the musical version of
the Wizard of Oz? [Mia]
Which TNer has played Jesus on stage? [Ren]
Which TNer played the "evil" priest Caiphas in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar? [Nick]

OLIVER!
Which TNer once played the Artful Dodger to Leonard Nimoy’s Fagin in Oliver! ? [Jess]
Which TNer played Nancy in Oliver! ? [Constance]
Which TNer played Mr Brownlow in Oliver! ? [Thomas]

ANCESTRY
Which TNer is descended from a hunchbacked dwarf, court jester to a 10th Century Irish tribal king, who was ennobled by said king then later executed for being caught in flagrante with the king’s wife? [Jess]
Which TNer was born in Swansea, Wales? [Dmitri]
Which TNer is a direct descendant of Daniel Boone? [Dmitri]
Which TNer is descended from the illegitimate child of Robbie Burns? [Josh]
Which TNer has a female shaman on their mother’s side of the family? [Unggi]
Which TNer was conceived at Woodstock? [Cory]

SCHOOL
Which TNer attended the Taipei American school and was also schooled in the Shire of Denmark? [Nate]
Which TNer went to elementary school in Guam? [Betsy]

THE LAW
Which two TNers have illegally climbed to the Hollywood sign? [Dmitri and Betsy]
Which TNer has been trailed by a KGB agent? [Ted]
Which two TNers have been held up at gunpoint? [Dmitri and Constance]
Which TNer has committed a crime punishable by death? [Ted]

LANGUAGES
Which TNer learnt Japanese at school? [Dmitri]
Which two TNers learnt Latin at school? [Dmitri and Dan]
Which TNer can speak Turkmen? [Greg]
Which TNer can speak sign language? [Constance]
Which TNer can speak Portuguese? [Julian]

JOBS
Which three TNers have worked as a librarian’s assistant? [Cory, Thomas and Ren]
Which TNer's first job was as a bingo caller? [Richard]
Which TNer worked at Kmart for exactly one day? [Mia]
Which TNer was a gogo dancer, who was fired for kicking a customer in the throat? [Constance]

BRUSHES WITH FAME
Which two TNers have shaken Ronald Reagan’s hand? [Ted and Dmitri]
Which TNer has shaken George Bush Sr’s hand, twice? [Cory]
Which TNer was offered cocaine in an elevator by John Lurie, founder of the 1980s fake jazz combo The Lounge Lizards? [Julian]
Which TNer was propositioned by Frank Sinatra? [Ted]

JUST PLAIN WEIRD
Which TNer has a hole in their heart? [Dan]
Which TNer has seen a nuclear weapon? [Cory]
Which TNer lives in a house with a gravestone beside the front door? [Ren]
Which TNer and their spouse both broke engagements to other people? [Josh]
Which TNer got into trouble at school for hypnotising classmates? [Nick]
Which TNer has swum in piranha-infested waters? [Julian]

Now the repercussions can begin...

Richard

How to end a world?

How should the end of a world come to pass?

Ashron’s Call 2 is dying.

This is not news.

The close down was announced officially back in August. But the last day, 30 Dec 05, approaches rapidly.

Clive Thompson over at wired news has documented some of the emergent behaviour that he has observed in AC2. This includes players going round taking photo’s of places with associated special memories such as first kills. There also appears to be fan fic activity which Turbine is collecting in the ‘Farewell to AC2’ section of their site.

I wonder how it’s going to end. I wonder how it should. If I was there I’d like the narrative to be apocalyptic, I’d like to live through the last moments, see my character, my people and my world die with me - one last, big, futile battle maybe. I would wonder if my character had an afterlife, maybe I would get a glimpse of this before the final:

.

.

... .. . connection lost

New Video Game Design: No Harmful Effect on Children

A template for a safe game (from the makers of the notoriously dangerous and unhealthy GTA, surprisingly enough) has emerged at the Tokyo Game Show, as reported in America's finest news source.

A Diagnosis For Online Gaming Syndrome

A Korean doctor has outlined a health risk pattern that predicts death from online gaming. The most common cause of gaming death in Korea, according to Dr. Song Hyeong-gon,  is pulmonary thrombo-embolism, a seizure of the cortex. In the gaming cases, it is caused by sudden visual stimulation following long periods of high stress with low physical activity.  Eurogamer reports; Chosunilbo Digital had the original story (but I don't have a link).

Makes me wonder: Should Terra Nova have a health category? Should we get a gaming health expert to join us?

Holiday Reading

Want some reading over the holidays?

I'm a bit late with this, because of Typepad's recent problems, but take a look at the term papers for Aaron Delwiche's Games for the Web course at Trinity university. They're almost all refreshing and insightful, and if I didn't tell you they were written by undergraduates you might have had a hard time figuring it out from the content - it's of a very high standard. Not all of them are formal enough to put in .pdfs, but even some of those that aren't make some interesting observations.

If you're into the social science side of virtual world research, check them out.

Richard

Cockpit of your avatar

If a virtual world is a cockpit capable of holding, say, the "vasty fields of France," what of the cockpit that is you represented by your avatar and mediated by pixels, keyboard, and mouse?  Do the constraints of the interface as they then become folded into the design of the game encourage us to view the avatar as a machine of components and of verbs reified into icons arrayed into trays...

A long time ago in a galaxy before us, there was a fine space empire computer strategy game called Master of Orion (MOO).   It was a single player game.  Noteable was the ability of players to design new spacecraft based on the limits of their technology and treasury.   It is a pattern we have seen elsewhere, but MOO did a nice job of it and fitting it into the strategic mosaic of the larger game.

Similarly, AD&D (and derivations afterwords, to our beloved MMORPG now) uses a similar albeit first person variant: characters become in large part the "sum of the parts" - from armor to skill  points to potions and reagents.   We have then the freedom (subject to game world constraints) to become what we build.  Lego man.  Building block woman. 

In online worlds where our avatars signify machine (Eve-Online,  combat simulations, ...) there appears a stronger intellectual affinity between us and the aggregated components of our presence.  We imagine ourselves at the helm, in the cockpit, in command - pushing buttons, executing proper order sequences, command and control.   Do the bonds between function keys and iconic trays of spells and moves mentally sequenced feel most real when our avatars are planes, ship, craft?

In many game worlds players find pleasure as well as seek to differentiate themselves by perfecting the key-mappings and the push-button icons to optimize play.  So for example, a warrior in WoW might have sets of keys (conveniently lumped into nice trays) corresponding to  "when playing solo with 1H weapon+shield; when playing in a group, etc."  My priest utilizes all 6 trays littered with itty-bitty icons to nuance my actions to different scenarios.  A great deal of thought has gone into what to put where and how to lay them out.

A long time ago when I played on the Everquest teams PvP servers (when they had the item loot rule for death), there was a classic "power down" sequence of undress we'd go through when we started to lose a PvP fight... we'd start "bagging" our clothing where they couldn't be looted.  Clothing was just another component of you, and you had to hurry. Perhaps not too unlike another power-down sequence: Eve-Online allows you to blow yourself up (a spaceship) when facing capture.

The gymnastics of the verbs and nouns of ourselves in these first person RPG worlds can sound weird.  Yet it is also one of the interesting details in these places.  But I also think this aspect of our presence invites us to think of ourselves as assets or units built of constituent parts which can be min-maxed and too there must be Spock, Kirk and Scotty somewhere in our heads perhaps: "Captain, she's giving all she's got..." 

Aye.

Marvel v NCsoft Whimpers Out

Marvel, NCsoft and Crytpic have settled the "City of Heroes" lawsuit. As always the settlement is "amicable" and it clears the way for both parties "to develop and sell exciting and innovative products" and yada yada yada.

I guess this is hardly surprising, and no doubt in the parties' best interests. But law academics always feel a little let down when there is nothing to point to by way of a precedent or policy pronouncement. And this case was really significant because it exposed the faultlines of intellectual property protection in this space, and made a number of people recognize that there is a significant issue in the way that we express ourselves within MOGs/VWs.

But enough of my mewlings.

Hand me some more eggnog.

Summary over the fold and here is the press release.

Update: 7:54pm Story here by Daniel Terdiman, quoting all manner of notables, but none so notable as our very own G. Lastowka Esq. As Greg says: "... Marvel's claims of player infringement have not been formally rejected by the court, which means analogous claims might be pursued by Marvel, or a like-minded company, in the future."

-----
AUSTIN, Texas, December 12, 2005—Marvel Entertainment, Inc., NCsoft® Corporation, NC Interactive, Inc. and Cryptic Studios™, Inc. are pleased to announce today that they have amicably settled all claims brought by Marvel and all claims brought by NCsoft, NC Interactive, Inc. and Cryptic Studios, Inc.

The parties' settlement allows them all to continue to develop and sell exciting and innovative products, but does not reduce the players' ability to express their creativity in making and playing original and exciting characters. Therefore, no changes to City of Heroes® or City of Villains'™ character creation engine are part of the settlement. The parties have agreed that protecting intellectual property rights is critically important and each will continue aggressively to protect such rights in accordance with all applicable laws. While the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, all parties agree that this case was never about monetary issues and that the fans of their respective products and characters are the winners in this settlement.

Constructing the Market (or “1000g for you, auctionbitch”)

The auctionhouse (AH) in World of Warcraft is an interesting place. I like it mostly for the fact that it’s one of the few unscripted places within the world, where player autonomy means that a number of unplanned and emergent features can emerge. We’ve mentioned a few of these before: here, for instance, and, um, here, and, oh, also here. An interesting aspect of this though is that emergent, player-created artifacts are not viewed with universal enthusiasm. My guildies and I have been trading in the AH a lot, and this weekend we start work on our cartelization program. I doubt that we’re going to win any new friends with this little initiative. But even in the normal operation of the market the response of some players is fascinating.

The most active AH camper in our guild is Eric Nickell, one of the happy crew at Xerox PARC who study MMOGs and who report their findings at the fabulous Play On blog. He recently came into abuse when he asked for advice in the trade channel about what price he should list a particular item. He was told figures between 100g and 150g, and also, “1000g for you, auctionbitch.” Now this latter comment may be explained by the fact that he was probably undercutting the auctions of the unhappy defamer. But in another incident he got into an increasingly heated exchange over the price he was prepared to sell a particular item. He offered to sell it for 239g, but the would-be purchaser only wanted to pay 160g because “Allakhazam says it costs 175g” , and then later “But I can use it in PvP!” , and so on. When Eric stuck by his price the would-be purchaser started to become abusive, to the point where Eric stuck him on /ignore.

I’m interested to explore these sorts of reactions, and why they happen fairly often in MMOGs, but relatively rarely in real life. Is it because the AH is seen by some players as a kind of distributed NPC vendor with semi-stable prices; or maybe that these players have limited sources of information (ie Thottbot and Allakhazam) and so don’t really see the AH as a market at all? Or is it because the would-be purchaser doesn’t really understand markets, or is unhappy being on the wrong end of the supply-demand curve? Are derogatory comments about being an “auctionbitch” or “AH camper” an indication that there is one or two sanctioned ways of playing these games (PvE and PvP) and all other activities are seen, at best, as secondary to or supportive of these two; or, at worst, inferior to them?

Obviously I don’t know what the individual answers are in relation to any of the incidents above. But I think it’s interesting that the marketplace plays such an unusual position within the game, and that there seem to be different constructions of the market in the minds of different players. (This is tied into the construction of the concept of “Chinese gold farmers” about which we’ve talked about a bit—here, —here, and here, for example—and about which the Xerox PARC guys and I will have more to say in a couple of months).

I think that most people have a fairly clear and shared understanding of the nature of private markets within the real world (even if they are not always happy about them, or may contest the application of the market in certain contexts). But I’m not at all sure that this is true in the virtual worlds.

Beauty is Pixel Deep

Two intertwined thoughts:

From PlayOn analysis: In World of Warcraft, there is a higher percentage of female characters in Alliance than Horde. On Alliance side, 1 out of 3 characters is female. On Horde side, 1 out of 5 characters is female. Most players would probably also agree that Alliance female characters are far more attractive than Horde female characters.

Behavioral Confirmation: The psychological phenomenon where a perceiver's expectations of a target causes the target to behave in a way that confirms the perceiver's expectations. In the classic study (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977), male undergrads chatted over the phone with female undergrads they did not previously know. Half the male undergrads were given a photo of an attractive woman and the other half were given photos of unattractive women (unbeknownst to the women themselves). This is  analogous to interacting with an attractive female Night Elf online.

Unsurprisingly, the male undergrads in the attractive condition were rated by blind coders to be friendlier than the men in the unattractive condition. What was interesting was that the female undergrads who were presumed to be attractive were rated by blind coders to to more friendly, charming, and sociable than the women who were presumed to be unattractive. In other words, the expectation of the men in the attractive condition caused the women to become friendlier, more charming, and more sociable.

Given that Alliance avatars are more attractive than Horde avatars (especially the female avatars), and given that many social interactions on Alliance side are parallels of the classic Behavioral Confirmation study - men interacting with who they believe are attractive women, might this cause Alliance players to become friendlier, more charming, and more sociable in general than Horde players over time regardless of their RL gender or attractiveness? That is to say, a form of behavioral confirmation cascade that has an effect on the community rather than simply the individual level.

Now, it's  true that choosing between Alliance and Horde involves personality and motivational differences to begin with (and Dmitri points this out too), but here I'm more interested in the dynamic social engineering that occurs during game-play itself. In other words, could avatar appearance itself be used as a form of social engineering in virtual environments? And if so, are Alliance and Horde players being socially engineered in different ways?

Elvish Gold

Joshua de Larios-Heiman, who recently graduated from University of San Francisco School of Law, wrote a piece about virtual currency and some of the legal implications. It's called "Can Elvish Gold Pieces Ever Become Real Money? The Numismatic Qualities of Virtual Currency Under the Law". From the abstract:

"This essay addresses whether virtual currency, the medium of exchange used in the economies of massive multiplayer online games, can ever be imputed to be real money under American law. Part I defines the basic concepts surrounding virtual property and virtual currency. Part II focuses on the application of American commercial law to virtual currency, examines whether virtual currency should be construed by courts to be real money, and looks at pubic policy concerns of making such a determination. Part III examines virtual currency under existing Federal criminal law and focuses specifically on how the Money Laundering Control Act, 18 U.S.C.A. 1956, applies to virtual currency. Finally this essay summarizes the arguments presented and concludes that in specific situations, virtual currency should be imputed to be real money under the law. "

His advisor on this was cyber law professor Susan Freiwald who, I'm delighted to say, used to work in my department. (Indeed, I owe my job to her: had she not seen the light and moved to San Francisco I wouldn't be here). Oh, and prior to law school Josh had a career in securities where he created the world’s first financial superhero. You can read his comics here. The mind boggles.

The Grey Area

Back in college, my writing instructor told us all that good fiction happened because of complex characters. His line that I remember well was "Even mass murderers have mothers." This has always been my way to understand why I liked some fiction and disliked other areas. Purely "good" and purely "bad" are plainly boring and unrealistic. The NYT suggests this is why people buy George R. R. Martin's books and I agree.

So does this help explain at all why some people pick certain MMO races and classes that are coded as good, evil or in that grey area? I have a hypothesis:

People enjoy playing "evil" when it is purely evil because it's obviously unrealistic. So it's clearly not being evil because no one would mistake the in-game actions for out-of game attitudes. Despite the Third Reich (the creative's ultimate plot device), the real world has  much less true good and evil than we'd all like to think. Thus, people don't have a hard time being "the terrorists" when playing Counterstrike or Nazis in some FPS title because those classes are labeled "bad" and there's little room for reading them differently. In fact, it's probably comforting to think of the world as having bad guys and playing enforces this.

But what happens when you have sides that are in that more uncomfortable grey area? Who wants to be the misunderstood, not-truly evil but maybe a bit bad monster? Who picks that vs. some white-skinned human priest who can choose "holy" talents? I wonder if some of the population imbalances in MMOs might be explained by the discomfort with the grey area choice.

WoW offers an example. Trolls look pretty evil and that opening cinematic doesn't make them seem like good party guests. Yet Taurens are plainly liberal environmentalists (good cows), orcs  nature lovers (mostly good if lacking dental hygiene) and the undead are painted as misunderstood, yet occasionally bad-to-the bone (grey area). So overall the Horde, unlike the Imperials or the Nazis, offers that good/bad blur that might actually be uncomfortable for some people.

Does this pattern appear in other games?

Anyway, it's a hypothesis. Fire away.

Free Speech Coalition and MMOGs?

Kolby Granville, a law student at Arizona State with an interest in MMOGs and a reader of TN, made an observation off-blog that is worth sharing:

" I was surprised that I was unable to find a reference to a thread discussing Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition 535 U.S. 234, 122 S.Ct. 1389 (2002). Considering that so often when people talk about the "magic circle" and the need to keep laws out of games someone stands up and says, "but what about for child porn!"

In fact, I even remember at State of Play III during one of the panels someone mentioning, "What if we had a game where the point of the game was to lure virtual children, naturally the law would want to prevent that..." (Richard Bartle)

However, in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition the court seems to say that may be permitted (at least via my cursory reading).

Perhaps this case is not discussed on the site because it was pre-site creation. Maybe the case was just interesting to me. Just wanted to point it out."

The Supreme Court decision on this can be found here. It concerns the constitutionality of a statute regulating "virtual" child pornography.

Thoughts?

Ludium I Results Available

Go to arden.indiana.edu to download the report and watch a documentary. 

Which TNer?

Time for a festive quiz!

Or, as they're known outside the USA, a Christmas quiz!

I asked every member of the Terra Nova team to volunteer some interesting trivia about themself, and here is the result. All TNers participated except Tim and TL, whose secrets are obviously too dark for public consumption.

All you have to do is guess which TNer fits the deed.

This has nothing to do with "Exploring Virtual Worlds".

There are no prizes whatsoever.

Richard

FOOD
Which TNer has eaten sheep’s eyeballs?
Which TNer has eaten sheep’s lung?
Which TNer has eaten zebra?
Which TNer has eaten hard-boiled silkworm pupae?
Which TNer has eaten ground-up turtle jello?
Which TNer has eaten roasted turtle?
Which two TNers have caught and eaten a rattlesnake?
Which TNer ate one of the last hundred of a particular variety of sea slug before they became extinct?

ON STAGE
Which TNer has performed on stage at the Lincoln Center, Boston's Symphony Hall, and
the Kennedy Center?
Which TNer played The Wicked Witch of the West in the musical version of
the Wizard of Oz?
Which TNer has played Jesus on stage?
Which TNer played the "evil" priest Caiphas in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar?

OLIVER!
Which TNer once played the Artful Dodger to Leonard Nimoy’s Fagin in Oliver! ?
Which TNer played Nancy in Oliver! ?
Which TNer played Mr Brownlow in Oliver! ?

ANCESTRY
Which TNer is descended from a hunchbacked dwarf, court jester to a 10th Century Irish tribal king, who was ennobled by said king then later executed for being caught in flagrante with the king’s wife?
Which TNer was born in Swansea, Wales?
Which TNer is a direct descendant of Daniel Boone?
Which TNer is descended from the illegitimate child of Robbie Burns?
Which TNer has a female shaman on their mother’s side of the family?
Which TNer was conceived at Woodstock?

SCHOOL
Which TNer attended the Taipei American school and was also schooled in the Shire of Denmark?
Which TNer went to elementary school in Guam?

THE LAW
Which two TNers have illegally climbed to the Hollywood sign?
Which TNer has been trailed by a KGB agent?
Which two TNers have been held up at gunpoint?
Which TNer has committed a crime punishable by death?

LANGUAGES
Which TNer learnt Japanese at school?
Which two TNers learnt Latin at school?
Which TNer can speak Turkmen?
Which TNer can speak sign language?
Which TNer can speak Portuguese?

JOBS
Which three TNers have worked as a librarian’s assistant?
Which TNer's first job was as a bingo caller?
Which TNer worked at Kmart for exactly one day?
Which TNer was a gogo dancer, who was fired for kicking a customer in the throat?

BRUSHES WITH FAME
Which two TNers have shaken Ronald Reagan’s hand?
Which TNer has shaken George Bush Sr’s hand, twice?
Which TNer was offered cocaine in an elevator by John Lurie, founder of the 1980s fake jazz combo The Lounge Lizards?
Which TNer was propositioned by Frank Sinatra?

JUST PLAIN WEIRD
Which TNer has a hole in their heart?
Which TNer has seen a nuclear weapon?
Which TNer lives in a house with a gravestone beside the front door?
Which TNer and their spouse both broke engagements to other people?
Which TNer got into trouble at school for hypnotising classmates?
Which TNer has swum in piranha-infested waters?

Ghost In The Machine

David Kennerly wrote an article a while back on why MMOG players don't really want randomness in the sense as it is usually discussed colloquially ("a die-roll").  Specifically he suggests that we would feel better if virtual worlds adopted mechanisms whose random samples were based on replacement (akin to pulling cards from a deck, "Randomness without Replacement").  One way of looking at this is through an analogy.  Damion Schubert a while back wrote an excellent piece about the the state of design of AI characters in MMOGs - namely their stupidity is their greatest virtue:  they present a pattern, a "puzzle the player needs to solve..."  And too a puzzle the player can solve."

If it is really unfettered chance and serendipity that we despise, is card counting the obvious successor?   Perhaps what we really want is visibility into the breadth of the function of the world...

Brian Green recently penned an essay about Why the Monthly Subscription is Doomed.  The conundrum he crisply states as (my emphasis):

The main problem I've run into as a small game operator is that this business model doesn't scale down very well. Let me illustrate: if I have 1,000 subscribers and charge them $10/month, I have a yearly income of $120,000. If another game has 1,000,000 subscribers and charges the same $10/month, then they make $120 million. Obviously, the bigger game has more funding to do more development work. Yet, to the individual players, it appears that they are paying the exact same price for a different amount of development. 

He hints that the MMOG machine through whatever design or implementation fault may not communicate the value of component player investments.  Is it that players look for patterns of developer input suggesting world vitality (via the proxy of perceived developer investment in the world)?

The distinction between pattern and predictable result may be an important one.  Another way of thinking about it might be that we seek the illusion of randomness and variability, but that in fact we really want our toys and drops predictably.  We want to be able to touch the gears of the game world machine.

A recent Bear Stearns analysis of the Asian Online Games sector suggests that game server piracy stems from players wanting to avoid paying subscriptions, but the kicker is that they may be quite willing to "pay for perks" (phrase from here).  Perhaps the explanation is that paying to touch the gears of the machine directly is a whole lot more fun than the mere opportunity.

NYTimes Tracks Down Gold Farmers

David Barboza's front-page report is the first solid journalistic evidence that RMT has spawned a cottage gold farming industry in low-wage countries. We knew it was true but had nothing to point to. Now we have something to point to.

Registration required. An excerpt follows.

Begin Quote
*************
One of China's newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse....

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."
******************

End Quote

There's also a vignette about in-game spam, and an audio slide show.

DAC and PCD

We just hosted the DAC conference here at the ITU and it was, as always, great to hang out with smart, interesting folks and get to chat and hear what they are up to. There are a lot of threads that came up during the conference and you can read various coverage via links at the conference wiki. I just want to mention one theme I have been hearing more and more about recently, something termed "player-centered design."

I suppose it is still because it is being formed that I can't give you any precise definition, but I have been struck by how often I hear the term these days. It seems that it can indicate everything from what I would consider more "market research" to fascinating work (like that by Olli Sotamaa and the gang in Finland) on using cultural probes(PDF link) for game design. While I am not a designer myself I am very interested in what techniques do get used (or can get used) for the ways they tell us something about the overall landscape of user/designer relations. Of course we have lots of beta-testing & QA feedback in MMOGs (and EQ now even seems to hold a regular guild summit in which devs meet up with well-established community members to talk about the game and its future), but is there a place for things like cultural probes, participatory design, user workshops, etc. in either developing new platforms or maintaining the existing ones? Maybe this question in some ways relates to Richard's previous entry about platforms for academic research - though I think not excluding commercial ventures is important. Is anyone (any company? any commercial enterprise?) integrating something roughly called "player-centered design" into their MMOG dev processes or is that wording the kind that makes the practicing designer cringe as it seems to undermine the artistic/auteur aspect of producing a game? Microsoft's Game User Research Group seems one of the most active in trying to get players integrated into the design process (although sometimes it isn't much more than basic UI stuff) so I wonder what might the future be for extending initiatives like that to MMOGs. And, just as critical at least from my point of view, does the structure of the development process (complete with publisher demands etc.) even allow for these kinds of more exploratory or nontraditional design methods? While there seems to be growing interest in the academic community on this approach, I am curious to hear what working practioners might make of it.

[As a small sidenote, this is my final TN author post as I am turning my attention to my pro-gaming research. I look forward to continuing to follow discussions from the readers seat however ;) ]

Unsanctioned Advergaming Appears In WoW

At 10:33 EST this evening, in World of Warcraft, I received the following 'tell' (direct person-to-person message):

"Adifdkd whispers: Hi, pls visit www.itembay.ca The low Price: $8.99=100G, $16.99=200G $40.99=500G $75.99=1000G. First Come, First Serve."

This on a role-playing server, no less. While I think it may be a first (I've never experienced direct in-game advertisement unless it is sanctioned by the developer, and I haven't heard stories about it either), I can't imagine it is too hard to do, coding-wise.

I imagine by next week I will be getting messages from players named UrFr3ndslik3itt00 and B3tsee34D offering low-interest mortgages and rock-hard erections. For me, it's a moment of duh. Duh - of course game communications would become spam conduits. Of course.

Still, let's not forget that the toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube by gold pharmers. First and foremost. Can anyone still deny that RMT, though innocent in its origins, at this scale becomes a serious pollutant of online games?

Make Your Own Virtual World

One of the bottlenecks in virtual world research is the fact that we academics don't have any virtual worlds of our own. The reason for this is simply cost: it's just too expensive to create one to anything approaching professional quality (unless you go with a textual world, in which case it's cheap but you don't get players).

There are free development tools around, but they always seem to be missing some crucial component. NeL gives you a skeleton, for free, but wants half a million Euros for a something you could actually use. Kaneva's game engine is more complete, but you can't use it for free-to-play worlds of any scale (ie. more than 30 players - and they want to host it on their own network). RealmForge is very good except for its network features, although it is rapidly improving in that area. RealmCrafter is only $55, so it's practically free, but its graphics engine is dated and it's still something of a work-in-progress. BYOND is 100% free, and is excellent - if you don't mind having a 2D world rather than a 3D one.

I was a little suspicious, then, when at the AGC I heard of Multiverse, launching today. It's a complete, end-to-end platform solution that is free for non-commercial use. "We only make money when you make money, and if you never charge a cent, you never have to pay us anything". Nevertheless, having looked into it, it does indeed seem to be the genuine article. It was set up by a bunch of ex-Netscape developers, and they took their give-it-away philosophy with them. The business model appears to be to build up an installed base of Multiverse browsers through free games, thereby making the platform attractive to commercial developers (who will have to pay to use it).

Never mind the world of commerce, though - this is great for academics! We get a free, commercial-quality engine, plus SDK, documentation, sample game, art assets - everything except our own content. Because there's a common client, it looks as if even home users could set up small virtual worlds on their own, in the same way they currently set up web pages. If that happens, virtual worlds will really take off.

There has to be a catch, right?

Nasty, Brutish and Short

When I decided to focus on World of Warcraft for a while, I joined a bunch of newbies (and some oldbies from Alliance side) and we rolled Horde characters on a PvP server. It’s not clear in retrospect why we chose PvP. A number of us (myself included) have instinctively gone for carebear servers in the past, because PvP just seemed, well, so unfriendly; and a number of us have previously gravitated to RP servers.

The response of the guild members has been really interesting. A couple really hate our server, largely as a result of spending time in the Hillsbrad Foothills (a.k.a. the "Hobbesbrad Foothills" for reasons well known to any Horde toon who has tried to quest there; and which the subject line should make clear). For some reason there is a really bad Alliance-Horde dynamic on our server, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that lvl ?? Alliance chars wiped the floor with my mid-20s tauren. A couple of guildies have reported the Alliance toons at the same level attacking them, with one or two lvl 60 Alliance escorts on hand in the event that the fight doesn’t go as planned. Pointless, and stupid, and pretty close to my definition of griefing; but there it is.

On the whole though, I really quite like the PvP implementation in WoW. It’d be nice not to be ganked all the time by lvl 60s—like when I’m checking mail in a poorly defended town—but few things are as exciting as being out in Ashenvale with my hunter, and seeing a little dot appear on my mini-map with the name “Fortehwin” or “PwnzU” which turns out to be an evenly matched dwarf or human. My cat finds dwarves delicious.

But here’s the thing. I think that PvP is broken in WoW. Not because of griefing but because of the BattleGrounds. As people presumably know, BGs are capture-the-flag mini-games that are built as separate instances. They are tons of fun, and I understand why the designers put them in: lots of 15 y/o Halo players will pony up $12 a month on an MMOG if it replicates some of the features of multiplayer twitch-games like Unreal Tournament or CounterStrike. But BGs gimp the PvP game for those who want to have some concept of immersion or role playing. One of my chars had 4 kills out in Stonetalon and Hillsbrad this week, and I was quite pleased with his role in defending our faction (I would whisper “For the Horde” when I managed to bring down one of those filthy Alliance). But the significance of those kills was wiped out after spending one evening in Warsong Gulch: after a couple of BG sessions the toon had about 100 kills. So the satisfying kills are devalued by the kill-die-rez-kill-die-rez dynamic of the BG. At one point I was somewhat in awe of those who wore the honor rankings of First Sergeant/Senior Sergeant/etc, because I thought that it meant something within the milieu of the game. But of course (silly me) it just means that they spend their time playing the Halo-minigame that happens to sit within WoW, rather than actually playing WoW.

I’m not trying to tell “Senior Sergeant Biigbaalls” how to play the game, and it’s not that I object to having mini-games within MMOGs/VWs. Hell, put a casino in the world, or dueling, or monopoly, or canasta, or whatever. I could care less. But if you have a system for recognition of social capital within the role playing fiction of the milieu, don’t muddy it by using the same reputational marker for ability within an incommensurate system. And especially don’t devalue the recognition of something that’s consistent-with-your-world, with something that’s inconsistent. It’s like getting awarded XP for winning at Minesweeper or for shooting craps.

EVE Online and Emergent Structures

Mark WalkerWallace's great blog has a really wonderful post about a player-created structure within EVE, that was funding through a player-created share offering. Some really great observations about the nature of EVE, the difference between it and other VWs, and the possibilities of emergent economic activities in various worlds.

From the introduction:

"Once again it seems the MMO EVE Online enables and encourages some of the most robust economically and socially oriented gameplay of any massively multiplayer metaverse out there. In this case, it's the EVE galaxy's first player-concocted initial public offering, of shares in a neutral player-owned outpost that is to provide services to warring player factions deep in the lawless reaches of what is often known in EVE as "Alliance space," where there are no NPC police to protect you from PvP. From a game design perspective, the question, of course, is what ingredients EVE has that makes this kind of thing possible for its players."

Names and Narrative

Fair warning -- I'm playing outside of my sandbox here.

One question that has been bothering me for quite some time is why we conceive of avatars as alternate identities.  It seems to me that that is not how many (most?) of us experience avatars.  They are not alternate selves.  Rather, to the extent I do engage in storytelling and not Halo-style enemy blasting, I do so as a narrative.  My characters are more akin to characters in a book, rather than alternate identities.    (My critical literary theory is especially weak.   I'm sure someone with an English degree will tell us many useful things about the relationship of authors to authored characters.)

So: if we experience our avatars as characters in a story, rather than alternate identities, does that mean anything to my larger project of the economic analysis of virtual property in real markets?  Surprisingly, yes.  And the conclusion may run counter to the general thrust of my arguments.  But, that's what we get to do here -- consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds, and all.

Here's how the thought-stream goes.  How do we explain why someone keeps a given object off of the market when a market clearing price is generally offered?  If golden rings are going for $90 in general, why don't I put the one on my left hand onto the market?  Peggy Radin's idea is that identity is the key: when I identify with my wedding band, or my house, or my car, etc., then I keep it off the market not because a market-clearing price isn't being offered, but because it is MINE. 

Another way of putting it: trades make us all richer.  I want the baseball card more, you want the money more.  So we trade.  The question is WHY I want the baseball card more.  Idiosyncratic preferences are what generate value realized through trade.  But what creates those idiosyncratic preferences?

Sometimes what creates idiosyncratic preferences is information differential.  But that's boring.  If I happen to have secret knowledge that the card is worth a lot more than I'm paying for it, obviously I (or anyone else) will buy it and resell it.  But that can't account for the majority of sales.  For the most part, we buy at market prices,  and then (crazily enough) we KEEP the property off the market.  It's ours.  It becomes part of our identity.

So if this slightly off-beat thought-stream is correct, if avatars and swords and the rest are about identity, we ought to protect property rights in these things.  This approach was indirectly suggested in Dan and Greg's fantastic "Laws of the Virtual Worlds" piece. 

But what *if* it's all about narrative?  If it's all about narrative, then these avatars and objects are creative works, and all the arguments I've been making about disentangling intellectual property law from basic vanilla property law come under serious stress.

Indeed, I'll admit it: one thing my theories -- OR the game companies -- don't deal well with is the problem of user-created intellectual content.  But that's not really my goal: those derivative work / infringement cases will have to be worked out like the sampling cases in rap music.  And I think they will be worked out to some reasonable solution.

Thoughts?

Equations of death

dead (dead (un-dead)) = ?

When I get them time, between the spam clearance and the crack, I’m a lowly un-dead Mage in the corporate schmooze fest we like to call WoW.

Anywayz, I was happily hackin an’a zappin some Red Guard when I died. Which I find confusing at the best of times, being un-dead n'all.

So I’m ghosting my way back in my dead un-dead form when I decided that the most fun thing to do is to throw myself off the nearest cliff and into the sea. I then proceed to swim my dead-un-dead ass to the bottom of the ocean. As, well, I just want to see what’s there.

Then I die.

And I’m like – what the,,,

I mean now I’m a dead, dead un-dead.

Just how dead is that?

I guess what I was asking is what meaning I’m supposed to attribute to this condition. There is the purely ludic i.e. that this is just one of the states that the game can be in. Then there is the practical i.e. that it’s going to take me time to get myself back playing again, though being dead does not mean that I can’t do anything, it just means that I cant do many things.

What I struggled with was to attribute a useful metaphorical / game fiction meaning to what was happening to me. And I started to wondering, in a staggering un-informed way, what symbolic role death was playing in my experience of WoW and whether it had lost all moorings with death in a conventional sense.

It’s said that one of the functions of play is to inoculate ourselves against parts of life so that it makes it easier to cope, so it would make sense for death to be a big part of play but this just seems so very removed.

Lost in Space

Should a five ounce bird be able to carry a one pound coconut  (1. , 2. )? 

In the real world small matters count.  If nothing else you might trip over them.  In dynamic environments small matters can compound into big ones.  Consider how space is used and occupied by ourselves.  Presence has mass.  Obstacles carry substance...

In law enforcement one may see the displacement of crime from one neighborhood to another as an unintended consequence.   In large conflicts big outcomes may result from the most tactical of events ("A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!").

I found myself the other night in World of Warcraft again considering that forever and occasional theme of forum chatter - why do your avatars often have no substance beyond gaudy colors and troll haircuts?  The simple answer is that collision-detection can be expensive.   It can be expensive to compute between the objects directly concerned.  And too, indirect problems can become more expensive to solve - e.g. pathfinding.    So the end result is where we often find ourselves.  We have full freedom to run your avatar through other avatars and creatures.  We cannot block anyone.  And noone can block us.

When gamers complain about this expediency they often claim that it limits combat options of the sort they would like to see - e.g. no meaningful phalanx is possible.  No battle at Thermopylae.

True, a wall of warriors cannot block the wicked from a priest in World of Warcraft.  Instead they act through a game design proxies for physical displacement such as "building aggro."  Getting and holding aggro involves a warrior capturing the attention of the attacker sufficiently (e.g. through damage) so that he focuses upon the warrior and doesn't run to the back of the party and attacks the weak.  Good warriors know how to do this and as an MMOG game design pattern it has been around forever.  Also used are devices and spells to slow a villain's ability to move.  These are all, however, at best imperfect analogies to the real world ability to hold and control space directly.

Do you miss what you cannot touch?

I recently read Choi and Tan's "Perceived Instability of Virtual Haptic Texture. II. Effect of Collision-Detection Algorithm" - an engineering  article that hypothesizes that the psycho-physical sensation of  "aliveness" with haptic devices (e.g. a stylus) can result from an unanticipated force magnitude change (as an artifact of the collision-detection algorithm) while the user *believes*  the stylus was stationary.  Yet another illusion in the human experience results:  a pulsating sensation is perceived and the user disbelieves the virtual surface.

Perhaps the perceived instabilty of virtual haptic texture and the absence of avatar spatial substance in many virtual worlds represent flip sides of the same conundrum:  how to design space and presence in that space so that they work together across different levels of perception?

Rivalrous Consumption of Virtual Assets

Today must be my day for catching up on reading (which is about all I'm good for today, having spent waaaay too much time instance-raiding recently).

Anyway, I'm delighted to be able to recommend another essay, this time by Andy Schwarz and Robert Bullis. It's called Rivalrous Consumption and the Boundaries of Copyright Law: Intellectual Property Lessons from Online Games..

Don't let the title put you off (law review essays always have dull titles--it's mandatory). It's about the implications of the easy-to-understand-but-absolutely-vital economic concept of rivalrous and non-rivalrous consumption, ie when the use of a good by one person precludes / doesn't preclude use by another. This has emerged as one of the most significant basis for criticism of the current intellectual property system, but hasn't been sufficiently examined in MMOGs before.[fn1] The paper outlines some of the implications for viewing virtual assets as rivalrous or non-rivalrous goods.

It also has a section on antitrust (ie anti-competitive) implications of EULAs inter alia, which is sure to raise some eyebrows and put some noses out of joint.

The opening paragraph is over the fold, and defines the scope pretty well:

"When fantasy and reality collide, what laws should apply? Online fantasy games are spawning real-world markets in which players can trade cash for objects (such as swords with special powers) in the fantasy world. The objects only exist in the game world, typically on a server that is owned by a company such as Sony. Should Sony have the absolute authority to license the game and its objects without restriction? Or should the players, who invest time, effort, and skill into the game to 'obtain' the objects have the right to sell to other players for real dollars? This article addresses whether the fantasy sword is more akin to a book which under copyright law can be sequentially resold, or a digital song download which cannot. The authors suggest that the critical distinction between digital media that needs special protection and other digital items that do not, is the concept of rivalrous consumption (whether for copyright or antitrust issues). In essence, whether a given consumer can sell his or her sword and swing it too."

---
fn1: Josh's great Virtual Property paper also looks at the issue of rivalrous consumption of virtual assets, but his take is different. He suggests that the rivarlous character of the resource will, together with the naturally layered nature of the internet will lead to overlapping rights of exclusion that will generate underuse of internet resources. The so-called "tragedy of the anticommons". Read that too if you haven't already. I'd re-read it now, but, honestly, I think I'm going to have a nap.

Economic Stages of MMOGs

One of our regular commentators, Bart Stewart, has a paper examining MMOG economies, and contrasting them with the development of economic systems in the real world. We're hosting it here for him, and I've put his synopsis over the fold. Worth reading. Interesting both in terms of understanding certain relationships between MMOG and RW economic systems, and for some possibilities it throws up for alternatives to the approaches favored in the current MMOGs.

ADVANCED ECONOMIC SYSTEMS IN ONLINE GAMES -- SYNOPSIS

INTRODUCTION

Do MMOGs offer advanced economic systems?

real-world history has been punctuated by several sharp increases in economic activity it is possible to characterize the innovations enabling these increases most MMOGs implement only the earliest of these economic innovations some MMOGs would benefit from implementing more of the later and more potent innovations these innovations can be implemented as specific features

TABLE OF ECONOMIC STAGES

STAGE | TECHNOLOGY | ORGANIZING FORM | DATE
Prehistoric | handcrafting | barter | prehistory!
Civic | agriculture | city | ca. 5000 BC
Trading | currency | code of laws | ca. AD 1
Mercantile | printing press | banking | ca. AD 1400
Commercial | sai