Terra Nova

Do We Need a Virtual Gaming Commission?

In another life I was a researcher on gambling, and perhaps the most important public policy question that (legalized) gambling presents is regulatory: how are the games guaranteed to be "fair"?  In Nevada, for example, the Nevada Gaming Commission oversees the casinos to ensure that the operations of the employees and of the technology (roulette wheels, slot machines) are, as their mandate from the legislature puts it, "honest and competitive." The point is not to protect people from making some bad bets (such as betting on a single number in U.S. roulette -- a 38:1 gamble that only pays 35:1), but to guarantee that the games are (a) run as they are claimed to be and (b) in the case of slots, not paying out less often than a certain floor percentage. Why think about this here?  Well, with RMT now openly encouraged by the makers of some virtual worlds, can their players trust the 'house' not to skim a bit too much off the top? 

In recent discussions here and here, the possibility was raised that in MindArk's Entropia Universe making money is more akin to striking it rich in Vegas than to the just rewards from applying oneself through hard work and entrepreneurial skill. In a related vein, Jason Archinaco has recently posted a piece to ssrn about the career of a virtual horse at horseracingpark.com. While the piece for the most part applies a number of the ideas by our esteemed messrs. Castronova, Hunter, and Lastowka to ask questions at the intersection of law and (virtual) horse-breeding, Archinaco also points to the position of the game's makers and their high level of control over the conditions under which the virtual breeding and racing take place.

Big deal, you might say. If people want to bet their money in an enviroment where the mechanisms for determining outcomes are hidden, it's their money to lose. But public policy on gambling has usually wound up in a more regulatory position, forcing gambling venues to open their procedures and machines to the public or barring that (in the case of slots) to a licensing commission. Most policy experts on gambling point to the well-documented capacity of gambling to prey upon the hopes of the desperate, thereby worsening poverty. The Nevada legislature's mandate to the Nevada Gaming Commission states:

• The continued growth and success of gaming is dependent upon public confidence and trust that gaming is conducted honestly and competitively, that the rights of the creditors of licensees are protected and that gaming is free from criminal and corruptive elements.
• Public confidence and trust can only be maintained by strict regulation of all persons, locations, practices, associations and activities related to the operation of licensed gaming establishments and the manufacture or distribution of gambling devices and equipment.
• All establishments where gaming is conducted and where gambling devices are operated, and manufacturers, sellers and distributors of certain gambling devices and equipment must therefore be licensed, controlled and assisted to protect the public health, safety, morals, good order and general welfare of the inhabitants of the state, to foster the stability and success of gaming and to preserve the competitive economy and policies of free competition of the State of Nevada.

The free market, then, does not reign over gambling in Nevada. Should it reign over online virtual worlds that encourage the speculative inflow of real capital (via RMT)? The key issue here is information; must virtual world makers with significant economies and RMT "open their books" about how their economies operate, given how much control they have over the conditions and mechanisms of those economies?

The Bank You Can Trust

Eve-Online, a space-opera once described as "Icelandic with Calvinist overtones," proposes a more narrow virtual world experience than many:  galactic-scale Player-versus-Player combat, a corporate regime and a deep economics game.  Yet it is quite one thing to identify a niche, and quite another thing to be able to execute upon that niche.  Somewhere in the calculus of success are good tools to enable players to manage themselves and their specialized interests...

In terms of the (near-) mainstream MMOG experience, Eve-Online provides amongst the most sophisticated in-game tools and mechanisms for engaging in, well, intergalactic trade in a player-driven economy.   Thus it is no surprise that so much of the resulting player structure and experience revolve around these themes, for better or for worse (ref [1.] , [2.] , [3.] ).

Recently there has been press regarding a 3rd party bank serving players of Eve-Online.  The Eve Intergalactic Bank is available to serve the in-game banking needs of galactic traders everywhere (ref. cover webpage, services they offer).   

To an Eve-Online player, that you can earn interest and make large sums of ISKs (the in-game currency) work for you without having to engage in time-consuming and risky commodities trading is appealing.   True, there is this detail about whether you can trust this bank, any 3rd party bank.   And yes, Eve Intergalactic Bank probably doesn't help curmudgeons like myself feel comfortable with their operations when they say  (fn1) "we will be taking (ISK) bets on pretty much anything that happens in the world of Eve and outside it."   Yes, it seems like they will be entertaining wagers on the upcoming World Cup in Germany.

As in-game tools and services go, there are two ways to look at this glass.   The half-empty view is that such 3rd party concoctions are imperfect.  First, there is that nagging element of trust.  Then there is another issue involving transparency (are they financing my enemies).  The half-full view is that they are along the right path.  Demonstrated is the viability of such institutions within the Eve-Online universe, with perhaps greater and better services just around the corner.

I see both points-of-view.  My question is more basic.  If I am earning ISKs rock-grinding and pirate-swizzeling  in 0.0 to pay for World Cup bets who are the winners and losers:   the Eve-Online universe, me, the World Cup, or all of us?   Why or why not.

This story came via Steven Davis and  GameSetWatch. 

-----------------------------

fn1.   Eve Intergalactic Bank Games, Posted by Cally, 24th May 2006, Press Release.

Ref.   Eve-Online forum discussion (EIB).

ATITD Tests Psychological Origins of Play

At Ludium I, five teams competed to develop scholarly research questions that could be tested in a synthetic world. The Koithuo team proposed to test some implications from Francis Steen's theories of the evolutionary origins of play. Andrew Tepper, who was on that team as well, has now implemented the tests in A Tale in the Desert III, which goes live today.

The photo shows Thom Gillespie, Francis Steen, Randy Farmer, Andy Tepper, and Ian Pottmeyer. Also on Koithuo were Bill Sams and a student whose name escapes me.

While Koithuo did not win the Ludium, they clearly had the most controversial set of proposals. Here's why. Develop in your mind an evolutionary theory of human gender differences. Examine it; note that it explains why we have many ugly behavior patterns and outcomes that we really wish we did not have. Now because you developed your ideas using evolutionary psychology, you've endowed them with an uncomfortable robustness. We can't just pass a law and make them go away; they are the result of aeons of development.

Continue examing your theory but apply it now to games. Note how easily it explains why more guys play the current crop of MMORPG games. Here comes the hard part: use the theory to redesign games so that they appeal to your evolutionarily-designed model of females. It's not hard to do, just uncomfortable to think about. We're fine with the idea that boys and young men like to fight each other in a game environment. "It's a guy thing," we say. But this implies something queasy: maybe there are "girl things." To some, the very idea is revolting. And when Koithuo presented some theoretically-derived notions of what evolutionary psychology predicts "girl things" would be in games, they were criticized.

Steen's theories propose some very controversial girl game modes. Those modes are based on a prediction that women will be interested in a) games about rating men's prowess ("The Yenta Game"), choosing men to connect with ("The Marriage Game"), and getting men to stay committed to them ("The Newlywed Game").

These kinds of hypotheses are such that even stating them ends all rational discussion. Some even argued that such things should not be said as research hypotheses, just because of their political implications.  The ideas themselves got everyone into a major tizzy.  So I'll stop talking now and leave the heavy lifting to Teppy. Here's how he described the implementation of these games in ATITD 3, in an email earlier this month:

** BEGIN QUOTE **
"The Marriage Game" is now known as The Test of Marriage. One change  from the way it was presented at Ludium I is that your score is the sum of  your progress and your mate's progress *or* the number of marriages that  you ("Casanova") have been in. This made it a lot more palatable to our  players, without changing the optimal play strategy. It will be  interesting to see the distribution of "Casanovas" vs. "good spouses", and  to see if there is some correlation with player gender.

"The Yenta Game" is now known as The Test of the Prophet. Each week,  you'll have a chance to pick another player that you believe will go on to  have much future success. It is open to both men and women, though each  must prophecy about a member of the other gender. Though the Test is now  open to both genders, it is unchanged from the way it was presented at  Ludium I. Again, I look forward to seeing whether women or men are better  at this, and more importantly, if women rate this Test as particularly  fun. (Which was Koithuo's hypothesis.)

"The Newlywed Game" is now known as The Test of Souls. Each week,  forecast a marriage that will survive a long time. "Survive" means that no  divorce has taken place, and that both accounts remain active. Scoring is  paramutual style. It is essentially unchanged from the presentation.  Although we didn't explicitly give a hypothesis for this one, I'll propose  one now: heavily wagered marriages' players' accounts will have higher  retention rates than unwagered ones.
** END QUOTE **

These game modes implement the theory in a gender-neutral way. We will see whether there are any differences between the way men and women approach them.

I think this is really cool. Regardless of whether you agree with Steen's theories or not, the exciting thing here is that we get to see them tested, at the level of an entire society. It's not just a theoretical/political debate any more. We're getting some information. And that was the essence of the mission of Ludium I.

I can't wait to see what happens.

Big and Small Bear

I started out this evening thinking ahout modding - the game-culture phenonomenon that has fallen into some controversy these days.  My thoughts waved into big and small bears, finally to be snagged by recent commentary as to whether we at Terra Nova were preoccupied with larger virtual worlds at the expense of the smaller ones...

I would hate to see modding disappear for many reasons.  Foremost of which is a jealous one: from those places have come so many delightful surprises.  Yes, some mods are clever, yet most of them are derivative at best.  I am convinced most of the value of modding comes from community building rather than game play -  mods seem a means communicating (mostly) campy tales told amongst a niche of gamers with a particular creative and technical bent.

Yes, every now and then a trully impressive game mod leaks out and appeals to a wide audience.  But even with those, I have wondered if we'd all be better off if the same energy were aggregated and harnessed to develop real tools and platforms.  Of course I'm wrong, because mods - as forgettable and tiny as most are - are about community...

Over the years I have read of big and small bears far too many (or far too few) times, depending upon my children's perspective.  The gist of this book is this.  Big bear and small bear bumble through many pages mistaking items intended for the  other for themselves.   From their playful meander we learn that big and small bears enjoy each other's company yet they live worlds apart when it comes to what they collect.  We learn too that shared values is not always about shared ownership or round-robin resource allocation - it is about shared interests, ideals, and support.

Recently on Terra Nova there was a robust discussion about Terra Nova's editorial meandering - whether at this time small virtual words were underserved.   Speaking for myself, I absolutely agree, 100%.  The problem is that it is harder to know what to learn from the small scintillating experiments than it is from the cranky bets played by millions.  At least at first.  Ideas take time to evolve and filter through the larger community.

Yes, small virtual worlds and big ones are not created equally in the forum of public attention.  Sometimes fairly, sometimes not.  If at any time you think we've overlooked something worth noting, send your thoughts to the mailing list on the side-bar.  We don't do marketing (unless you pay us far more than you can possibly imagine).

Curmudgeons and critics us all, we are great fans of the community of bears, big and small.  But remember, big bear wore big shoes, and little bear wore little shoes.

Ludium II Plans

The Arden Institute at Indiana University announces: Ludium II is tentatively planned for June 22-23, 2007.  ("Ludium!? What's a Ludium!?") The theme "Videogames and Public Policy" will be explored through a game that puts participants in a 19th century US political convention, complete with smoke-filled rooms and bombastic delegates. OK, due to health concerns we will not allow cigars, but bombasticism will be encouraged regardless of the risks. Gameplay: The delegates will form caucuses and compete to get planks on the party platform. They'll also elect a party nominee for President. Results: A platform recommending 10 (or so) Principles for Sensible Video Game Policy, and a single person, the nominee, who will become our de facto spokesperson for the ideas in the platform. From the Ludium's end until November 2008, we will point to the nominee whenever we are asked about games by the media, legislatures, courts, lobbying groups, or voters. Prizes go to participants who get the most ideas on the platform, and for being a candidate or the eventual nominee. Participation will be open. We have room for 400 people.

Though at an early stage, Ludium II could use a little help.

1. CALL FOR DESIGNS

Design a game using the feature set described in the opening paragraph. You have one resource: a large, spacious, open room, with a stage at one end, nestled inside a big, old, rambling building. The building is placed in a parklike setting on a university campus.

Submit your design proposal to me here early this summer. I'll go through the submissions over the summer and initiate discussions with the authors of ones that seem to fit best.

The conference is in the planning stage, so I can't commit to any compensation. This is work-for-credit, until and unless significant sponsorship happens.

2. CALL FOR SPONSORSHIP

If you'd like to sponsor the event, let me know.

3. CALL FOR LEADERSHIP

Participants will be assigned to a specific delegation, and each delegation will have a leader. To the extent we are able to reimburse travel expenses, we will do so for delegation heads first. A delegation head's primary duties will be to help resolve disputes among delegates. If you're interested, please notify me here.

4. CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

Want to help? Email me.

An Offer You Shouldn't Refuse

Walker Spaight (aka Mark Wallace) has just posted about an opening for Managing Editor of the Second Life Herald. A worthwhile opportunity for those with an interest in virtual worlds who want to begin understanding the future of journalism in these spaces. Oh, and the pay is lousy. What more could you ask for?

"The job description is much the same as it was a year ago: Basic idea is to average a story a day. Editor would be free to build a staff of freelance reporters (easier said than done). Starting pay is around US$100 a month, which would also have to cover pay to stringers you bring on board. Uri will continue in his role as Editor Emeritus, I will continue as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. The new hire would be the Managing Editor, responsible for most of the day-to-day operation of the Herald. If you can get the paper to generate more income, then we rethink your salary accordingly.

"We average around 1,000 unique IP hits per day, and several thousand page views. Despite the growth of SL media, the Herald remains the Grid's only real representative of a watchdog press. It's our job to get under the skin of those who run the world (or who would like to), and uncover the goings-on that don't get reported about elsewhere. This doesn't mean just sex and drama, but also interesting people, events and builds, new updates to the software, and, importantly, slapping a critical eye on all things Second Life and not being afraid to call it like we see it. That's our mandate; unfortunately, we haven't been fulfilling it all that well lately, and we could use a little help."

Bogost: Unit Operations

I just got my copy of Ian Bogost's new book, Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism. My jacket blurb says "Bogost challenges humanists and technologists to pay attention to one another, something they desperately need to do as computation accelerates us into the red zones of widespread virtual reality...Highly recommended." Reading it over again, that's still how I feel. A tough and important subject, handled really well, chock full of arguments relevant to the virtuati.  Read it!

Early Registration Launches for 'Games for Change' Annual Conference in June

Games for Change (G4C) has launched the early registration website for its 2006 conference on “Social Change and Digital Games.” The 3rd annual event will be co-hosted June 27th and 28th with the New School in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Registration fees will increase after May 26th. Full event details are available at: www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2006/index.htm
This event is the annual gathering for the exciting new movement using digital games to address the most pressing issues of our day. At the conference, expert practitioners -- academics, activists, non-profits -- will be called in to examine the impact of current games and preliminary work to build the field. Keynotes include Bob Kerrey, The New School President, and best-selling author Steven Johnson of "Everything Bad Is Good For You." A showcase of the latest social change games will be open to the media at the Games Expo. Panel topics include Games for Global Peace, Creating a PBS for Games, Academic Evaluation Efforts, Recent Funding Initiatives, Health and Environmental Awareness Campaigns, and Guerrilla Nonprofit Games.

Featured speakers include Josh Fouts, Executive Director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Connie Yowell, Senior Program Officer, MacArthur Foundation, Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby, authors of “Smart Bomb,” game maker Asi Burak of PeaceMaker, the UW-Madison's David Williamson Shaffer, representatives from MTV and the Museum of the Moving Image, David Rejeski, Director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Wilson Center, and Katie Salen, Acting Director of the Design and Technology Center at the New School, among many others.

A private briefing for potential funders to this field will be hosted the previous day by the Robert Wood Johnson, Surdna and MacArthur Foundations. In addition, a media-only briefing will take place at the Games Expo on the 27th.

Videogames are increasingly ubiquitous. More than half of all Americans play them, as this technology matures there is the potential for a new breed of games to emerge with a real impact on such diverse issues as poverty, health reform and racial inequities. This year’s featured games include the public diplomacy game Peacemaker, where Isreali and Palestinian youth play together, and Darfur is Dying, which provides a first-person role-play of life in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The social change sector is often slow to understand and adopt new technologies. Like public TV and documentary film before them, there needs a concerted and informed effort to create a public space for this new media. Collective strategies today will have tremendous long-term power to facilitate the development of games for the public good.

For inquiries, please see the conference website.
----------------
*Games for Change (G4C, www.gamesforchange.org) provides support, visibility and shared resources to individuals and organizations using digital games for social change. We formed in 2004 as a sub-group of the Serious Games Initiative. The 2006 conference was developed to showcase the state of the art, evaluate outcomes achieved, and to grow the overall capacity of the sector. G4C acts as a national and international hub to help organizations network and develop videogame projects beyond their traditional expertise. Our members represent hundreds of organizations and include partners in the games industry, academia, nonprofits, local and state governments, foundations, the UN and artists.

*The New School (www.newschool.edu) is a leading progressive university comprising eight schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 9,300 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. Within the school, Parsons is one of the premier degree-granting colleges of art and design in the nation. Its graduates and faculty appear on the short list of outstanding practitioners in every realm of art and design — creative, management, and scholarly.

Civicus

We once discussed how the inside of a virtual world can often be unfathonable to those on the outside (ref.  Stranger in a Strange Land).   Most virtual worlds we know are centered upon clusters of friends in a sea of strangers with whom we have little connection except through abstract filters - such as markets or gauzy toons with strange (and forgettable) names beholden to some tribal (and flimsy) narrative (e.g. alliance-vs-horde, etc.) .  Are our experiences in virtual worlds diminished by a lack of signficant interactions with strangers?

In my household we  still play Animal Crossing - I less so than my children.  However, when I do play it seems like a great deal of barking goes on about who has or has not been maintaining the village grounds adequately - e.g. it lacks flowers, is filled with litter and weeds.  Were we strangers the appeals would be to civic responsibility.  Were we strangers...

Mark Wallace pointed to an essay by Grant McCracken (How Virtual Worlds Discovered Dynamism) that makes an excellent point about the Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network (VATSIM) folks.  They are, to my understanding, a dedicated bunch who play online a detailed flight-sim/air-traffic-control-sim involving signficiant training and commitment to their virtual world.  The point made by Grant is this one (emphasis mine):

...VATSIM case, interaction take place between perfect strangers.  My game can be changed by behaviors you "throw off" in your game without really thinking about what they might mean to me.  Flying into Albuquerque, I may "crash" because it just so happens that you, the controller, are inexperienced, tired, distracted, or wrestling with your sister for control of the family computer.  The controller is not (or need not be) concerned with what my flight simulation experience is going to be.  No, he is just doing what he does, and whatever this is will sometimes have important implications for my game play...

In the VATSIM world we are led to believe that you must rely upon the duty-mindedness of your fellow players, strangers apparently bonded by a society purpose: keep the air-traffic network up. Contrast this with the more familiar MMOG pattern where players engage primarily through varying shades of alone or with friends.

Beyond the self-absorbtion that results from self-selecting societies - is it also true that the familiar MMOG pattern leads us to a place where self-absorbtion becomes the societal ethic?

Are strangers, deeply engaged, necessary to a world - without them can worlds at best be just a game,  gussied up?

----------

Ref.

Post-gazette reprint of May 18 WSJ article cited by Grant McCracken.  See also General Discussion on forums here ("VATSIM Makes Front Page of Wall Street Journal").

Censorship across the Pond: So what?

In the TN back channel, Ren recently asked: Exactly what's the problem Americans have with legislation restricting access to video games? There's an age rating on the box, so what's the big deal with enforcing it? The British have been doing it for ages, so what's the big deal?

Why are Americans different about this?

Fair question. Why are Americans skittish about State control over media in ways that some European nations aren't? (This apparently crops up a lot on the IGDA Sex SIG and its boards.

"In contrast to the system in the US, in the UK video games that are particularly realistic, or feature sex or violence, must be classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) under the Video Recordings Act of 1984. The Act provides that it is an offence to supply such a game to anyone below the age limit, punishable by a fine of up to £5000 or up to six months in prison. For those games not covered by the Act the UK games industry applies its own voluntary age rating system set up by the Video Standards Council (VSC) and run by the Entertainment Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) (more details about ELSPA). In the region of 90% of all titles released on to the market are exempt from legal classification." (See out-law)

Here was my pot-shot answer, at least on why the US is different than the UK:

We (I'm American, although ironically a dual citizen of the UK and US) have the same tensions between our cultural conservatives and liberal advocates as the British, but our history inflects a stronger dose of libertarianism. The Magna Carta notwithstanding, our history is based more strongly on sticking it to the Man. So, despite the wiretapping and general lunacy of this particular administration, we have a good history of rebellion, dissent and being suspicious of our government. "Big Brother" strikes a real chord here.

Also, the rugged individual ethic of the Western frontier pioneer that inflects American thinking translates into people taking responsibility for their actions rather than relying on government to do it. "Can-do" means do it yourself, not wait for the State. I recall having a conversation with an English friend about health care and why it wasn't universal in the US. She was shocked that I wasn't for it by default. Who could not endorse universal health care? But I was raised to think that I'd better look out for myself because I couldn't trust or depend on the State, and that (at least in my very Republican household) meant that others should look after themselves as well. In truth, we simply came from different socialization.

I'd also toss into the mix that there is some subconscious unease about media and blaming producers. We Americans generally do a horrible job at caring for our youth (see the Laissez Faire do-it-yourself ethic above). There are 1.5 million incidents of child abuse or molestation reported annually (one shudders to think of the actual number). Plus, we're not grand on health and education for youth right now. The enemy is us.

I'd argue that those factors create guilt over the way we treat children in general. Thus, when some external factor can be assigned blame, people tend to fairly leap out of their seats to agree, simply because it alleviates some of our collective guilt. The cause of problems is far more often an abusive known relative than some GTA game or stalker in Second Life, but who's going to face up to the fact that Uncle Fred is a pedophile?

Anyway, those are my two pence, written up in a chapter in the new Vorderer and Bryant edited volume on games:

Williams, D. (2006). A (Brief) Social History of Gaming. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Video Games: Motivations and Consequences of Use. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

The guilt and tension arguments aren't mine, although I buy them and have adapted them for games. The original ideas can be found in:
Glassner, B. (1999). The culture of fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things. New York: Basic Books.

Am I right or wrong? Are those the real cultural forces that keep our media restrictions in place, or is it something else? Or is it some accident of circumstance? How do other country's experiences compare? I'd love to hear from some Aussies in particular. My impression is that they react and legislate entirely differently.

Is it all just an outcome of our history--bizarre cultural path dependence that stretches from the Boston Tea Party to Ozzie Osborn, through GTA and on into the future virtual world?

Pink Games Rule

In February 2004 an AOL survey found that the biggest chunk of online gamers were older women playing for free at casual games sites. "Women? Old people?? It can't be! My guild officers are still in diapers!" We thought it was a blip. It's not. The ever-interesting Paul Hyman of Hollywood Reporter has got three separate studies showing how broad the demographics are for online games. It's hard for us to see because we're all into Jamaican Troll-Fightin', which means we're all geeky men (well almost all). That's not a problem, though; the market will move on without us, and eventually we'll have to start paying attention.

Uru lives!

Daniel Terdiman reports that Uru Live, the MMOG based on the Myst series, is to make a comeback. God, I so hope this is true. I barely ate for the daysweeks that each one of the Myst games took me to complete. When I heard that Uru was being shuttered I was really heartbroken. I hope they get it together this time.

One suggestion to the designers: Myst + World Open PvP = $$$$

Ya rly.

Mindark, I’m sorry…

…if you’re unhappy with what I wrote. But accusing me of slander and using scary Swedish mind tricks to make my life miserable is a bad idea. Let me explain…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post where I said that Mindark may well be a fine company, but its press releases about Project Entropia (or Entropia Universe as it’s now called) were over the top and worthy of much more investigation than the mainstream press usually afforded them. In the posting I made some observations about Mindark: (1) it has a history of making wild claims about Entropia, (2) at least one of the much-vaunted sales of assets in the world was to someone who has a direct connection to the company, and (3) that its recent announcement about its groundbreaking “Entropia banking card” was not very groundbreaking, coz it was basically a debit card. So far, so bland. I mean, big deal. Public relations is mostly hype anyway, and my beef wasn’t particularly with Mindark as the mainstream media’s inability to exercise any judgment about what is really newsworthy about virtual worlds. When the New York Times gets all breathy about a debit card, it’s time to tell them to get a better bullshit detector.

Mindark didn’t appreciate this posting very much, perhaps because it interfered with the potential press coverage of the AMAZING story that Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs is the world’s FIRST VIRTUAL MILLIONAIRE!!1!1!!

Anyway, shortly after the posting Jan Welter Timkrans, Mindark's CEO sent the following message to one of my bosses:

Sir

I am the CEO of a company named MindArk PE AB based in Sweden. I would like to know how it is possible that an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, employed by the Wharton University of Pensylvania. Is initiating and spreading slander concerning our product "Project Entropia".
It is utterly appalling to see his writings concerning a product he clearly knows nothing about. How can promoting slander by an employee be tolerated by a university involved in the education of Business Ethics and on top of that Legal Studies?
Dan Hunter has never even been in contact with our company.
Dan Hunters slander can be viewed at: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/05/project_entropi.html#more
Best Regards

Jan Welter Timkrans / CEO Mindark PE AB
[...contact details snipped...]

I spoke to my school about it, and we all shrugged it off. People suggested I should blog about it, but I figured that it didn’t add much to any discussion. So, it turns out that Mindark was pissed off with me. Take a number and stand in line guys.

But they just can’t leave well enough alone. This morning their CEO sent the following message to my school, looking for an apology:

Dear Sirs

I am disappointed to note that none of you have answered the mail that I have submitted below, this can only lead me to believe that the slander Dan Hunter is creating and spreading is sanctioned by the institution which employs him. Please answer. At this stage I will be content with an official apology.

Best Regards

Jan

And he sent one to the principals behind TerraNova:

Dear Sirs

I would like to inform you that you are promoting slander by making Dan Hunters slander available on your collaborative weblog experiment.
For your information you can see what I have communicated to Dan Hunters colleagues here below.

Best Regards

Jan Welter Timkrans

And they’ve even reserved me my own little spot in the Seventh Hell of Entropia, where they explain that I am, in fact, the "flimsiest story". (I’m not quite sure what that means, but, like, whatever. Welcome to the internets, where everyone gets to call you odd names).

Now this sort of thing pisses me off. To the point where it’s worth my time to blog about it. It’s not because I care at all about the implicit threat here: that if somebody doesn’t do something about me (in general) or this posting (in particular) then defamation suits will flow like the gentle rain from heaven. One of the great beauties of all those years learning law, practising law, and (now) teaching law is that I actually know what the law is; and perhaps more important, I don’t have any fear of groundless and stupid implied threats that I might get sued.

No, the thing that pisses me off is the use of these sorts of threats on all the people around me, in an effort to try to get me to shut up. (What’s strangest about Mindark’s behavior was that I was planning on ignoring them, since I have a million better things to be doing than writing about them. But they keep on picking, picking, picking at the wound, and, hey, before you know it, it’s bleeding again). I’m sure that there are all manner of organizations which, when faced by dumb threats like this, will actually try to make nice with bullies like Mindark, and tell their employees to shut up, or revoke publishing privileges, or whatever. But that’s not going to happen here. So that Jan Welter Timkrans and his minions at Mindark actually understand that it’s a waste of time to ask my school for an apology (and apology for what? for employing me?) I want them to know that I have tenure there. This means that they cannot fire me except in the most unusual of cases, one of which is definitely not because of pressure from a bunch of Swedish bullies with a penchant for wildly over-stated press releases. And as for thinking that TerraNova might decide to try to shut me up and get rid of me…well, they may want to have a look back to November 2003 and remind themselves who founded this site in the first place.

But if they want to knock themselves out contacting people who have influence over me, in an effort to shut me up, can I suggest the Starbucks barista named Juan who makes my coffee in the morning? I mean if he decides to cut me off from my supply then I’ll definitely consider writing a post entitled: “Mindark, I’m truly sorry…and can I now please have a large caffe latte with an extra shot? And if you also get me a bagel I'll buy your next space station, no questions asked!”

Oh, and to the inevitable Mindark sockpuppets who will post comments below, let me wish you the best. Knock yourselves out guys. Freedom of expression is da bomb, isn’t it?

Text as World Indeed

TN reader Andy Havens was nice enough to send us a heads up about his new text-based RPG-ing project PlayByWiki.  PlayByWiki is an experiment in online virtual worlds (Glad we agree on that one, Andy) using communal, text-only space.  Why text?  It's expandable.  It's accessible.  Heck, it's just plain fun.  I for one can't wait to see how it goes!

Loose Couplings

Via Mark Wallace comes an interesting interview and perspective by Tim O'Reilly regarding the infrastructure supporting Second Life.   Another data point in the MMO unseen...

Read Tim's interview of Cory Ondrejka and Ian Wilkes on his site - there is plenty to chew.

As a minor detail - I found Cory's remark interesting on how Second Life is moving towards an HTTP-based communcation model within their back-end system.   Once upon a time I worked on a large-scale distributed middleware system that used a similar approach - assuming I understand Cory's meaning. 

The neat thing about a pull-based architecture (e.g. "webservices")  is that they are often more flexible (as Cory points out) even if they may be less-efficient on a per message basis (overhead of using a general format and protocol).

Perhaps we should just stop here and marvel the complexity of the MMO backend system (also chase down the above links to Eve-Online and Everquest).   However, I can't resist this technical pun of sorts:  if I rely on a pull-based communcation model (not told about an event until I ask), can it have happened in a virtual world?   Zen aside, do you ever wonder what is the right way to handle world state inconsistencies resulting from hiccups (pull or push) besides rolling-back to where you were 10 minutes ago or having it just disappear (ref. transactions)?

Anyway, enough of the techno navel-gazing.  Enjoy your world, but just remember all the work that makes it happen, unseen.

Cultural Borrowing in WoW

Over two years ago, I was reading this pretty well-known Alpha tester review of WoW, and came across this description of some of the Horde races in Kalimdor.  I've been meaning to do a post about it ever since.

Trolls
...Lean predators, they're as tall as night elves when they stand fully erect, but normally bob along, hunched over, coiled and ready to spring. While Warcraft players know them by their Jamaican accents, voodoo-flavored culture and wild hairstyles, the trolls are also cruel, sadistic and evil...

Tauren
The closest things to true "good guys" in the Horde – perhaps in all of the World of Warcraft – the Taurens go far beyond just a simple Native American vibe to be true lords of the plains...  They are a spiritual people who put new Tauren player characters through a series of rites of passage, including following the path of a spirit wolf. Yet another of the moments in WoW that just feel intensely RIGHT, Taurens have a quest requiring them to chase a kodo herd across the grass fields of Mulgore, as close to a fantasy game recreation of a buffalo hunt as you'll ever come... The Tauren homeland of Mulgore is "big sky country," Montana to the Africa of the Barrens.

So to this Alpha reviewer, at least, it seemed the Horde "races" were all pinned, at least to some degree, to particular cultural groups and practices... does this raise any issues?

Cultural borrowing is nothing new to MMORPGs, of course.  Dark Age of Camelot organized Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard around European cultures and mythologies.  Puzzle Pirates snagged a pretty well known time and space as a starting point.  There were historical MUDs aplenty, I imagine. Grabbing your world components from history is a good way of avoiding the costs of licensing your world from others who own the IP rights and might want some creative control over the project.  One could query about indigenous IP rights, but I'd rather not go down that path.  (Perhaps "borrowing" is too loaded a term, even -- is "referencing" better?)

Instead, I want to talk about how science fiction and fantasy engage often engage in this type of borrowing -- most "new" things are just old things recoded.  For instance, the Wikipedia entry on Klingons points to the Soviets, Mongolians, and Japanese Samurai.  In most cases, I think this whole process of cultural encryption, mash-up, and recoding is fun -- perhaps what good art is all about.  Looking particularly at WoW, though, I have to wonder sometimes...

Ted's post a while back "The Horde is Evil" probably drew the most comments of any post we've had here in our three-year history.  I don't want to re-open that thread, but I want to ask for thoughts on how it connects to the cultural borrowings/references.  How does the arguably colonialist theme of WoW (pitting the technologically advanced Euro-Alliance against the "native" Horde) work for people?

Last year, one of Aaron's undergraduate students, Katie B., wrote an interesting paper on this exact issue in WoW, where she sought feedback from the other members of the class.  Aaron actually mentioned it in the comments before, summarizing, in part:

(1) Gnomes, dwarves and humans seem to signify the West, with gnomes and dwarves closely connected to capitalism and technology. The only alliance race with darker skin is the Night Elves, and they are viewed with suspicion by other alliance members.

(2) The visual iconography of the horde races suggests real-world cultures (e.g. totems, tents, face paint), and the horde in general are portrayed as "primitive."

(3) The trolls speak in recognizably Jamaican accents, and the emotes for the male reinforce highly sexualized stereotypes...

(4) The alliance actually locked the Orcs up in internment camps, a move which she compares to the Indian Removal Act of 1830. She writes, "The Orcs’s bloodthirstiness was subdued during their stay in internment camps, which is a disturbing sort of justification for the imprisonment and enslavement of another race of people."

There are a bunch of other interesting observations in the paper:

The clearest indication of colonial awareness can be seen in relation to the excerpts concerning the Horde and Alliance cities. The majority of the respondents note that, in some form or fashion, that the “Horde seem to be more tribal or barbaric. Much more primitive or backward.... The Alliance cities are paragons of sturdiness, whimsy, technology, and nature. This reinforces the idea that the Alliance are the ‘good guys’ by being more advanced.” Part of this thought process seems to reflect a certain measure of acknowledgement for the ‘European’ or Western bias built into the good vs. evil dichotomy in the game. As one interviewee puts it, “Alliance cities are cleaner and more epic. Even the music is epic.”

The whole paper is worth a look -- there are a lot of interesting reflections.  I found it fascinating as one student's reading of a MMORPG text.  But one of the most interesting claims is that most of the students surveyed weren't consciously tuning into the crypto-colonialist matrix that the author sees in the game: "Aside from passing references to the Scottish Dwarves, none of the respondents mentioned the ethnicity of the different races, skin tones, or even the use of internment camps, which, while empty, can still be visited ingame..."

I guess what I'm curious about is how people feel about cultural borrowing in WoW, and more broadly, about the appropriate limits (if any) of this kind of thing.  Is there a point where crypto-cultural references become offensive?  Can they be offensive if they are not perceived by the players?  Jar-Jar Binks seemed to create a little bit of controversy a while back, so much that Lucas himself reportedly commented that the way Binks talked was "definitely not Jamaican and if you were to say those lines in Jamaican they wouldn't be anything like the way Jar Jar Binks says them."

Thoughts?

p.s. For those interested in further reading on the topic of race in video games generally, Peter Edelman and others put together a nice list of resources here.

Update: Parallell discussion of this and Ted's "Horde is Evil" post on Slashdot.  Note: If you want to tell Ted that the Horde isn't evil and he needs to pay more attention to the Warcraft lore, it would be appropriate post your comment here (with the 1000 other comments that say that).

Google’s virtual world

According to a breathy report on CNN / Business 2.0 Google are getting into the Virtual World business. In short the idea seems to be to map 3D models as custom layers to Google Earth and make them public.

Talk about collision of rights issues and a large bucket of fun – where do we start?

Writing about the project on Googleblog, Brad Schell, Product Management Director, Google SketchUp enthused: “Visionaries, utopians, virtual world builders: your time has come.” And I'm sure that there will be business in creating things like a virtual Royal Academy over the location of the physical one in London’s swinging West End.

But our experience of VWs so far suggest that virtual utopias always come with heavy dose of distopian practices known as greifing. As every new virtual form is invented a new and unusual corruption of that form quickly follows. For a lesson in what might happen one need look no further than your average virtual utopian’s space of choice - Second Life (sorry for the third SL ref in a row – I really need to get on a bonus scheme, so for balance consider also There.com for all your 3D social world needs), and the multifarious kinds of architectural greifing that go on there.

So, if A knows where B lives, A does not like B so I create a large purple phallic looking building over their location and publish it as a layer. Assume for the moment that it’s not defamatory in a legal sense and that But B owns their property – do they have some kind of right over that space or those co-ordinates in any space that seeks to replicate physical world geography?

Further - linking back to the interesting discussion we are having over anti-war protests and Amercia’s Army in the dead-in-iraq: thread – what’s public, what’s common, is political protest on say the location of 10 Downing Street OK?

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With my speculation hat firmly in place the way I see things going is as follows:

- Some form of official virtual map will emerge, special rights will be treated like rights to domains initially with Google and arbitrator and possibly national based authorities along the domain model should the project be a success.

- In parallel a number of fantasy layers as group project will emerge – initial ones possibly along lines ‘what if’ conceits – such as what if this were are cartoon world, here fair use and satire would exist and parallel spaces would compete for audience share though would probably target like minded groups.

- On the edge will be political world-views such as an ecologists view of the world using visual representations of climate states and organisations that pollute so one can zoom around the globe from a eco point of view.

These broadly map against the more nuanced version of the Four Worlds Theory I’ve been working on following the helpful comments on the thread.

Note: for previous physical / virtual mapping conundrums see Skinnable World I and II.

Public Media, Public Diplomacy, Games, and Place

OK, time for some beardy musings. Ren just posted about the BBC 1 Big Weekend and referenced a discussion on Raph's site about public media. In it, Raph throws cold water on Alice's discussions of how games could fit into public media. Given the intersecting pieces of public media, public diplomacy, and public broadcast that have happened in Second Life alone over the last two weeks, it is clear that Raph isn't giving either the BBC or other public media sources enough credit. More importantly, it highlights an interesting choice when thinking about how to use technology in the public media/public diplomacy arena.

Public media is looking at what games and virtual worlds can bring to the table. Harvard's Berkman Center hosted Beyond Broadcast this weekend and conducted a simulcast into Second Life. A year ago it might have been correct to think that broadcast media isn't influenced by virtual worlds, but that is no longer the case.

Which leads to another of Raph's comments. He says that the World Bank can't afford the price tag of making games. First, while they might not be the kind of games that Raph makes, both the PBS and BBC sites are FULL of games. My three year old has been a pretty avid web game player since she was two and she spends nearly all of her online time on these two sites. Second, the BBC has proven quite adept at demonstrating how to experiment within a limited budget, with 1 Big Weekend a prime example. Plus, the technological differences between what was required to create 1 Big Weekend and -- say -- to host public debate on intervention in Iran, including live discussions with participants from appropriate countries, links to up-to-date news and analysis, technical discussions of enrichment and the history of confrontations between nuclear-armed nations is negligible. Any organization that wanted to do this could pull it off for relatively low cost -- zero cost compared to developing a game from scratch. The BBC is simply ahead of everyone else.

This brings us to the real questions. Sure, people can spend time making decent single player games that teach about food distribution. On the other hand, you could build a space in Second Life that showed how to distribute the food or introduced you to the people getting the food. These places allow you to engage in discourse about the problems and challenges, rather than playing through a fixed experience that encodes one set of beliefs.

When we look to the future of virtual worlds, we should focus on playing to their unique attributes -- putting people into shared places. My only disappointment in the otherwise excellent USC Center for Public Diplomacy Awards Ceremony was that it was an award for the best "Game" used to advance public diplomacy. How much farther can we go when we truly become comfortable thinking beyond games?

Nation shall speak unto virtual nations

This weekend BBC Radio 1 held The Big Weekend, a two-day free concert in Dundee, Scotland. The event was also streamed into Second Life and shown on a set of custom BBC islands. I think this counts as another first for both the Beeb and SL as I’m not aware of another major broadcaster officially streaming a live event into a virtual space. Initial figures from creators of the event in SL suggest that up to 6,000 avatars will have been at the show over the weekend.

No beardy musings - just noting another cross-media data-point and the trend from Gorillaz doing Habbo in August last year, through to the Beeb broadcasting from inside Second Life in January this year and now this. Where TV audiences go – broadcasters and (in most cases other than the BBC) advertisers will follow.

Alice has been providing some coverage of the event, but (just in case you missed it) for deeper thoughts check out her entry on public service gaming and Raph’s further thoughts on the subject.

Happy Dingday / Guild Efficiency

Two pretty random questions that hopefully might provoke discussion here...

1) Happy Dingday?

I'll probably need to page Dr. Bartle and Ms. Mulligan for this one -- the question being, does the fact that the number of levels in most (not all) MMORPGs hovers at around the lifespan of  a human being have any significance other than the fact that it just kind of happened that way?  Is there anything to the fact that a level "ding" is celebrated, like a birthday, with congratulations from friends and some presents from the game gods.  Hmm?  Okay, probably not -- but moving right along...

2) When are guilds more efficient than markets?

This one is even stranger.  Let's say, just arguendo, that when we see the laborious production of objects of value that can benefit those other than the producer, we see the emergence of markets.  As Ted talked about long ago, in EQ, we saw this happen informally at first in certain locations of heavy trade (like the East Commonlands tunnel), and it was later formalized by SOE in the Luclin Bazaar.  If you're a free marketeer, this all sounds peachy, but...

The fact is that many products and services in MMORPGs don't flow from player to player through market exchanges.  Buffs in WoW, for instance, are sold sometimes, but at other times are thrown around indiscriminately (explainable in economic terms perhaps because albeit the value, the replenishable mana costs makes them superabundant, like air).

The more interesting question for me is this: within guilds, you can see plenty of resource pooling that isn't dominated by market exchanges.  So, at least in some cases, it seems that guild resource pools must be more efficient than markets for distribution.  Which isn't too odd, because you can see plenty of situations "IRL" where smaller social units (e.g. families) don't operate via explicit market exchanges, but operate via a "pooling" commons of concurrent ownership.

My questions are the following -- though feel free to make up your own:

1) Is there any particular characteristic of classes of virtual goods that guilds will put into pooling arrangements?  Is there any particular classes of goods that are exempted from guild pooling?

2) Any stories (hyperlinks would be even better) to more complicated structures of guild administration of common resources?  Thoughts on why they are more efficient than market models?

3) There's obviously an issue with scaling common ownership -- so how do uberguilds handle these arrangements differently?  Do they edge back toward standard markets?  Do they have some kind of n00b welfare?

4) Is there an interesting dimension to this in terms of ludology? E.g., does the guild turn the MMORPG into a team sport rather than a solo game played socially?

Well, those are probably enough questions...

The Amazing Mechanical Turk

In Social Code the excellent (albeit sceptically applied) phrase "social  algorithm" found its way into the Terra Nova lexicon.  This led to a small spiral on algorithms, their sociability, and a little bit about agency, software, and a flirtation with social AI, and finally to speculation of a social algorithm...

First off, we need a working sense of algorithm.  The Wikipedia offers us:

...an algorithm is a procedure (a finite set of well-defined instructions) for accomplishing some task which, given an initial state, will terminate in a defined end-state...

Informally, the concept of an algorithm is often illustrated by the example of a recipe, although many algorithms are much more complex; algorithms often have steps that repeat... or require decisions (such as logic or comparison)...

Great.  A quick Googling then suggests that a working definition of  "social algorithm" seems to have been adopted in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) literature.  Excellent.

Software agents imply a range of Computer Science concerns related to the many challenges that software built from pieces operating with some degree of independence can pose.  As was earlier mentioned (e.g. [1.], [2.] ), such topics are as of a practical matter not very far removed from the concerns of the games industry...

In MAS literature "social laws" have been occasionally suggested as an organizing principle  (e.g., ref [1.] , [2.] ).   The idea here is that if all the bits of unleashed code were rooted in some "social" framework they might be more responsible and productive - ant colonies are but one metaphorical tease. 

While the MAS usage is an interesting offering, it feels like it advances social algorithm as a social simulation: there is little direct contact with the people, so to speak.   Yet imagine a workflow - another algorithmic form - containing both software and human components.  Imagine an MMORPG where players play the AI... 

Fascinating stuff and somewhat abstract even for the likes of us navel-gazing Terra Novans. 

However, along the way comes interesting discussion ( ACM Queue) of the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT).  The AMT is, as best I can tell, an Amazon web-service offered to web-developers using which they can ask Artificial Intelligence (AI) like questions about content using a standard software interface pattern (remote procedure call).  But the kicker is that the answers would come from a vast human participation (btw, for profit):

...The application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this “artificial artificial intelligence” by coming to the Web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work. This allows software developers to easily and economically build programs that tap into a worldwide, massively parallel, Internet-scale human workforce on an incremental, as-needed basis...

A truly social algorithm?

The pod and the mouse

Podcasting has just /got/ Second Life. Adam Curry the so-called PodFather has a castle and my two favorite podcasts Fox and the City and Keith and the Girl [note: both are for mature audiences with a ‘robust’ sense of humour]. Second Life is rushing like a fire storm through the podsphere.

At face value this is not in the slightest interesting: one fringe group (podcasters) start to grock grok a fringe activity (being in Second Life). But..

..what does strike me as interesting is the level to which one might track the SL meme through the podsphere. I know that people have done similar work looking at the communications networks and power relations within the blogshpere and this seems to me to be an excelent way to study the way ideas pass through podcasts – what’s more if Linden set up a Surname such as ‘podfan’ or ‘podcast’ then there might be some interesting data about how self identifying members of this group permeate the SL social structure. Not that I’m suggesting that we track people without their knowledge of course.

C’mon there’s got to be a research project in there somewhere.

More generally it’s fascinating to hear what people outside the games / intellectual clique that typically bang on about SL actually say about it. One has to note of course that by definition a podcaster is someone that is already a DIY media producer but with podcasting one is hearing the interplay of a wide range of sensibilities with the, sometimes utopian, vision of Second Life.

Chatting

Just saw a truly wonderful talk by Karrie Karahalios from UIUC about the relatively-understudied role of audio in social computing. She makes a compelling case for using social computing methods for visualizing and incorporating audio within the various social software systems that people are building.

Which was interesting because last night I was playing WoW in the same room as some of my guildies and also the leader of another guild. The most remarkable thing, for me, was the amount of Teamspeak voice chatter that the other guild engaged in. Our guild only ever uses Teamspeak for instances and raids, and so to hear the other guild just chatting was intriguing.

I don't know if this is correlated with expectations about roleplay--I know that Richard has a view about roleplay and voice--although I suspect that it's not necessarily related. Our guild is utterly uninterested in roleplay, but we just don't use TeamSpeak for non-instance play. I have no idea why this is so.

I also happen to know that Dmitri has done some studies about the role of voice in various metrics of play, and I don't want to steal his thunder. No doubt he'll tell us all about it in due course. But I've never thought about it before, and I think that I've been missing something significant.

The Virtual Office

When I think most of us are in a TN frame of mind we tend to think of virtual worlds as only games or social spaces. The concept of work when it does come into play tends to do so in the sense of its traditional boundaries being challenges by a shift in the consumer / producer divide or in the sense that is is entailed by the pracitice of gold farming.

So here in a bit of a novel and experimental move for us is an essay on the subject of the Virtual Office by Andrew W. Donoho who is Web Theorist in the bit of IBM they like to call Emerging Technology. Responses to to the questions that Andrew poses and the very inclusion of the discussion of the virtual office as a topic on TN are welcome.

The Virtual Office: A Holy Grail or Attainable 'Reality'?

The virtual office (VO) is a dream of human interface/virtual system researchers for many years now. Yet, the VO seems as far away as ever. Yes, we have hours of entertainment in fabulous virtual worlds, such as the World of Warcraft, Second Life and others. But how do we transition out of the entertainment spaces and “get some work done” in VOs?

In my day job as an emerging technologist for IBM, I see the misapplication of technology to the human problems of organizations all of the time. Therefore, since the technologies for building VOs are now being commercialized by Second Life and others, I ask myself if it is going to be different this time? My analysis starts with performing an inventory of technologies and workplace challenges. I then offer a simple economic scenario for implementing a VO. A description of the social issues precluding VO acceptance is next. And I conclude by soliciting the opinions of Terra Novans on the problem.

Technology Inventory:

1. High performance, commodity priced graphics hardware.
   
2. High resolution screens.
   
3. Pervasive, low cost motion video cameras.
   
4. Modest broad bandwidth connections.
   
5. Second Life as a sample VO construction toolbox.
   
6. Effective network office infrastructure (Web, IM, email, etc.)

The above list is a pretty standard inventory of the state of broadly deployed technologies. I include Second Life because it is available, has a demonstrated track record of being able to support office level avatar densities and has an open architecture. Because this list is not terribly controversial, I will not examine it further in this post.

Rational Workplace Challenges:

1. Lead, overwhelmingly obvious application that VO solves.
   
2. Low cost alternatives.
   
3. Networked Abstract Office v. Virtual Office.

Because the decision to implement a virtual office is made by businesses and not individuals, it will frequently start with the above 'rational' issues before proceeding to the softer social issue examined below.

Social 'Drag' - the resistance to novel organization of social systems.

1. Social structure of business life.
   
2. Boundary between the personal space and business space.
   
3. Company culture.
   
4. Training.

Social drag will slow and frequently stop much innovation in organizations. It can only be overcome by the steady application of sound micro-economic logic of business savings over time. Let us look at logic.

Rational Workplace Challenges:

The 'killer' or traction application is normally where these kinds of analyses both start and stop. I contend that there is no specific application that a VO solves that will call it into being. A VO is a systemic economic entity that reduces costs so much that it overcomes objections to its use.

Therefore, the VO has to offer a better economic solution than the reigning paradigm of the Networked Abstract Office (NAO). The NAO is that collection of technologies that we use for the day to day communication and control of our various business activities - phone, email, web browsing, IM and, to a much lesser extent, blogging. This office exists in the participant's minds and they navigate it relatively well. Bearing in mind that most NAO users only use the most rudimentary capabilities of their tools, the productivity of the interpersonal communication they enable overwhelms the cost of deploying many of these over engineered technologies. Since many of these tools will be common between a NAO and a VO, they will not be a differentiating factor. Yes, they may be represented differently in a VO but, because humans have already adapted to using NAO tools, they will not offer much economic advantage. Emerging from this analysis is the very clear idea that the VO is a superset of the NAO.

But what kind of superset? Is it an avatar based world? A 2 and 1/2 dimensional view of a desktop? What is the real roll of a first person perspective in an office setting? I think all of these questions are improperly technology driven. Office life and productivity enhancement is about communication. Therefore, any VO is going to have to have rich communication at its heart. Because of the pervasive availability of motion video cameras and broadband, I think the real driver will be the deep integration of live video of the VO participants. Anyone who has seen a multi-person demo of Apple's iChat AV senses the power of this kind of integration. Yet, it is still reasonably difficult to set up a multi-person AV chat.

Therefore, my lead scenario for calling a VO into being is as follows. As a response to an energy crisis, large organizations wishing to avoid compensating employees for travel to offices will put in place the server infrastructure to host home office employees in a VO. As this proves successful, in a positive feedback loop, employers will start shifting more of their employees to home offices and releasing high priced office space. The savings to organizations is large - avoided employee raises to compensate for increased transportation energy costs and the reduction in rent for mundane office facilities. These avoided costs dwarf the costs for high priced, high bandwidth networks into homes, fancy VO capable desktop PCs and supporting servers. The savings are there. The precipitating event to cause businesses to reevaluate this situation has not yet occurred. Furthermore, there are no products currently available which implement a workable VO. The pieces are there. Will anyone put them together?

Social 'Drag':

Humans like other humans. They like being near them, going to lunch, conversing and working together. In this regard, the VO starts with a real disadvantage. Since I am a home office worker, I have intimate familiarity with the feelings of isolation that can occur without daily human connections. There is a social structure of office life that humans benefit from. (I get my social outlets elsewhere but I can easily see this as a large scale problem if VOs get established.) While a VO can address this isolation somewhat, a VO is starting out with a huge hurdle to acceptance. This is very different than entering a virtual world (VW) for entertainment. Presumably you see people at school or your real office and the VW is a temporally limited affair with impressive eye candy, modest engaging puzzles and social chat. A VO would be your daily grind (and not in the sense of how many mobs you kill today). The social structure of business life is a serious impediment to VO adoption.

There is also the problem of the boundary between personal space, e.g. your home office, and your formal business space. While I am odd that I invite business people over to my home office often for meetings, I expect most people would not do so. Therefore, the VO has an opportunity to migrate formal space into the virtual realm. To keep it separate from the personal realm. Because of the tight video integration, there will be some leakage between the spaces. (For example, I used to have a cockatiel that would squawk during teleconferences.) This problem is manageable but we will also have to recognize that many employees do not have dedicated home workspaces. There will be some appropriate employee pushback on shifting these home office costs onto employee shoulders.

Company culture is very difficult to overcome. For example, many large companies have very advanced teleconference centric culture. This culture has developed over years of having geographically far flung venues. This culture is somewhat of a culture shock to new employees. In contrast, many companies still 'live under one roof'. Their culture requires face to face meetings. A teleconference is not a 'real meeting'. I have had to frequently fly in to their site to, in fact, cause folks to meet deadlines. These cultures are durable. A VO can probably pretty easily take root in a teleconference culture company but whither in a face to face culture company. Therefore, VOs will probably first start being deployed by large companies.

Finally, training is a real cost. It is one of the major reasons that most organizations do not use most of the features in their current suite of office productivity tools. Fortunately, VOs should be able to leverage the rapid learning features demonstrated in virtual world systems. But, this will be a real objection from the social realm driven by real costs. We cannot ignore them.

Summary:

The odds are against any VO actually getting deployed and used. Yet, the technical and infrastructure pieces are basically in place to make VOs broadly available. The integration of live video is probably the last required piece of technology to make VOs possible. There is an economic case to be made for their deployment but is lacking a precipitating event to start the shift. The social drag slowing and stalling acceptance will be huge. In other words, like office productivity tools themselves, a VO may take upwards of 20 years for our society to figure out how to use it.

Questions for the Terra Nova Community:

1. What else, if anything, do you think is a technology prerequisite for a VO?
2. Does my communication centric view really trump the technology driven approach?
3. If not energy, then what would prompt the creation of a VO? (Bird flu is too transitory, in my opinion, to cause the investments.)
4. What, if anything, do you think should be added to the social analysis?
5. Do you agree that the social structure of business is probably the biggest impediment to VO adoption?
6. And, of course, what suggestions do Terra Novans have for me as I navigate this application area?

by Andrew W. Donoho.

Spectacle

I'm at the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium organized in inimitable fashion by Liz Lawley, and attended by about half of the brainstrust of Terra Nova. One of the focuses here has been the connection between virtual worlds, online communities and the rise of social computing generally. Tim is liveblogging from the event, and so I won't. But it's made me think about a couple of things, one of which I want to mention here.

Chatting in one of the breakout groups, we discussed the nature of specators within MMOGs. With a small number of exceptions--notably the arenas in City of Heroes and Villians, watching a duel in WoW, sitting up on a hill as the crowd runs by--there is very little opportunity for engaging in the world as a spectator. That is, one could sit back and watch people going about their business in world, but the modality of engagement in virtual worlds is participation not spectation (is that even a word?) Indeed, like Stephen Johnson, this has always been one of my major defenses of video games against those who stigmatize them: video games get the user to do something, unlike television or radio or newspapers.

But I think that perhaps we've underestimated the joy of spectaction (and spectacle), of being present but not directly engaged in what is happening in our world. I think that perhaps spectation has been unfairly stigmatized ("You're not watching the boobtube again, are you?") and that perhaps it serves an important role for us. There is, no doubt, an established literature on this, but I'm not aware of. Perhaps others can help me out here.

This observation leads to some game design implications. Why is it that we don't have "televised" spectacles within the worlds, why aren't there more arenas where one can watch others fight, why do we assume that participation is the most important touchstone of immersion within MMOGs? And so on, and so on.

I don't have a thesis here. But it intriques me as to why MMOGs are so different from the physical world.