Terra Nova

Proceed and Permit

Looks like we have found Get A First Life’s (GAFL) strongest supporter – Second Life. OK, Linden Lab. A link in the footer of GAFL’s page asks for “comments or cease and desist letters”.

So Linden’s lawyer sent one.

But not the letter that anyone might be expecting. Rather than ordering GAFL to stop it provides a brief legal defense of the right’s of parody under US law.

Before anyone gets cynical about this ‘master stroke of PR genius’ that the LL folk dreamed up in their Dr Evil bunker, c’mon give them a break – it follows Linden’s long standing ethos of IP use and, best of all, it’s funny.

Synchronized Punditry About Second Life

Clay Shirky, Beth Coleman, and Henry Jenkins have decided to coordinate simultaneous blog posts discussing Second Life.

Clay's post on Many-to-Many, entitled Second Life, Games, and Virtual Worlds, addresses two questions: "Will Second Life become a platform for a significant online population? And, second, what can Second Life tell us about the future of virtual worlds generally?" No, it's not an SL-bashing piece. Not in the least. What it is is a thoughtful, lengthy exploration of the questions he poses. His conclusion? That the promise of immersive virtual worlds will not be met with today's technologies, and that "as a result, games will continue to dominate the list of well-populated environments for the foreseeable future, rendering ineffectual the category of virtual worlds, and, critically, many of the predictions being attached thereunto."

Henry's post, A Second Look at Second Life, responds directly to some of Clay's previous criticisms of SL press coverage, but shifts the focus: "I care only a little bit about the future of virtual worlds. I care a great deal about the future of participatory culture. And for the moment, the debate about and the hype surrounding SL is keeping alive the idea that we might design and inhabit our own worlds and construct our own culture. That's something worth defending."

Unfortunately, Beth's post has yet to make its appearance on her site, but I'll update this post once it does.

The posts are intended to be the beginning of a coordinated conversation. According to Henry, "After corresponding with Shirky and with my colleague Beth Coleman, it was decided that we would offer some new statements about this controversy across our three blogs today and respond to each other's posts in about a week's time. We also agreed that we would post links to the other posts through our sites which would help readers navigate between the various positions." I'll certainly be watching this interchange with interest.

RMT to disappear forever. Just kidding.

From fellow muckrackers at Slashdot, we learn that eBay is going to enforce its ban on MMO RMT.

Will this have any discernable impact on the financial traffic? Will it simply move it to less savory locations?

Virtual World Tours

Lisa cites Ta-Nehisi Coates (Time magazine) "show(ing) off his avatar, guild, travel options, a few locations, and other favorite things in WoW via Time's animated photojournalism format. "  For those of you unfamiliar, it is a great way to get to know a place  (narrated photo essay).

Dragon Kill Points and Posner

Posner seems quite interested in our little corner of the metaverse.  He invited our own Edward Castronova to his Rational Models colloquium to give a whitepaper that we co-wrote on Dragon Kill Points.

SL Economy Misunderstood Again

A whitepaper is making the rounds claiming that the Second Life economy is a ponzi scheme. I wasn't sure whether to blog this at all; the SL economy is so obviously not a mere scheme that it's hardly worth opposing the notion. But what's interesting here is not that the SL economy is not as liquid as, say, the economy of the United States. It's that serious consultants such as Randolph Harrison would go into SL expecting the economy to be as liquid as that of the United States. What a silly expectation. Wonder where they got that idea?

Dreaming of An Educational MMO

Finally, via Joystiq, a productive use of time for those of us who worry that repeatedly whacking monsters is not actually contributing to improvements in our zen… Or maybe it is, but soon it will be possible to learn Chinese in Zon – The New Chengo Chinese MMO, and we'll be able to both get zen and spout koans right and left in their intended language! And maybe even be able to play someday with our  millions of  Chinese fellow WoW fiends, or at least lambast the gold farmers appropriately...

Virtual World Has Billions of Residents

It's called First Life. Read a beta review here.

Go Pats!

This is the weekend when the New England Patriots face-off the Indianapolis Colts in the play-offs, and I am a partisan.  In Beantown now, folks are giddy.  So much so, that news on the subject often qualifies as running a Madden Football 2007 simulation of Sunday's game and reporting the result (Fn1).

Sports themes seemed to have been washing ashore on Terra Nova for quite some time.  Just recently there was the Red Sox maestro angle, earlier this year I suggested that MMORPG Player-versus-Player combat (PvP) was more like sports than, well, "war".  One year ago, at about this time, I dragged Doug Flutie and his "Drop Kick" into the cookery.  Throw into this broth a series of discussions over the past several months in and about this topic and I'm breathless:  are MMORPGs indeed more sport than game, or vice versa?

I Love the Smell of Burning Crusade in the Morning

My main interest in virtual worlds remains the way in which they serve as an accidental laboratory for studying historical change in societies over time, and in particular, the evolution of emergent, accidental or unpredictable structures and practices.

So there's this thing called "The Burning Crusade" that I've heard about. Maybe you have too? Let's make this an open thread of sorts for collecting and commenting on reports of transformation or novelty in the social structures within World of Warcraft. I have a few initial thoughts below the fold.

The Green Monster

Curt Schilling's MMOG startup venture is attracting a great deal of attention (e.g., see 1., 2.), less for its proposition than for its messenger.  Over the years Curt has built a considerable reputation in the off-season as a dedicated online game player and ferocious advocate of MMOGs to the mainstream.  From my perspective, as significant are his contributions to a declining board wargame culture (Advanced Squad Leader):  it is hard to dress this up as fashionable.  I guess it must be passion.

Where are you?

Using a new web mash-up [1.], you can view via a browser the location of a pilot in the Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network (VATSIM).  Their location is offered on Google Maps along with other information on their flight plan.  Try it [fn1]!  In general it seems rare to find virtual worlds that offer location information on its participants, especially to outside viewers.  True, why?

Brass Buttons

In Walter Lord's account of "the greatest escape of all time" [1.], on May 27, 1940, Captain Tennant left desk duty in London, found his way across the channel where he was hastily appointed SNO (fn1) of Dunkirk.  There he helped restore discipline among the disorder of "Tommies."  His success was in part attributed to his uniform.  Does your uniform in your virtual world impart any authority? 

Open Source and Open Predictions

Today’s Second Life Open Source announcement seems like a good time to follow up 0.500 average from last year with a new set of fearless predictions for 2007. So, here we go:

1) Intel and AMD’s battle in the MIPS/watt game will take servers below 30 watts/core

2) Second Life’s peak concurrency, currently at 25,000, will reach 150,000

3) Graphics cards will be released with small batch rendering and unified texture memory thanks to John Carmack and others

4) A Second Life development company, such as Electric Sheep or Rivers Run Red, will surpass 100 employees

5) Exchanges within MMORPGs and virtual worlds will still not be taxed until converted into real-world currency

6) At least one Presidential candidate will use Second Life to build a community around issues rather than simply holding a single press conference

7) AACS will get pwned and at least one major Hollywood studio will experiment with downloading unencrypted DVDs

8) Relay for Life will raise over US$200k in Second Life this year

9) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will have more US$ sales [edit: thanks Chris] on its release day than any book, movie or video game in history

10) Dmitri will agree that I have won my quarter by the end of the year

And, of course, the free one is that the Open Source viewer will be used in ways that none of us would have predicted.

Jimmy Tolkien

By reason of the small people who live in my house I watch more Jimmy Neutron than is good for me ("Brain Blast,  I've got it!").   While planning this summer's obligatory costume party (the final Harry Potter book), a contrast drawn between JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling stuck.  Tolkien and "small people" come on the heels of David Brin's "Why Johnny Can't Code".   Hang on...

2006 Predictions Review

Once again it is time to review my predictions from last year. I attempted to reach a bit more as it seemed inappropriate to be batting over .500. How did I do?
1) A winning candidate in the 2006 US Congressional elections will have campaigned in an MMO or virtual world
Nope. Came close in some ways and it looks like we'll be seeing more interest going forward, but this didn't happen. 0 for 1.
2) Apple's share of the PC market will double to 5%
And then some. 1 for 2.
3) Second Life's peak concurrency, currently at 5000, will reach 20,000
Barely but we did it. Perhaps more interesting is that we had only reached 5k by asking our residents to log in at the same time, so our actual concurrency was more in the 2 to 3k range. Thus our concurrency, like several other published metrics grew by nearly an order of magnitude in one year. 2 for 3.
4) WoW will end 2006 with fewer players than it has today
I think this was wrong, but I haven't seen any recent WoW numbers. Anyone know? 2 for 4.
5) Peter Ludlow won't send me an autographed copy of "Only a Game"
Sadly, I'd have happily lost this one if I got the signed book. Instead, 3 for 5.
6) A Second Life resident will begin selling a service for exporting SL items to a Fab Lab (such as Berkeley's Squid Labs) in order to create them in the real world
At least one that I know of. 4 for 6.
7) A Virtual Research Foundation, based in a virtual world or MMO, will be created to gather games and virtual world research, create research standards, and provide funding to researchers
Alas, this didn't happen yet, although Ted got some great funding to build a game, which is very cool. We'll see what 2007 holds. Hopefully it will be like my prediction about real-time collaboration in a CAD tool, which came 3 weeks late for me last year. 4 for 7.
8) The US Democratic Party, in an attempt to capture the "family values" vote, will demonize games during the 2006 election cycle
Wrong. Although there was some of this, it was not a driving issue in the elections. 4 for 8.
9) A business or service in a virtual world will successfully file for a trademark
Lots of rumors about this but I haven't heard of any that were completed. 4 for 9.
10) A Terra Nova author will testify before Congress about virtual worlds
Dmitri ftw! 5 for 10.

So, .500 for 2006. Next week I'll post my fearless predictions for 2007.