Terra Nova

Omigod. This Is Completely Unreal.

According to a four-page article in today's New York Times, there's this 3D virtual site called Second Life where people can log on and make virtual houses. This one guy actually made a Mexican-style "villa", in a virtual "neighborhood." He says his virtual "neighbors" come over for visits with their "avatar", just like in the real world. Huh!

Proceed and Permit

Looks like we have found Get A First Life’s (GAFL) strongest supporter – Second Life. OK, Linden Lab. A link in the footer of GAFL’s page asks for “comments or cease and desist letters”.

So Linden’s lawyer sent one.

But not the letter that anyone might be expecting. Rather than ordering GAFL to stop it provides a brief legal defense of the right’s of parody under US law.

Before anyone gets cynical about this ‘master stroke of PR genius’ that the LL folk dreamed up in their Dr Evil bunker, c’mon give them a break – it follows Linden’s long standing ethos of IP use and, best of all, it’s funny.

Virtual World Has Billions of Residents

It's called First Life. Read a beta review here.

Site of TN Backchannel Discovered

Rumors of an ultra-secret Terra Nova hideout have been confirmed; a photo has come to light. Here for the first time, a glimpse into the inner sanctum of this dastardly cyber-cabal:  Witness The Terra Nova Hut.

|\| 4 + ! \/ 1 7 '/ Sillyness

"Three Mages form a PuG only to discover they share the ‘follow yonder star and drop off phat l00t’ quest."

Magic Vessel of Cheerios +5

RIT Professor Andy Phelps, creator of the MUPPETS project, has a great  essay comparing parenthood to RPG play.  It is a great read and delves into one of my favorite topics: the tension between "play" and "work":

At a superficial day-to-day level the process of managing life with a young child can be viewed as a game, a steady process of learning the ins and outs of the event/response pattern of the world around you.

And it can be just as rewarding. When she was screaming in the mall and I whip out the Magic Vessel of Cheerios +5 and hand it her, I have this weird tingle of happiness that I was able to anticipate her desires and have come well prepared to the situation. Not unlike the ending of an RPG in which you have all the items, spells, and armor to defeat evil and save the world. We place intrinsic value on the first, call it ‘good parenting’, while the latter is merely ‘wasting time.’ But what if the way we waste our time was helping us do the important stuff better?

Read the whole article here.

New Video Game Design: No Harmful Effect on Children

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

Ludium I Follow-up: The Toilet Paper Incident

As the elves continue working on the Ludium's final report (which should be out in a couple of weeks), they came across the following footage. Courtesy of documentarian Jeanette Castillo.

mom pwns

Oh, why not: Busted.

*war*

I’ve cracked this whole MMO marketing thang,,,