Terra Nova

Studying Real-World Business in Virtual Worlds

Hello, Terra Novans!

I am delighted to have this opportunity to post some of my thoughts on TN, and look forward to reading your responses.

Let me start with a little self-promotion:  download Worlds For Study—Invitation, subtitled “Virtual Worlds for the Study of Real-World Business (and Law, and Politics, and Sociology, and…)”.  In that paper, I spell out my vision to create a platform on which researchers and educators can create serious games for studying real-world business and related topics.

                                    

That vision might sound familiar (at least to those who have followed academic discussions of how virtual worlds can be used).   But my goal seems to differ from what others are proposing.  So this first post will place relatively heavy emphasis on what I am not trying to do. Let me know if you think my impressions are correct, and what my apparently unusual focus might mean for structure and success of WFS.  (read more….) 

Bragg and IGE cases

Many many legal happenings on virtual property and assets. First off, the judge in the Bragg v Linden case has dismissed Linden's Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction and Motion to Compel Arbitration. Lots to say about this Order, but I need some time to digest it. Also, a South Florida law firm has brought a consumer class action on behalf of US WoW subscribers against IGE for their gold farming activities. Much to be said here in a bit.

The highpoint of my brief reading to date is the opening paragraph of the Order in the Bragg case:

This case is about virtual property maintained on a virtual world on the Internet. Plaintiff, March Bragg, Esq., claims an ownership interest in such virtual property. Bragg contends that Defendants, the operators of the virtual world, unlawfully confiscated his virtual property and denied him access to their virtual world. Ultimately at issue in this case are the novel questions of what rights and obligations grow out of the relationship between the owner and creator of a virtual world and its resident-customers. While the property and the world where it is found are "virtual," the dispute is real.

Hey, Who Filled My Ivory Tower With Carbon Monoxide?

Sorry, kids, but I just really needed a post with this title.  Did you all read this beauty (scroll down to 'Terrifying Teachers') buried in comments?  Freaking awesome.  They have no idea just how terrifying we are.  Muahhaha!

Design From Soup to Nuts

The discussion of Nate Combs' recent post about the current hubbub over at EVE Online made me think a bit about the process of design in virtual worlds. Many scholars with an interest in synthetic worlds  have studied some aspect or another of design, and some of us have done design work at some level or another. There are also a number of articulate designers who provide a window of some kind into problems, issues and processes in design. There are entire curricula devoted to design, and books written to accompany those curricula.

But do we have a lengthy, detailed narrative account of the design process  from initial concept to live management of a single major existing commercial synthetic world, basically an insider's history of an existing world? I can't really think of anything that comes close, just fan-dancer glimpses of the underlying flesh and bone behind existing games. There are  studies of Second Life underway that might address this, but I think the kind of sub-creation and user participation that is a basic part of Second Life, not to mention the much more consciously introspective attitude of Linden,  makes it very different than the other synthetic worlds out there in processual terms.

June Guest Robert Bloomfield

We're very happy to have Robert Bloomfield guest-blogging with us on Terra Nova this June. Robert is a Professor of Accounting at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, where he directs both the Business Simulation Laboratory and the Doctoral Program.  Trained as a behavioral game theorist, he has published the results of laboratory games and markets in journals representing most areas of business, from accounting and finance to organizational behavior, psychology, marketing and operations.

June Guest Peder Burgaard

We're happy to welcome Peder Burgaard as a guest blogger on TN this June.  We asked Peder to introduce himself to the readers.  Here you go:

The last six months I have been on sabbatical from my day job at Innovation Lab, a Danish based think tank on emerging technologies & trends, to study business strategies and virtual world potentials, and have been fortunate to work with IBM’s Metaverse Evangelists in the UK and key personal from the 3D Internet & Virtual Business Opportunity group in the states and various IBMer’s in Second Life, for my masters degree in Information Science at the university of Aarhus, Denmark.

June Guest Bob McGinley

We're happy to have Bob McGinley joining us this month as a guest on Terra Nova. Bob is an Executive IT Architect for IBM working in Global Middleware Services. As an Application Architect with a background in software design and development, he has a knack for delivering large complex systems. Bob has developed several large scale government industry applications using a variety of development methodologies, coding languages, and system platforms. His career is now focused on simplifying and teaching web development to enhance development efficiency.

Structuration, Synthetic Worlds-Style: LOTRO and Emotes

Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration maybe gets less frequent use than it deserves in part because it is ultimately rather commonsensical. Agency and structure are a loop, in his view; we can only understand why things happen in human societies by combining an attention to the microscale of individual practice and action and the macroscale of social structure across broad expanses of time and space.

A fairly large percentage of my interests in synthetic worlds ultimately come back to structuration as Giddens describes it. In fact, I think synthetic worlds are the ideal focal point for a study of structuration in action. Try to apply it to the unmanageable complexity of a given human society in motion, and the kinds of practical limits that have to be placed on the analysis can feel arbitrary. But synthetic worlds come with manageable boundaries that are intrinsic to them: the rules or structures governing social and economic activity are knowable, the cultural histories behind and within the players are specific, the economics of the industry that produces them are specifiable, and you can study the evolution of a synthetic world from an initial condition in a way that is never possible in the ongoing history of real-world societies.

Potpourri

Topic A.  Personally speaking.  My view is to to err on the side of regulation and back it with enforcement.  Reason:  people have a sad habit of cheating.  I guess the FDA is in the thick of it.  Claim: the pathologies of online gameplay can be seen as a lesson of the foibles of under-constrained folks  (/edited nc).

Update 6/2/2007   Links capping Topic-A from comments below:

• Steven Davis ""Unpopular Post #2 - Just Say "No" to Developers playing their own MMOs.""
• CCP's official response.
• Raph:  "...a frame job?"
• Scott Jennings: "CCP Strikes back."
• And as close to this chapter, Nate: "In praise of eve."

Topic B. I cite a few short essays and wonder the meta-question:  is online gaming a profoundly geek activity?

Virtual reality and higher education: Another perspective

A few weeks ago, I posted an interview on Terra Nova with Rebecca Nesson, who is using Second Life as a platform for distance education at the Harvard Extension School. While SL has been adopted by Harvard and more than 100 other schools worldwide, it is not the only online virtual reality environment that is used for educational purposes. There are other virtual world/virtual reality technologies that can support instruction and classroom activities, and this week we will get a perspective from someone who is using these alternate technologies to teach. The interview is with Aaron Walsh, a programmer and instructor who has used modding software and other tools to create VR classrooms for courses at the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College (the inset photo is from one of his experiments, and depicts "students gathering in the virtual Egyptian environment"). His VR classes are part of a larger effort that he is leading to develop a standards-based educational platform called Immersive Education.

UO RIP? Not So Much

The demise of Ultima Online -- now nearing its tenth anniversary -- has been widely predicted, even here on Terra Nova over two years ago.  Multiple abortive attempts at revamping the game have been made within Electronic Arts (heck, I was on the second one and that was nearly five years ago).  It has long seemed to many industry watchers that UO would eventually ride off into the MMO sunset, carrying its still respectable playerbase with it. 

Well, apparently not.  UO is a Kingdom Reborn. Spiffy new 3D graphics, same top-down viewpoint.

MODs for MMOs for the Hearing Impaired

The other day, Samantha LeCraft posted a reply to one of my posts

Get involved in the WoW modding community. Learn how to create add-ons for WoW, and see if there are others within the existing WoW mod community who would be interested in collaborating on a mod. Personally, I would start with a mod that translates sounds from combat to directional visual cues, as that is something that isn't already included in WoW and is, from what I know, one of the few barriers to the deaf playing WoW (since nearly all communication in WoW is text based already). Don't bill it as a "special interest mod". Mention the applicability to deaf players, but also point out that it would be useful to hearing players who don't have headphones or a sound card, or who have to turn off their sound due to roommates or children, or even just for that added edge in combat. Once you've created the mod, put it up for download at a place that will show the number of times it's been downloaded. Then come back here and tell us of your progress. You never know, Blizzard might be listening.

This is an excellent suggestion, although one that requires quite a bit of people power. As of right now, we have only one member that has the experience with creating MODs for the hearing impaired: Reid Kimball who created an amazing MOD for Doom3 (yes, I realize that is not a MMO) that allowed for not only verbal closed captioning but also ambient sound closed captioning (it was also nominated for a MOD award at the IGF).

What? What do one button games have to do with MMOs?

So right now I'm mainly talking about gamers with mobility limitations (could include a whole range of things) but a lot of these controllers can help those with severe learning disabilities depending on the level of the game and the type of learning disability.

Yes. I am advertising a service but at the same time I'm letting you know about a resource called One Switch by London game enthusiast and SIG member, Barrie Ellis. Not only does he sell accessible gaming solutions in his shop, Barrie has helped the DIY (Do-It Yourself) hobbiest with a DIY page with detailed information and also a blog. But something you really need to look over is his excellent page on physical barriers in video gaming: problems and solutions.

Welcome to AbleGamers

In an effort to increase the face value of my game accessibility posts for the MMOG community, I've asked for some additional assistance from the game accessibility community and was reminded of AbleGamers, a fairly new site run by Mark Barlet,  a Disabled Veteran and avid gamer, primarily as a host for reviews of the accessibility of MMOGs.

Must See PVP

I've never been a sports nut.  But last week, as I found myself obsessing over frame-captured video of the World of Warcraft Arena semifinals, I realized -- MMORPGs may plausibly give us the basis for the next set of semi-participatory sports.  Here's an example of two top-level players going toe-to-toe (I've skipped most of the videos because they are grainy and accompanied by very angry music.)  Let me explain.

There's Gold in them thar... Penguins

Club Penguin is, as you probably (or really should) know by now, a great example of a true second-generation MMOG.   It's cute, cuddly, great for kids, and plays right in the browser (no dynamically mapped shadows in sight).  It uses a combination of free play, subscription ($6/month), and item-based sales to generate revenue.  Oh and there's no download, no retail, no spattered blood, blue elves, or female cat things overflowing their strangely armored bustiers. 

Supposedly, New Horizon Interactive, the company that developed and runs Club Penguin from sunny Kelowna, BC, Canada, has turned down investment funding thus far -- with their approximately 50% gross margin, they just don't need the money.  And, according to Paid Content, the company spurned an acquisition offer by News Corp for $200M.  According to that site, they're now being courted by none other than Sony for (reportedly) $450M. 

That's a lot of penguins.   

Teaching in Second Life: One instructor's perspective

Earlier this month on Terra Nova, a thread started by Aaron Delwiche discussed aspects of teaching and learning in Second Life. He is not the only academic who has realized the potential of Second Life to serve as a platform for instruction. The virtual world is already being used at 125 colleges, universities, and schools worldwide, according to the Second Life Educators Wiki (thanks to Barbara Z. Johnson for the link).

The thread and the wiki prompted me to look at how Second Life is being used at the Harvard Extension School, where I am currently a graduate student. In 2006, the Extension School and the Harvard Law School launched CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion. This course in "persuasive, empathic argument in the Internet space" included weekly sessions and assignments in Second Life. I did not participate in the class, but had wondered about the virtual classroom experience, which I believe was the first of its kind at Harvard. Last Friday (May 11, 2007) I was able to interview Rebecca Nesson, one of the course instructors for CyberOne, to find out more about the challenges, tools, and interactions she observed while teaching in SL. I transcribed the entire interview, but in this Terra Nova post, I am only including the sections that relate specifically to teaching in Second Life (the full unedited interview, which also includes several Harvard-specific questions and answers, is available here).

Bringing Sexy Back

What if you held a party but no one showed? Or...the problem with the word "accessibility."

Accessible Sex in Games

As I was reading the comments on the allegations of rape in Second Life, I started thinking about sex in games in general. Recently on the Game Accessibility listserv, Richard Van Tol from AudioGames.net (amongst other affiliations) brought up this news story about an accessible porn website for those with visual and hearing impairments (pornography that includes closed captioning and audio descriptions).

April Showers Bring...May Finals?

I've realized that May was not the best month to guest blog, especially when I had about 100 students and their final projects to grade. But that's all over now and I apologize for the gap in my posts and will now try to overload you with information about game accessibility for the remainder of the month! Stay tuned!

Early Bird Registration for Ludium II Ends Today

Register at https://www.indiana.edu/~swi/reg/

The Dark Side of User-Created Content

Everyone loves user-created content in virtual worlds. It’s the flavor of the month and a key feature in several new and upcoming worlds. It’s arguably what has made Second Life so popular. Linden Labs has estimated  that it has the equivalent of 5100 full-time content creators working for it on content, all for free! How can that be a bad thing?

Some friends and I were talking about this recently, and the question came to me: if everyone loves user-created content and SL is so popular, why do so many people complain of the place feeling so lonely?

The answer: it’s the content, stupid. 

Selective bombing of RMT in Korea

On wednesday in S. Korea, the RMTing of the game money,  game items in Poker-like MOGs and the RMTing of game money, game items produced by the illegal way of copying, adaptating, hacking or abnomal game-play in MMOGs are banned by the Game Industry Promotion Act.

The word 'abnormal play' is surely relating to some workshops whrere BOT programs facilitated.

Meanwhile, in the sphere of MMOGs, RMTing of game money etc earned by normal play remains out of govermental regulation(except the possibility of taxing). So there are worries about how to distingush between normal and abnormal one. I humbly think the underlined object of those articles is not to suppress illegal workshop overseas directly but to check/prevent native intermediaries from connecting with the workshops.

Belows is former TN post with reference to the act.

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/11/korean_national.html

And here are the extract of the act that I translated personaly & informally.

MMO Voice paper out

We had some pretty lively discussions on the VoIP issue, in which I alluded to a paper that was under review. It's now through the peer review process and in press, so is both public and vetted.

State of the Field 2007: Graduate School Edition

So, within the space of a week, I got three queries from undergraduates who want to study synthetic worlds and video games as graduate students, from a humanistic or social-scientific perspective. I'm fielding more and more of these kinds of questions as time goes by, which I think is only a little bit about undergraduates knowing that I'm interested in this field and more about rising numbers of future academics wanting to study in the field.

So I'm keen to survey TN readers: what would you recommend?

3D media in 3D worlds

There was a watershed moment in the history of Western pop culture in 1985. That year, Dire Straits released a music video ("Money For Nothing") that was partially made with 3D, computer-generated imagery. There was a big buzz around this; I remember friends remarking about the "high-tech" appearance of the 3D characters, even though the animation looks primitive now.

KidSpace Stamp

The virtual world industry should create a set of best practice standards for the operation of spaces for the under 18s.

It should further certify those operators that meet them thus raising the overall level of safety in online spaces and reducing confusion in the market place.

Building the Beast

One of the central features of the public securities market is that it forces the disclosure of all manner of information that otherwise would be commercial-in-confidence that would never become public. David Grundy alerted us to the recent prospectus by Interplay which details the financials for the development of the MMO version of Fallout.

The headliner is the cost structure for developing and publishing a high-end MMO, for a total cost of US$75M. A few interesting aspects of this...

And the winner might be

Age play

Organizing the Virtual Organization

Wikipedia defines a 'virtual organization' as one that exists 'as a corporate, not-for-profit, educational or otherwise productive entity that does not have a central geographical location and exists solely through telecommunication tools'.  Since the 1990s, virtual organizations and teams have seemed like a panacea for a lot of problems that arise from RL collaboration (real estate, travel costs, time wasted commuting, etc. etc.), but there hasn't been all that much useful data on what makes a virtual organization or team work well, despite the fact that there are many that are majestic examples of virtual organization (and more notably, self-organization) that flourish beyond anyone's wildest expectations.  Likewise there have been horrible failures resulting from efforts to contrive a successful organization in a virtual setting (think of some of those horrible groupware experiments).  And while  I suppose there are those who might debate whether MMO play constitutes productive activity or not, it does seem clear that the skills one develops via participation in MMOs might be hugely relevant to other types of virtual organizations.

(Artificial) Intelligence in Virtual Worlds

In Richard Bartle's recent item on First Principles a number of interesting discussions have come up that deserve to be looked at on their own.  One of these is the question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) is necessary, preferable, or even possible in online worlds.   What do you think? 

Rape in...yeah, you know...

Ça plus ça change. But please, when discussing the foundational work in this space can we all agree to get Julian's surname right? It's spelt "Dribble", or if you prefer to render it in the original Flemish, "Drivel".

First Principles

Because we haven't had a crazy, abstract, whacked-out design thread for a while...

One of the things that bugs me about virtual worlds (game-like ones in particular) is how the paradigm doesn't really change much. We still get designers discussing what classes and races their world will have, without having considered whether they need classes or races at all.

So here's a question: given the absolute minimum that you need to have a virtual world, how can you extend that in ways that don't take us back to Second Life or World of Warcraft?

College students create social networking and dating site for Second Life

Next Tuesday (May 8th) from 8:00 am to 9:15 am (PST), students in the virtual world promotions class at Trinity University will share hard-won insights that should be useful to anyone who is building and promoting an institutional presence in Second Life. Students will talk openly about the lessons they learned while designing SLeuth: a social networking service that links new residents with mentors, friends and potential dates.

The student presentation will be held in the amphitheater on Metaversatility Island. (Note: Other than the fact that I am the professor of this course, SLeuth is in no way connected to Metaversatility.)

Metaverse development consultancies, advertising agencies, and non-profits, please take note. This is a wonderful opportunity to connect with thoughtful college students who now have hands-on experience designing and promoting virtual world content. During the past semester, these students have explored community building, 3D modeling, viral marketing, machinima, blended reality events, and the challenge of integrating in-world content with web applications. In these early days of the Metaverse, it is very difficult to find people of any age who can claim first-hand exposure to virtual world development.

A Virtual Slice of Tax Law

At the State of Play/Terra Nova Symposium in New York last fall, Bryan Camp of Texas Tech School of Law gave us a primer on tax law as it relates to virtual worlds. I never knew that listening to a tax professor could be so illuminating and fun (really). Now he has written a paper giving a similarly engaging overview of the issues as they relate to SL and WoW.

And to think his elegant solution may be ruined by pizza...

Evaluating virtual population projections

I am a great believer in the potential of virtual worlds as platforms for communication, interaction, discovery, and entertainment. But I am also a realist when it comes to appraising related technologies and user interest in virtual worlds. In this post, I'd like to talk about population projections, and how technology may limit the development of virtual worlds in the next few years.

If you're online, no one knows you're disabled...

I've said this statement and so have others and for many computer environments this can be true and hopeful. But what about those who cannot access an online gaming environment because the menu system the game used didn't work with the assistive technology they were using? Or what if the gamer, due to the type and/or severity of their disability felt awkward joining in because they were afraid that they'd feel the need to disclose their disability to explain certain things such as having to game at a different pace? If you do not have a disability, do you feel the need to disclose other factors about yourself such as gender, race, or sexuality in order to give others reason to understand your style of gaming? Probably not, unless you are playing at a role that is not your reality.

PBS to Broadcast Game Accessibility Story

For those lovers (like me!) of PBS, check your local listings for a program called Quest tonight. KQED in San Francisco filmed the special and it will be airing at 7:30pm tonight (Tuesday, May 1st) on the US west coast. Tonight's episode entitled, "Videogames for All," will chronicle the efforts of the IGDA Game Accessibility SIG to spread the word about accessibility issues for games. If the episode is not broadcast in your area, fear not, it should posted on Quest's website, http://www.kqed.com/quest/ today or tomorrow. Or call up your local PBS station and request an airing (I did!).

Update: Here's the direct link to the video!

What do we MEAN by "game accessibility?"

The word "accessibility" is a mean one. It's confusing and can mean so many different things such as lack of access to technology due to poverty or "usability." But what I mean when I say it (and others in my group, the International Game Developers Association's Game Accessibility SIG) is making games accessible for gamers (or potential gamers) with disabilities.

Game Accessibility?

To start off my guest blogging month, I thought that I'd send everyone a few links in advance so that readers can learn more and (hopefully) join in on the conversations about making games accessible for gamers with disabilities. So this is sometimes done at the end of a paper or a tv show ("for more information...") but I'm going to start out this way because I'm outrageous like that.

Some places you'll want to explore (and more links will be provided later, don't you worry!):

• The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Game Accessibility SIG Mailing List: Here you'll find members who are experts in the area of game accessibility, gamers with disabilities, developers with disabilities, and more. But that's not all! I chair this group. :)
• GameAccessibility.com: This is a "one stop shop" for everything "game accessibility" and is the main web resource that we use in the SIG to communicate accessibility news and information.

So with that...I'll let you explore a bit and then we'll start the conversation about the field of game accessibility! I hope you'll join me!