Terra Nova

IMVU = There lite?

Yet another visual chat system is making the break for mainstream acceptance. This one is called IMVU. The neat thing about is it that it sits on top of a range of Instant Message clients and though its in Beta it seems fairly stable. Like many other things virtual IMVU has its own currency Avatar Dollars (AV$) and allows users to buy and sell clothing and accessories.

Team TN, well Betsy and I, have been road testing the software – see screen shot on right of our intense user test procedure in full flow.

The There link?

Well I have not been able to track down anything official yet, but if you do a whois on the domain you find that it is owned by The Will Harvey Company in CA and just how many Will Harvey’s working on vitual words can there be. Oh and the avatars floating chat bubbles are seem to be give away.

Virtual (Wikipediac) Worlds?

On Slashdot they reviewed Robert Glass' book Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering.  Fact 21 snagged by eye:  "(f)or every 25% increase in problem complexity, there is a 100% increase in solution complexity."   On BoingBoing they continued with  the controversy of Wikipedia and whether a publically vetted (open source) knowledge base can be trusted.  All this led to a few thoughts about scaling problems in future virtual worlds...

Terra Nova Welcomes Jim Purbrick

One of the fortunate few who have been able, at this early stage, to acquire both academic and industry experience in analyzing and implementing virtual worlds, Purbrick hails from Nottingham UK. Primarily a network technologist but also a designer, his credits include experiments with time-linking in virtual worlds (recording and replaying events), persistence mechanisms (the PhD thesis), and real-world projects like Dragon Empires and the now-retired Warhammer Online. In the latter, we would have been treated to Jim's version of a seamless load-balancing technology - a holy grail for us lag-tortured players.

You can see a collection of Jim's writings at this link. Welcome!

Are Virtual Worlds Blind?

In the August Popular Science you can find "Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?" A fun and thoughtful read that claims Sci-Fi -- once the domain of fresh thinking and edgy choices about imminent possibilities -- has gone soft, safe, and docile:

...(To) imagine the relatively near-term future... is a strangely courageous act, because modern science fiction is facing a crisis of confidence. The recent crop of stories mostly take the form of fantasy (elves and wizards), alternate history (what if the Black Death had been deadlier?) and space operas about interstellar civilizations in the year 12,000 (which typically gloss over how those civilizations evolved from ours). Only a small cadre of technoprophets is attempting to extrapolate current trends and imagine what our world might look like in the next few decades. “We’re staring into a fogbank,”

Virtual Worlds 101: Draft Syllabus

The following course outline is for a upperclass undergraduate seminar on "Virtual Worlds" here at Indiana University. I'd be eager to get some commentary before inflicting this stuff on helpless students. Don't forget that they are college students, after all, and won't be enthusiastic about reading thousands of pages. Also, book purchases are to be kept to a minimum. The goal is to cover the basics without imposing too much burden. Plus I want lots of time to just discuss things. Suggestions for improvement / change of direction / more representative works are welcome.

Richard Posner & Virtual Worlds

The Honorable Richard A. Posner is a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a renowned public intellectual, and pretty much the inventor of at least one or two entire fields of legal scholarship. He's also guest-blogging this week over at Larry Lessig's weblog. Perhaps I should have seen this coming when he said that The Matrix was his new favorite movie--but in any event, his latest post shows that he's as fascinated with the social, economic, and legal implications of virtual worlds as we at Terra Nova. Read the post, you'll see what I mean. Professor Beth Noveck, in the comments field, has told him he must come to the State of Play II: Reloaded. We agree!

Forterra = The New There

Those who read Clive Thompson's NYT Magazine piece blogged by Greg earlier this week may have noticed the new company name for There: Forterra Systems. Yesterday the company issued a press release that confirms the name change and announces a new round of financing to the tune of $14M.

Who says geeks

..can’t get a date?

Well how else are you going to explain news-fad-of-the-day: The Virtual Girlfriend from Artificial Life Inc. The business model seems to be that you buy the character stuff and, according this BBC story, ‘she’ will introduce punters “to different aspects of her life”.

So, it’s a cute Tamagotchi with a slot marked ‘keep inserting money here’?

If any one wants to send me money to reveal different aspects of my life the bidding starts at $/€ 500 per go – I promise to make something up that is almost mildly interesting.

News Links

A busy day in the digital world news cycle. Protests, digital items and donations, oh my!

First, the Terra Novans were asleep at the wheel and missed the Star Wars: Galaxies protest, covered in detail on Law Meme. Digital world protests are nothing new, but this is an interesting look into how SW:G's customer service reps handle emergent situations.

Second, Wired News has an article about earning real money in digital worlds, specifically on using cheaper, international labor. Julian is mentioned and Brock Pierce is quoted.

Finally, actually a bit of original news. Following VERTU's successful campaigns for Heifer International and EFF, IGE has now opened a donation page as well, allowing digital world residents to give their earnings to Mercy Corps. Any of the lawyers want to jump in with a discussion of how simple US charitable giving rules are :-)?

Rayne, Rayne, go away?

The game character Rayne (BloodRayne series) appears to have a full schedule: on September 18 she is to appear on MTV2 where "Rayne and crew (will) give a stunning lip synced performance to Evanescence's hit 'Everybody's Fool.'" In October she will appear topless in Playboy magazine.

The Virtual Military

Clive Thompson, a journalist who shares many of our interests, has a new article in the NYT Magazine about There.com and the United States Army. We've discussed There.com & the Army a few times here: 1) U.S. Army adopts MMOG Tech (1/16/04), Earth the (Army) MMOG (2/18/04), 3) There's Army (4/24/04).

30d6 fireball: AD&D turns 30 this Week

Dungeons and Dragons turned 30 this week. I listened to the NPR story with some excitement - it also mentioned the GenCon kickoff, also this week. The story asserted that AD&D was "hugely influential" in defining how computer games, and MMOGs, look-and-feel today. There were a number of aspects to this claim: 1.) the "geek overlap" (programmers and AD&Ders); 2.) AD&D made palatable numeric models of behavior (percentile dice thing); 3.) cooperative (multi-)play; ... How much influence do you think AD&D really had?

Auteurs & Hollywood v. Flash & MUDs

Looking around The Witchery during the pre-conference dinner at the Edinburgh International Games Festival, it really sunk home for me how far computer gaming has come since the days when game makers like Steve Russell or Richard Garriott were hacking. I was well aware of the financial strength of game companies like EA, Sony, and Nintendo, but I had not fully understood what that kind of size meant for the culture in which games are created.

Heralding Cory

Just in case you have not seen it - The Alphaville Herald has an interview of TNs own Cory Ondrejka about the moonlighting he does over at Linden Lab as VP of Product Development. The interview focuses on the Intellectual Property issues raised by SL, in particular the fact that one can upload images and now stream music (or any other sound) in-world.

Online console gaming pwnd?

According to this news piece in The Register, U.S. patent 6,769,989 has just been granted to Nintendo. The patent seems to cover all generic aspects of online gaming via a “home video game system”.

While this is an interesting corporate move, I’m not sure that it actually means anything. Though the idea of Microsoft and Sony having to pay Nintendo a fee for each system that they hook up online is momentarily amusing.

Law is code

The rules of regular computer games are defined in code. If the game lets you do it, you can do it; if it doesn't, you can't. Want your RPG party members to fireball one another? Go ahead. Want to drive the wrong way round a racing circuit? If it lets you, sure, why not?

The rules of virtual worlds are also defined in code, but there are other rules beyond this that can't be coded: no profanity, no hate speech, no commodification, no [whatever]. These rules are defined in the EULA.

Because EULA rules aren't "part of the game", some players feel free to disregard them. The typical response to a violation is, "Hey, the program let me do it. If you didn't want me to do it, you should have coded it out".

Alternatively...

Virtual Crime on SSRN

Dan and I have posted a new draft of the Virtual Crime article on SSRN.

Ordinary Worlds, People?

An admirer of Hayao Miyazaki films, I recently was drawn into comparing how place was depicted in My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke. The forests and countryside of Totoro are ordinary - a place where spirits co-exist with a pastoral stillness. In contrast, the forests and spirits of Princess Mononoke live in a far away place, a place accessible by journey, a place of extraordinary form and drama. All of this led me to wonder about virtual worlds and their sense of place and folk.

An Intergalactic Investment Scam

A lengthy, but intensely fascinating and well-written account of an Eve Online player who brokered a large investment scam by creating a puppet corporation. He does an incredible job of explaining the complexity of MMORPG worlds, the emotional salience of interactions, and how play transforms into work.

It's a lot of reading, but it's well worth it. Captivating, suspenseful, and at times, simply pure evil.

[Edit: The text may also be available here and here. Castronova, 4:21pm August 16]

EAs Eyes wide shut

Here at the Edinburgh International Games Festival the panel discussion on virtual currency that I chaired has caused a bit of a storm thanks to Jeff (lawnmower man) Brown, VP of Corporate Communications for Electronic Arts.

News About Numbers

Three headlines today: Runescape Hits 100,000 Subscribers; Final Fantasy Grows Enormously; and Girardo Develops Cool Tracking Stats...

Quebecois Wanted

Jean-Francois Gazaille, magazine writer in Montreal, is looking to interview French-speaking folk who participate in virtual item trading. Quand c'est vous-meme, um, on sendez-il un, ah... O, BOTHER. If you fit the bill, send him an email at [email protected] .

When do Themes Collide?

Greg Aleknevicus, at The Games Journal - a web publication concerned with the art and design of the boardgame, poses an interesting cross-over question.  In "German Games are Fradulent" he claims that there should be a thematic <-> mechanical connection to good (board) game design.   Is there an equivalent principle for MMOGs: a thematic <-> simulation connection?

You spent how much!?

As TN readers will know, the development of Shenmue Online - a Sega / JC Entertainment / T2 co-production was announced recently (press release .pdf).

The proposed MMORPG is set in China (including Hong Kong) during the 1980s. It features Kung Fu action (nanaa nanaa, nanaa nanaa, na na naaah, every body was…) and is seen as an attempt by Sega to break into the Chinese gaming market. All good stuff - then I saw the development budget!

AvA no DB

This month’s PC Gamer Magazine (UK September Edition p 19 (no I don’t know why publishing is a month in advance here either)) has an ‘Academic Deathmatch’ between: me, Dr C, Proff B and Gonzalo Frasca (of ludology.org), the scores on the doors are:

Edward Castronova: ***** (5 brains)
Gonzalo Frasca: **** (4 brains)
Richard Bartle: *** (3 brains)
Ren Reynolds: ** (2 brains)

Where are the Heroes?

Why are there so few opportunities for an epic heroic gesture in MMORPGs?   Or do you disagree?

The Tricky Business of Predicting the Future

A research firm called DFC Intelligence has released an industry report covering the online gaming market. The Table of Contents is posted on the DFC site.

Got a Life

Salon.com and the UKs Guardian Online both feature a piece James Meek called Get a Life. The feature covers the business of MMORPGs both from the publisher stand point and the growing trade in item trading. I did not spot anything that would surprise a TN reader (though of course they have impeccable sources: Dr C, Julian and Professor Bartle are all referenced [edit: scandalously Julian is not cited, but Nick Yee is – sorry I was halucinating]) but it is interesting to see MMO coverage stretching across the media landscape.

Incidentally the Guardian aunched a games blog this week.

Nuclear Family Fallout

The running joke about the Nuclear Family is that it went critical sometime in the 70's and blew up all over the place, with fallout we're still trying to sort out even now. The modern paradigm is the "Blended Family", the product of divorce and remarriage. I'm intimately familiar with that, as the reason I've been so scarce for the last 6 months has been dealing with trying to make a family out of me, my fiance, her two boys and my daughter.

My paternal grandparents once told me that the world had changed so much since they were young, they didn't even recognize it anymore. Born in the 1920's, their childhood was during the Great Depression and their young adulthood during World War II. When they were young, divorces were rare, mass entertainment was movies and radio dramas, and long-distance calls so expensive that you heard from relatives in other states only on special holidays and in emergencies.

Virtual World Economy: It's Namibia, Basically.

In my original study, EverQuest's productivity was measured at about $2,000 in terms of annual GDP per capita. This was misreported in the press as "Economist finds virtual economy bigger than Russia!" Absurd. No virtual economy could outproduce, in gross terms, Russia's hundred-million-worker economy. I wonder how many sensible people have rejected the whole line of research on the basis of this misreporting.

But let's address the question head on. Is it possible that virtual world economies might make a gross impact equivalent to that of a real country? Actually, yes. Virtual worlds are already that big, economically speaking. More accurately, some unfortunate countries remain that small.

After currency

In this exclusive interview TerraNova talks to Second Life member Jacqueline Richelieu about her plans to create an in-world investment bank and stock exchange.

Other Players conference

Due to some technical difficulties the submission deadline for the Other Players conference has been extended to August 16. Papers should be submitted online (contact Miguel Sicart for any questions about the process). The conference is December 6-8 at the IT University of Copenhagen and is sure to be a good one so hope folks can make it!

It's Academic

Following on from Ted's job news, as of today I'm officially Visiting Professor in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at the University of Essex, England. The main consequence of this as far as I'm concerned is that I can use the job title Professor.