Terra Nova

From the Desk of Eric Nickell

(who appears to have lost the keys to this place)

"World of Warcraft UI Add-On Development Policy Blizzard announced a WoW UI Add-On Development Policy for World of Warcraft addons today. Among other things, the policy that all addons be distributed free, unobfuscated, and it bans them from advertising in-game.

In a few short hours, a very lengthy -- and sometimes overheated -- discussion (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864747207&sid=1) has started to take place on the game's UI forums about everything from the causes that prompted Blizzard to take this action, to legal and moral issues surrounding such a policy, to the real-world mechanics of how some mod authors make the transfer from for-fun to for-profit addon development.

Eric Nickell"

The Virtual Data Collection Interface

In collaboration with the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) in the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the SWI at Indiana University has developed a tool for collecting survey data within Second Life. The usual protocol with such surveys is to attract respondents in-world and then send them to a web page to complete the survey. This is a poor protocol because it causes attrition and breaks immersion. It is usually necessary, however, because objects in SL usually cannot serve questions quickly and clearly enough. The Virtual Data Collection Interface (VDCI) is an SL object that optimizes question delivery and data retention so that the respondent experience is very close to the typical experience with web surveys. It allows respondents to quickly complete surveys while remaining in-world. We think it is the only tool in SL with this feature, but maybe one is out there and we just haven't heard of it.

The VDCI draws on existing formal survey protocols developed by scholarly survey-creation experts. It extends  these protocols into the virtual realm, creating a new protocol that can be termed Virtual Assisted Self-Interviewing (VASI). VASI represents an early step into the future of rigorous in-world data collection from users of virtual worlds.

This working paper describes both the protocol and the tool. Questions or comments? The corresponding author on this project is Mark W. Bell (typewritermark 8t gmail d0t com).

The Point of No Return

I ran a roundtable session at IMGDC last weekend on the subject of "Government Interference: How Much Can you Take?". The way it worked, I presented a number of scenarios in turn, ramping up each one of them to see when (if ever) the situation would become so intolerable that it would stop the attendees from ever wanting to develop an MMORPG.

Some things were irritating, but not so irritating that they'd cause the assembled developers and designers to give up. For example, government requirements for tracking every single transaction to prevent fraud fell into this category: it adds a huge overhead, but it's something people can just about live with.

There were two proposals, however, which hit the abandon ship button for everyone. Both of these are ones I've seen advocated a number of times, included here on TerraNova.

Is 'Free Gesticulation' For Avatars Here Yet?

I attended the Metaverse Roadmap workshop last week at Stanford, and I was pleased to hear Mitch Kapor touting the benefits of gestural input for virtual worlds (see Dan's blog post). I was especially excited when he said you can (almost) buy "3D webcams" - cameras plus an infrared depth sensor - for only $39! (Not sure if he was talking about the ZCam specifically). A couple of years ago, when Richard Marks of the Sony EyeToy team visited PARC and demonstrated their "real-time motion capture" for games, he said 3D cameras still cost $20,000!

Now I don't know if gestural interfaces will revolutionize computing in general, but I'm very excited about the new possibilities they create for 3D avatar control. As I've written about before, avatars will never be fully expressive until they are enabled with free gesticulation. With 3D cameras and real-time motion-capture techniques, "Players could use their own bodies and faces as joysticks in puppeteering their avatars." Currently in MMOs, gesture and facial expression are limited to a pre-specified library of commands (/bow, /wave, /point, /smile, /wink, etc.). Imagine if text chat were like this? What if you could only send chat messages by selecting them from a pre-specified library of phrases (like chat between strangers in ToonTown)? This would be severely limiting in terms of communication and expression. However, that's the current state of avatar gesture in virtual worlds.

On the Convergence of Virtual Worlds and Social Networking Sites

We're starting to see a convergence of virtual worlds and social networking sites in the new wave of virtual "social" worlds (e.g., Kaneva, vSide, Virtual MTV) and new 3D Facebook applications (ActiveWorlds, Gaia Online). This might be dismissed as fad. After all, everyone is either trying to replicate or piggyback on the success of America's #3 (MySpace) and #9 (Facebook) top-visited websites. World of Warcraft's 10 million users is impressive indeed, but MySpace has 30 times that. However, I think there is more to a convergence than mere hype. I see some interesting similarities and possible synergies between virtual worlds and social networking sites but also some important differences that could make integration tricky.

Habbo Hotel as a boundary object

There is an insightful interview of Sulka Haro, the lead designer of Habbo Hotel by Brandon Sheffield on Gamasutra. The interview covers a broad range of issues and may be of interest for who-ever is intrigued by "gameless games" or the "social web" or the evolution of the game industry as a whole. It's not all about MMOs but it shows how the topic overlaps with other themes such as social software, multiple on-line identity or scrum development etc.

The Hidden Bartle Type

Often when I write about games, I'm interested in an experiential perspective on play and in the kinds of social and political structures that evolve within virutal worlds, but TN readers probably have noticed that I'm equally drawn to questions about design processes, about the authorship of digital games.

Virtual space evolution according to Korean developer Jake Song

Last month, I had the pleasure to co-organize a small event in Seoul about digital and physical space, and how technologies reshape them. One of the speaker, Jake Song gave an interesting talk about the evolution of "virtual space" in multi-player games. A South Korean programmer, regarded as one of the greatest game developers in Korea, Jake is one the of the creator of Lineage and is now CEO of XL Games.

EverQuest to Integrate Card Game With MMO

While the idea of trading card tie-ins is not new, Rory Starks, one of the designers and artists of Arden,  reports that Sony will make a trading card game that is played from within the MMO. There are some new issues. Rory's analysis:

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EverQuest: Legends of Norrath: Oathbound: The Trading Card Game
Rory Starks

During the Fan Faire MMO event a couple of weeks ago, SOE president John Smedley revealed a new trading card game based on the Everquest franchise – "Legends of Norrath: Oathbound".  At first glance, this news was not too entirely exciting considering that EQ fans can play the EverQuest pen-and-paper RPG, various spinoff games, and they can even light up their cigarettes with EQ-emblazoned Zippo lighters (provided they have the requisite skills in fire crafting).  On the other hand, what was interesting about this announcement was that Smedley revealed that the game is online-only and played from within EverQuest 1 and 2.  Players can purchase cards and construct decks inside the two games and then challenge other players to a game.  There will eventually be a standalone client so that players can even play the game outside of the two EQ titles (and without having to have a subscription). 

What's Going On....

People log in and go to a place in cyberspace for a reason. Recent posts suggest that this place doesn't have to exist before they go there (and it could disappear when they leave). Each place, though will have a tone or atmosphere to it. To some extent this is the result of the software developers' intent, but many systems allow the user varying degrees of control over this atmosphere. I remember when it was a big deal that AW had implemented fog. Not a computer game fan myself, I didn't understand why this would move people. In retrospect, I think they wanted the worlds to look like their favorite games and they recognized that implementing fog can make for more intimate spaces, and I think they just wanted more control.