Terra Nova

Playing with history

This past week included Memorial Day in the US. I attended a parade and a dedication to a Korean War monument. Afterwards, I struggled a bit trying to recall the details of the history of The Forgotten War. I did some reading on the web; unfortunately I seemed to have lost texts I used to have on the subject. Yet I found compensation, I discovered a boxed copy of Victory Games' "The Korean War (June 1950-May 1951)" in storage. Originally published in 1984, I obtained my copy in the early 90's to PBEM with a friend.

What I love about its 51 page rules/scenario manual is what I love about most manuals of this genre of game - they provide a succinct accounting of a model of history. I skimmed the rules, I remembered the board game, and in so doing I recalled something of the history - albeit one narrowly focused on the (geo-)political/military one spanning 1950-51...

Maxwell's Hammer

From time to time here on TN I've delved into methodological territory, and in my last effort, quite some time ago, I focused on the charges of "anecdotalism" that qualitative research in the social sciences sometimes faces, and argued that generalizable claims can be generated out of such methods. But, in retrospect, that piece did not confront the root of the problem directly, given the degree to which I do not there question generalizability itself as the core aim of scientific inquiry.[fn 1] As research on virtual worlds continues to increase, and as the different parts of the academy ramp up their efforts to fight for their funding (and perhaps thereby seek to discredit other approaches), it seems worthwhile (and consistent with the ecumenical spirit that largely characterizes TN) to consider how scientific the pursuit of other kinds of claims apart from the general are.[fn 2] And that's where James Clerk Maxwell comes in...

The Bot-Slaughtering Totems of Stormwind

Andrés Guadamuz, lecturer in law at Edinburgh, and co-organizer of the upcoming, very-cool-looking GikIII Conference at Oxford, has waived his claim of copyright infringement against me for cutting and pasting below a recent blog posting he put up at Technollama.

It's a really interesting post.  As Andres frames it, it is about how disgruntled Alliance players have come up with a clever, though perhaps somewhat EULA-non-compliant hack to enable community self-help (aka murder) as  means of silencing n00b bot gold spammers on the cobbled streets of Stormwind.  Screenshot at right.

Arden Experimental Results: Preliminary Release

Some of you may have been following the Arden project (reported in Nature and the Chronicle of Higher Education). I'm pleased to announce that the project has come to fruition. With generous support from the MacArthur Foundation, we have created a fun game environment and used it to conduct a month-long experiment. Our experimental question (kept secret up to now) was: Are fantasy game players economically "normal"? Or on the contrary, when they make themselves into elves and dwarves and hobbits, do they stop taking economic decisions seriously? We created two virtual worlds, one an exact copy of the other, except that in the experimental world the price of a simple healing potion was twice as high as in the control. If people are taking prices seriously in this fantasy environment, they should buy fewer of the potions when potions are more expensive.

Goodwill Calling

Today,  I come into find out & read  Andrew Herman, Rosemary J. Coombe & Lewis Kaye's article titled as "YOUR SECOND LIFE?  Goodwill and perfomativity of intellectual property in online digital gaming" from virtual law bibliography in Lawspot online.

www.yorku.ca/rcoombe/publications/YourSecondLife.pdf  (2006)

This article deals with the governance issue of VW(eg. SL), the key tool for argument is not an exclusive proprietary one such as IP or VP but -- to my delight-- an inclusive one, corporate goodwill.

With regard to this, I tell you I registered an article on SSRN recently.

Real Money Trading in MMORPG items from a Legal and Policy perspective

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1113327

It was originally presented at 13. Dec. 2004 in Future Game Seminar held by Korea Game Development & Promotion Institute.  By virtue of professor Yee Fen Lim and lawyer Nicholas Suzor's encouragement and assistance, I could published it in complete english version.

My article deals with the RMT issues of VW(eg. Lineage), and the key tool is Gwonri-geum(a korean legal concept similar to goodwill, strictly speaking, more akin to that of 'lease goodwill'  in England, Austrailia).

*Nic Suzor thankfully made a nice abstract of the article, you can read it here

My paper, same to that of Andew Herman at al, centers on the creation and management of goodwill, an intangible asset of considerable value to VW itself based on affective bonds between players, MMO platform operators, and their commodities in the marketplace. (Differences are, i approached in micro level with economic's support, while they did in macro level with communication & cultural studies)

I hope recalling these two goodwill be an international goodwill, then help in concluding a peace treaty between properties(IP v. VP), and carve out the identity of VW & its virtue.

WoW v. MDY: Copyright, EULAs, and Game Rules

We've been talking about TOS/EULAs for quite a long time here at Terra Nova.  Here's a fairly obvious theory about these agreements, borrowed from Jeremy Bentham's felicfic calculus:

I Gamer

Computer games are a catalyst for a generational change in self-identification.

I believe that the notion of being a ‘gamer’ is not merely growing but becoming mainstream. Gamer is no longer a excuse for having bad personal hygiene and no social skills but simply something one is.

An Atlas of our Terra Nova?

Truly a herculean effort has been undertaken!  The Association of Virtual Worlds has compiled 'The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds", an index to 250 virtual worlds from all over our physical world, all neatly meta-tagged and linked.  Oh, and there's a glossary... 

The Cookie Monster Economy and "Guild Socialism"

Recently, I happened to catch a segment of Sesame Street that my daughter was watching. In it, Cookie Monster was trying to hire a human assistant to help him sell six cookies. Cookie Monster explained helpfully, “Cookie Monster sell cookies in order to have money to buy cookies”.

Virtual world exchange can feel like a Cookie Monster economy sometimes, but never more so than in Flying Lab Software’s Pirates of the Burning Sea. It’s been an interesting economy to watch as the live game has taken shape. Not so much because it is innovative or provides a fun game mechanic. Even by the standards of persistent virtual worlds, the economy in Pirates is unusually broken in functional terms. However, on one hand, it is one of the most successful Cookie Monster designs I’ve seen, in that it attracts players who are most strongly drawn to the game’s setting or the game’s design ambitions and niche vision. On the other hand, it also throws a sharp light on collective action in MMO economies that are designed to blunt or hedge against exposure to markets.

Bears are People Too! The Metanomics Colbert Challenge

Last Monday capped off the first season of interview series, Metanomics:  Business and Policy in the Metaverse.   Over the course of the season (35 shows in 35 weeks), we refined our focus to the following four target audiences:

• representatives of real-world enterprises using virtual worlds to achieve their goals
• virtual world entrepreneurs meeting the needs of those enterprises or their fellow residents
• developers,  policy-makers and analysts who will shape the future of the metaverse; and
• academics who are studying and educating these groups, or using virtual worlds as their classrooms or laboratories.

One industry we haven't delved into yet is entertainment.  The fit is natural, as the reports on Virtual Worlds News shows us just about every day.  But how do we get movers and shakers in entertainment to appear on Metanomics?  Well, one way is to be a little more entertaining.  So take a gander at our Metanomics Colbert Challenge.

No one is going to suggest I quit my day job to do comedy, but SLCN does an excellent job of packaging.  Feel free to pass it on to your friends--and to Jon Stewart, Rob Riggle and Stephen Colbert, if you know them.

Metanomics is running 'best of' shows on Mondays at 11am Pacific Time and Tuesdays at 3pm Pacific, until we start our second season in June.  If you want to suggest guests, please do--self-nominations welcome.