Terra Nova

Let the Total Inundation Begin...

Amidst our talk of a possible virtual world winter,  and the frantic efforts of pundits looking for bright spots in a somewhat dismal holiday retailing season, more and more suggestions that kids will fuel the next wave of virtual world development ('the most annoying trend since Beanie Babies')....

From the NYTimes...

Second Life and other virtual worlds for grown-ups have enjoyed intense media attention in the last year but fallen far short of breathless expectations. The children’s versions are proving much more popular, to the dismay of some parents and child advocacy groups. Now the likes of the Walt Disney Company, which owns Club Penguin, are working at warp speed to pump out sister sites.

“Get ready for total inundation”...

Or is this just a new cog in the hype machine?  What happens when your 5-year old is inconsolable when they can't log on?  My prediction for 2008:  a fresh crop of virtual world 'addicts', and all the requisite concerned voices to go along with them, including the likes of...  wait for it...  Dr. Phil.

2007 Predictions Review

Well, I seemed to have missed one minor prediction for 2007, but it is still time to review the rest.  Read on to see how I did in 2007.  Did I surpass last year's 0.500?

Strange company in Eve-Online

Mention of Eve-Online frequently slips into a sci-futuristic noir of "0.0 taxation regimes", rapacious marketeering, "a game about economics and its constraint on power", and corporations.

The ongoing series on the alliance game in Eve-Online  is no exception (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7.  8. ).    Robert Bloomfield (TN side-bar) asks in what ways are Eve-Online corporations like and unlike their real world counterparts.  Usefully, Eyjlfur Gumundsson (CCP)  recently posted "econ dev blog no. 3 - some statistics on corporations (in Eve-Online).  Here is a good place to start with a few questions.

Consider (Gumundsson):  "In EVE there are 34,658 active corporations with player members of which 45 are NPC corporations and 34,613 are player established and operated. "   While I think it would be more accurate to compare Eve-Online corporations to the guilds of other MMORPGs  - essentially social and coordination vehicles, I think they are also the products of their environment.  The large and relatively complex economic system of the Eve-Online universe seems to have driven a broad range of types of corporations of varying grades of sophistication.

My own player experience has seen Eve-Online corporations in fairly parochial terms.  Yet I occasionally hear of stories of corporations that have bumped to a next level.   I also think that for at least the 0.0 ecosystem we've been discussing in the earlier cited series, much of the additional and evolving framework will come from above- from the alliance system.  In that space, perhaps the growth of the corporation will be stunted by the need for PvP might and the economic power to wield it. 

The problem with sandboxes (fn1) is that it is hard to know what lies over the next mountain.  Below the fold are a set of excellent framing questions from outside the sandbox: to keep and use on your next travels in Eve-Online.  Followed by a few thoughts of my own, from this side of the mountain.

Florida AG issues subpoena to IGE

As reported by Wired, WoW Insider and Massively.  As far as I know, this is the first time a prosecutor's office in the United States has investigated gold farming.  The subpoena can be found here.

A Virtual World Winter?

"...nearly all of those who came, left" - Wagner Au

In his New World Notes blog, Wagner Au notes that Second Life has plateaued at about half a million active users.  He carefully spins this news in the glass-half-full direction, saying that this makes Second Life essentially the equivalent of lovely Portland, Oregon, and what could be wrong with that? 

That question implies a sort of settling for something less than being the start of the globe-spanning 3D Web, something less than winning Dmitri's quarter.  More generally though, what does this slowing say about the growth and sustenance of virtual worlds and MMOGs overall? 

While I'm still bullish on virtual worlds and MMOGs for a number of reasons, that doesn't mean we won't necessarily go through a deep winter before we find spring again.    I'm often asked about what comes after World of Warcraft?  Can this market be sustained?  Is it possible that we could find ourselves in a situation where we have to say about our entire customer base that "those who came, left"?  And if so, how do we prevent that from happening?

The FSM has Left the Building: Cory Leaves Linden Lab

Our own Cory Ondrejka has left Linden Lab, and the SL blogosphere is abuzz. News reports can be found at CNET and InformationWeek, for starters. Best of luck to Cory -- like many I'll be eager to see what he does next (beyond take a cushy quasi-academic break somewhere, à la Al Gore ;-) ).

As for Linden Lab, if interested folks would like to muse about what this might mean for it and Second Life, please feel free to weigh in.

Virtual Worlds and Social Science: Conference

I'd like to let you know about a conference being held at Emory University on February 11. I know there are many virtual worlds conferences these days. This one is different. Let me set a historical context.

There have been virtual worlds conferences for many years. The industry itself has run the Austin Game Conference, and there have been several academic conferences centered on the humanities: interesting discussions without the intent of having a practical impact one way or another. (And there's nothing wrong with that.) Then came State of Play in 2003, at New York Law School, the most influential conference of that era. That conference produced a community of hard-headed people, a community that then developed the advice and reasoning that courts and legislatures are using today to deal with the virtual worlds legal issues we knew would come.

Soon, firms became interested in virtual worlds, and a series of Virtual Worlds Conference and Expos have allowed that community to develop marketing methods, business models, and interoperability standards. Second Life has been the main driver in that area.

Throughout this period, many of us said that the next thing would be a revolution in social and behavioral science. Virtual worlds will change society, making them a research subject in their own right. But virtual worlds would also be an important tool for researchers, a controlled environment for studying macro-scale questions, a social science petri dish. As such, virtual worlds would revolutionize the academy as well as society.

These possibilities have now been thrust into the spotlight by the publication, in Lancet and Epidemiology, of research on the Corrupted Blood plague in World of Warcraft. A trickle of virtual world social science papers is appearing. It appears we are now entering the next phase, in which hard-nosed, quantitative, social and behavioral scientists will address the likely impact of virtual worlds across all society. A community is forming, and the first conference of this nascent community will meet at Emory University on February 11, 2008.

Why Fantasy?

Here's a simple question for you, which I suspect does not have a simple answer: why is Fantasy the predominant genre of game-like virtual worlds?

It can't all be down to the influence of The Lord of the Rings, surely?

Richard

The 800 lb gorilla in Eve-Online

Eve Online is many things to many players, but its economic sandbox seems to get a lot of play (fn1).

I thought in "PvP, asymmetry, and the information game in Eve-Online" that Eve-Online was "a game about economics and its constraint on power."  My view of Eve-Online has been of late on the alliance game (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7.  ) and is therefore naturally inclined to look more towards the constraint and power elements, as I find their texture and  nuance interesting.   Yet there is a more direct view.   

Talking trash about intellectual trash...

I quite enjoy it when people get sick of hype and decide to rain all over the parade.  The problem is that too often people do it when their annoyance causes any degree of balance and levity to flee, as in the case of  Malcolm King writing in 'Australia's e-journal for social and political debate', who clearly has seen one too many articles about the amazing wonders of Second Life and the residents therein... Yes, he's a bit late to the SL bashing party, but the level of vitriol smells like a pile of fetid backlash to me (predicted by Ren for 2007.  Check).

Exploitation of Christmas Extends to Virtual Reality

Thanks to Sasha Barab, designer of the educational virtual world Quest Atlantis, this link to a news item about virtual gifts. Says the AP:

"You don't wrap these presents in a box. You can't wear them, play with them or show them off, at least not in the real world. Even so, virtual gifts -- computer-generated items given and displayed online -- are quickly becoming must-haves. And increasingly, people are willing to pay cold, hard, real-life cash to purchase them for friends, family and co-workers."

The History of Play and Leisure (Syllabus)

So here's my first stab at actually teaching about games. In this case, since it's a class that needs to be in my home department and discipline, I've integrated digital games-related material into a wider history of play and leisure. I actually think that's an interesting grounding for discussion of contemporary games, both in terms of thinking about issues like time and "addiction" in virtual worlds and in terms of foregrounding some classically "ludological" questions about formalism.<p>

It's also a course for first-year students, so there's a lot of emphasis on skills development that I might otherwise not feature so heavily. I'm still making a few adjustments here and there, so suggestions are welcome. (The reading loads may appear very heavy in some weeks, but in many weeks, I'll be dividing the students into groups, with each group reading something slightly different and then having to present about their assignment as a way to build confidence about discussion participation.)

WashPo: Dealing with your Online Gaming Child

From the Washington Post:

Q. I thought my thoughtful, sensitive, conscientious, kind, funny, handsome son would grow up to be successful, happy and self-sufficient but he's 20 now, he's passed only one or two classes in his two years at community college and he quits every part-time job he gets.

He is addicted, I think, to online gaming. He says he isn't interested in anything but playing his game -- a game, I'm ashamed to say, I gave him years ago -- and only wants to work for the maker of the game or the gaming industry...

Feigning death

Torrill Mortensen mentions of a news story in Norway about a 12 year old boy who survived a moose attack having "first yelled at the moose, distracting it so his sister got away, then when he got attacked and the animal stood over him he feigned death. 'Just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft.'"

On the subject of serendipitous transfer to your real life your MMOG experience.