Terra Nova

Join me and IEEE in LA

For the last year or so the Virtual Policy Network (that I founded) has been working with a group of good people (the Virtual Environment CoLab) and the IEEE on the slow march to establishing a set of Virtual Environment practices and standards.

We are having an event in LA in September – you can come, in fact if you read TerraNova you probably should come as you probably care about Virtual Environments as much as us. 

The event is NOT focused on tech standards. What we are doing is setting out a set of social challenges and getting a bunch of experts to come up with solutions that harness Virtual Environments. 

The event is titled vPEARL (Virtual Play Exchange Advise Renew Learn), it’s going to be on 20-21 September 2011, Los Angeles, CA in the USA. Registration is $150 and spaces are limited to 100. 

The official event page and regisration is here: http://standards.ieee.org/news/vpearl/index.html

I will be intense and fun. You will get to see my shoes. Come.

Why should politicians care about games?

Games in general, that is, not just electronic ones.

I was asked this today and I’m wondering if the TN hive mind can come up with a short compelling set of reasons.

 

Of Shadow Cities and Dwarf Fortresses

The New York Times in the last week has taken an interest in not just one but two virtual worlds. Both of them are something other than a reskinning of Zynga games that many former virtual world designers seem to have concluded is their inevitable future. Both of them have their problems, both as games and as worlds, but if you'll forgive me taking another ride on my long-established hobbyhorse, both of them also underscore how powerful "world-making" has been and could yet be as a design niche in interactive media.

Virtual Astroturf: Google +1 For Sale

Following on Julian Dibbell's report on Google not getting something, search engine optimizing shops are selling Google +1's (thanks Travis Ross for the tip). It reminds me of the politicans' term for generated "authentic" grass roots public opinion: Astroturf.

Star Wars Preorder

ZOMG it's a new $300m Star Wars MMO scheduled for release on December 31 of THIS YEAR!!! The Collector's Edition is only $149.

They had me at $300m! With that kind of development cost and price point, here's what we're all expecting:

• An +800% flying mount with Excelsior (tm) quadruple laser blaster cannons available in-game at level 1 for 10 credits. Collector's Edition: You receive 10 of these for free.
• A personal Jedi master will deliver the game to your home. The master will meditate on the front porch for 3 months and will answer all game-related questions during that time. Collector's Edition: You may choose the sex and age of the master.
• Make-Me-A-Dungeon: Click this button and a team of crack Bioware designers, artists, and coders, on-call 24/7, will create a new instance just for you within 30 seconds. Collector's Edition: The dungeon takes you on a personalized 400-hour epic story arc where you start as a humble trader and end as Emperor of the Known Universe.
• Teams of GMs will group with you on request. Collector's Edition: The GMs will match your maturity level and be nice and funny. They will compliment your play style.
• Should you encounter technical issues, a Bioware Emergency Response Team (BERT) will rappel into your room and set up a remote hyperlink to SWTOR Central HQ in Austin Texas. While net techs work on communication issues, your computer will be serviced, cleaned, and replaced if necessary. Collector's Edition: A team of stage designers will construct a version of the game in your neighborhood. Professional actors will accompany you as you complete game content in live-action format. Accountants will be on hand to record your progress and upload it to your account.
• You can be Darth Vadar. As Darth Vadar, you can reach out your hand and kill any hostile creature in the game instantly and with infinite repetition. Collector's Edition: When playing as Darth Vadar, you may name all the other players "Republic Agent" and set their alignment to "Hostile."

Google+ to Second Lifers: Get Real

Opening-night reviews for Google+ have been fairly breathless, with the social-media hipstocracy declaring it just-better-enough than Facebook in almost every way that matters. But on one count at least, the unhappy story of an Italian Second Life die-hard who goes by the nym Opensource Obscure suggests that Google has missed a chance to handle online social life with more flexibility and nuance than the spawn of Zuckerberg. As reported by Wagner James Au, Cnet, and Business Insider, Google suspended the user's Google+ account because "Opensource Obscure" didn't pass muster as the kind of real name the company is requiring Google+ users to adopt. Here's the story in Opensource's own words:

I'm a Second Life user since 2006. My avatar name is 'Opensource Obscure'.
https://my.secondlife.com/opensource.obscure

A few days ago I joined Google Plus. There, I engaged in some
discussions about virtual identity and pseudonyms, exposing
myself to the attention of some Google employees.

Then, my Google Profile was suspended because I'm using
my SL name as my primary name on Google Profiles.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceobscure/5915226844/

My profile is still suspended. Since then I never provide Google
with my "real" name. Note that they don't have a "real-identity"
verification system - so they don't verify if your name is "really real".
If I changed my Google Profile name from "Opensource Obscure"
to "Tom White" or whatever, they would be fine - if it was a "realistic"
name. And my Google profile would be reinstated.

Ah, the perils of virtuality!

Well, commentariat, is this proof that, as W. James Au puts it, "Google still doesn't get social"? Or is it a sign that "social" has gotten irrevocably real?

Insurance for Virtual Goods

China brings us the world's first insurance policy covering online game goods. Thanks to James "Pidge" Fielder for the tip.

I was tempted to say this was insurance for virtual goods, but there has always been coverage for intangibles. If, God forbid, America Ferrara were to lose her smile! Insurance itself is a virtual good.

The evidence piles up that Professor Fairfield was correct in 2005 when he argued that virtual property is pretty much just property. It can be lost; when loss is large and random, it will be insured.

Creating Cooperation

Fairly frequently we're confronted with the decision to contribute, or not, to a social need. Littering, or not littering, or picking up litter. Global warming. Blowing fireworks at midnight in a neighborhood with kids trying to sleep (one of my neighbors chose to be anti-social three nights ago). Griefing a level 1, or not. Elinor Ostrom's Nobel prize was about this. I mean, not about griefing. About cooperation. It's often a cultural thing. Playing nice is more likely if there's a general commitment to playing nice.

Games need to worry about the level of cooperation. Travis Ross over at Motivate.Play has a new post about how game design can encourage or discourage cooperation.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin purports to be a peer-to-peer virtual currency without a central monetary authority. You download and install the client. The client lets you send and receive Bitcoins. It also lets you try to create new Bitcoins. Bitcoin has a list of hard computer problems and if your computer is the first to solve it, you get a new block of Bitcoins. Designers say that they've set up the problems and the blocks so that new Bitcoins will be created at a slower and slower rate. By 2030 or so, there will be 21m Bitcoins, and that's it. 

Experience with game currencies makes me skeptical about Bitcoin. 

Zynga v. Williams

Sort of interesting recent judgment from the Northern District of California in Zynga Game Network v. Williams et al., 5:2010cv01022.  The facts are recited by the court as follows:

Zynga is a social gaming company. This action involves "Mafia Wars," a game played on wireless devices and computers (the "Game"). When users sign up with Zynga to play the Game, they receive a certain sum of "Virtual Currency" that they use to purchase various in-Game digital items ("Virtual Goods"). Players can increase their total amount of "Virtual Currency" through their play and also can purchase additional "Virtual Currency" from Zynga. Zynga has not authorized any third party to sell the "Virtual Currency" or "Virtual Goods" required to play the game. The terms of service that govern the Game prohibit users from selling or exchanging "Virtual Currency" or "Virtual Goods" for real-world money or anything of value outside the Game. Zynga alleges that Defendants have established unauthorized websites that "sell" "Virtual Goods" for real-world money.

Among the form of relief granted is the following:

(1) Defendants are ordered to account for and to disgorge to Zynga all profits from their sale of "Virtual Goods" for use in the Game.

But the case is far less interesting than the above makes it appear, because: 1) the cause of action here is essentially trademark infringement (the defendants used Zynga's marks in relation to their business); 2) the defendants never showed up to present their side of the case -- so this is a default judgment, not a true judicial decision.

Many of the case docs are here -- I haven't found the recent judgment online yet, though.