Calling all space engineers

STATE OF PLAY - MMORPG PUBLIC SPACE DESIGN COMPETITION
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 28, 2005

From NY Law School:

STATE OF PLAY III | Social Revolutions

To Enter --- Prizes --- Rules

Do you enjoy building things in a virtual world? Ever built a virtual house or terraformed a virtual landscape? How about designing public space for your metaverse? Maybe this public architecture resembles the public spaces of old like town squares, markets, transportation hubs or town halls. Maybe not. This competition invites designers and architects to submit examples of the best public, democratic or civic architecture in a virtual world.

Architects from virtual worlds across the universe are invited to submit their designs for public spaces and structures to the State of Play Virtual Public Space Design Competition by September, 28 2005. The State of Play is the annual conference on Law, Videogames and Virtual Worlds (http://www.nyls.edu/stateofplay) co-sponsored by New York Law School's Institute for Information Law & Policy, Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Yale Law School's Information Society Project.

Entries will be critiqued by a panel of professional architects, architectural theorists and game designers including Harvard's Nathan Glazer, renowned public intellectual and author of The Public Face of Architecture; Anne Beamish, architect and professor, University of Texas; and Yehuda Kalay, architect and professor, University of California at Berkeley and others to be announced. Submissions will be showcased at the State of Play conference on law, video games and virtual worlds in New York, October 7-9, and form the centerpiece of a panel on public architecture in the metaverse. That panel asks:

Unlike the flat, text-based web world, virtual worlds reintroduce space and place on-line. I can occupy a plot of land, build a house there, and invite guests over to break bread or man the barricades. Groups and institutions can cohere around specific geographies and community once again comes to be defined by the social and technical construction of space. But our familiar understanding of the relationship between architectural design and social regulation is dramatically altered in the virtual world. The distinction between private and public may make less sense, not only because all space is privately �owned� but also because virtual architecture is neither completely physical nor completely representational. In this panel, architects, lawyers and game designers talk about the future of public space in the virtual world.

PRIZES
1st Place Prize
Airfare, hotel and registration for participation at the State of Play, New York, New York, Oct 6-8, 2005; Publication in First Monday magazine special State of Play issue; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $500

2nd Place Prize
Publication in First Monday magazine; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $250

3rd Place Prize
Publication in First Monday magazine; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $100

The top 10 submissions will be displayed at the State of Play Conference and website.

TO ENTER:

Please send:

• Title of entry
• Representative screenshots (GIF or JPEG) and/or short film giving a tour of the Space (MPG, MPEG, MOV or AVI)
• Description of your public space and why it promotes public and civic engagement
• Location of entry (i.e. coordinates of where and in which virtual world the build can be found)
• Legal name and address
• Contact information (physical mail address, email and phone number)



To: stateofplay AT cyber.law.harvard.edu
Subject line: Public Space Design Competition
Entries may also be mailed to:

State of Play III Conference
Attn: Public Space Design Competition
Institute for Information Law & Policy
New York Law School,
57 Worth Street, New York, NY 10013

When: On or before September 28, 2005.

Entries from all massively multi-player games and worlds will be accepted, (no stand-alone 3D software please).

First Monday magazine (http://www.firstmonday.org) is one of the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its launch in May 1996, First Monday has published 622 papers in 110 issues. First Monday enjoys a large circulation. In 2004, 6,728,893 successful requests were processed from 835,768 distinct hosts.

Official Rules

Eligibility of Contestants
The design competition is open to anyone 18 and older in the U.S. and abroad, except in any areas where the competition is prohibited by law. There is no cost to enter the competition.

Eligibility of Entry
The contest submission (i.e. the public space image, movie and/or text) must be the original work of the submitting entrant. No infringing works will be knowingly accepted, and any works determined by the judging panel, in its sole discretion, to actually or likely infringe the rights of others will not be considered.

Ownership and Copyright
Submission of an entry does not assign or transfer any ownership of or rights in and to the content of the submission. Those rights remain with the original holder (the creator or the virtual world owner, as applicable). As a condition of entry, the entrant grants a license to the organizers of the State of Play conference to reproduce, display and perform the submission at the State of Play conference and to distribute the submission in print and on the web.

Multiple Submissions
Entrants may submit more than one submission. Each submission may contain multiple screen shots. But each submission should describe a distinct public structure, space or place.

Submission Deadline
All entries must be received by State of Play via stateofplay AT cyber.law.harvard.edu by September 28, 2005, 11:59pm ET. Entries submitted after the deadline will not be considered. No extensions will be made under any circumstances.

Judging Decisions
Judges are looking for the designs, spaces and structures that foster civic engagement, promote civil society and strengthen the public sphere while, at the same time, demonstrating artistic and aesthetic vision. All decisions of the judges in connection with the competition are final and are not subject to appeal or review. The judges may in their sole discretion decide to award all, some or none of the prizes listed below.

Rules
Please be advised these rules are subject to change at any time. Any questions related to the rules should be directed to stateofplay AT cyber.law.harvard.edu.

Comments

[Richard Bartle]

1.

Ren>Unlike the flat, text-based web world, virtual worlds reintroduce space and place on-line. I can occupy a plot of land, build a house there, and invite guests over to break bread or man the barricades.

What does "text-based" have to do with it?

Richard

[ren reynolds]

2.

Richard wrote:
>>Ren>Unlike the flat, text-based web world, virtual worlds reintroduce space
>>and place on-line. I can occupy a plot of land, build a house there, and
>>invite guests over to break bread or man the barricades.
>What does "text-based" have to do with it?

Did not have a chance to format correctly, this is all NYLS stuff that I just happened to post.

Having said that, quickly scanning the rules, I can’t see that they exclude text worlds, and I can’t wait to see how they would judge a text based public space that you might design and how they would compare it with a graphical one – go on enter one :)

[Ian Bogost]

3.

Following up on Richard's question, what about a public space in a non-multiplayer environment that could host social engagement, such as an Inform or TADS text adventure? Or a world with asynchronous properties? It says "entries from all massively multi-player games and worlds will be accepted" but I wonder why only synchronous, multiplayer virtual worlds are suggested to be proper fodder for public space?

I could just email the indicated address and ask, but that's much less confrontational :)

[ren reynolds]

4.

Ian Bogost > I could just email the indicated address and ask, but that's much less confrontational :)

I’m just starting to wonder if the meta-game of rule hacking is gonna be more interesting than the actual competition, as we are geting into some interesting definitional boundaries.

[Abalieno]

5.

Representative screenshots (GIF or JPEG) and/or short film giving a tour of the Space (MPG, MPEG, MOV or AVI)

I'm really curious about how you provide these if you want to submit a text-based thing.

It's pretty clear that they want a "visual" space.

[Ian Bogost]

6.

Abalieno -- I agree that it seems clear they want a visual space. Morever, they seem to want a 3D space and one within an existing (and publicly available) virtual world, thus a multiplayer space. Moreover, it futher appears to be "physical" -- the judges are architects. These observations seems to suggest a whole mess of assumptions about what might qualify as public space. At the same time, I'd happily take a screenshot of the description text of a textual space :) Or how about a short film of the user moving around in it?

Granted, the title is "MMOPG Public Space Design Competition," so the rules follow the title. But as someone who has arguably done more work than anyone in trying to make videogames "foster civic engagement" (as the judging criteria states), I remain unconvinced and in fact deeply skeptical that MMOG's are the best place to do that.

One of the reasons for this is that MMOG's seem to focus on the construction of space and community *in the virtual world* rather than focusing attention and critique on social engagement *in the material world*. This does not mean that MMOG's necessarily cannot or do not engage social issues across worlds, but certainly it is folly to claim that MMOG's are the only form of games that could do so. Does the fact that State of Play's lineup ONLY covers virtual worlds and not other types of videogames or game worlds suggest that it hopes to advance the claim just mentioned?

[bruce boston]

7.

Hi Ren,

First, I think this is a great idea, and it will be very interesting to see what people are submitting as this unfolds.

Second, Makena Technologies has just sweetened the deal for the community members of There.com. The following was posted today:
"...we are excited to announce that we will match the cash prize if you win with a submission of something you created in There."
Link to Full Article

This brings the cash prize opportunity up to $1000 for anyone interested.

-bruce

[Dr, Cat]

8.

Well, I'm glad they didn't list 3D as a requirement. Some of our places have had huge amounts of thought (and a lot of experience) put into developing map layouts, paths and roads, plavement of seating, signs, etc. in order to maximize various kinds of social interaction. I'm going to try and make sure we have at least one entry from our world in the contest. If nothing else, it'll hopefully remind everyone that 2D worlds have a lot to offer too. And while they lack some of the advantages 3D worlds have... 3D worlds also lack some of the advantages 2D worlds can have as well. Both have their merits.

[ren reynolds]

9.

Abalieno wrote:
> Representative screenshots (GIF or JPEG) and/or short film giving a tour of the
>Space (MPG, MPEG, MOV or AVI)
>>I'm really curious about how you provide these if you want to submit a text-based
>thing.

It’s this magic button called PrtScrn, combined with MS Paint’s SaveAs .JPEG function. As for movie – exactly the same way that you would provide any other movie from a PC. I don’t see any difficulty at all.

[ren reynolds]

10.

Ian > Granted, the title is "MMOPG Public Space Design Competition," so the rules follow the title.

Well if we follow the title then entries from Second Life and There should be excluded as neither are games:

http://secondlife.com/whatis/
http://www.there.com/index.html (see “What is There”, top right)

Entrants would first have to great an MMORG inside one of these worlds, then create the architecture, but without a ludic context then the rules would seem to bar them.

As to Ian’s wider points. I’m half way with him, in that I think that there are a lot of implicit assumptions going on about public spaces. But I guess that as the focus of SoP is primarily virtual worlds as opposed to the public nature of cyberspace, then I agree that some bounding is OK. What I do object to is the implicit assumption that 2D or text worlds do not count.

Again, I wanted to note - I just posted this. I had nothing to do with writing the rules.

[Ian Bogost]

11.

Ren -- yup, I know you're just the messenger. My questions are directed toward the community in general and not meant as jibes at you for posting it. Maybe it's time to get one of the organizers to answer these questions.

[Jeff Cole]

12.

From the Rules:

Submission of an entry does not assign or transfer any ownership of or rights in and to the content of the submission. Those rights remain with the original holder (the creator or the virtual world owner, as applicable). As a condition of entry, the entrant grants a license to the organizers of the State of Play conference to reproduce, display and perform the submission at the State of Play conference and to distribute the submission in print and on the web.

Is it too pedantic to point out that a license to display and perform a submission is a right in and to the content of the submission?

It's ironic to find such a provision considering both (1) Berkman, NY Law School, and Yale Law School's participation, and (2) the starring role in which IP seems to be reluctantly cast.

I realize the probability of any suit is all but zero, and the provision is more publicity than protection, but c'mon ...

Jeff Cole

[ren reynolds]

13.

Jeff > Is it too pedantic to point out,,,

Too pedantic – heck no. The irony of the competition in the context of SoP seems wonderful.

In fact I was thinking further, the entry has to be both described and has to exist in a given virtual world. As I’ve noted above this seems to be scope limited to a game world. Just about all of which have EULAs that state that the stuff in the world is the property of the publisher.

So, I own the rights to my design. But to enter you also have to have something in a virtual world and grant rights to this to some other party.

So, if the virtual world is a SOE, NCSoft, etc one, then the individual will have to get a special licence for them and the organisers, what’s more if the build it self if part of the entry, then the prize must go jointly to the designer (for their non instantiated designs) and to the world owner (as they own the build) unless there is some kind of special contract in place between the creator and the publisher.

If not, is the entrant not passing of a derivative works as their own, are the not defrauding NY Law school in some way if they accepted the prize.

And if its OK to draw something, then use MMO tools to build it, then get money from NY Law School for it – then how is it not OK to eBay it?

So in fact, are NY Law School not encouraging people to breach contract and ignore IPR if the above situation pertains.

Moreover if legal council form one or more of these companies is present and do nothing about it – is eBaying then OK, if not, how are Sony et al going to argue that the competition is OK but not eBaying?

[ren reynolds]

14.

Ian > Ren -- yup, I know you're just the messenger.

OK. It was not the possibility of jibes that I was worrying about. Jibe all you want at me here (if you ever wish to), just simply the point, for clarity, that while I am organising one of the SoP III workshops, I just don’t happen to have anything to do with this bit of the conference, other than being a potnential entrant of some text world thingy or other, or potential challenger to the validity of the winner if an entry from a non-game world, or game world with prohibitive IP regime wins - that is unless NYLS change or publically interpret the rules between now and then.

[BSN]

15.

Reading this thread with great pleasure and amusement and looking forward to your submissions! Hope to see everyone in October: http://www.nyls.edu/stateofplay. Best, Beth

[Beth, web designer]

16.

I would be happy to see some of the works... This is a good chance for talented designers to get recognized, and this is a great opportunity to make our everyday life more beautiful.