Terra Nova

Parsing Philip Rosedale

I had a chance to interview Philip Rosedale earlier this month, leading to a broad set of posts by bloggers who follow virtual worlds (and Second Life) pretty closely.  You can see the whole thing here (with links to the analysis by Christian Renaud, Nic Mitham, Wagner James Au, Ben Duranske, Bettina Tizzy, Roland Legrand, and Dusan Writer), but after the break I include some of the more interesting quotes.

We are going to be talking about it today at noon pacific time.  You can watch online, and participate in backchat, without going into Second Life, here.

Special IT Journal Issue on Virtual Worlds

San Murugesan recently e-mailed to let me know that the Cutter IT Journal has a special issue on the subject of virtual worlds.  His introduction to that issue is here.  A PDF of the entire issue can be acquired for free (with registration) here. 

It is an interesting mix of articles.  It covers the full spectrum of virtual worlds -- from games to kids worlds to Second Life.  The articles present a balanced approach.  In particular, they are generally positive, with caveats, about the future of the 3D Web and commerce.  At the same time, they are fairly critical of the success of virtual worlds to date in living up to their initial promises.

Escort derails coverage of science museums in 'Second Life'

First, the disclaimer: I work for Village Voice Media.  Village Voice Media runs the Westword.  The Westword ran this story on science museums in Second Life.  Yes, I'm practicing both partiality and blatant (semi)self-promotion.  Now that that's out of the way...

As I reported over on Heartless Doll, we have here another feature piece on Second Life that gets derailed by the decadence factor.  It can't seem to focus on the story at hand: namely, that science is finding a home in a world where the welcome lack of safety concerns leaves room for education.  Specifically, the article highlights the creation of science museums, like the in-world branch of San Francisco's Exploratorium, that let visitors approach learning in the form of rides that would be too dangerous or costly to build in real life.  In addition, there's talk of a replica nuclear reactor, which could serve as a practice tool for those preparing to work with the real thing.

That's all downright fascinating -- especially the part about the people who'll hold the key to our future nuclear safety looking for virtual analogs -- but this piece looses its focus from the beginning, spending its first eight paragraphs ogling  a Second Life escort who happens to walk through one science center.  Yes, she's "hot."  Yes, she's wearing knee-high boots.  But wasn't there a story being told here?  Not to put down the Westword for their valiant effort, but it's about time that the hook behind virtual world coverage is no longer addiction, or crazy avatars, or sex.  Not that I don't like sex, because you all know I do, but because there's more to talk about here than favors being exchanged for Linden dollars...

Won't Get Spooked Again

Via Wired comes this bit of news about the Pentagon's fears that WoW (specifically) could be used to organize a terrorist attack. This isn't the first time intelligence agencies have considered what implications virtual worlds have for terrorism, and noting this ongoing interest on their part is just something we've gotten in the habit of doing around here. What does catch one's eye about this one is the level of detail provided in the simulated WoW scenario (check out the screenies). Does this change our assessment of their risk assessment?

Fifty days and worlds apart

In fifty-and-some days we will see the conclusion of a two year U.S. presidential selection process.  Temperatures have been rising as we draw near the end.  Rather than finding a new means of arguing one's way into someone else's bubble, perhaps the partisan could profit from an altogether new method of persuasion.  I wonder whether an MMORPG can have a political ideology, either by design or by accident.

Protecting Virtual Playgrounds Symposium

On Friday, Oct. 3, the Washington and Lee University School of Law (in scenic Lexington, Virginia) will gather a range of top thinkers to discuss the regulatory future of children's worlds in a one-day symposium. 

Our own Ted Castronova, Greg Lastowka, Robert Bloomfield and yours truly will be there.  We hope you can all come!  More information (and registration forms) at law.wlu.edu/virtualplaygrounds, or below the fold.

Buying Spore, or just renting?

I admit I haven't yet picked up a copy of Spore (beginning of the school year and all) but I figured it was being released to universal acclaim, sales, yada yada. And of course all of the pre-release information hyped the game to no end, and fans seemed, well, fanatic, about getting their hands on the game. What a difference a day or two makes. Check out the review scores for Spore on Amazon's site. As of my writing this, there are 1840 1-star reviews of the game. Why?

Who plays, how much, and why? Answers.

As some on this list know, my research group has been working on a joint project with Sony Online Entertainment for the last two years. This collaboration has enabled our team to collect virtual world data on--as far as we know--an unprecedented scale. SOE has let us access the full data logs generated and collected by the world Everquest II.

This is one of those "be careful what you ask for" moments in science. We asked for everything, and many terabytes later, found ourselves hosting and analyzing massive data on supercomputers at NCSA. SOE also let us do a large-scale survey of their player base. Although there have been good surveys of virtual world populations done in the past, this is the first that took place within the game engine and with the help of the developer. As a result, it does not have the self-selection issues that the first such surveys have had, and the response rate was impressive.

This post will share the first of what we expect to be a dozen or more papers on virtual world behaviors. As the first, it's the broadest, but I suspect will be of interest and use to the wider virtual world community. You can find the full text of this first paper here, at the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, with no access restrictions.

More below the fold . . .

Habbo Spending Cap

The LA Times recently mentioned an interesting feature of Habbo.  Apparently, Sulake does not permit Habbo Users to spend more than $35 per month on clothes and furni for their rooms.

According to the reporter, about 10% of Habbo Users spend $17 a month buying virtual stuff.  So, if I can do a little math (which is dubious), Habbo has 100 million users registered, but on its website reports only 10 million "unique visitors" a month.  Still, this means ($17 x 1M) = $17 million a month spent on virtual stuff in Habbo.  So, for a year (x 12) that's a little over $200 million a year selling pixels to kids -- maybe approaching about 1/3 (or so) of what WoW is making.  Since I haven't looked at the actual financials (and usually only do math in private), feel free to correct me with a better number.

But however many kids are paying them, the fact that Sulake is making money this way isn't really news.  It's the price limit I find interesting and the curious  comment of Teemu Huuhtannen: "We really don't want teenagers to spend more than the price of two movie tickets a month on Habbo."  That's followed by Alex Pham (the reporter) making the observation:

If turning down money seems un-American, it is.  Sulake's Scandinavian origins meant it grew up in a market that heavily favors consumers' rights.