Terra Nova

A Gazillion Lindens

Linden Lab creators of Second Life have just received $11 Million in a new round of financing lead by Globespan Capital Partners, blar blar blar.

Question is: where is all the money going?

Obviously with the increasing roster of TN authors the bulk of the new capital injection is going to fund the next round of drinks Cory gets us, but what are they going to do with the change?

Williams Testifies in US Senate

Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights, holds hearings today on “What’s in a Game? Regulation of Violent Video Games and the First Amendment”. Dmitri Williams speaks on his game violence research in the first panel, 2pm.

SIGGRAPH Sandbox

Run, don't walk, to the two day ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium on Video Game Design on 29 July and 30 July, co-located with SIGGRAPH 06 in Boston, where Ian Shaw and Greg Costikyan are already confirmed as keynote speakers. Others are in the process of being assimilated by the borg. Call for papers here

Taylor Plays Between Worlds

Former TN author TL Taylor (Center for Computer Games Research, ITU Copenhagen) has written a new book that's just come out, Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. It's a must-read. I get so many emails and calls from people who cannot understand why these spaces matter to those immersed in them. I try to 'explain' it, but I am not sure it can be 'explained'. You have to experience it. Read this book and you'll be a lot closer to experiencing it, and maybe close to getting it. Taylor's approach is ethnographic; she puts you inside the realms and exposes you to the things that happen, all with a sound critical eye. Highly recommended.

Sovereignty and Development

Fritz Effenberger of VNUnet kindly alerted us to a potentially-interesting development. He writes:

"I just want to point at a very interesting turn in mmo development. Reakktor, the German MMO developer, running its cyberpunk MMO Neocron for more than 3 years now, had announced to rework the graphics of the game, only to receive massive complaints from the gaming community. Neocron players rated balancing problems more important than changes in graphics, so the development started an ongoing forum discussion about character classes and balancing issues. I actually never heard of such a thing before: gamers have a voice in balancing reworks, common opinions get re-posted by the devs and re-discussed by the comm. It just looks like this MMO is going to be formed using democratic ways."

WoW to open for-pay character transfers soon?

Transfer-per-pay may be coming to World of Warcraft in the near future.

While trying to get into phone support for WoW, came across an odd recorded message saying something to the effect that character transfers are not yet available, and to keep watching worldofwarcraft.com for information on when this would be made available. (Subsequent attempts to call back in and transcribe the message exactly did not elicit the message again.)

After getting through to a service rep and dealing with my problem, I asked about that message and he said that they hope to have it ready “in the near future”, but that they want to make sure that it’s bullet-proof before it’s made widely available. It will be pay-for-transfer. Gold and goods should transfer with the character, but they’ve been having difficulty maintaining in-progress quest kills in the transfers. Also, I was surprised to hear that honor will be preserved, although the hidden honor “value” associated with each character will map to a possibly different honor rank on another server.

New Math

Rodney Brooks recently penned an essay on the need for a new mathematics "that is so revolutionary and elegantly simple that it will appear in high-school curricula."    He claims that understanding biological systems "demands it."

Game Studies at GDC, Part 2

After the ranting, moaning and blogging about the first session I participated in at GDC this year, I have to say I was a bit nervous about presenting at The Game Studies Download. However, given that it was the last session, on the last day, Ian Bogost, Jane McGonigal and I figured there wouldn't be too many people around to see it, much less heckle. We made 50 handouts and figured that was being optimistic. And then the people started arriving, and then more came in, and the room was filled. Seriously.

Raph Koster

Ordinarily we don't do industry news, but good god, how could we not mention that SOE and Raph have parted ways.

Yeah, not so much

Wired's newest issue is about [drumroll] games. A hefty chunk of which is on MMOGs. Much to tease out, but we received a great note from a reader about one article and we wanted to share it with you.

Steven Johnson has a piece in which he suggests a convergence of game worlds is probable and/or desirable, and that we should be able to move toons across worlds. Andy Havens wrote to Steven Johnson to disagree. He writes:

"Steven:

"Er... yeah. Because people have always wanted to see how Heathcliff would
have ganged up with Beowulf in a tag-team match against Luke Skywalker and
Madame Bovary using those bone clubs from "2001."

Coding Dispositions at GDC

Not too long ago on the TN backchannel, a few of us got to talking about the tendency for game designers and developers to fall into the trap of looking down upon their users, devaluing their knowledge, opinions, and skills. Well, in the wake of my first (and certainly very limited) GDC experience, I'm surprised to find myself revisiting this criticism of game developer myopia. I'm coming to believe that precisely what this site might be seen as testament to -- the ability of researchers, writers, designers, and developers to talk together productively -- is the very thing that may not have much potential beyond cozy corners such as this...

He Died For Our Griefing

Via f13, I see that the historical MMOG Roma Victor, now in beta testing, has come up with a unique punishment for griefing: crucifixion.

Boom or Bust?

Why is it that when someone bills themselves as “a leading developer, publisher and distributor of online games”, I’ve likely never heard of them? 

Like I don’t already get enough junk mail from various people who want to show me how to increase the size of my johnson, sell me Cialis, increase my sperm count, send me a watch that looks just like an honest-to-God Rolex so I can pretend to be rich, too, inform me of the latest hot penny stock or introduce me to other shy, but sexually deviant, single daters in my neighborhood: somebody spammed the Terra Nova mailing list with this press release.

It did get me thinking, though probably not in the way the spammer intended.

Daedalus Data

In the new issue of The Daedalus Project:

• What's life like as a guild leader? Narratives from current and past guild leaders highlight common pain-points and lessons learned.
• As to the origin of guild leaders, younger players who are guild leaders tend to be leaders of guilds they created themselves whiles older players who are guild leaders tend to be leaders of guilds they inherited. An interesting life-cycle of guilds may be at play.
• About 30% of respondents use a VoIP tool on a regular basis. The best predictor of VoIP use was the Achievement motivation (Socialization comes in third).
• 45% of respondents had at least 2 computers in their household on which an MMO is regularly played. About 20% of male respondents and 50% of female respondents regularly play with someone else in the same room.

The future of VWs over a quarter

I like to bet people a quarter. I pick a quarter because when someone wins or loses, it's completely about the principle rather than the money. If you bet someone $100 and you win, you're focused on the money. If you bet .25c, it becomes totally about pride.

So I just bet Cory a quarter over the following proposition: Which will have more North American users two years from now: Second Life or WoW?

More Than a Pretty Face

They could be your neighbors, your best friends, even... you! Yes, video-game cross-dressers are all around us -- but just who are these gender-bending gamers we keep hearing so much about?

Last time we touched on the subject of video-game cross-dressing, we asked the question: Where does it happen? This time, we want to know: Who's doing it?

Hunt and Peck?

Earlier this year Greg Wilson in Gamasutra wrote "Off With Their HUDs!:  Rethinking the Heads-Up Display in Console Game Design."  He suggested that the game industry is evolving away from the Heads-Up-Display (HUD) and moving towards incorporating information directly into the game environment...

Computer Games Magazine to Launch New MMO Publication

Straight from their mouths: "MASSIVE Magazine Will Be Devoted Exclusively to Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Computer Games Magazine, published by the media division of theglobe.com, today announced it will publish MASSIVE Magazine, the first print publication dedicated solely to massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. It will provide avid online gamers a new source for the latest news, features, and previews. The premiere issue will hit newsstands for a three-month run on September 19, 2006, and will start as a stand-alone quarterly publication by January 2007. It will also include a free DVD packed with MMO demos and games.

Confessions of a Virtual Intelligence Analyst

We live in a world where the technology exists that the government or other technically sophisticated group is able to monitor and analyze a substantial fraction of the communications of the world's population, or can track their movements throughout the day, or keep tabs on their financial transactions.

And that world is called World of Warcraft.

While the NSA has been capturing and analyzing international phone calls and electronic communications, with far less press coverage I’ve spent much of the last year collecting and helping to analyze data scraped from World of Warcraft as part of the largest quantitative study of virtual worlds to date.

We've run into a series of problems trying to scrape information from five of WoW's servers -- some expected, some not -- and developed some rules of thumb in the process.

The Gamer Bloc

In response to anti-game legislation, some of it ridiculous, the Entertainment Software Association has established a Video Game Voters Network. Members are encouraged to advocate for sound policies regarding the medium. I've been thinking quite a bit lately about policy issues as regards synthetic worlds. Some questions, below the fold.

Race Bending

One of our readers, George Lara, sent us a question that is interesting, provocative and on which, no doubt, the hivemind has views.

George writes:

"In the past, I've read articles from various sources about "Gender Bending" players who take on opposite genders while online. I wonder if and of your authors has dived into the subject of playing someone of a different race or skin color? I play a human character in WoW that has dark hair and skin and I notice that my character really was a true minority among human characters (I'm Latino in real life) who were overwhelmingly Anglo. It lead me to wonder if there are players out there who "Race Bend", and is it as common as those who gender bend. Are offline persons of color choosing to play Anglo humanoid players and vice versa and why?"

Welcome Eric Nickell

A while back we announced that we had added Nic Ducheneaut to our authorial ranks, as part of a strategy to take over the brainpower of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) but pay nothing for the privilege. Since we already had Nick Yee on our non-payroll, this was a moderately-implausible but amusing story. I can now announce the next stage in our takeover strategy, by announcing that we are collectively delighted to welcome Eric Nickell to the blog. Eric is a computer scientist in the Computing Science Laboratory at PARC, with a B.S. from Caltech, an M.A. from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a wealth of experience as a video game designer, and computer programmer/analyst developing high-speed imaging software and task management software. More important than this though, he is one of the principals behind the PARC PlayOn project, which is collecting and analysing and thinking about MMOGs.

Disembodiment, Hypermobility, and Labor

Ge Jin, a PhD student from UCSD, is making a video documentary of the gold farming phenomenon (preview here). The documentary preview shows some of his interviews with Chinese workers in various gold farming workshops. In our conversations over email, he has brought up some interesting points based on his observations. He's also looking for feedback and suggestions for important research questions and different points of view.

Of Mechanical Mice and Men

I found myself wondering Jeff Orkin's muse about "the future of AI in an increasingly multiplayer-dominated world."  He asks whether the AI in the virtual world will be limited to roles for which no player would want to engage.  This is a religious topic in the games  community, easy to miss.  But then along the way comes a report of a "massacre" of Chinese players by Korean players in Lineage and old questions surface:  better to trust the world to AI (and game design) or the players?

Far East News

The online games Free Style, Audition, Everquest II (China)  cap our Far East thoughts  today.

You Owe Me

BillMonk, a hybrid of financial tracking and social networking that allows you to see what your balance is with your friends, now supports virtual game currencies. BillMonk itself is interesting is that the debts it tracks are all informal, backed only by the trust between/among friends rather than hard currency or legal obligation, making it a virtual and voluntary economy of hundreds of thousands of ___ [<-- insert your favorite unit of currency here]. And now, its gone meta-virtual, adding support for virtual currency debt types as well.

According the Chuck, the BillMonk guru, "The awkwardness friends have with money is a chronic social/cultural problem, and our users tell us that we're really helping them make their lives easier. We find it fascinating to trace friendship networks, especially when they cross currency and location boundaries." Best of all, for those of us interested in the kinds of social/monetary network data this software generates, BillMonk is willing to, er, share the wealth (of data, that is). Properly scrubbed of names and all identifying information to protect folks' privacy of course.

Mimicry, Melting Faces, and The Proteus Effect

Those of you who know that The Daedalus Project isn't my main research project at Stanford may have wondered what it is I actually do at Stanford. Here's the short version. I melt faces.

Purging

Norseheim is a textual world being run by Jamie Slate at Catawba College as experimental research into co-operation and competition under constraints. This is a long-term project which takes an Economics perspective (although nothing is published yet).

What makes it particularly interesting for us here at Terra Nova, however, is the nature of the constraints. Basically, four times a year, the player database is purged. Everyone starts again from scratch.

Hamlet who?

Hamlet Linden is no more. Arise Hamlet Au. Yup - it’s all change in the VW community this year. Betsy has gone There, Uri has gone who knows where and Hammie has gotten de-embedded.

I would suggest that you can read all about the real deal at LL from my hard hitting interview with the big H where I reduce a grown man to confused tears of rage and pain, or reveal the true life kiss-and-tell story of CA geeks gone wild replete with photo’s, video and avatar reenactments. But no. I’d love to say he’s also joined There, as that would just be funny. But no again.

The truth of is it that he’s changed name, changed URL but has managed to smuggle out the New World Notes brand with him. And he’s writing like crazy, covering free speech, creative commons, abusive float monkeys all this week. Though I have to say the images in Hamlet Reborn are kinda spooky, like a dream where your freakish new clone pitches up and presses your off button.

Anyhoo here’s his new pad: nwn.blogs.com

[note: this message was brought to you by the friends of Hamlet and the letter H, the opinions expresses were bias and may or may not represent those of the author, genuineness being proportionate to units of alcohol bought for said author at time or times to be determined]

Play as Production / Labor

In the inaugural issue of the new game studies journal Games and Culture, Celia Pearce and I wrote two short articles that touched upon some similar themes. We both challenged the assumption of unproductive play in different ways. The full articles from that issue of Games and Culture are available after a free registration.

SLurl

Earlier, in The Geography of Travel we suggested the complicated relationships that form between users and maps shaped by function.  Second Life reminds us of this as it reaches to provide webpage links to places in it's virtual world...

The Cultivation Hypothesis

Cultivation theory has been around for about four decades now. What is it? The idea is that if you consume some kind of media consistently, you'll start thinking that the real world is more like the media one.

The classic case is television news. People who watch a lot of it were supposed to think that their neighborhoods were more dangerous. Only the studies were generally trashed in one of the better academic food fights that my field's ever had. One particularly devastating critique showed the the zodiac signs of the people in the studies were a better predictor than what they watched. So for years we've thought that the theory, while appealing, was probably a load of baloney.

The problem is, I found cultivation in an MMO.

Far East News

Today's discussion from the Far East - recruiting farmers in China and identity theft in Korea (Lineage).

Raph's Rants

Longtime TN reader and Second Life resident Kolby Granville points us to recent musings of Raph Koster on the subject of MMORPG design. Fine material from a top thinker.