Terra Nova

...and IMVU-Forterra Word Balloon battle outcome (ref Farmer)

Terra Novans, related to the Worlds.com patent story below, I thought you might be interested in Randy Farmer's blog posting today on the IMVU-Forterra "word balloon" patent lawsuit which came to a messy conclusion last year after a 2 year drama (and a full patent reexam by the USPTO). Both Randy and I worked on this case. All the documents were made public due to the reexam.

Direct URL:
http://thefarmers.org/Habitat/2008/12/the_demise_of_the_word_balloon_1.html

This case as well as the Worlds.com move are representative the sorry state of the IP/patent system and reflect the  "corrupted" nature of business, government and general bad behavior throughout today's society (for which we are finally starting to pay the price).

Sigh... hoping for change in '009.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Randy!

Bruce

Update on Patent Wars: Worlds.com Picks a Fight

According to a story in The Register, Worlds.com made good on its promise to go after MMOG companies using its patents.  Playing the role of Mr. Potter, Worlds.com lawyers delivered a lawsuit to NCSoft on Christmas Eve, saying that NCSoft "willfully and deliberately infringed on its patent."  They are seeking "an unspecified amount of damages along with prejudgment and postjudgement interest, or 'in no event less than a reasonable royalty.'"

The Register article also notes that "the patent was filed in August 16, 1999 and granted to Worlds.com on May 4, 2004. (Note that City of Heroes was released April 2004, before the patent was issued. Lineage was released in 1998, before the patent was even filed.)"

Game as Cultural Form, Play as Disposition

I've just posted a piece to SSRN about play. In the past I have focused on games as a culturally-shaped activity (what we anthropologists would call a "cultural form"), and in the course of that I have made explicit efforts to decouple games from the concept of play (see here, for example). I argued that it is not very useful to see play as an activity, with games as a subset of it, and suggested that play more usefully denotes a disposition, a way of approaching the world.

In doing that I wasn't trying to argue that games and play are not related to each other, but rather that we need to move beyond seeing them as intrinsically linked (where the question of, for example, whether something is a game boils down to whether it brings about a playful experience). The primary motivation was to make room for an approach to games on their own terms, but the issue of play has been simmering with me for a long time. The posted essay is the result – a long-planned attempt to articulate play as a disposition.

Worlds.com Asserting Patents on Virtual Worlds

News in the blogosphere this morning (from Sean Kane's Virtual Law blog, via Virtual Worlds News) that Worlds.com, a company that was an early pioneer of virtual worlds development, but which has long been relegated to the shadows of online history, is flexing potential litigious muscle in asserting certain patents it has been awarded on key aspects affecting virtual worlds and MMOGs -- essentially, just about anything with a virtual space and an avatar. 

Gender differences: New findings, new paper

So I pull up TN and my good colleagues are concerned that there isn't much to say. Sounds to me like a good time to release some findings!

We (Mia Consalvo, Scott Caplan, Nick Yee in this case) had a paper on gender differences among MMO players accepted to the Journal of Communication yesterday, which means I am sharing those findings and a pre-release copy of the paper (based on a conference version so as not to violate copyright). Here are the highlights:

- Contrary to expectations, women are more intense players than men, on average and among the most hard-core
- When men and women play together in a relationship, the men tend to be less happy and the women more happy
- All players under-report how much they play, but the women more so
- Men play slightly (not overwhelmingly) more to beat the game, whereas women play slightly (not overwhelmingly) more for social reasons.
- Although the men think they are healthier, it is the women who actually are

Is Terra Nova Aging?

Yes it is. Things are not what they were. A reader (who may decide to de-lurk) wrote to us asking why the frequency of posts has declined. A little discussion emerged in the backchannel and it presents a moment to reflect on the blog as well as the subject matter it covers.

The gee-whiz era for virtual worlds has passed, and this changes what happens at TN.

Why this blog exists...

Many many years ago, four ne'er-do-wells became interested in a topic that was both arcane and pointless. One of the things which catalyzed their interest was an activity that was so ridiculous that it didn't seem possible. Yet this ridiculous activity formed the basis of the early work of all of the four ne'er-do-wells (and was the core of three tenure cases and one book deal).

When they looked at this ridiculous activity they noticed that there was this guy, who had this company. The guy had been a child actor in Hollywood, and had formed the company to make money doing the ridiculous activity. And this company seemed to be making a ridiculous amount of money. All of the four ne'er-do-wells met the ex-actor, and looked at his company, and simply couldn't believe their eyes.

Simply. Could. Not. Believe. Their. Eyes.

So they created a blog. They called it Terranova, and they started to look at the weird topic of virtual worlds, and the ridiculous activity of gold farming, and the ex-actor called Brock Pierce, and the company called IGE. But they never got very far, because investigating this stuff is hard, and calls for fact-checking, and is slightly dangerous. So they didn't do much with it.

But then the most talented of the founders of the blog got a commission to write a piece for Wired, providing chapter and verse on the early days of gold farming, and Brock, and IGE.

And the others read it.

And. Simply. Could. Not. Believe. Their. Eyes.

GLS Conference 5.0 Call for Papers

Games+Learning+Society 5.0: Learning Through Interaction
June 10-12, 2009 Madison, WI

The GLS conference in beautiful Madison every summer is one of the highlights of the year for many game researchers. Constance Steinkuehler, Kurt Squire, and the gang of incredibly capable GLS students somehow combine high-level discussions, fascinating presentations, and (most important) great gaming time and time again. The coming year's theme is "Learning Through Interaction," and I've put the full call for papers after the jump.

Dear Pew: What is a virtual world again?

Pew has a report out that include some data on virtual worlds. Their view is that virtual worlds have yet to catch on. Data they cite: only 2% of internet users (Edit: in the text, the authors say "gamers" here.) have visited a virtual world. On the other hand, they say that 9% of Internet users "gamers" have played MMOGs. And 6% of adults on the internet have made an avatar. [Edit: I'm really confused about what exactly they did.]

Weird numbers, given that MMOGs are virtual worlds, and avatars are things in virtual worlds, and the survey questions seem to have "internet users" as the base, not "gamers".  Well, the questions follow.

Is it I?

This isn't a post as much as a few questions.  At a conference recently, I heard someone say that she had several avatars in several virtual worlds, including World of Warcraft and Second Life.  I was surprised, though, that she uniformly referred to her avatars in the third person.  She said things like: "It isn't a good fighter -- it was exploring and it got killed by wolves." 

This surprised me.  Though it is perfect logical to see your avatar as a separate thing, I still would have expected her to say "*I* was exploring and *I* got killed by wolves."  Does the usage of the third person here sound strange to you too?  When you talk about things that happen to your avatars in virtual worlds, do you refer to your avatars as "it" or "I"?  In what situations would you speak of your avatar in the third person voice (it/he/she) and in what situations would you use the first person?