Terra Nova

...and IMVU-Forterra Word Balloon battle outcome (ref Farmer)

Terra Novans, related to the Worlds.com patent story below, I thought you might be interested in Randy Farmer's blog posting today on the IMVU-Forterra "word balloon" patent lawsuit which came to a messy conclusion last year after a 2 year drama (and a full patent reexam by the USPTO). Both Randy and I worked on this case. All the documents were made public due to the reexam.

Direct URL:
http://thefarmers.org/Habitat/2008/12/the_demise_of_the_word_balloon_1.html

This case as well as the Worlds.com move are representative the sorry state of the IP/patent system and reflect the  "corrupted" nature of business, government and general bad behavior throughout today's society (for which we are finally starting to pay the price).

Sigh... hoping for change in '009.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Randy!

Bruce

Voice in Virtual Worlds, Take 3

In line with the recent discussions we had here about the role of voice in virtual worlds (see for instance this post, and more recently this one), some new research by Greg Wadley from the University of Melbourne adds more empirical data to the debate. The findings are summarized in this paper but click below to read Greg's own summary of his findings:

Legitimate Questions

One of my longstanding interests in studying virtual worlds is governance and legitimacy. How are virtual worlds governed, and to what extent is this governance legitimate? When we think about political legitimacy, we can start to see a key difference between how political institutions have established their legitimate rule in the past, and how the multiple new institutions of governance in virtual worlds go about it. In particular, I am curious about how games may be making larger and larger contributions to political legitimacy in virtual worlds. To what extent are the outcomes that games generate not only legitimate in reference to the game (a valid, just, or fair win, if you will) but also contributing in some way to the legitimacy of associated institutions, such as guilds, gamemakers, and others?

A Case Study of Second Life

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.

Game Over, well not quite

As this month of guest blogging comes to an end culminating in me reaching the ripe old age of forty I have the phrase "Game Over man" from Aliens ringing in my ears. It did remind me of some things I have observed about the whole notion of a game being over from seeing my kids start to take in interest in my games consoles.

The most unusual point is that the 4 year old looks at games with no sentimental baggage, nor with any desire to win in the old fashioned sense. This manifests itself in some very quirky ways and has got me wondering where the limit is in educating a new game player about the social norms that apply just as we educate them with everyday social skills and rules.

To my daughter "Game Over" is viewed as a reward and the cause of much enjoyment.

Sustain That Brand

State of Play V, from immaculate Singapore, kicked off this morning with a panel on "Building Businesses in Virtual Worlds." As I write I'm listening as the panel wraps up, with the panelists -- all involved in business development companies that focus to some extent on virtual worlds -- taking questions from the audience. But continuing to resonate in my mind is a phrase that panel participant Ken Brady of Centric used in his remarks to characterize what businesses should aim for in virtual worlds moving forward: "sustainable branding." This idea was echoed by the others on the panel as the discussion progressed, and to me this should prompt us to continue to think about the current era of virtual worlds as one that is beginning to be defined less by the relationship between their makers and their users (as individuals or nascent groups), and more by the expansion (one might even say colonization) of them by both emergent and pre-existing institutions.

Augmented Mixed Reality - Real to virtual and back again

Augmented Reality has been around as a concept for a long time. It has very often been described in images of the future as enhancing the real world with additional layers of digitially created information.  As more people are becoming aware of virtual worlds and seeking to build within them they, in general, start with trying to recreate some element of Real Life. This may be representations of themselves as avatars, existing buildings and offices they frequent. real world metaphors such as chairs, tables, presentation screens. This is something I have observed as the willingness to engage with virtual worlds has extended past gamers and early adopters. The representation is focussed on the boundaries of the environment being used and on how to manipulate the building tools to create that vision, crafting for that environment.

We are seeing more uses of things from the real world crossing over into the non-game metaverse environments. e.g. tennis ball trajectories and scores from Wimbledon into Second Life.

Is this augmented mixed reality? Are we creating Augmented Reality for virtual worlds? Is there a continuous circle feeding real things and virtual things into representations of one another?

What a performance! Live Vs Recorded in a multi player world

A theme strand has developed in how I view virtual worlds and metaverses. It has formed from online and multiplayer gaming but been flavoured by my work environment (As with all these posts these are merely my opinions not those of the IBM). That theme is about performing, about the nature of the live performance as opposed to the crafted and edited kind.

What are the opportunities to benefit from live expressions of knowledge, talent and ideas? How does this change the perception of a metaverse environment when it is regarded as a performance medium as much as a canvas for fixed assets to be displayed?

I think there are two main ways people express themselves through their actions. The first is the product of their actions, something manufactured, crafted and delivered for other people to use. The other is through live performance actions of some kind.

Metaverses and virtual worlds are as much about live performance as they are about manufacturing and creating content. 

Player Vs Player in a corporate environment

Roo and I are very much looking forward to these guest posts we are going to be making here where it brings a chance for yet another voice to be developed. So thank you for the invitation and an obvious /bow to Ren Reynolds.

Before we start I do have to say the postings on this site are of course our own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Having worked in a corporate environment for a 17 years, but having been a serious gamer for even longer, I have been struck by the similarity in some of the concepts found in games and how they appear to be being played out in a supposedly buttoned down, “professional”, serious environment.

Much of this thought has been sparked by the challenges Roo and I faced in the last 17 months bringing virtual worlds/metaverses, such as Second Life to a corporate environment initially under the banner of Eightbar. We have spent a long time explaining to people that just because it looks like a game, it does not mean that it is. Now I am starting to look at the opposite point of view that business is a game it just does not look like one.

Virtual facilitation of real world social interactions

Hallo, TN readers.

For some time now I have been processing thoughts on the matter of, if virtual world facilitation of real world social connections and interactions is a previously somewhat unknown essential key to success, which game designers need to have stronger focus on in the future? I guess my question asked, positions me as part of the “suits”, with a question to the “talents” as categorized by fellow guest author Robert Bloomfield, and also reverses Roberts direction arrow of real world actions migrating into virtual worlds, to an apposite scenario of whether virtual world interactions migrating into the real world prolongs the lifetime of the virtual world because of those potentially new bridging connections.