* Inventory loss - this is a devastating problem that is worsening. We have no ability to protect our own inventories through backups, and are trusting you to protect that data. This is the highest priority. Sensible inventory limits (on non-verified accounts only), combined with better management tools and ways to protect our inventory ourselves would help to mitigate the problem as well. Regardless, this cannot continue - we will not accept financial loss as a feature of Second Life. It is your responsibility as service provider to ensure our data is not lost, and you are failing us.
* Problems with Find and Friends List - we continue to see search outages on a far too regular basis. It is bad enough trying to get anywhere without being able to use search, but many users are also paying money for classified ads. Our friends lists just do not work reliably any longer, after years without an issue with them. If America Online/MSN/Yahoo can provide presence information for hundreds of millions of users, surely there is a way to make our friends lists work again.
* Grid stability and performance - teleports fail quite regularly, especially under heavy load. Attachments end up in places they did not start out in, and sim performance varies wildly. None of this makes for a very pleasant experience for users. Long promised improvement to physics and scripting would help dramatically to reduce these problems, but there are a lot of other scalability issues as well. It often feels like the grid is coming apart at the seams. The promised use of limiting logins of non-verified accounts during peak load has been severely lacking. This would be an effective interim solution to load issues, but Linden Lab seems unwilling to use it.
* Build tool problems - the importance of build tools that actually work as promised cannot be overstated enough - we rely on them to create content. Prim drift, disappearing prims, imprecise placement, problems with linking and other issues with the tools need to be addressed. Too much time is being spent trying to work around the problems.
* Transaction problems - inventory deliveries are failing with an alarming (and annoying) frequency, leaving merchants with the burden of replacing missing content and having to try to confim the transaction in the first place. We trust that our L$ balances are accurate, but given recent problems, that is a cause for concern as well, and one we place our full trust in you to ensure its accuracy.
The letter demands that Linden Lab put off new feature rollouts until these issues have been addressed, but doesn't specify what action the group will take should LL not comply. It doesn't seem that these users can do much, beyond organizing more protests -- many have invested a great deal of time and effort in SL, and I don't think they would be willing to abandon the virtual world.
We're pleased to welcome Michelle Hinn, who will be guestblogging at Terra Nova throughout May. Here's her impressive bio:
Michelle Hinn is an instructor in the department of Library and
Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, where she teaches game design courses, and
is the academic advisor for the Women in Math, Science, and
Engineering living/learning community at the university. She was
recently named one of Next Generation Magazine's 100 Most Influential
Women in Gaming based on her work as chair of the IGDA Game
Accessibility Special Interest Group. She is also the head of the
game division of a shareware/donationware company, DonationCoder.com.
Michelle has a B.A. in Music Performance,
a B.S. in Psychology, a M.A. in Multimedia Design from Virginia Tech,
and is completing her PhD in Game Accessibility at the University of
Illinois this summer. She has worked at Microsoft Game Studios where she focused
on piloting usability tests for Xbox multiplayer games. Additionally,
she has worked for Computer Sciences Corporation, the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and the University of Nevada
at Reno.
Michelle is the co-editor of the 2001 book Visions of Quality:
How Evaluators Define, Understand, and Represent Program Quality and
is working with the Game Accessibility SIG on a book on Game
Accessibility. She is on the editorial board of ACM's Computers in
Entertainment magazine. She has also authored several
award-winning papers on the topic of universal accessibility from
organizations such as the American Evaluators Association and the
International Visual Literacy Association and was one of the three
2006 recipients of the IGDA's Most Valuable Player Award.
We'd like to thank Michelle for joining us and we're looking forward to the discussion!
Rachel and I will be appearing at SOPA today at noon pst to discuss the Fizzy experiment at there.com (http://stateofplayacademy.com/). Everyone and anyone is welcome Thanks again for a great month.
We're happy to have Ian Lamont joining us as a guest author on Terra Nova for the month of May. Ian's self-introduction follows:
I'm the senior online projects editor at Computerworld, a trade publication covering the IT industry, and a graduate student at the Harvard Extension School, studying modern Chinese history and mass media. My thesis is based on a computer content analysis I performed on traditional media content (news articles published by the New China News Agency) but my research interests extend to Chinese Internet usage and regulations. Thanks to my studies, my job, and my blogging efforts, I have many opportunities to write about these and other technology-related topics that interest me, most notably 3D software tools, virtual worlds, and emerging media technologies.
I've observed that writers on Terra Nova like to reminisce about their
first experiences with virtual worlds and 3D environments, which range
from 70s-era 3D games (!) to early MUDs and Internet-based virtual communities. For me, reading William Gibson's Neuromancer
in the mid-1980s opened my eyes to the concept of virtual worlds.
However, I didn't actually experience networked 3D environments until
about 10 years later, when I was living in Asia and tried Doom
for the first time. These days, I don't spend a great deal of time in
3D gaming environments (that might change when sequels to Half Life 2 or Return to Castle Wolfenstein come out) but I do make an effort to explore Second Life on a weekly basis.
I really appreciate this opportunity, and am looking forward to joining the Terra Nova dialogue!
In our corner of the universe, considerable coverage has been given this past week of IBM's announced new mainframe platform based on the Cell processor (PlayStation 3) that is designed to support virtual worlds (and related) applications. Beneath the fold I'll provide a sampling of links.
Mark Wallace (3DPoint) provides an excellent round of introductory coverage:
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 confronted a T-1000 - a liquid metal villian capable of shape changing. Second Life, in a way, strives to touch a similar star with its "sculptured prim" feature, a new user tool for generating shapes from textures ("images"). At least this is a direction they claim to be heading.
The Second Life wiki has a write-up. The gist, however, is that they are now offering a capability where one can import an RGB texture and map it into XYZ space (fn1) - thereby estimating the original shape (3d model). Mark Wallace has a good write-up on its anticipated impact in the Second Life ecosystem, notably that it may impact a vibrant modeling service economy there.
CNet (and other press reflectors) emphasize the ability to generate "organic" shapes from textures - which can be produced from a variety of tools. I think, however, the more ambitious view is the more interesting one. From the Second Life wiki:
...it would be easy to have a flash animation generate a sculpted prim - and when a resident touches a spot on its surface, the shape could wiggle and ripple appropriately.
Dynamic shapes responsive to their environment. Sounds cool, we'll see. Hasta la vista.
For those familiar with computer graphics - a sculpt texture is very similar to a normal map, but instead of encoding surface normals we encode surface positions. They are also similar to displacement maps, but instead of a single scalar distance we have three values (for each of X, Y, and Z.) They are also very similar to parametric (e.g. nurbs) surfaces.
Buzzword Compliant is calling it the "Harry Potter programming language." Hackety Hack was created as manifesto by the author of The Little Coder's Predicament (also here). Early shades of David Brin's "Why Johnny Can't Code" (below). This week sees a new beta release of Hackety Hack - ready to engage the 13+ (at heart) everywhere. Who would have thunk it. A Gecko and Ruby mashup as fun: "Code yourself a blog in 6 lines" (fn1). Along with the other options we have discussed in the past (below), could "a blog in 6 lines" save computer science education?
Shifting gears just a notch. Nicholas Carr offers a superb discussion of Dirk Riehl's (IEEE) "The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder Perspectives" - both seem to echo a somewhat pessimistic view of the Open Source software ecosystem, namely that it culminates in the "Programmer's Dilemma" (Nicholas, emphasis added):
Because skills in open source programming are increasingly necessary to enhance the potential career prospects of individual programmers, individual programmers have strong motivations to join in - and as more programmers join in, the incentive for each individual programmer to participate becomes ever stronger. At the same time, the total amount of money that goes to programmers falls as open source is adopted by more companies. Individual programmers, in other words, have selfish motives to engage in collectively destructive behavior.
I'm less pessimistic. Where this analysis and the Programmer's Dilemma is weak (IMO) is in its closed system assumptions. Creation of marginal software value (e.g. faciliated by inexpensive Open Source) can, I believe, ultimately extend the reach of software into new niches and in so doing, build new demand. Future value based on an open system trumps collective destruction?
After all, I did just mention an intriguing experiment involving Gecko and Ruby.
The virtual world questions lie just beneath the surface. For example:
Would the Programmer's Dilemma (or Creator's dilemma) be more or less applicable to user created content systems in virtual worlds?
What of the contrast of a text programming language versus one layered above the objects of a virtual world for youth education (e.g. Storytelling in Wonderland below, or Second Life)?
Thoughts to the reader for your travels on the weekend.
TN: Jimmy Tolkien. January 2007. Regarding David Brin's "Why Johnny Can't Code."
TN: Storytelling in Wonderland. March 2007. The dismal state of computer science education in the U.S. CMU's Alice and educating children in computer science using virtual worlds.
TN: Ruby Slippers. December 2006. Web 2.0 and the symbiosis of people and technology and Ruby on Rails.
David Brin. "Why Johnny Can't Code." Salon, September 2006. "BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming."
Computer Science Teacher's Association. "When the Worst of Times is the Best of Times." December 2006. "At the risk of looking a little too hard for that silver lining in the big black cloud, I am beginning to think that some very good things might come out of the current bust in computer science education."
fn1.
blog = Table("MyBlog").recent(10)
Web.page {
blog.each do |entry|
title entry[:title]
puts entry[:editbox]
end
}
A few comments. First, I am delighted that so many of the students posted comments. Second, the lack of uniformity in the screencasts has been because of technical difficulties, and so we are still attempting to get all of them up, which should happen by next week.
And then, on a different note. I thank you again for allowing us the space this month to share our project. We are novices at the beginning of a journey, and you have allowed us to post and get feedback from experts. We are very appreciative. I think what was interesting about this project was the beginning-ness of it--the first steps of law students applying their most basic knowledge of law into a virtual world that they were unfamiliar.
And so where does this project go next? I think I will be writing a law review article on the experiment, but I am not sure. Do we look more seriously into the property questions? I'm not sure. I know Rachel will continue to work in this field (she has a job at Linden Lab for the summer), which is good enough for me. And other students are inspired to do more work, which is good as well. And I saw students take inititive (one became the oganizer of new groups each week, another arranged the in class video conference call with Jason Archinaco, which became the finale for the course).
But for the project itself? I'm just not sure at this point. I am in a space of just enjoying what we have accomplished at the moment. We did it. We took 100 students into Second Life and survived. That is something. We were able to apply and analyze basic concepts of property law to what we saw in Second Life. That is something as well. We created 13 screencasts. We worked well in small groups ( law students are notoriously known for not playing well with others). We had a representative from Linden Lab that began the class and the attorney for the Bragg case that ended it. We blogged at Terra Nova. We will appear on Monday at the State of Play Academy. We felt part of the world, which is not usually the case for a First Year Property class.
Any suggestions or comments on what would be useful as the next step would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you again for allowing us the space to be part of Terra Nova for the month. It was great and thrilling and wonderful...
I have been thinking about the relationship of law to virtual worlds for a long time -- and here's one result.
So, one thing that law professors don't really get to do is speak plainly. That is what this "paper," or "speech," or whatever, is, in intellectualized form. It's a polite rant. So, a few things from the start:
(1) I don't know if I'm right. I do want to articulate a position that I think best describes the current and future relationships between law and virtual worlds.
(2) I don't think I'm righter than anyone else. There are a lot of really important reasons to create "law free" zones. Humans need frontiers. Virtual worlds have been our frontier for a long time. But a sad thing happens to frontiers -- I mean, is Kansas City still the Wild, Wild West? Not so much.
For those who don't want to click through, the basic idea is this: Law already governs every aspect of virtual worlds -- from the contract law invoked by EULAs, to tort laws premised on various theories of consent, to tax law, to criminal law. But that does not mean that we must give up everything that makes virtual worlds special. The common law has had a long practice of deferring to industry or community customs and practices. There is no reason for courts to stop now. The debate, thus, should be shifted from whether law does (it does) or should (ok, more debatable) affect virtual worlds to what mechanisms we should adopt for sussing out what norms are emerging within virtual worlds, and which of those norms ought to be plugged into the socket in the law that courts reserve for community norms.
In her first book, "Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport" [1], Jennifer Shahade delightfully contrasts her early chess play ("violent", "reckless", "aggressive") with her ("iron-man physique") father's "sedate style" (fn1). He was by her words a "calculator", prefering solid positional set-ups. She had the taste for slash and burn in those early days, he built walls.
In Avalon Hill's Caesar (fn2), to play the Romans often appears to the uninitiated as a depressing narrative of enduring a relentless squeeze. The Gauls have mobility and the initiative. The Romans, merely circumvallation. Yet, by most grognard lists, AH's Caesar is considered a classic.
Whether by a display of passion, cunning, engineering, or just luck, the player can choose the demeanor of their victory. Winning might not even be a process of "winning" , but one of "losing gracefully" (e.g. a techincal win by bettering your historical counterpart).
Contrast this with Raph's discussion on treadmills in games. As Raph points out:
They are a hypertrophied version of basic incentives... Anyone can climb the ladder... You always know what to do next...
While chess and AH's Caesar have well defined victory conditions (rules), the paths there are ambiguous. For example, it is impossible to say that "I'm 64% of the way to winning" without simplification. Yet in a treadmill system, such could easily mean 0.64 *MaxLevelAllowed (or MaxExperienceAllowed, see fn3). Because treadmills are games designed around metrics, they instruct you on how to game winning. Whereas games that are lousy with the metrics leave it to the player to come up with their own.
The Screencasts from Fizzy's Second Life Property Law Project
We have officially completed all of the screencasts for the Second Life project at Seattle University School of Law. We have created screencasts, many of which are now available for viewing.
We now have a good portion of the screencasts available in two forms-- the original versions (which run 18-30 minutes) and the brief versions, which concentrate only on the property question at hand. They are available for viewing at http://fizzy.blip.tv/.
One caveat -- these were created by the students, and they are responsible for the content and comments.
I have asked my students to respond to the project. Today we completed the 13th and final episode of "Fizzy's Second Life." Some of the episodes are up at http://fizzysecondlife.blogspot.com. I will, in the next few days, post excerpts on the property questions to give a sense of what we did with the project.
A few more comments about the project. Many were skeptical about the project, and some continued to be. Others were enthusiastic. I have tried to encourage a wide variety of students to contribute as comments to this post. We will see what happens.
Fizzy's Second Life Project at Seatle U. -- A guest coming to class tomorrow
The lawyer for the plaintiff in the Braggs case will be visiting our clase via video conference call (and not through Second Life) tomorrow. I will report more after class.
In 1940 Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in The Great Dictator, a satire of Hitler and Nazi Germany (fn1) situated in the fictional country of Tomania. In the real world, there followed a great war and the good guys won. I commented in passing on an important moment - Brass Buttons. Soon democracy flourished, sort of, after a hiccup called the Cold War and a somewhat invisible under-developed world. But no matter. There came this idea known as the "internets" and all sorts of folks invented it. Soon others were envisoning virtual kingdoms and questions of how to govern these places arose. Some were saying it is just a game, others wished another whack at a new, digital, democracy. Yet, surprise, as Cory Doctorow revealed recently (fn2): online games are dictatorships.
While the subject has already been well discussed (fn3) Cory pulled together in a nice reader-friendly package. I do have two Friday night moments, however.
I.
Perhaps we should revisit first principles. Why the implied linkage between (real) virtual property rights and "democracy?" Staring at us in the by-line, for example (emphasis added): "Cory Doctorow wonders if it's possible to create a game that's a democracy, where your in-world property is reallyyours." Virtual property as a fetish for the self-organization of online spaces? Okay, it is possible I am still just a little tetchy after my "Money and Everything" post.
II.
Cory also seems to have been ensnared in an assumption we just tackled ("Rat atat tat (or why rat food and vodka don't mix)"): one wouldn't do anything in a virtual world unless it were fun and fun = rewarded. If you believe this, then this claim would be true (emphasis added):
...Why not just create a "democratic" game that has a constitution, full citizenship for players, and all the prerequisites for stable wealth? Such a game would be open source (so that other, interoperable "nations" could be established for you to emigrate to if you don't like the will of the majority in one game-world), and run by elected representatives who would instruct the administrators and programmers as to how to run the virtual world. In the real world, the TSA sets the rules for aviation -- in a virtual world, the equivalent agency would determine the physics of flight.
The question is, would this game be any fun? Well, democracy itself is pretty fun -- where "fun" means "engrossing and engaging." Lots of people like to play the democracy game, whether by voting every four years or by moving to K Street and setting up a lobbying operation.
But video games aren't quite the same thing. Gameplay conventions like "grinding" (repeating a task),
However, as I suggested in Lights Will Guide You Home (Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network) perhaps this is too pessimistic. To paraphrase what I said then:
Were you to devise a set of metrics to measure the health of a virtual world, what would they be? High on my list, I suspect, would be the willingness and the commitment of strangers to bring me home.
Dare I suggest it, such a motivator could be a sturdy platform upon which to grow online democratic values.
Sure, there will need to be some reformulation of the broth - but why argue the MMORPG - circa 1997-2007, err 2008... - assumptions?
More on the law and virtual worlds front... The State of Play Academy, the first law and technology academy built
in a virtual world, is gearing up for some very interesting and free sessions in the next couple months. Lauren Gelman writes:
I am delighted to announce the State
of Play Academy (SOPA) Spring Semester will start Monday April 23 2007
and run thru June 8, 2007. SOPA is a virtual space for conversations
about law and technology located in There.com.
We are offering conversations in three tracks:
* Paper Workshops- presentations by scholars of papers related to law and technology.
* Issue Conversations- group discussions of current events and emerging issues in law and technology.
* How-to’s- practical advise on all sorts issues that confront ordinary Internet users.
We will be adding more classes as the semester progresses. I will
add them to the website and post them on our blog. You can also join
our mailing list to get regular updates to our schedule.
http://stateofplayacademy.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=20
Hope to see you in There!
-Lauren Gelman
Dean, State of Play Academy
Gelman at Stanford dot edu
They've got a great lineup talking about great topics, featuring, among plenty of others: James Grimmelmann (on search engines), Beth Noveck, Jen Granick, David Post -- and even our own guestblogger here this month, Elizabeth Townsend Gard.
And these speaker sessions are all free -- can't beat that.
Gamegrene is reporting of Ziggurat Con and what could be the first D&D convention/game day ever held in a war zone ("to be held June 9 from 1200 to 2100 hours at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase" [fn1]). Tony Walsh again asks if Second Life is environmentally sustainable ("avatar in Second Life consumes about as much power as the average Brazilian" [fn2]). Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that US military thinkers are worried about climate change (global instability, terrorism). In 2004 Ted asked whether we should all run away into virtual worlds.
If you connect the dots you might arrive at this thought. Perhaps there is a word in our future for eco-friendly, portable, hardship-savvy virtual worlds. I'm sure the word is not 'plastics', beyond that you tell me.
-------------------------
fn1. Iraq. Open to allied military. They are looking for some of the old true and tried kit (dice, manuals etc), help 'em out if you can!
fn2. Also see Nick Carr's post. See also (with links) - footprint of virtual world platforms today (not Second Life specific). TN: "The MMO Powerplant."
You know, I wouldn't
call myself one of those evil academics^TM who studies World of WarCraft (WoW). Far from it, I play WoW, and the
anthropologist in me can't help but analyze what makes that play culture tick. And that would include a little more than a passing academic interest in WoW. So, maybe I am
evil after all and I suppose that's why I typically
play Horde. kek.
For this entry, I shall begin with a
story about WoW that may hit home with many TN readers. This is just
one example of engagement with one form of media, being games. As I
promised in my last entry, I will show that the interactions associated
with game play are significant and deserve more of our attention than
being written off as 'just a game.' I don't think I'm preaching solely
to the converted here, either. Sometimes, in the rare moments I
venture outside the land of the digerati, I realize
just how much work remains to be done in driving home the idea that
games are indeed social, as opposed to isolating, for example. This is
a story about games as part of our
communications media toolkit, with which we have just as many chances
of conveying
the good, bad, and ugly of humanity as we do with other forms of media.
Over the years I had
come to think myself rather good at what I call passionate detachment.
Passion is what drives me to pursue the tough questions, but detachment is what needs to occur in order to convert
things like intense passionate participation into clear, compelling, ethnographic
writing. It has taken me until now to truly
be able to convert one particular experience into anything resembling
articulate.
In this particular
night of passionate participation, I found myself curled up in the foetal
position and sobbing post-raid. True
story. One may ask what the
deal is, because it's just a game. Right? Well, it isn't and here's why.
At the time, I was a
new level 60 (meaning, that my gear wasn't uber in any sense, I only had one
purple item, and I didn't have Vent or even CT mod yet). I had however been in
many instances with coordinated groups, had my fair share of bad PUGs (Pick-Up
Groups), and was a pretty confident player. I felt like I had an advantage coming from EverQuest: because I wasn't a
new gamer, I knew what to do during a raid, and what not to do. Anyone could feel confident inviting me because
I wouldn't be an 'idiot.' One evening after
dinner, a local friend called me up and told me that his guild (most of which
had members joining in from time zones seven hours ahead) needed more people
for their Silithus raid. With my
agreement to participate, there were already social relations at stake. This
friend was my in to this particular group. If I screwed up somehow, it would reflect badly on him in his
guild. It would also reflect badly on
me, I could potentially be blacklisted from ever grouping with this prominent
guild again, and pain of shame would be mine. But, as I mentioned before, I wouldn't be an idiot, so we were totally
safe of course. I logged on, got
myself to the rallying point in Silithus, was welcomed by the group, and along
with many other players' and waited. And
waited, and waited. Waiting is a big
part of group coordination, especially where a 40+ player raid is concerned. People joining/leaving the group, figuring
out where so and so is, and other such mundane matters. Depending on the group and its leaders,
distribution of loot off slain monsters could work differently. Some groups will allow everyone to ''roll" at
will on a precious item, and others will restrict the chances to a select
few. It really depends and is subject to
negotiation. For this particular raid, I
was only allowed to loot anything the other group members left on the mob's
body. I was ok with that, because I was
a guest. My friend directed me to be
extremely careful, because this group had previous bad encounters with Ninjas
(people who wrongfully/covertly loot and keep items) and were quite paranoid
about looting practices. I waved it off,
thinking I had it together. Hours went by, and we
were finally ready to begin with a full complement. By this time I was getting quite tired and it
was already late into my night, even if it wasn't for the other group
members. However, I wasn't about to quit
now. To quit after committing to a group is bad form. It would have let group members down, so I
stayed. There was a quest I needed to
complete coinciding with this raid anyway. The summoning of
creatures began, and the whole zone was watching in awe as this guild and its
affiliates like me joined in to kill monster after monster. We were almost finished, right before
approaching the Boss. The looting was
rather conventional up to that point. Everyone seemed to be waiting around for the next kill, and I saw that
loot had been left on the monster. So I
looted, like I had for the previous mobs. My screen was suddenly
filled with one angry group member after another shouting at me, "WTF??" At that time I didn't understand what was
going on. It took a while for my friend to clue in as to what had just happened
as well.
I had just Ninja'd a blue BOP Bind on Pickup item.
When I had realized what I had done, I gave
back what I could, and apologized profusely. Meanwhile, my friend was busy trying to remedy the situation whilst
apologizing himself. The group members
were not convinced that I wasn't a Ninja and proceeded to lay an onslaught of
verbal abuse on me and nothing I did or said could help it. In order to quell everyone's temper, the
group leader messaged me and told me that I had to be kicked out of the raid
group, and I was subsequently booted from the raid. I am not sure how I
can convey the feeling of utter frustration and humiliation I felt at that
moment. They ALL knew who I was because
of my screen name and supposed good affiliation with a guild. This was supposed to be my "coming out party"
of sorts. My first real participation in
a large, unfamiliar group as a level 60 character. It was supposed to be a no
brainer. Instead, I watched as everyone
else killed the Boss and fulfilled their quests without me. I was convinced I would be blacklisted thereafter. It was a prominent enough screw up. Hence, the tiredness on top of everything
allowed the sobbing to begin. These were
actual people who were pissed off at me (along with the friend who first invited me), and actual people who would remember
that I was an, "idiot."
How dreadful.
Well, my friend called
me after the raid and said that the group member whose item I had ninja'd
wanted to talk to me and apologize for overreacting the way he did. I was not in a state to listen however and
just decided to sleep on it. Five days
later, when I had the guts to show my avatar again in Orgrimmar, we cleared things up and added each other to our 'friends' list for future grouping as a show of good faith.
This encounter was just one more instance of an argument that community
formation and identity politics are negotiated with as much seriousness
and fervor online as it is offline. In this vein, I have gone so far
as to say that it's not a first life or second life, but one life.
This experience left
me asking many more reflexive questions about my experiences online, offline, and how the two
were really intertwined and fluid. As
one can see, the interpersonal dynamics experienced within this game context
could have really happened anywhere, though people are not chided nearly as much for having emotional reactions to
other everyday activities like hockey, soccer, golf, or even poker
probably because those activities have become more entrenched and accepted in
mainstream culture as worthy (think: Bourdieu) timesinks. There were people trying to achieve a goal, personalities, economics,
culture, and paranoia were involved. Real people were playing games with other real people. And, it is the real people part in which I am ultimately
interested.
Tune in next time for musings on the existence of my imaginary cat.
I jumped from Second Life to There the other day and got thinking about the way that space /feels/ in virtual worlds.
I started wondering what it was that gave space a feeling. I think it comes down to two key elements: camera movement and in-world physics.
To deal with the latter, and I think least important, animations such as running embody a representation of in-world physics. This provides, as it were, a diagetic sense of the feeling of space; that experienced by the character that you control. This is maybe why, to me, it feels secondary.
The primary thing that I think provides this sense of the world (for which I’m not sure there is a name) is camera control. Spaces such as WoW and Second Life give the user pretty rigid camera control, with some mouse of button combination it can seem like one has hold of the camera and is moving it in hard space. Whereas in EvE and There, while each have quite different degrees of control over camera position, the view-point seems to have its own momentum and damping.
I don’t think that one of these is any more realistic than the other. After all the notion of a camera is one of those interface elements that we conveniently internalize in the experience of a virtual world. So in one case we could think of things simulating a phone-cam, in the other a full movie camera. However as the notion of camera also seems to be a mass-less singularity in the virtual space, to me, it seems like we are ascribing these properties to the space itself.
It gets me to wondering (a) how intentional the relationship between the feel of space in a world and the more semiotic sense of a world is (b) what other elements of a virtual space are there that I’m overlooking that make up my senses of it and thus add texture to the experience. (c) Am I write about this feeling of space thing at all, is it just me, is it different things that are in fact creating the effect.
For some of us this coming Monday is Patriots' Day. I also live a skip and a stone's throw from "Live Free or Die." Don't fool with freedom. So China's announced constraint on virtual worlds might seem like a wet-fish-slap-in-the-face for the likes of me. Yet as this story dogs my recent concerns on the trendline of mass market virtual worlds (fn1.), I find myself willing to listen.
Here is what China has claimed to have done (People's Daily Online, emphasis added):
The government yesterday issued a regulation, which takes effect on April 15, demanding online operators set up a "game fatigue system" that encourages players under 18 to play less than 3 hours a day.
Online gamers will also be required to register using real names and identity card numbers to indicate if they are younger than 18.
Experts said the move reflects government fears over the social impact of popular online games, which have been blamed for the rising numbers of school children playing truant or even committing crimes.
Under the system, known as the "anti-online game addiction system", the first 3 hours of play for each day is considered "healthy", during which players will be awarded full points in the virtual world. The next 2 hours will yield only half the normal points and there will be no points after 5 hours.
After the 5-hour limit, players will be subjected every 15 minutes to the warning: "You have entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If you do not, your health will be damaged and your points will be cut to zero."
All the online games run in China, including the Massive Multi-player Online Role Player Games (MMORPG) operated by NASDAQ-listed companies such as Shanda, NetEase and The9 and other games like those run by Tencent, will have to abide by the rule.
According to the regulators' timetable, online game operators will have up to four months to install the system; and games not embedded with the software by July 16 will be shut down.
The Chinese floated a stronger version of this idea (including adults) last year and apparently backed off (TN: "Chinese Fatigue Regulations"). Now it would seem to be back but limited to children.
Raph offers an insightful discussion ("Paternalistic or Libertine") focusing on freedom vs. the issue of anonymity. Steven Davis frames his viewpoint ("Why the online Game Industry should Embrace Time Limits") in terms of "the failure of the games industry to respond to social concerns about game addiction (fn2)." Slashdot offers the usual shotgun - including a few conspiracy theories.
I'll leave the rest to you, the reader, to complete.
fn.2 A point of note. For reasons best given by Nick Yee ("Blurring Boundaries of Play") I would be one of those folks who would be suspicious [unconvinced] of "addiction" = a function of hours logged. But on the other hand, I'm willing to believe that moderation is probably a good thing given all the other elements in the medium that I've found worrisome.
Just a few quick bullet points about law and virtual worlds:
When Thomas blogged about the FBI looking at Second Life casinos last week, I wanted to chime in to say, based on my impressions, Second Life has good reason to be worried about the casinos. Most gambling regulations don't cover only wagers of currency, but talk about games of chance involving something of value. But I hesitated to comment because casino law is not my area and I hadn't even read the recently passed Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
So many thanks to Professor Anita Ramasastry for actually reading the UIGEA and doing a thoughtful analysis of the Second Life casinos issue for FindLaw. See her column and conclusions here:
(In summary: yes, there is good reason for concern.)
On the legal scholarship front, people often raise the question of
who owns the rights to player-created works in virtual worlds. Erez
Reuveni, currently clerking for the Chief Judge of the District of
Massachusetts, has a recent article about that exact issue in the Indiana Law Journal. It can be found here. It's a very thoughtful analysis of the issues.
Not really law, but something that I think IP lawyers in this space
might want to consider: Jason Craft's 200+ page PhD thesis, "Fiction Networks: The Emergence of Proprietary, Persistent, Large-Scale Popular Fictions."
It's an interesting analysis that draws on Star Wars Galaxies and comic
books to come up with a critical theory of virtual worlds and other
proprietary fictional universes. It includes references to Wookies,
Michel de Certeau, Harry Potter, Espen Aarseth, and Larry Lessig.
The most interesting new VW case being litigated today (barring Bragg v. Linden, which is still live in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but bogged down in a variety of procedural matters) is Blizzard's suit against the makers of WoWGlider. Gamasutra covered the story developments back in February. TN friend Matt Mihaly has been following the case on his blog (see here e.g.) and takes a pretty dim view of the Blizzard's claims. Others folks, including commenters on Matt's blog, are supportive of Blizzard.
If you're interested in the case documents, the original declaratory judgment Complaint is here. Counterclaims are here. A proposed joint case management plan can be found here. The case management plan is an interesting document for non-lawyers to read, since it offers brief and readable statements by both sides of the facts of the case and the nature of the legal claims.
I don't want to explain and hash out the merits of Blizzard's DMCA, contributory copyright infringement, unjust enrichment and tortious interference claims in this post (that would take a while), but I did find one aspect of the case very interesting. Part of Blizzard's damages theory is that WoWGlider is a gold farming tool that ruins the in-game economy and destroys the desired and optimal game balance, making players cancel subscriptions when they otherwise would continue playing. For example, Blizzard's lawyers say in their statement:
The MDY parties are also fully aware that WoWGlider users rely on the program to acquire large quantities of WoW virtual property with little effort, and then sell that virtual property for real money in unauthorized third-party exchanges. These sales have a ruinous effect on WoW's in-game economy. The MDY Parties' sale of WoWGlider has caused a loss of goodwill among WoW players by devaluing the game experience, forced Blizzard to divert resources to preventing access to WoWGlider users, and decreased Blizzard's revenues from WoW players who stop playing out of frustration with the devalued game and from WoWGlider users that Blizzard is forced to terminate to protect the overall integrity of the game.
So here's a discussion question: Who do readers think oughtto win this lawsuit?
Rat atat tat (or why rat food and vodka don't mix)
Jeff Atwood forwards a thoughtful piece considering online extrinsic versus intrinsic reward systems, read it on his site. He contrasts Amazon's Mechanical Turk with its book review system. With one you are paid to contribute, with the other you volunteer. By Jeff's reckoning one is more successful than the other.
There seems to be more discussion lately on the real world costs associated with extrinsic motivators (e.g. paying people) over intrinsic ones (*wanting* to). Joel Spolsky's "The Econ 101 Management Method" cited the "overjustification effect" as but one unpleasant side-effect. Mary Poppendieck suggests other (related) dysfunctions in agile software development teams. Alfie Kohn likens it to "bribery." Etc.
What I find fascinating with the apparent real world push-back is how it juxtaposes with much of contemporary game (and especially MMOG) design. From Statistical Heroism: "...what places like Azeroth do is to extrinsically reward folks to participate ... (pay) to kill trolls (in experience points, loot). " Then by way of Joel's overjustification argument, this implication: "the reward diminishes the desire of players to kill trolls for any other purpose but for the reward."
None of this is novel - most design discussions seem to involve some degree of hand-wringing or cynicism or both on this point (IMO) . I guess noone has figured out how to build engaging game world experiences that are large enough and enduring enough to pay their bills without slipping us the food pellet every now and then. I do not mean any disrespect to the developers: these are the games that the rats, err we, seem to like to p(l)ay money for.
At this point I'll insert the gratuitous Skinner box reference.
To be optimistic, however. I think we just have to wait a little longer, look for a break or two in design coupled with a technology advance (or not). Something like that. In the mean time. Until we can outgrow our rodent tendencies, perhaps Jeff's examples from afield are but one more small hint in favor of limiting the role of real money in the virtual world experience.
Letting the rats spike their pellets just seems like it's looking for trouble.
I play a lot of pvp, most of it on WoW, some of it in FPS format. The concept of "balancing," and its attendant justification of "nerfing" has seen a lot of discussion now that arenas are out in WW. Balance is bunk. The reason designers don't achieve it is because they don't want it.
Don't worry -- despite the teaser this isn't a rant brought on by losing to a better player. That happens to me too often to warrant complaint. I want to argue that the basic goal of "balancing" -- even the standard model of "rock-paper-scissors" balancing (rogue beats warlock beats warrior beats rogue) is misleading, and does not explain what we see in game design.
These thoughts were provoked by my experiences in the World of Warcraft Arena. I play there a lot, and really love it. I have been struck by how smart people are. For those of you who don't play WoW, I'll just claim that there are quite difficult to find solutions to combat problems, and players move to those solutions with frightening rapidity. Corner solutions -- solutions built out of finding one extreme behavior and repeating it (paladin / warrior groups for examples) are the norm. Other corner solutions I've seen -- all stealth groups, where the priests are nightelves and can shadowmeld. Or, in 2v2 combat, two warlocks who have the same specific rare item that raises pet abilities beyond the ken. Suddenly the pets are a serious problem where they were a nuisance before.
Ok. So. We have thought of balance in pvp as a progressive task. The standard model of balancing says that we get "better" balance by introducing new powers, or nerfing old powers. The goal is an equilibrium, whereby everyone has fun and has something of a fair shot in pvp. Even the "rock-papers-scissors" paradigm seeks a stable equilibrium. Mages can kill warriors, can kill rogues, can kill mages, and so on.
My sense is that this is simply not what is happening. Rather, nerfing, buffing, and more is a solution that seeks to DISRUPT equilibria. Any pvp system will fall into stable states, mostly as a function of people's ability to pick groupmates and select targets. Buffing and nerfing disrupts that equilibrium and sends people back into experimentation mode, as they seek new corner solutions.
Thus, people who complain about nerfing do so because it disrupts equilibrium. And people will complain about any nerfing -- or any buffing (because the upcoming buff to warriors is a nerf to little ol' rogue me, believe you me) -- not because they are concerned about progressing toward "balance," but because any change disrupts the current equilibrium.
Is PS3 Home just a next gen console port of Second Life? On Three Speech, Sony's Phil Harrison, interviewed at GDC, says absolutely not.
From the Three Speech interview by Steve Boxer:
PH: I think you’re way oversimplifying by suggesting Second Life and
Home are the same. In Home, you get a character and a 3D world, and
that’s where the similarity ends... Home is about entertainment, it
has a game focus, and it’s about sharing with a like-minded community.
We don’t give users the level of influence over the environment,
behaviour and object definitions that Second Life does – it’s as secure
as any other PS3 game...
So, in short -- the plan here is gamey, secure, and not UGC. (Looks a lot more like There.com 2.0, actually.)
If you haven't seen the P3 Home demo video, check it out. Whatever it is, it's a virtual world.
I thought about the internet stunt known as 'Where the Hell is Matt?', then wandered into nostalgia about Battlezone (the original), proceeded to dance with a few drones in Eve-Online, and ended up perched on a pixel.
Matt Harding is by the accounts I've seen a video game designer/writer who took some time off to travel the world and dance his way (on video) to >6 million views on YouTube. By his account he is:
a 30-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. He achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around the planet until it ran out.
According tothe Wikipedia, Matt contributed to Battlezone II - and it is at this point where I leapt into nostalgia. Who remembers the orignal Battlezone - Atari, 1980, minimalistic vector graphics (see here)?
Too far back? Consider an example of spartans closer to home.
In Eve-Online, a pilot can equip her ship with drones. Drones in the Eve-Online universe are AI controlled craft that take orders ("fly this orbit, attack that target..." etc) and provide an assist (combat, mining, repair). Depending upon the pilot's design and strategy, drones can be an indispensible tool (fn1.). To those of other MMOGs, drones have a similar feel to "pets" - AI controlled side-kicks. One difference, however, is quantity. If one uses drones, they may use many of them simultaneously, perhaps a dozen or more.
Eve-Online as a MMOG platform is able to successfully squeeze a large number of objects into a shared space (large numbers of players and drones in a single battle, for e.g.) in large part because of its graphic minimalism: it requires a lot less cycles to render low-polygon spacecraft and the emptiness of space, than say a village of orcs emoting to you. This brings me to my point about the drones. For most of their life they exist as single pixel. Yes, they wear a graphic halo, a cross-hair that travels with them across your display. Without it that pixel would be nearly invisible. Sure, you can zoom in and examine the underlying 3D model - but who does that?
For all practical purposes, a drone is but a pixel.
The seduction of the pixel called a drone is behavioral. They fly various orbits and when given orders flock-off with Buck Rogers zeal and graceful arcs. A pixel with an attitude. The thing about drones is that sometimes pilots develop a bond. "Leave no drone behind" (e.g. flee a scene before recovering your drones) is a mantra I've heard.
To fall in love with a pixel.
This begs the next question. What would happen if your pixels were taken to their limit and disappear entirely, replaced with text, say:
"Your drones, Johnny, Duke, Helen, swept to engage X...."
Would you then be able to leave your drones behind? Harkening back to Battlezone, the original: how much more could you subtract from this scene and still want to play?
/Ed: Video for those unfamiliar with Eve-Online drones, a fairly typical close quarters combat scenario on YouTube - can you spot those pixels? (p.s.) They are deployed in numbers.
From Reuters and CNN comes this small item about Linden Lab asking the FBI to take a look at the casinos in Second Life, which the FBI apparently has done, although the legal status remains up in the air for now. Former Linden Lab General Counsel -- now Vice President for Business Affairs -- Ginsu Yoon has an interesting quote in the piece:
"It's not always clear to us whether a 3-D simulation of a casino is
the same thing as a casino, legally speaking, and it's not clear to the
law enforcement authorities we have asked," Yoon said.
I am not a lawyer, but about a year ago I did ask whether we needed a virtual gaming commission. (Gambling, as I pointed out then, is often seen from a policy perspective as requiring special oversight.) Apparently, Linden wonders where to go from here about gambling in virtual worlds as well (or maybe they'd just rather the speculation were confined to buying real estate ;-) ).
I’ve been a reader and friend of those on TerraNova since its beginning in
2003. Being a person who loves games, gaming, and games research, it is an
absolute pleasure to be an invited guest blogger for TN this month.
I thought this would be a great time to share my plans for (dramatic epic music //) the
dissertation (// dramatic epic music) so that TN readers may get a cursory idea of what I'm 'about.' My research involves taking a critical look at dominant discourses
surrounding the phenomenon of “online games addiction” as it is understood in a
colloquial sense, primarily the concept is presented in the mass media. More specifically, I’m questioning the meanings
of definition, regulation, and cultural value of excessive game playing in the
context of Korean online game culture. My goal is to build an increased understanding of cultural factors in the
evaluation and implementation of technology and the social fallouts that may
coincide with that.
The widespread international concern of
addiction to online games in
particular, with which many TN blog readers are familiar, provides an
excellent
context in which to situate an examination of the interaction between
Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and
users in their lived realities. I'm especially interested in how games
are a part of that inquiry, increasingly acting as a medium by which
users communicate and often facilitate meaningful relationships. By
thinking of games as a form of meaningful communication, it
problematizes how concepts like 'addiction' to such activities are
operationalized and measured (such as 'time spent online' or 'anxiety
level when not logged on'). Should we think about games in their
myriad forms differently?
In 2002, I was conducting my own ethnography of EverQuest players, having
been inspired by the player-informed work of TL Taylor, Edward Castronova, and
Nick Yee that I came across while doing research on networked games (no
coincidence that they subsequently formed part of the original TN authorship
base…). The main objective of my work
evolved into the wish to contribute a nuanced critique of what I saw in the
mainstream media: the frenzied reportage of causal relationships and
mystification associated with online games, the people who play them and their
supposedly horrible addictions to online games. A paper explaining that ethnographic study published in Interactive Convergence can be found here.
Once I finished that study, in 2003 my gaze could turn fully to Korea and the online game culture
there. I had been intrigued by the news stories about online game addiction coming out of the country for quite a while. Korean
youth were making international news headlines for their apparent
excessive gaming habits and associated health problems, such as obesity or
exhaustion from lack of sleep. In some cases, excessive gaming was highlighted as the reason for youth self-destruction. That is, the
