Terra Nova

Diversity Among Designers

The Burn baby burn thread covered a lot of turf, and one of the more intriguing aspects of it was the back and forth nearer the end where posters began to discuss whether the makeup of a design shop influences the kind of games that get made, including what values and norms show up. Let's hear from the dev community.

The Boundaries of Diversity

I ran across this WoW message thread because of a referrer link from my site. It’s commentary on a newly proposed gay-friendly guild on the Sunstrider (Europe) server.

There were the overtly homophobic comments:

•  “this is a game. with children. hello?” (#11)

But I think the most intriguing comments were those that claimed to be non-homophobic but argued for suppression of minorities:

•  “You guys are free to do what you want of course, but I think two gay guilds on the same server (and same faction too) is overkill.” (#5)
•   “If you're upset by the homophobic comments on the site then why support the forming of a guild that's a magnet for homophobes? (#20) Calling a guild Loud and Queer is an invitation for homophobes to poke fun and be offensive. (#22)”

It’s interesting that someone argued that you can’t have more than one gay-friendly guild on a server - partly implying that there is a single gay identity and one affiliation would suffice and also implying that there is only a certain quota of gay men that can be tolerated. The second comment is even more intriguing in that it suggests victims should censor their own identities and have only themselves to blame.

Byte Murder

More evidence that 'virtual' as a prefix to 'property' has no modifying function: A guy sold another guy's virtual sword without his permission, so the second guy killed the first guy. Thanks Tobold for the head's up.

Does the word 'virtual' have any meaning now?

Edit: A longer description, from China Daily. Thanks [anonymous]. EC

In Fullness of Time

Do worlds take time to unfold and extend their full wingspan?  What do Harry Potter,  Monty Python,  and AD&D suggest to us, if anything?

Top 10 MMOG Trends?

Dave "Fargo" Kosak, who writes about MMOGs for Gamespy, would like to start a conversation here on TN with the academic/industrial/ub3r hivemind about the top 10 current trends in MMOGs.   In his opinion, the industry started to turn a corner around the time City of Heroes hit the market.  But rather than just offer up his own opinions, he'd like to get some feedback from the folks who hang out here--with a promise to give credit in the article by linking back to this discussion (presumably if we do more than complain about Blizzard's server problems).

For starters, here's what Dave thinks are three trends he's spotted:

Part Of My (Virtual) World

What do Michael Dell, Gordon Moore, the symbiotic relationship between the video game and home computing industries, and MMO's-in-windowed-mode have in common?

World of Warcraft Reviewed on NPR

Old news, but in case you missed it, listen here.   

Communities and MMOGs: Nations and States

A new article by Nicholas Gervassis of University of Edinburgh School of Law, from the Journal of Information Law and Technology.

Burn baby burn

Those following the Burning Down the House thread will know that Matt Mihaly of Iron Realms has firm views on the state of the games industry and independent games developers.

By way of response the to GDC panel Matt has asked TN to host this open letter to panel participants Warren Spector, Greg Costikyan, and Brenda Laurel. So, here it is,,,

Warcraft: 800,000 in North America

1.5 million worldwide. Newly announced subscriber figures here.

Annotated Sword (Play)

I stumbled across a charming post over on Laundry Sessions ("Artifact Based Narrative").  It highlighted a recent eBay auction of a "time machine" (that closed for $647).  Noteworthy of this auction beyond a "rewired toaster" (circa early 20th century), was the collection of letters, trinkets, books - some stretching back to the 1920's - related to its former owner, a Dr. J.S. Strauss.  This had me thinking about virtual worlds and whether, for example, the objects within them could become annotated with their own narratives: history, past uses, and hoary owners.  Would this be enriching or just wasted database space.  Would the whispers of the past lives of that sword-of-uberness matter to you?

Game Design Atoms

I went to an interesting talk by Raph Koster at GDC on "Game Design Atoms."  Raph focused on the use of notation in music and choreography and discussed his attempts to create a rigorous notation for game design.  He pointed out the advantages of notation -- reproducibility, error detection, rigorous definitions, content independence, and detection of bad game ideas -- and proceeded to diagram some of the game of checkers as a way to demonstrate the idea.  An interesting, and intellectually appealing, endeavor.

However, I believe that it is making some fundamental mistakes about what games are.  Are games more like music or more like the real world?  While the design space of all music is certainly vast, it is vastly smaller than the design space and complexity available to games.  As a result, in attempting to describe what games are, we should take a lesson from the real world.  And for rigorous descriptions of reality, we turn to mathematics.  Mathematics provide a formal description of the laws that govern the universe.

For games' universes, a similar formal description already exists: the code.  Read on . . .

Announcing: Command Lines

Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace will be really useful to this community, I think. We talk all the time about economics and law, not enough about governance.

We now have some firm info about the conference. From the website: The conference "will examine the diverse ways       in which governance is both implemented and emerging       within cyberspace and the effects of such approaches       to governance in the off-line world. Sessions will       cover the entire range of types of governance mechanisms,       from the formal laws of government through the       formal and informal governance mechanisms of both       state and non-state actors to the cultural practices       of governmentality that sustain and enable both governance       and government."

How Low Can You Go?

When World of Warcraft launched in Europe, 80 servers were installed to support the 290,000 players who signed up for its first weekend. That's 3,625 players per server.

What if they'd had 800 servers instead of 80?

The Daedalus Project - New Look. New Content.

The Daedalus Project has been redesigned. New look. New Content. The current issue focuses on a factor analytic approach to player motivations with a backdrop of many great player narratives on why they play. There are also a few interactive gadgets to play with.

General Highlights:
1) A much cleaner and more intuitive 3 factor model with underlying components.
2) Interesting player narratives on the motivations of achievement, socializing, and immersion.
3) Browse through in-depth player profiles that pair the assessment scores with the player's own open-ended description of why they play.
4) Assess yourself.

Findings Highlights:
1) Gender differences in the achievement component are pretty striking. 
2) The reasons why men spend a lot of time in the game are different from why women spend a lot of time in the game.
3) Men and women like to socialize just as much, but they are looking for very different things in those  relationships.
4) The best predictor for problematic usage is escapism (avoiding RL problems) followed by hours played per week and the desire for advancement. In other words, the mindset of the player is a better predictor of problematic usage than game mechanics (a la Skinner Box).

And a collated PDF of the articles is available.

Burning Down the House

Alice -- apparently the world's fastest typist -- has posted an amazing account of GDC's "Game Developers Rant." It is quite a read and includes some great comments on "piracy," including Greg Costikyan's sarcastic "[t]he world is not designed in such a way that money inherently funnels its way into your wallet!?"

However, it isn't anything that hasn't been said before: publishers are risk averse, games are getting more expensive, we're all going to be outsourced to Bangalore, nobody cares, and there is a need for alternative distribution channels.

In 2000 I left THQ to go work on Second Life at Linden Lab. While we have since started to learn that collaborative digital worlds have the potential for helping those with disabilities, driving innovation, and building phenomenal communities, none of those reasons had anything to do with me leaving THQ. I left because I wanted to create technology that would let everyone make games. SL isn't there yet, but events like the Tringo deal remind me that we are the way.

However, I think that the history of SL/Linden Lab acts as another response to the rant session. If you don't like publishers or Wal-Mart, then don't use them. While the cost of AAA titles has skyrocketed -- Greg's estimate of $20M is now on the low end -- the options for making and distributing games have never been better.

Read on for six ways to make games without EA.

Marvel: Loses Round 1 on Points

According to an NCSoft/BusinessWire release, the judge in the Marvel v NC Soft & Cryptic Studios case dismissed several key claims earlier this week.

The Skinnable World

During the State of Play II conference, TL, Torill, and several others kept challenging the presumption that Norrath and other virtual worlds should be thought of as separate places.   This is a good question to ask with regard to Norrath, but I wonder whether if it will be an even more important issue with regard to the future direction of virtual worlds.

3% means what?

Bruce Boston, at a roundtable on MMO economies at the GDC gave an interesting datapoint (used with permission).  Namely that 3% of There.com participants "played" the market for its own sake.  In other words, buying and selling There.com's fashion goods is an engaging end onto itself for 3% of this world's inhabitants.  For them these markets are not just a means.  It is the other 97%, however, that I wonder about.

Sarge, I Can't Run Ten Miles: I Failed My Constitution Save

Hey, America's youth! Worried about the possibility of a draft? Already thinking about how to get a deferment?

Try playing lots and lots of role-playing games. It works in Israel, apparently. (via Boing Boing).

On the other hand, the U.S. Marine Corps has actually run ads in the past where they appear to promise that service in the Marine Corps is functionally fairly similar to being a tank in Molten Core, so maybe this won't work as a deferment strategy in the U.S.

Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2

GDC05 marks the release of "Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2" by Charles River Media. Both Richard and I have chapters in it, and it features articles from an amazingly broad range of MMO developers and thinkers. Hopefully, even experienced MMO folks will find something new and interesting in it.

Worlds in Play Abstracts

The paper abstract for the Digital Games Research Association's "Worlds in Play" four-day conference in Vancouver have been posted.  Quite a few TN authors will be there and quite a few MMORPG-relevant abstracts are in the over 250 papers listed.  Registration here.

But Seriously Folks

Ben Sawyer's Serious Game Summit got underway yesterday at GDC. Raph Koster started things off with his "Theory of Fun" talk, from his book and based on his talk at the Austin Game Conference in 2003. I had a chance to speak about Serious Games in Second Life, Wilde Cunningham, Brigadoon Island and Virtual Hallucinations, which was quite fun (and seems to have been well received.) Also got see a great demo by Andrew Phelps and Dave Parks of RIT, who's MUPPETS project is an amazing approach to computer science education. It is also exciting because it echos many of the benefits of collaboration and real-time development that we see in Second Life.

A couple of things from Raph's talk jumped out at me. Several times he focused on the difference between "thinking" and "knowing." He also repeated asserted the common statement that we get "worse" at learning as we age and that older people (he used his father as an example) wouldn't be able to comprehend the open nature of Second Life.

Read on for why I disagree with those thoughts.

Games, Learning & Society Conference 2005: Call for Papers

Games, Learning & Society Conference 2005: Call for Papers
June 23-24, 2005 . Madison WI
www.glsconference.com

Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Academic ADL Co-Lab, the GLS Conference will foster substantive discussion and collaboration among academics, designers, and educators interested in how videogames – commercial games and others – can enhance learning, culture, and education. Speakers, discussion groups, interactive workshops, and exhibits will focus on game design, game culture, and games' potential for learning and society more broadly. This two-day conference will be held at Frank Lloyd Wright's Monona Terrace overlooking downtown Madison's beautiful Lake Monona. Conference highlights include a two-day exhibit hall featuring poster presentations and interactive demos of games; a special track of selected, hands-on sessions designed specifically by and for practicing teachers (continuing education credit may be available); and an outdoor dinner party at historic Quivey's Grove. Participants and speakers currently include John Seely Brown, Edward Castronova, Doug Church, James Paul Gee, Henry Jenkins, Jesper Juul, Jay Lemke, Kurt Squire, and Eric Zimmerman.

Deadline for proposals is March 14, 2005!

In the World, But Not Of It

World of Warcraft forum-hounds have recently been chewing over the difficult case of one "Baxter", who has been desperately appealing his sentence of virtual execution for the apparent crime of levitating into forbidden places. The discussion (in one main thread and several other related ones) has mostly centered on various competing ideas about virtual jurisprudence and due process, which touch on my established interest in the "MMOG state".

But I think there's another issue here that takes us away from the official forum thrashing about Baxter's guilt or innocence to the theory and practice of MMOG design. Namely, what's the best way to implement the long-term addition of new geographies and content to a MMOG world?

Grooves and Groups

If you are an MMORPG player, at least of the kind that I am, you live for the "groove":  that perfect group-in-motion where "everyone is competent," "sufficiently selfless," and spiced with some ill-defined "above average" quality.  With a groovy group you can go places, good places, travel up town to mean places. You can really rock.  Yet, the funny thing about grooves is that they are hard to come by....

The Forsaken

During the past year, I've spent significant time with two MMORPGs: City of Heroes and World of Warcraft.  By "significant time" I mean something far less than the typical author here would mean: my top avatars in each are under level 20 (aka ub3r I am not).  But since these two particular games were designated by Computer Gaming World this month as top games of the year (WoW winning best game and CoH, oddly, winning best MMORPG), I though I'd offer a casual gamer's comparison and some thoughts.  My main reaction is that unless you're a power gamer, World of Warcraft is a comparatively solitary place--especially for an undead warlock.

Simulating terror

Can we learn about al-Qaeda by studying griefing in  MMOs?

When worlds contract

It seems pretty inevitable. If you cruise around the MUD Connector you will find lots of ghost towns out there. I'm sure many of us have experienced a world or two closing in the past, but more commonly they seem to hang on in some diminished way. The recent announcements about further server mergers in EQ prompts me to wonder lately about downward trajectories. There are a lot of fascinating details to be dealt with (duplicate names, character limits) and things that will arise from the change, not the least of which will be seeing how two server communities negotiate now living on the same block.

We have a lot of stories about vibrant communities online, but it'd be great to have more reports about when networks fade, when people leave, and what exactly remains. Of course, one of the interesting things that has happened with past worlds is that sometimes groups of users swoop in to salvage or recreate - often on a smaller scale - their beloved spaces. I'm don't mean to overstate this and suggest EQ is going to have the plug pulled anytime soon. But having seen Bristlebane when it was so big it had to be split, the pending merger admittedly leaves me a bit nostalgic. So I'm curious, what does the death of a world look like in the MMOG-age?

One Tringo to Rule Us

It isn't just about fashion anymore. Two months ago, over his Christmas vacation, Kermitt Quirk created the game Tringo within Second Life. It has become a huge hit and has earned him over L$1,000,000. But that was apparently just the beginning. The Wall Street Journal (alas, no easy linking) reported today that Kermitt has sold the real world publishing rights of Tringo to Sean Ryan's Donnerwood Media for "low five figures." They plan to publish Tringo for mobile phones and on the web.

Martha's Avatar

Jonathan Glater picks up the story of the Martha Stewart Newsweek cover for the New York Times today.  More coverage here.  The long and the short of it -- the picture on the right isn't Martha (which makes sense, right -- because since she's in prison?), but instead is an old shot of Martha's head grafted onto another person's body.  Newsweek says this was made obvious by the credit on page 3.  (Query: If you don't open the magazine and just see it on the newsstand, is it still obvious?)

Stories and Pyramid Power

Damion Schubert over on Zen of Design presents a tidy encapsulation of ideas relating the layers  of contributors and sources of content to a virtual world.    Drawing  from a discussion on Mud-Dev (via Mike Rozak) what seems  implied  is an enigmatic relationship between the "virtual world" its content. 

A beardy gathering

Anyone attending GDC is welcome to come join our blob, err, blog gathering. TN authors, posters and lurkers--as well as members of DiGRA--will be meeting on Thursday, March 10. Gather at 7 pm at the IGDA booth on the 3rd floor (I'm told this makes sense when you get there).

Beards optional.

New New Zealand Academic Site

Social Study Games.com collects research about social effects of MMORPGs. Many TN sources are linked there.  Brought to you by doctoral student Lisa Galarneau.

By the way, we encourage anyone mounting a site like this to send us the link for our resource list. Centralized info is good.