Terra Nova

What Are You Missing?

New Scientist (dot) Com details recent studies on "game addiction."   Studies analogizing computer game cues with "drug memory" triggers is discussed.  Additionally, some interesting work with "startle reflexes" is introduced.    However, the fascination of the neurological with the computer game (in a manner of speaking) is likely complex...

The Horde is Evil

In the Terranova backchannel, an ugly debate (I've been creating most of the ugliness) has erupted over the significance of avatar choice. I've advanced two controversial positions: that avatar choice is not a neutral thing from the standpoint of personal integrity, and that the Horde, in World of Warcraft, is evil. Nobody agrees, but it's been suggested that the community could chew on this a bit.

One Room School

National Public Radio recently revisited the One-Room School House (ref. Wiki).  Emphasized in "Maine School Binds Isolated Island Together"  is how a one-room school binds community on Monhegan Island (10 miles off the coast of Maine).  To many of us these few remaining places are a legacy of a distant rural  America  (in 1919 there were reportedly 190K one-room schools, now barely 400).  Undermined by modern transportation and the brutal efficiencies of consolidation, I wonder if they are worth noting here...

The Solution to Griefing is... The FBI?

There have been several recent reports of high-profile incidents of griefing and even an effective "denial of service" (DOS) attack within Second Life.  The worst of these shut down the system entirely due to the behavior of in-game scripted objects.  In this incident, a self-replicating object did just that: replicated by doubling itself to the point it brought the servers down.  DOS from the inside, apparently intentional, using the tools provided by Linden Labs to its users.

According to reports Linden Labs first changed the capabilities of the scripting language to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, but then rolled back that change due to the outcry from honest SL citizens, as it effectively disabled many of the scripted objects they had come to depend on.

So the ultimate solution?  Not content with banning the individuals involved (generally acknowledged as ineffective in SL and other virtual worlds/games, given how easy it is to come back again), Linden Labs has called in the FBI. 

TN Welcomes Mike Sellers

In my mind, Mike deserves credits at the level of a Bartle for his role as lead design in the first 3D graphical MUD, Meridian 59 (which lives on under the direction of frequent commenter Brian Green).  Consistent with that start, Mike went on to found and direct a number of projects in the industry, and has to be counted among the elite when it comes to both theoretical and hands-on understanding of the strange thing we're all studying. His most recent work on believable AI is likely IMHO to create yet another singularity in this space; the immersive quality made a discontinuous leap when 3D came about, and it will do so again when NPCs begin to acquire credible social and emotive behaviors. Mike's also got a crafting focus in interfaces, and has degrees in cognitive science as well as AI.

We're very lucky to have people like Mr. Sellers, people with actual talent and experience, continue to join our happy band. I increasingly feel that Greg, Dan, Julian and I are playing the role of stone to the fine soup that's being brewed here.  Welcome Mike!

And so as not to miss out on Richard's "Which TNer" quiz, we might ask everyone to guess which of the following things Mike Sellers has NOT done:

Which TNer? - Answers

Those of you pacing the floor in expectation need wait no longer! Here are the answers to the "Which TNer?" quiz!

How to end a world?

How should the end of a world come to pass?

New Video Game Design: No Harmful Effect on Children

A template for a safe game (from the makers of the notoriously dangerous and unhealthy GTA, surprisingly enough) has emerged at the Tokyo Game Show, as reported in America's finest news source.

A Diagnosis For Online Gaming Syndrome

A Korean doctor has outlined a health risk pattern that predicts death from online gaming. The most common cause of gaming death in Korea, according to Dr. Song Hyeong-gon,  is pulmonary thrombo-embolism, a seizure of the cortex. In the gaming cases, it is caused by sudden visual stimulation following long periods of high stress with low physical activity.  Eurogamer reports; Chosunilbo Digital had the original story (but I don't have a link).

Makes me wonder: Should Terra Nova have a health category? Should we get a gaming health expert to join us?

Holiday Reading

Want some reading over the holidays?

I'm a bit late with this, because of Typepad's recent problems, but take a look at the term papers for Aaron Delwiche's Games for the Web course at Trinity university. They're almost all refreshing and insightful, and if I didn't tell you they were written by undergraduates you might have had a hard time figuring it out from the content - it's of a very high standard. Not all of them are formal enough to put in .pdfs, but even some of those that aren't make some interesting observations.

If you're into the social science side of virtual world research, check them out.

Richard

Cockpit of your avatar

If a virtual world is a cockpit capable of holding, say, the "vasty fields of France," what of the cockpit that is you represented by your avatar and mediated by pixels, keyboard, and mouse?  Do the constraints of the interface as they then become folded into the design of the game encourage us to view the avatar as a machine of components and of verbs reified into icons arrayed into trays...

Marvel v NCsoft Whimpers Out

Marvel, NCsoft and Crytpic have settled the "City of Heroes" lawsuit. As always the settlement is "amicable" and it clears the way for both parties "to develop and sell exciting and innovative products" and yada yada yada.

I guess this is hardly surprising, and no doubt in the parties' best interests. But law academics always feel a little let down when there is nothing to point to by way of a precedent or policy pronouncement. And this case was really significant because it exposed the faultlines of intellectual property protection in this space, and made a number of people recognize that there is a significant issue in the way that we express ourselves within MOGs/VWs.

But enough of my mewlings.

Hand me some more eggnog.

Summary over the fold and here is the press release.

Update: 7:54pm Story here by Daniel Terdiman, quoting all manner of notables, but none so notable as our very own G. Lastowka Esq. As Greg says: "... Marvel's claims of player infringement have not been formally rejected by the court, which means analogous claims might be pursued by Marvel, or a like-minded company, in the future."

Constructing the Market (or “1000g for you, auctionbitch”)

The auctionhouse (AH) in World of Warcraft is an interesting place. I like it mostly for the fact that it’s one of the few unscripted places within the world, where player autonomy means that a number of unplanned and emergent features can emerge. We’ve mentioned a few of these before: here, for instance, and, um, here, and, oh, also here. An interesting aspect of this though is that emergent, player-created artifacts are not viewed with universal enthusiasm. My guildies and I have been trading in the AH a lot, and this weekend we start work on our cartelization program. I doubt that we’re going to win any new friends with this little initiative. But even in the normal operation of the market the response of some players is fascinating.

Beauty is Pixel Deep

Two intertwined thoughts:

From PlayOn analysis: In World of Warcraft, there is a higher percentage of female characters in Alliance than Horde. On Alliance side, 1 out of 3 characters is female. On Horde side, 1 out of 5 characters is female. Most players would probably also agree that Alliance female characters are far more attractive than Horde female characters.

Behavioral Confirmation: The psychological phenomenon where a perceiver's expectations of a target causes the target to behave in a way that confirms the perceiver's expectations. In the classic study (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977), male undergrads chatted over the phone with female undergrads they did not previously know. Half the male undergrads were given a photo of an attractive woman and the other half were given photos of unattractive women (unbeknownst to the women themselves). This is  analogous to interacting with an attractive female Night Elf online.

Elvish Gold

Joshua de Larios-Heiman, who recently graduated from University of San Francisco School of Law, wrote a piece about virtual currency and some of the legal implications. It's called "Can Elvish Gold Pieces Ever Become Real Money? The Numismatic Qualities of Virtual Currency Under the Law". From the abstract:

"This essay addresses whether virtual currency, the medium of exchange used in the economies of massive multiplayer online games, can ever be imputed to be real money under American law. Part I defines the basic concepts surrounding virtual property and virtual currency. Part II focuses on the application of American commercial law to virtual currency, examines whether virtual currency should be construed by courts to be real money, and looks at pubic policy concerns of making such a determination. Part III examines virtual currency under existing Federal criminal law and focuses specifically on how the Money Laundering Control Act, 18 U.S.C.A. 1956, applies to virtual currency. Finally this essay summarizes the arguments presented and concludes that in specific situations, virtual currency should be imputed to be real money under the law. "

His advisor on this was cyber law professor Susan Freiwald who, I'm delighted to say, used to work in my department. (Indeed, I owe my job to her: had she not seen the light and moved to San Francisco I wouldn't be here). Oh, and prior to law school Josh had a career in securities where he created the world’s first financial superhero. You can read his comics here. The mind boggles.

The Grey Area

Back in college, my writing instructor told us all that good fiction happened because of complex characters. His line that I remember well was "Even mass murderers have mothers." This has always been my way to understand why I liked some fiction and disliked other areas. Purely "good" and purely "bad" are plainly boring and unrealistic. The NYT suggests this is why people buy George R. R. Martin's books and I agree.

So does this help explain at all why some people pick certain MMO races and classes that are coded as good, evil or in that grey area? I have a hypothesis:

Free Speech Coalition and MMOGs?

Kolby Granville, a law student at Arizona State with an interest in MMOGs and a reader of TN, made an observation off-blog that is worth sharing:

" I was surprised that I was unable to find a reference to a thread discussing Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition 535 U.S. 234, 122 S.Ct. 1389 (2002). Considering that so often when people talk about the "magic circle" and the need to keep laws out of games someone stands up and says, "but what about for child porn!"

In fact, I even remember at State of Play III during one of the panels someone mentioning, "What if we had a game where the point of the game was to lure virtual children, naturally the law would want to prevent that..." (Richard Bartle)

However, in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition the court seems to say that may be permitted (at least via my cursory reading).

Perhaps this case is not discussed on the site because it was pre-site creation. Maybe the case was just interesting to me. Just wanted to point it out."

The Supreme Court decision on this can be found here. It concerns the constitutionality of a statute regulating "virtual" child pornography.

Thoughts?

Ludium I Results Available

Go to arden.indiana.edu to download the report and watch a documentary. 

Which TNer?

Time for a festive quiz!

Or, as they're known outside the USA, a Christmas quiz!

I asked every member of the Terra Nova team to volunteer some interesting trivia about themself, and here is the result. All TNers participated except Tim and TL, whose secrets are obviously too dark for public consumption.

All you have to do is guess which TNer fits the deed.

This has nothing to do with "Exploring Virtual Worlds".

There are no prizes whatsoever.

Richard

Ghost In The Machine

David Kennerly wrote an article a while back on why MMOG players don't really want randomness in the sense as it is usually discussed colloquially ("a die-roll").  Specifically he suggests that we would feel better if virtual worlds adopted mechanisms whose random samples were based on replacement (akin to pulling cards from a deck, "Randomness without Replacement").  One way of looking at this is through an analogy.  Damion Schubert a while back wrote an excellent piece about the the state of design of AI characters in MMOGs - namely their stupidity is their greatest virtue:  they present a pattern, a "puzzle the player needs to solve..."  And too a puzzle the player can solve."

If it is really unfettered chance and serendipity that we despise, is card counting the obvious successor?   Perhaps what we really want is visibility into the breadth of the function of the world...

NYTimes Tracks Down Gold Farmers

David Barboza's front-page report is the first solid journalistic evidence that RMT has spawned a cottage gold farming industry in low-wage countries. We knew it was true but had nothing to point to. Now we have something to point to.

Registration required. An excerpt follows.

DAC and PCD

We just hosted the DAC conference here at the ITU and it was, as always, great to hang out with smart, interesting folks and get to chat and hear what they are up to. There are a lot of threads that came up during the conference and you can read various coverage via links at the conference wiki. I just want to mention one theme I have been hearing more and more about recently, something termed "player-centered design."

Unsanctioned Advergaming Appears In WoW

At 10:33 EST this evening, in World of Warcraft, I received the following 'tell' (direct person-to-person message):

"Adifdkd whispers: Hi, pls visit www.itembay.ca The low Price: $8.99=100G, $16.99=200G $40.99=500G $75.99=1000G. First Come, First Serve."

This on a role-playing server, no less. While I think it may be a first (I've never experienced direct in-game advertisement unless it is sanctioned by the developer, and I haven't heard stories about it either), I can't imagine it is too hard to do, coding-wise.

I imagine by next week I will be getting messages from players named UrFr3ndslik3itt00 and B3tsee34D offering low-interest mortgages and rock-hard erections. For me, it's a moment of duh. Duh - of course game communications would become spam conduits. Of course.

Still, let's not forget that the toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube by gold pharmers. First and foremost. Can anyone still deny that RMT, though innocent in its origins, at this scale becomes a serious pollutant of online games?

Make Your Own Virtual World

One of the bottlenecks in virtual world research is the fact that we academics don't have any virtual worlds of our own. The reason for this is simply cost: it's just too expensive to create one to anything approaching professional quality (unless you go with a textual world, in which case it's cheap but you don't get players).

Nasty, Brutish and Short

When I decided to focus on World of Warcraft for a while, I joined a bunch of newbies (and some oldbies from Alliance side) and we rolled Horde characters on a PvP server. It’s not clear in retrospect why we chose PvP. A number of us (myself included) have instinctively gone for carebear servers in the past, because PvP just seemed, well, so unfriendly; and a number of us have previously gravitated to RP servers.

The response of the guild members has been really interesting. A couple really hate our server, largely as a result of spending time in the Hillsbrad Foothills (a.k.a. the "Hobbesbrad Foothills" for reasons well known to any Horde toon who has tried to quest there; and which the subject line should make clear). For some reason there is a really bad Alliance-Horde dynamic on our server, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that lvl ?? Alliance chars wiped the floor with my mid-20s tauren. A couple of guildies have reported the Alliance toons at the same level attacking them, with one or two lvl 60 Alliance escorts on hand in the event that the fight doesn’t go as planned. Pointless, and stupid, and pretty close to my definition of griefing; but there it is.

EVE Online and Emergent Structures

Mark WalkerWallace's great blog has a really wonderful post about a player-created structure within EVE, that was funding through a player-created share offering. Some really great observations about the nature of EVE, the difference between it and other VWs, and the possibilities of emergent economic activities in various worlds.

From the introduction:

"Once again it seems the MMO EVE Online enables and encourages some of the most robust economically and socially oriented gameplay of any massively multiplayer metaverse out there. In this case, it's the EVE galaxy's first player-concocted initial public offering, of shares in a neutral player-owned outpost that is to provide services to warring player factions deep in the lawless reaches of what is often known in EVE as "Alliance space," where there are no NPC police to protect you from PvP. From a game design perspective, the question, of course, is what ingredients EVE has that makes this kind of thing possible for its players."

Names and Narrative

Fair warning -- I'm playing outside of my sandbox here.

One question that has been bothering me for quite some time is why we conceive of avatars as alternate identities.  It seems to me that that is not how many (most?) of us experience avatars.  They are not alternate selves.  Rather, to the extent I do engage in storytelling and not Halo-style enemy blasting, I do so as a narrative.  My characters are more akin to characters in a book, rather than alternate identities.    (My critical literary theory is especially weak.   I'm sure someone with an English degree will tell us many useful things about the relationship of authors to authored characters.)

Equations of death

dead (dead (un-dead)) = ?

Lost in Space

Should a five ounce bird be able to carry a one pound coconut  (1. , 2. )? 

In the real world small matters count.  If nothing else you might trip over them.  In dynamic environments small matters can compound into big ones.  Consider how space is used and occupied by ourselves.  Presence has mass.  Obstacles carry substance...

Rivalrous Consumption of Virtual Assets

Today must be my day for catching up on reading (which is about all I'm good for today, having spent waaaay too much time instance-raiding recently).

Anyway, I'm delighted to be able to recommend another essay, this time by Andy Schwarz and Robert Bullis. It's called Rivalrous Consumption and the Boundaries of Copyright Law: Intellectual Property Lessons from Online Games..

Don't let the title put you off (law review essays always have dull titles--it's mandatory). It's about the implications of the easy-to-understand-but-absolutely-vital economic concept of rivalrous and non-rivalrous consumption, ie when the use of a good by one person precludes / doesn't preclude use by another. This has emerged as one of the most significant basis for criticism of the current intellectual property system, but hasn't been sufficiently examined in MMOGs before.[fn1] The paper outlines some of the implications for viewing virtual assets as rivalrous or non-rivalrous goods.

It also has a section on antitrust (ie anti-competitive) implications of EULAs inter alia, which is sure to raise some eyebrows and put some noses out of joint.

The opening paragraph is over the fold, and defines the scope pretty well:

Economic Stages of MMOGs

One of our regular commentators, Bart Stewart, has a paper examining MMOG economies, and contrasting them with the development of economic systems in the real world. We're hosting it here for him, and I've put his synopsis over the fold. Worth reading. Interesting both in terms of understanding certain relationships between MMOG and RW economic systems, and for some possibilities it throws up for alternatives to the approaches favored in the current MMOGs.