Terra Nova

China to ban RMT, maybe.

Thanks to Andy Schwarz for tipping us to this article in Information Week reporting on a Chinese government press release supposedly banning the sale of virtual stuff for real money. In the backchannel, Julian Dibbell reminded us that Korea did the same thing a couple of years back to no effect. No effect because it is hard to do without redesigning the virtual economy, and also because the law's intent was not actually to ban RMT. As we all know, some laws regulating a practice are not really intended to stop it - whatever the preamble might say - but to control it merely.

So: What is China up to?

The Soul of a New Regime: Thomas Malaby's Making Virtual Worlds

Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life, by our own Thomas Malaby, has its official release today, and the timing couldn't be better. I'm writing from the midst of State of Play VI -- "The Conference on the Serious Study of Virtual Worlds" -- where Thomas's book will be feted this evening and where the mood, in general, is that of a not entirely unwelcome intellectual hangover. The hype surrounding Second Life (and the broader phenomenon of virtual worlds for which it's been so imperfect a proxy) has come and, finally, gone, and there's a sense that only now can we begin to dig beneath the shiny, first-pass questions that provoked the hype and get a deeper handle on what we've been talking about. This is a challenging, exciting project, and if the thoughtful, game-changing ethnography Thomas has produced is any indication, it's off to a promising start.

You No Take Candle!

Yesterday at State of Play, Bart Simon made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion: that journals like Games and Culture adopt a five-year ban on articles that focus on Second Life and World of Warcraft.

State of Play 6

State of Play 6 (2009) is up and running at New York Law School.  Yesterday was the grad student symposium and today is the first day of the two-day main event.  Dan is kicking things off at the podium and Raph Koster will be giving the keynote next on metaplace.  Feel free to post whatever conference-related in the comment.  If I can, I'll do some live-blogging in the comments here.

Officialish backchannel

Twitter hashtag

Functional Governance

The regulation and governance of technology has tended to be based around industry sectors such as film, radio, television etc., or on things such as the radio spectrum or personal data.

I propose that we change this on a global scale and frame regulation in terms of the relationship between Functions and rights.

Virtual Worlds Workshop at Indiana University

This August, Lee Sheldon and I are hosting VW², a one-week workshop on the possibilities and pitfalls of using virtual worlds for business and research. Our aim is to help professionals who are new to the field from wasting several years and heaven knows how many millions of dollars re-learning the same old lessons. Our focus is practical, not academic: Here's what you do, and here's what you DO NOT do.

In designing the program, we've been fortunate to have the input of an illustrious advisory board. Rich Vogel and Ron Meiners are coming to give keynote lectures. Participants will learn by developing applications specific to their own environment. This includes pitching ideas, writing design documents, setting up hiring plans, choosing tools, and building their own virtual environments. On exit, participants will have created a shovel-ready virtual world project for their home organization.

More information about the board and the workshop here.

The End of the (Virtual) World

At the Digital Entrepreneurship conference, I remarked on the rising number of bankruptcies of virtual worlds or companies that develop them (most cleverly illustrated by Woody Hearns' bugzapper at gucomics, here, here, and here).  I'm interested in what we can learn about the bankruptcies of virtual worlds.