Greg Lastowka died last night. I really can't find the words, if you can, feel free to comment below.
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Following up on my recent cri d'coeur about the misanthropy of multiplayer gamer culture, I have to say I'm heartened by the diligence of the Guild Wars 2 developers in trying to create a more friendly, less offensive chat culture from the first day onward.
There's a thread at Reddit where the developers have offered to tell anyone who has been suspended why they were suspended or banned. Basically it breaks down into two major causes: first, that the account has been hacked by gold sellers and second, because the player was saying racist, homophobic, or grossly offensive things in public chat. It's an interesting thread just in purely documentary terms, since developers normally maintain a steely silence about bannings and allow players to represent themselves as the innocent victims of a mistake or a vendetta. But there's also a real pleasure to be had in seeing a player put up their character name, ask in all apparent innocence why they were banned, and to read the community representative quoting back to the player what they said in chat.
I get that this is too labor-intensive to keep up indefinitely. But it's a sign of some smart social thinking to at least do it now and hope to "seed" the emergent culture of the game with a lighter, more inclusive feeling.
The UK is considering a set of laws that give consumers rights over the providers of digital stuff. These new consumer rights will blow a hole through EULAs and side step a whole mess of intellectual property law. All UK consumers of ‘digital content’ would have these rights irrespective of where it’s provided from, the rights cannot be contracted out of, and the remedies apply to content providers where ever they are.
In short, if you are a game company based anywhere selling to the UK - you need to pay attention.
This is a consultation so none of it might happen. Actually that’s not true. The first option will happen as an EU law has been passed that gives consumers greater rights and this includes the digital domain.
This is a consultation so most of it might not happen. But if it does, this is what’s being proposed:
This is the big change. The proposal suggest that when a consumer gets a digital thing they should have a reasonable expectation of what that thing is. Just like any other good or service they would buy in the UK.
Seller has go to have the rights to sell it to you – so when Amazon removed Orwell’s 1984 from people’s kindles, that was their bad and the consumes should have got compensation
Is what it says it is – so if I buy something and THEN find out I need some specific player for it, that’s your bad not mine as you should have told me.
Uninterrupted use – so you know when Sony patched the PS/3 so you could not longer run Linux on it. Yeh, they can’t do that any more, as they sold a device that ran Linux and that’s what consumers paid for. The consultation does note that things change, and that’s fine, you just can’t suddenly remove valued features.
It’s basically gotta work – here things get tricky, but basically UK Gov are saying that there’s a reasonable expectation that, allowing for the usual bugs, digitial stuff has gotta be a certain quality
Paid for version is the same as the trial – ok, the trial might be limited but you can’t have a demo that’s substantially different from what people pay for.
And just in case you thought that some things might not full under this, the documents give all kinds of examples:
The rights against providers that customers may have are:
So, wow, the UK government are treating digital stuff just like other stuff. No EULA or IP trump cards. I'm sure there are a lot of happy consumers out there, but industry, how happy are you? Unreasonable burden on business? Have Koster's rights of the Avatar finally come to pass?
Note the full document is over 250 pages long, so for a very detailed analysis see the summary over at the Virtual Policy Network: http://www.virtualpolicy.net/ukcontentrights.html
tVPN is also putting together a civil society / academic response on Google Docs.
Your local trade association might be doing on too – see UKIE in the UK and ESA in the US.
The full consulation can be found here: http://www.bis.gov.uk/consultations/consultation-rationalising-modernising-consumer-law
From several of the talks, it seems game companies, driven by revenues, are collecting data on a massive scale and using it to conduct predictive studies about player data. The method of designing by datastream seems well advanced, although some techniques are more advanced than others. Dmitri Williams seems to have his finger on the pulse, and Raph Koster, the father-doctor of designers, remains as cerebral as ever. Most exciting to me is evidence that companies are using shards to do experiments. That's big stuff, science-wise.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the rampage killer Jared Loughner was a gamer. As usual? Recall Mr. Cho, whose killing of Hokies was followed immediately by angry denunciations of the game industry for programming him thusly. It turns out that the only game in his troubled mind was Sonic the Hedgehog. I guess Sonic only seems to be a cuddly rodent; he's actually the vehicle for a secret code that turns ordinary people into frenzied savages.
Loughner's preferred game was a MUD called Earth Empires. Aha! Now we get to the root of things! Richard Bartle, what insidious mind-altering snippet of code did you hide in MUD1 that has spread across the gaming industry and caused all these murders? Come clean, you rogue hacker!
On a serious note, it appears that Mr. Loughner's MUD community was more supportive and helpful to him than the world at large. He got kicked out of jobs and school, but one gets the impression from WSJ's report that EE forum readers never stopped trying to engage with him or give him advice. Certainly - and this is critical - none of the gamers encouraged him in his ravings.
Legal commentators in the blogosphere (e.g. Nic Suzor, Technollama, Rebecca Tushnet, Venkat & Eric) have already offered some initial thoughts on the Ninth Circuit decision in MDY v. Blizzard. Since I talked about the district court opinion in this case in Chapter 9 of my book, I thought I'd post a few reactions too.
This post is going to be a bit on the long side, but that's only because the issues raised on this appeal are a bit tricky, meaning that I feel the need to lay a little doctrinal groundwork before getting to my thoughts about the case.
Though there was an interesting tortious interference decision in the appeal, I'm going to focus on the two copyright issues that were decided by the Ninth Circuit, one involving a claim that users of MDY's Glider program breached World of Warcraft (WoW)'s software license and the other claiming that users of MDY's Glider program violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)'s prohibitions on circumventing technological protection measures that limit access to copyrighted works. This second claim focused on the operation of Blizzard's Warden program, which monitors a player's computer to see if it is running any unauthorized software.
The appellate court essentially found in favor of MDY on the licensing issue, reversing the lower court, and in favor of Blizzard on the DMCA-Warden issue, affirming the lower court. That adds up to a win for Blizzard. That win could be reversed, in theory, if MDY pursues further appeals. An en banc review of the Ninth Circuit is possible and there's always the slim chance of getting the case reviewed by the United States Supreme Court.
I'll discuss the software licensing issue first.1) Does violating a ban on botting make a user a copyright infringer? When a user plays WoW, some of the game's software code is copied into the random access memory of the user's computer. This "RAM copying" is treated as an exercise of the copyright owner's exclusive reproduction right pursuant to existing Ninth Circuit doctrine.
Whether the RAM copy doctrine makes sense has been subject to some debate. However, if we accept that premise, it follows that playing WoW entails making a copy of the WoW software. If you are making a copy and you are not licensed to make that copy, you're presumptively infringing copyright. It is worth noting that section 117 might seem to carve out an exception for software purchasers making RAM copies that are part of normal software use, but again, the Ninth Circuit's precedent (affirmed in this case) leads to the conclusion that section 117 doesn't apply in standard consumer software purchases.
So starting at that point, if there is a term in the software license that you fail to abide by, and you make a RAM copy while breaking the terms of the license, are you then engaged in copyright infringement? E.g., I grant you a license to use my spreadsheet program, but include in the license the condition that you must stand on one foot while doing so. You agree to my software license and then, while using the spreadsheet, you lose your balance. When your foot touches the earth, have you committed copyright infringement?
Or perhaps did you merely breach an independent contract with me that is unrelated to copyright, meaning I can only sue for breach of contract?
The difference in the two sorts of claims can be very significant. Breaching a contract gives rise to traditional remedies -- i.e., how were you damaged when I stood on two feet and used the software? Infringing a copyright, on the other hand, gives rise to statutory damages, which generally don't track the actual damages that a copyright holder suffered as a result of the infringement. Statutory damages are a much more powerful remedy.
The Ninth Circuit in MDY draws a distinction between licensing terms that give rise to copyright infringement liability and those terms that fall outside the scope of the copyright entitlement. This makes abundant sense. Software copyrights should not give their owners the power to essentially regulate all user behaviors during software use with the threat of statutory damages for any breach of the terms of use.
To give rise to the infringement remedy, it makes sense that a licensing condition should have some "copyrightishness" about it. By analogy, this is sort of like the touch & concern doctrine in the law of property servitudes, which requires real covenants (persistent social arrangements regarding land use) to have some "landishness" about them if they are going to be applied to downstream purchasers of the estate.
The precise term at issue in MDY is Blizzard's prohibition on unauthorized "botting" software. Glider is a botting program, so it pretty clearly breaches Blizzard's license. Essentially, a bot program turns your avatar into a robot. Using Glider means that you are not playing World of Warcraft -- instead you're letting the bot program control your avatar on autopilot, setting it to run around Azeroth and kill things and collect loot.
If you use Glider, it is clear that you are in violation of the software license of WoW. And MDY essentially conceded on appeal that if users are copyright infringers when they use Glider in this way, MDY is liable based on that conclusion as an accessory to the underlying infringement.
But, as it turns out, according to the Ninth Circuit's ruling, using bots in violation of the WoW software license actually does not make a user a copyright infringer. Why not? Because there's no nexus to the copyright law in the license prohibition against bots.
It's a little hard for me to neatly sum up the reasoning here, but the basic point seems to be that "how you play the game" does not really have much to do with making copies of the game software or recording the content, etc.
As an outcome, I'm fine with this. Still, I must confess I'm a little hazy about the rule. Supporting the court's view, it is true that the claim being made by Blizzard is not that Glider users make copies of its software or experience WoW without paying subscription fees. If this were a traditional video game, I think those facts would strongly support the lack of a copyright nexus. But WoW is not a conventional video game and the copyright at issue is not a conventional copyright. In fact, with regard to the DMCA claim (which I'll get to next), the Ninth Circuit opinion accepts the idea that Blizzard owns a discrete copyright interest in WoW's "dynamic non-literal elements."
So Blizzard is not only claiming protection of the game's literal software code or the various multi-media components (audio files, graphics files, animation files). The copyright asserted in this case extends to the user's experience of the game software when connected to the servers (which are in turn connected to the clients of the thousands of other players). The work accessed is "dynamic" because it is constantly evolving and "non-literal" because it is a fluid multimedia audiovisual experience rather than a conventional fixed text. Note that these dynamic non-literal elements are produced, at least to some degree, by the players.
In fact, what is particularly irksome to Blizzard (and to its subscribers) about Glider is not that Glider players get access to the world, but that that they fail to access the world. The Glider user doesn't actually want the "dynamic non-literal elements" of Azeroth. The paradigmatic Glider user is not even experiencing WoW when Glider is active.
So why is Blizzard complaining about Glider users who pay MDY not to experience Azeroth? Because this case, I think, has always been about gold-farming. Blizzard sued Glider, I think, because the software is useful for gold-farming and gold-farming disrupts the game economy, poses virtual property headaches for the company, and is deemed cheating by a substantial portion of WoW's user base. If virtual gold is valuable and can be sold for profits, botting to collect it is a way to make money and Glider becomes a business tool.
But in the case, it seemed that neither side (for separate good reasons) stressed or deeply explored the connection between MDY's profits and the gold farming business. Given that the parties did not pursue it, the court certainly did not jump on it sua sponte.
Before moving on to the DMCA, I want to touch back on the condition/covenant distinction in the license. Is it really true that the prohibition on botting has no nexus to Blizzard's copyright? Actually, I might argue that it does. The manner in which the Glider player acts (or more accurately, fails to act) actually does shapes the nature of the "dynamic non-literal" elements that are experienced by the other players. The Glider player is, essentially, a bad authorial collaborator, making WoW worse for other subscribers.
Is that a copyright nexus? Certainly not a traditional nexus, but I do think an argument could be made.
Still, as I said, I'm generally pleased with the outcome here. Whatever the coherence of the court's explanation on these facts, the public is certainly better off in a world where every minor violation of a clickwrap license won't put you on the hook for copyright infringement.
2) DMCA 1201(a)(2)
Although the DMCA is another copyright claim, it is actually a much different claim involving a much different law.
The software licensing claim described above follows this logic:
1) Blizzard says no botting or you can't make RAM copies,
2) players who use Glider make RAM copies,
3) these players infringe copyright,
4) MDY is liable for helping them do that.
As I said above, the Ninth Circuit finds for MDY (and Glider users) by failing to agree with Blizzard at step 3.
The DMCA claim concerns Blizzard's effort to control bots via technology. Specifically, Blizzard created a program called Warden that monitors the active memory of the user's computer. Warden scans the user's computer for signs of unauthorized software. When the user connects to Blizzard's servers and the game is running, Warden pokes around in the game memory. If it finds signs of something it doesn't like, it severs the player's connection to the servers.
Blizzard's DMCA claim follows a simpler legal logic:
1) Blizzard's Warden program is a technological measure that controls access to the "dynamic" WoW program,
2) MDY's Glider program is a tool that circumvents Warden.
Essentially, that's the whole claim. This is because the DMCA, at 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2) concisely prohibits trafficking in tools that "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work..."
Because Blizzard relies on Warden's policing activities for this claim, it had to take the position (mentioned above) that Blizzard holds a discrete copyright interest in WoW's dynamic non-literal game play elements. This is because Warden controls access to those dynamic elements, but doesn't effectively control access to the rest of the client software. E.g., the user has access to the audiovisual elements of the game and to the literal software code even when the client is not connected to the servers. The user only gets to see the game be dynamic, though, when the client ties into the server. This is when Warden does its police work.
So Blizzard's claim was that Warden is a technological measure that effectively controls access to WoW's dynamic non-literal work (the gameplay). The lower court accepted this claim. The Ninth Circuit accepted it as well, disagreeing with a Federal Circuit opinion that would have interpreted 1201 more narrowly, perhaps allowing MDY to prevail on this claim as well.
A large swath of the Ninth Circuit opinion is given to explaining what is fairly obvious if you read 17 U.S.C. 1201. Namely, section 1201(a) (at issue in this case) is directed at the circumvention of access-control measures whereas the separate provisions of 1201(b) outlaw trafficking in tools that enable the circumvention of rights protections. The court's descriptions of (a) and (b) are really quite nice, and I'll be sure to give them to my students in the future who get confused about the difference between 1201(a) and (b).
However, the Ninth Circuit uses the difference between 1201(a) and (b) to make a more radical, though not unprecedented, claim. Following what the Second Circuit did in the case of Universal Studios v. Corley, the Ninth Circuit determines that the 1201(a) "access" provisions are essentially a new right added to copyright law that are almost entirely separate from the traditional rights of copyright owners. Disagreeing with the Federal Circuit's decision in the Chamberlain (garage door opener) case, the Ninth Circuit rules that violations of 1201(a) can occur without the demonstration of any nexus (contra the discussion above re licensing) to copyright.
So, in essence, according to the court, it doesn't really matter that users are circumventing Warden with Glider solely to engage in a different sort of game play that is unrelated to copyright entitlements. The court itself stated that the botting prohibition lacks a copyright nexus. This doesn't help MDY evade 1201(a) we are essentially told, because that prohibition isn't about any that a user might do after evading Warden. The very act of evading Warden is the violation, even if subsequent actions have nothing to do with infringing copyright.
With that established, it is also established that MDY, by providing a tool that circumvents Warden, violates 1201(a)(2), even if the use of bots by users doesn't amount to copyright infringement.
Does that sound a bit odd? It certainly does to me.
Just like I disagreed with the Second Circuit when it decided Corley, I find myself in disagreement with the Ninth Circuit in this case. Whatever the legislative history of 1201 may say, it seems to me that 1201 is part of the copyright statute. Requiring that anti-circumvention violations bear some relation to copyright entitlements makes just as much sense here as it does with regard to the questions of software licensing. As many commentators have said over the past decade, treating 1201(a) as paracopyright entitlement essentially divorced from the logic of traditional copyright makes for both bad policy and bad copyright law.
Finally, I want to note that, for reasons that I explain in the book, I'm not unsympathetic to Blizzard's efforts with regard to prohibiting botting software. I'm actually okay, in this particular instance, with Blizzard winning this particular case.
My main concern is about the collateral consequences of this sort of DMCA decision. Copyright owners seeking to use the DMCA in this way are not all going to be like Blizzard going after botting programs. Few plaintiffs will be enforcing game rules with the general support of the user base.
Instead I predict that future cases that cite to this ruling will involve cloud computing companies and social network providers facing off against disruptive innovators -- and I'm pretty sure I'll be significantly less sympathetic to those efforts. Increasingly, the software we are running is going to be connected to remote servers and policed by programs like Warden that want to keep tabs on what we're doing with our iPads and smartphones, etc.
If you think about it, the ruling in this case is essentially about technology replacing law. Blizzard's contractual prohibition on bots has no copyright teeth. Its technological effort to prevent botting, however, obtain very pointy copyright teeth from 1201(a). Seems to me like an incentive for future cloud computing titans to build more comprehensive Wardens -- or even traitorware.
So there you have it. In sum, a mixed bag. (Lots of grays, a few greens, no purples.)
(Prior coverage here.)
The School of Communication and Information at Rutgers is planning a major conference to be held April 8-9, 2011. The conference will cover the cultural, business, legal, and artistic aspects of the videogame and virtual worlds industries -- pretty much everything practical and academic about gaming. If you'd like to spend a couple of days conversing with other folks who think seriously about gamers and the video game industry, please consider submitting to the Call for Papers, which can be found here: http://bit.ly/gbgcall (Deadline for 500-word abstract = Dec. 15th.)
For more information about the conference see this link: http://bit.ly/gamebehindgame
More details about the sorts of topics we're looking to explore below the fold:
The conference will feature speakers, panels, and workshops based on abstract papers submitted before the event. The submission deadline for abstracts, panel proposals, and student posters is December 15, 2010, and registration opens January 2011. The conference will also feature a poster session and exhibits from industry-leading vendors. An award, covering travel and lodging expenses, will go to the authors of the best paper and best poster.On IGN, an announcement for the Michael Jackson MMO we've all been waiting for: Planet Michael. The announcer 'couldn't stop laughing'. No violence. You win using 'the power of dance'. Using your keyboard, not your actual body. Free to play. Virtual items will be available for 'real-world currency'. Charitable contributions enabled.
From the press release:
Planet Michael will be an immersive virtual space themed after iconic visuals drawn from Michael’s music, his life and the global issues that concerned him. Entire continents will be created that will celebrate Michael’s unique genius in a way that underscores his place as the greatest artist of all time. Michael’s longtime fans will feel at home as they find themselves in places that seem familiar and yet unknown at the same time, and new generations will discover and experience Michael’s life in a way never before imagined. At its core, Planet Michael is a massive social gaming experience that will allow everyone, from the hardcore fan to the novice, to connect and engage in collaborative in-game activities with people worldwide.
Though my initial inclination was to disparage, maybe this could work... MMO universes drawn from the world-views of famous individuals. Elvis-verse? BeatlesWorld? DalaiLamaUniverse? PicassoPlanet? LadyGagaLand! I'm impressed that Planet Michael's mechanics are designed to uphold his pacifist leaning and philanthropic efforts, and I can imagine that forays into his imaginings are ripe with possibility <chortle>.
I predict the vanity MMO will become a trend, and as much as I hate to say it, could be the break-through-to-the-mainstream (the Second Life commercial push all over again). What do you all think? Will we see the Housewives of Beverly Hills obsessed with their first virtual worlds?
Disclaimer: I confess to being a fangirl of NCSoft, publishers of City of Heroes, which I studied for about 5 years. They have also published the Lineages, the original Guild Wars and Aion.
So...
The intrepid warriors from NCSoft and ArenaNet are presaging the pre-holiday beta launch of Guild Wars 2 with a declaration of independent thinking. More on that in a sec.
First off, let's review its pre-cursor, the original Guild Wars. What made it obsession-worthy?
- accessible to the 'casual', newbie MMO gamer.
- highly instanced combat (Sir Richard cringed).
- grouping that includes NPC mercenaries.
- very beautiful emotes like the Monk's dance. Amazing landscapes, architecture, everything.
- alternative play modes allowing high-level play for the low-level n00b.
- observer mode: enjoy the gank gladiator-style, you emerge un-scathed.
- 'no loot stealing, spawn camping, and endless travel'.
- guild capes (I confess to leaving guilds if they had ugly designs that didn't match my outfits. How shallow of me!)
I have more than a few opinions about what an exciting, 21st century MMO might encompass. Happy to say it appears that true evolution is in the works. Deviations/expansions of established MMO conventions in Guild Wars 2:
- Doing away with the grind. Not all will agree this is a good thing, but as my kid says, there is nothing worse than a videogame that is both 'hard and BORING'.
- New character classes (professions) like the Ranger.
- Personalized story-lines. NPCs remember you. You are not on the exact same quest path as everyone else, with the same goals, outfits, spells, items, etc. at the same levels.
- Cause and effect prevail, personal agency is paramount. Changes you effect on the environment persist.
- Dynamic events, a mechanic that has worked very well for CoX.
- PvP in non-zoned, non-instanced areas. Huge-scale world vs world combat events.
- Variations on healing and death rituals.
And for the techno-geeky among you, it's all being built on a new physics engine, Havok, that allows the designers and developers to more fully realize their conceptual vision:
We're creating a world, and what's the point of exploring a world if
there isn't the awe and wonder, you know? We try to create those moments
of awe and wonder. - Jeff Grubb, ArenaNet
For those of you who don't readily embrace change, Guild Wars servers will continue running, and an ongoing free trial is on offer.
Any predictions on the effect on social dynamics, innovations that are likely to stick, etc? Other games trying new things? My kid, for instance, is obsessed with Wizards 101, a pay-for-stuff-the-kid-MUST-have MMO that creates accessibility and safety for the semi-literate aspiring gamer.
I think things are about to get very exciting in Videogame Land. To over-use an over-used term, epic!
More on GW2:
This week Google launched Monopoly City Streets. The concept is simple. You buy real streets, develop them virtually, and earn a corresponding virtual income. Like Jerry Paffendorf's million-inches-in-Detroit, MCS combines alternate reality, games, virtual worlds, and social networking.
Is it good? I have no idea. Can't get in, because massive user inflow has already crashed the product. I'm reminded of the way that Quake broke some parts of the network when it launched, and EverQuest clogged all the bandwidth of San Diego on its opening day. When somebody comes up with a good idea on the net, the user storm becomes awe-inspiring.
There's a lesson here in the contrast with Google's Lively, a virtual world of avatars and rooms where you could hang out. /yawn. The crash there was caused not by massive user inflow but massive user apathy. Merely virtualizing something is dumb. VR a necessary tool, not a sufficient one. To create new energy, you have to reinvent the game people are playing.
Thanks to Daniel Polonsky for pointing this out.
The MacArthur Foundation will launch its own island in Second Life on May 18. A major event has been planned. Details here. Significant? You decide.
Games+Learning+Society 5.0: Learning Through Interaction
June 10-12, 2009 Madison, WI
The GLS conference in beautiful Madison every summer is one of the highlights of the year for many game researchers. Constance Steinkuehler, Kurt Squire, and the gang of incredibly capable GLS students somehow combine high-level discussions, fascinating presentations, and (most important) great gaming time and time again. The coming year's theme is "Learning Through Interaction," and I've put the full call for papers after the jump.
Games+Learning+Society 5.0: Learning Through Interaction
http://glsconference.org
June 10-12, 2009 Madison, WI
CALL FOR PAPERSBack by demand and now expanded to accommodate last year’s waiting list, the GLS conference this year will features substantive discussion and collaboration among academics, designers, and educators interested in how videogames –- commercial games and otherwise -– can enhance learning, culture, and education. This year’s theme of “Learning through Interaction” highlights the expansive nature of our definition of games & game culture to include research and design in areas including popular culture and fandom, interactive design more generally, and digital/visual cultures. This three-day conference will be held at the UW’s historic Memorial Union, overlooking downtown Madison's beautiful Lake Mendota.
Conference highlights also include keynotes by leaders in both academics and industry, interactive workshops on game design and games research, both individual and symposia presentation sessions, “chat n’ frags” in the arcade for hands-on gameplay, an evening poster session over cocktails & hors d'oeuvres, an evening machinima festival in the playhouse theatre, and fireside chats that enable thorough, cozy conversations among speakers and attendees. We encourage the submission of traditional paper sessions as well as innovative talk formats which focus on game design, game culture, and games' potential for learning and society more broadly.
Confirmed Speakers include: James Paul Gee, Idit Caperton, Alex Chisholm, Doug Church, Mia Consalvo, Elonka Dunin, Drew Davidson, Lisa Nakamura, Bonnie Nardi, Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuehler, Steve Thorne, Eric Zimmerman.
Submissions are due online by February 16, 2009. Complete submission guidelines can be found on the submissions site at http://glsconference.org.
The Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference is sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Academic ADL Co-Lab. For information on how to sponsor this event, contact the conference coordinator at gls(at)seanmichaeldargan(dot)com.
Two years back, a rehab center in Amsterdam made news headlines because they started a treatment program for video game addicts. They saw gaming problems as analogous to substance abuse and used similar treatment techniques.
But today, the founder of the program has come out and said that they no longer think that gaming problems are an addiction and they are changing how they help these gamers. Some choice quotes from the founder:
"But the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem."
"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," Mr Bakker told BBC News. "Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated."
"In most cases of compulsive gaming, it is not addiction and in that case, the solution lies elsewhere."
It's good to hear other people saying this too. As I noted in Daedalus also two years back, taking away the game doesn't solve the problem because gaming problems are not fundamentally rooted in the technology. Calling it a "gaming addiction" distracts us from the real problems.
Everybody wants to use evolutionary mechanisms in new media. There are folks who program little AI bots and let them evolve. I feel this is misguided in that a pre-programmed AI is never going to mutate the way a real entity would. Automata are never going to come up with molotov cocktails and IEDs. A virtual world, I've argued, is the best way to get the emergent/evolutionary thing going: replace the programmed automata with people. You'll get plenty of little nasties you never anticipated.
Now, Spore was supposed to give us an an example of how much better this strategy would be. In Spore, real people were going to make creatures that would survive or die out. But the Spore we eventually got doesn't do that, Science reports. Basically, Spore sucks. They didn't make a virtual world in which everybody's animals had to survive in competition over scarce resources. They made a toy.
OK. So look, just make a virtual world with the people as the entities. You'll get evolution.
Our friends at the Virtual Economy Research Network in Finland have added a bunch of content and launched a new strategy for reporting developments in virtual goods, RMT, business models, and more. Their bibliography is already the best in the business. Already worth a high-priority bookmark, VERN's future seems ever brighter. See this post for details.
Via Wired comes this bit of news about the Pentagon's fears that WoW (specifically) could be used to organize a terrorist attack. This isn't the first time intelligence agencies have considered what implications virtual worlds have for terrorism, and noting this ongoing interest on their part is just something we've gotten in the habit of doing around here. What does catch one's eye about this one is the level of detail provided in the simulated WoW scenario (check out the screenies). Does this change our assessment of their risk assessment?
Our own Cory Ondrejka has left Linden Lab, and the SL blogosphere is abuzz. News reports can be found at CNET and InformationWeek, for starters. Best of luck to Cory -- like many I'll be eager to see what he does next (beyond take a cushy quasi-academic break somewhere, à la Al Gore ;-) ).
As for Linden Lab, if interested folks would like to muse about what this might mean for it and Second Life, please feel free to weigh in.
I'd like to let you know about a conference being held at Emory University on February 11. I know there are many virtual worlds conferences these days. This one is different. Let me set a historical context.
There have been virtual worlds conferences for many years. The industry itself has run the Austin Game Conference, and there have been several academic conferences centered on the humanities: interesting discussions without the intent of having a practical impact one way or another. (And there's nothing wrong with that.) Then came State of Play in 2003, at New York Law School, the most influential conference of that era. That conference produced a community of hard-headed people, a community that then developed the advice and reasoning that courts and legislatures are using today to deal with the virtual worlds legal issues we knew would come.
Soon, firms became interested in virtual worlds, and a series of Virtual Worlds Conference and Expos have allowed that community to develop marketing methods, business models, and interoperability standards. Second Life has been the main driver in that area.
Throughout this period, many of us said that the next thing would be a revolution in social and behavioral science. Virtual worlds will change society, making them a research subject in their own right. But virtual worlds would also be an important tool for researchers, a controlled environment for studying macro-scale questions, a social science petri dish. As such, virtual worlds would revolutionize the academy as well as society.
These possibilities have now been thrust into the spotlight by the publication, in Lancet and Epidemiology, of research on the Corrupted Blood plague in World of Warcraft. A trickle of virtual world social science papers is appearing. It appears we are now entering the next phase, in which hard-nosed, quantitative, social and behavioral scientists will address the likely impact of virtual worlds across all society. A community is forming, and the first conference of this nascent community will meet at Emory University on February 11, 2008.
The subject of the conference is the evolution of virtual worlds and their broad impact on society. Research fields include economics, business, political science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, public health, and more. Developers of virtual world-making software will be on hand to discuss and demonstrate the possibilities for building pocket virtual worlds for research. The full announcement is below. The public is invited.
I think this is likely to be seen as a very important conference. If you have questions, please address them to the organizers: Benn Konsynski (Benn.Konsynski@bus.emory.edu), Holli Semetko (holli.semetko@emory.edu), and David Bray (dbray@bus.emory.edu).
**** CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT ****
Virtual Worlds and New Realities in Commerce, Politics, and Society
11 February 2008
Emory University, Atlanta GA
Virtual worlds are now a reality. Virtual worlds allow everyone to create
a digital character representing themselves and interact with other
computer-generated individuals, landscapes, virtually-run global
businesses, and in-world institutions in real-time. Fascinatingly, both
endogenously produced economies and social orders are emerging in these
virtual worlds. Political candidates are campaigning in virtual worlds,
while some sales of virtual assets are producing demand in the real world
for equivalent items.
On Monday, 11 February 2008 Emory University will host a public forum
discussing both research and long-term implications of virtual and
real-world interactions with regard to commerce, politics, and society.
Four panels will be held, to include:
(1) Evolution of Virtual Worlds
(2) Emerging Virtual Institutions both in Business and Politics
(3) Mirrored Influence of Virtual and Real-World Elements
(4) Possible Futures of Virtual Worlds and Society
Interested members of the public, practitioners, and academics from
multiple fields (to include political science, business, information
systems, public health, psychology, sociology, anthropology, library
sciences, and more) are all invited to participate in the forum. As part
of Emory University’s strategic plan, “Where Courageous Inquiry Leads”,
this conference seeks to engage scholars in a strong and vital community
to confront the human condition and experience and explore twenty-first
century frontiers in science and technology, specifically involving
virtual world phenomena.
Co-chairs: Benn Konsynski, Holli Semetko, David Bray
Innovations is a relatively new journal from MIT Press edited by Philip E. Auerswald and Iqbal Z. Quadir, and it focuses on technology and governance (two frequent topics here), with a specific focus on their policy implications. A regular component of the periodical is the presentation of cases by innovators themselves, accompanied by critical commentaries. The latest issue includes a case study of Second Life by our own Cory Ondrejka, with commentaries by Philip Evans of The Boston Consulting Group, Paul R. Verkuil of the Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and, well, me. A bit more below the fold; dig in and comment, if you like.
Cory's argument in a nutshell (and it really is more an argument than a presentation of a case): He provocatively argues that SL effectively eliminates geographic constraints from creative action, and then points to ways that this heralds vast transformations, through virtual worlds, in the nature of sovereignty and citizenship writ large. All three of the critical commentaries, in my opinion, push back to a certain degree on these ideas, with Evans interrogating what we mean by geography's costs and what its advantageous may nonetheless be, and Verkuil (who has written extensively on sovereignty) asking some penetrating questions about what Linden Lab's degree of control over SL means for its (and other virtual world makers') potential regulation. My comment probably attempts to throw the most cold water on the prospects Cory outlines. Enjoy!
(NB: MIT Press is making the entire issue available for free via pdf downloads at the link above, and they've told the authors that we're free to post and distribute without worry. Nice.)
[From Marc Fetscherin, Editor of the Special Issue]
Journal of Electronic Commerce Research (JECR): Special Issue on Virtual Worlds
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue on Virtual Worlds
Submissions due: November 1, 2007
Scheduled Publication date: August 2008
Overview:
The emergence of virtual worlds and Web 3.D change the way of doing business. Web 3.D is the synonym for Internet-based virtual worlds, where people can create own 3-D *virtual* personalities. Virtual Worlds such as Second Life and others are undergoing an evolution similar to that of the Internet in the mid nineties and might impact profoundly the way people cooperate, communicate, collaborate, and conduct business. The recent entering of companies such as Toyota, American Apparel, Nissan, or Adidas indicate the upcoming role of this platform for the next generation of conducting electronic business. This call for papers is intended to cover a wide range of business and research topics that fall within the broad description of activities, challenges, opportunities, applications, innovations and implications associated with Virtual Worlds as the emerging new online business landscape.
Purpose of the Special Issue:
The purpose of this special issue is to encourage discussion and communication of important research issues that underpin Virtual Worlds as an important aspect of e-commerce and to showcase interesting and significant research work in this critical area. Specifically this issues is focusing on business and legal issues of doing business in Virtual Worlds. Of particular relevance to the described focus are papers about business models, marketing, promotion, pricing, customer integration, consumer behavior, legal, cultural and cross-cultural research. The issue, however, will not be restricted to these topics; rather, it welcomes reports of theoretical or empirical research that examines pertinent business issues related to Virtual Worlds e-commerce. This special issue will be of interest to researchers, governments, small and large businesses, marketing and PR companies among others.
List of possible topics are:
* Product Development and Testing in Virtual Worlds
* Image, Branding, Advertising in Virtual Worlds
* Marketing in Virtual World
* Avatar-based Marketing
* Promotion of Virtual Goods in Virtual Worlds
* Pricing of Virtual Goods in Virtual Worlds
* Selling, Cross-Selling Real and Virtual Worlds
* Business Planning for Non-profits in Virtual Worlds
* Fundraising and Virtual Worlds
* Convergence of Real and Virtual Worlds
* Customer Integration and Virtual Worlds
* Technology, Business, Strategy in Virtual Worlds
* Financial Systems, Investments, Currency Exchange Real and Virtual Worlds
* Emerging Media Presence in Virtual Worlds
* Consumer Behavior, Consumer Acceptance and Virtual Worlds
* Trust, Cross-Cultural Studies and Virtual Worlds
* Intellectual Property, Copyright, Trademarks and Virtual Worlds
Submission of Manustcript:
JECR publishes original empirical research, theoretical and methodological articles, evaluative and integrative reviews, field research, business surveys, and application papers of interest to a general readership. A submission based on a paper appearing elsewhere (such as conference proceedings or newsletters) must have major value-added extensions to the earlier version. For conference papers, it should have at least 30% new material. The submitted manuscripts should follow the format as suggested in the Submission Guideline found in the journal website: http://www.csulb.edu/journals/jecr/s_guide.htm. Of particular note is that the manuscript should be prepared in Microsoft Word format. The names, affiliations, and contact information (i.e., phone, fax, email addresses) of all authors should be provided only on the cover page. The submitted paper will undergo a double-blind review. Contributing authors may be asked to serve as reviewers for the special issue. Authors may submit completed manuscripts electronically at any time prior to November 1st 2007 deadline. Manuscripts and questions send to mfetscherin@rollins.edu.
Guest Editor
Marc Fetscherin, Ph.D.
Rollins College
International Business Department
Winter Park, 32789, FL, USA
e-mail: mfetscherin@rollins.edu
Tel: +1 407 691 1759
Fax: +1 407 646 1566
Important Dates:
Deadline for Submission: November 1, 2007
Paper acceptance/rejection: January 15, 2008
Revised paper submission: March 15, 2008
Final acceptance following revisions: May 15, 2008
Publication Date: August 2008
To download the CFP, please visit this website:
http://www.csulb.edu/web/journals/jecr/issues/20083/cfp.pdf
Linden Lab has recently changed their policy about gambling in Second Life, effectively banning it (find a clutch of news reports here). The specific demands, in terms of policy and regulation, that gambling and other significant-stakes gaming make on virtual worlds have drawn my attention on TN before. Here I'd like to ask TN-at-large the following: What do you think the effects of this policy are likely to be on SL? On virtual worlds in general (if any)?
Ted's Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University convened the second Ludium Conference this past weekend in Bloomington. Attendees were charged with hammering out a well-considered platform to guide virtual world policy. We were successful, and the Declaration of Virtual World Policy [Edit: along with its wiki] has been posted by the conference's designers, Studio Cypher. Here it is for your perusal and comment (along with more details):
A Declaration of Virtual World Policy
made by
representatives of law, industry, and academia, assembled in full and
free convention as the first Synthetic Worlds Congress.
Whereas virtual worlds are places with untapped potential, providing new and positive experiences and effects, we resolve that:
-A self-governance group of virtual world stakeholders should be formed
-A players’ bill of rights should be drafted and should include the right of free speech and the rights to assemble and organize.[Edit: FN1]
-A universal age verification system should be created to support the individual rights of all users
-Virtual world designers should have freedom of expression
-Virtual worlds should include plain-language End-User
License Agreements (EULA) to enable all individuals to understand their
rights
-There are different types of virtual worlds with different policy implications
-Access is critical to virtual worlds, so net neutrality must be maintained
-Game developers shall not be liable for the actions taken by players
-Fair use may apply in virtual worlds that enable amateur creation of original works
-The government should provide a comprehensive package of funding for educational games research, development, and literacy
[Edit: FN1 Modified to reflect correct wording voted on at Ludium 2.]
SWI plans to send this platform to all major candidates for the presidency and for all contested congressional seats in the coming 2008 election. I'm sure these statements will prompt a lot of discussion and debate (I hope so), but I thought I would remind everyone that the congress is concluded, and these are SWI's policy recommendations, at least until the next Ludium ;-). I'm sure that registration for that one will be open, as it was for this one.
The Ludia are conferences structured as games, and this one was modeled
on a political convention, the first Synthetic Worlds Congress. Studio Cypher deserves a lot of credit for creating a game that generated incentives to both compete and collaborate. All attendees began in districts (of three delegates), and started by forging platform planks, combining them regionally (3 districts to a region, 3 regions total) by the end of the first day. On the second day, all voted in multiple straw polls on 30 potential planks, with merging of planks and refinement of language prompted by the game design, the end goal being a list of 10 planks, as determined by a final vote. The list above is the result. In addition, the conference elected me as its Speaker, which basically puts me forward to direct the traffic of media and policy-maker inquiries about the declaration to the appropriate legal, industry, and academic experts. In the process of determining the speaker as well there was a greater interest amongst the nominees (Corey Bridges of Multiverse, Joshua Fairfield of Indiana University Law School and TN, and myself) in focusing on the platform, and the breadth of expertise in the room that would be able to speak to its specific planks, then on the race for the position.
We all know that well-designed games are good at generating incentives for their players, and in a way I took it as a sign of the success of this one that before the first day was even completed many players were eager to concentrate on the content of the planks rather than press for every advantage that the game mechanics gave them to accumulate "influence points" or the currency, gold coins. It quickly became apparent that the Ludium had sparked useful ideas and discussion about virtual world policy. The feeling that we were succeeding in hammering out a useful set of policy guidelines only grew over the course of day 2.
The Ludium was also the setting for related news from Ren Reynolds, who took the opportunity after final voting was completed to let us know about the Virtual Policy Network he is spearheading, and organization based in the UK that will tackle similar policy matters from a European as well as global perspective. Bravo, Ren!
[Edit: Some Ludium2 reports from attendees have appeared. Christian Renaud of Cisco has a post here, and Mia Consalvo has a post here. Ron Meiners has blogged about it at Virtual Cultures, Garrison LeHearst weighs in here, and Michelle Senderhauf of ARGNet posted during the conference. Richard, of course, blogged about it here, and Peter Jenkins has a post on his blog as well. Any I've missed? Drop a comment below and I'll add the link!]
Ça plus ça change. But please, when discussing the foundational work in this space can we all agree to get Julian's surname right? It's spelt "Dribble", or if you prefer to render it in the original Flemish, "Drivel".
At the State of Play/Terra Nova Symposium in New York last fall, Bryan Camp of Texas Tech School of Law gave us a primer on tax law as it relates to virtual worlds. I never knew that listening to a tax professor could be so illuminating and fun (really). Now he has written a paper giving a similarly engaging overview of the issues as they relate to SL and WoW.
And to think his elegant solution may be ruined by pizza...
The paper contains loads of useful information for us non-law types, in particular such helpful nuggets as the tax law distinction between imputed and gross income and how it may be the appropriate spot to draw the taxation line for virtual worlds. For Camp, it makes pragmatic sense to distinguish between activity within the worlds as, in a way, non-taxable diversions, and the taxable events that only happen when the "fourth wall" is broken. As he puts it (pp. 64-65),
The breakdown of the magic circle, the feared commodification of virtual worlds, can only come about when, like Pinocchio, the virtual becomes real. That will happen when economic activity in Second Life begins to displace economic activity outside Second Life. The most likely evidence of that will be when account owners gain the ability to trade Lindens for real goods and services that are useful outside Second Life, beyond the fourth wall, when you cannot tell the players from the audience...When online exchanges outside of Second Life -- such as Amazon.com or Staples.com -- start accepting payment in Lindens, that will mark the erasing of the magic circle. At that time Second Life will become a barter club and Linden Dollars will cease to be a unit of play and will become Trade Credits. Whether or when that time will come I have no idea.
Professor Camp, meet Pizza.net. If this press release is to be believed, that fourth wall may be broken very soon...by the pizza guy. Residents are apparently up in arms over SL's technical challenges, but who can argue with the appeal of a slice?
Those attending Ludium II can now register at https://www.indiana.edu/~swi/reg/ . Information about the conference is here. Space is limited.
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 ;-) ).
Just wanted to let everyone know that the good folks behind Joystick101 have recently relaunched the site, with some new faces and lots of great commentary. Nice to see one of the core sources from our rolodex back in form.
Michelle Hinn a PhD student at Illinois alerts us to a program running on NPR about gamers with disabilities. She'll be interviewed, among others. It airs on the Weekend Edition Sunday and if you are in the US, it should be on during the second hour of their 8-10/11am show (most of the NPR stations follow this in their own time zone). It'll be archived here.
It's been an exciting week in Second Life! Dell opened a new store in-world, IBM's CEO, Sam Palmisano, made an in-world appearance, and so did the dreaded CopyBot. The presence of companies like IBM, Dell, Reuters and many others in Second Life shows that there is growing interest in using virtual worlds for more than killing orcs and avatar-based flirting. Sure, these companies are just beginning to experiment with business applications of virtual worlds, or "v-business," but things are moving fast. It seems like every week there is an announcement that another new company or institution is trying to go virtual by buying an island in Second Life.
But also this week, the now infamous CopyBot reared its ugly head in Second Life. Here's a brief recap: CopyBot is a tool that enables the unauthorized copying of virtual objects by a player (see Raph for more detail). Since virtual objects in Second Life are created by other players, rather than by Linden Lab, there was an outcry from many players to stop the use of CopyBot. Players protested and closed their in-world stores in fear that their creations would be stolen, resulting in the loss of real U.S. dollars.
In response, Linden Lab banned the use of CopyBot under its Terms of Service agreement but at the same time stated a reluctance to enter an "arms race" with players (e.g., by implementing Digital Rights Management technologies like Apple did with iTunes). The Lindens are taking the position that unauthorized copying is a general problem with the internet, "Like the World Wide Web, it will never be possible to prevent data that is drawn on your screen from being copied." Thus, player/creators in Second Life are panicking just like the Recording Industry Association of America did a few years ago when it began suing individuals for the unauthorized copying of music.
So what impact, if any, might the unauthorized copying of digital content in virtual worlds have on the still nascent v-business industry? Will CopyBot and its successors scare off some early would-be v-businesses?
On the one hand, if companies like Dell use their virtual store fronts primarily to sell physical products, like XPS laptops, unauthorized copying may not pose any problem at all. On the other hand, to the extent that companies attempt to sell digital products - virtual houses, avatar hair, code, images, books, music, etc. - their revenues will be vulnerable to digital piracy. Should companies be worried?
This morning I had a look at SL's main page and saw that the registration number had topped 1 million. Congratulations!
I know it's not paid users, and the concurrent user numbers are still below 10,000, but this is still a significant milestone.
The online journal First Monday has just published their 7th special issue, Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace, wherein you will find a number of articles by current and former Terra Novans, including Ted, Richard, T L Taylor, and me. (NB: the articles are appearing in three sets over three months; the complete list of them is at the link.)
The special issue (edited by Sandra Braman and me) grew out of the Command Lines conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (sponsored by its Center for International Education), where we brought together a number of people interested in governance online. In many ways I saw it as a chance for scholars of virtual worlds to contribute their unique perspective to a broader conversation, and the conference was a tremendous success. Anyone interested in how to make sense of the moving target that is governance in and beyond virtual worlds is encouraged to dive in.
We were sitting around the GLS conference and someone - maybe it was Thomas Malaby - said Hey what about getting some more anthropologists on TN? And we said Great. And then we said Thomas what if it was a socio-cultural anthropologist like Lisa Galarneau? And he didn't say anything because he was lost in thought over the realization that anthropologists and virtual world scholars both study shards but have little to say to one another about them. Undaunted, we went to Lisa and asked her to join us. And she agreed! Lisa is indeed a socio-cultural anthropologist, writing a PhD about spontaneous learning communities in City of Heroes. We first heard of Lisa through her Social Study Games site, highly recommended. Welcome Lisa!
Barry Joseph and Global Kids have been working in the teen grid of Second Life, and now they offer the world an invaluable insider's report on how you build education in digital 3D. Barry writes:
"Global Kids has been working since last December in the teen-only space of Teen Second Life. From what we understand, we are the first and (so far) only organization running public (and educational) events for the entire teen grid. We documented our experiences from the beginning, capturing the trials and tribulations of translating a youth development model into a virtual world, exploring the existential issues raised, and analyzing our work from a games and learning model (a la James Gee, Castronova, etc.). These monthly journals, the Holy Meatballs of Divine Spongiform, were only available through in-world books. But today we can announce that the past volumes, and future content, can now be seen on our blog. TerraNova has been an important community that has informed our practice and we look forward to any feedback it has to offer."
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.