Terra Nova

Uncharted's Designer Heads to the Ivory Tower

We've talked before in this space about academia and industry working together, and how much the academy needs to hire expertise from game developers. In perhaps the biggest such hire ever, USC has hired Richard Lemarchand. I wish I knew how much they had to pay him, as we are trying to come up with a way to do something similar. Any guesses?

Facebook Credits Under Attack

Earlier we reported that Google decided not to have a virtual currency. Facebook's Credits may face legal challenges, as Joystiq reports.

Virtual Currency Exchanges on the Upswing

Back in the day, say 2004 or 2005, some far-seeing folks tried to set up virtual currency exchanges. Traffic was too light at the time, but now it seems to be a sustainable business model with some venture buy-in. See this article in Forbes. Here's the skinny: The exchanges stand ready to transfer balances in either direction for a large number of currencies, including $. It's a natural next step in the evolution of this space. When there were a zillion European currencies, banks made a lot of money just helping you switch from one to another. "If it's Drachma, this must be Greece! Therefore, Tuesday!" Followed by "O Noes it's SPARTAAAAAaaaaaaa......." -Splat-

Latest Virtual Currency: $C

Everybody in Buffalo and Detroit jokes about their northern neighbor's "play money." But it may soon go digital in a way that looks more like Yo-Ho-Ho money than than Euros.

No Google Bucks

Google was thinking about making a virtual currency but did not, apparently due to regulatory concerns.

Gamer Nannies!

One Debbie Denard of Nanny.net has identified nanny characters she'd like to see in video games. I guess there'd have to be kids in games first. Wonder how The Sims nannies stack up.

Babykiller Gamers

Mike Fahey of Kotaku may be hitting rock bottom. He writes movingly that he can't take it any more, this pattern of stories in which gamers kill their babies. 

To gain perspective, let's count the babies who have been sent prematurely to their final rest.

• Globally, since 2001, due to problemtatic game use: 10? 20? (judging from news reports).
• In England, since 2001, due to abuse and neglect generally: 1,500 (3 per week times ten years; source).
• In the US, due to abuse and neglect, since 2001: 15,000 (about 1500 annually times ten years; source).
• In the US, since 2001, due to abortion: 12 million (1.2m per year times ten years; source).

Not sure what it all means, but I'm inclined to think that there is some root cause, or rather a glaring absence, or perhaps presence, of something, in modern culture, that produces both bad gaming and bad parenting. You be the judge!

 

 

 

 

 

Oh EVE, of course you're not a freeman's paradise

On its face, EVE Online seems such a paradise for the independent person. No laws, no restrictions, no way forward except individual merit. Can't handle it? Die or quit. Completely predictably, the resulting society does not consist of thousands of yeoman farmers but rather strong-man rule in the form of player guilds (corporations). Over and above this emergent oligarchic tyranny, the owners of EVE established a first-of-its-kind player governance, a parliament of sorts whereby the players would supposedly be able to have a hand on the game's development. This only replays once again the farce told eloquently by our own Julian Dibbell many years ago in his My Tiny Life. Another famous example was Peter Ludlow's and Mark Wallace's experience in the "freedom-loving" confines of Sims Online and Second Life.

For, as correspondent Marcus Carter reports, there ain't no freedom in EVE after all. He writes:

BEGIN QUOTE

Something just happened in EVE Online that I thought TerraNovans might be interested in.

EVE has a player elected council, the CSM. The election for CSM7 just finished. The winner, ‘The Mittani’ is a bit of a controversial figure in EVE, and got most of the votes. It doesn’t hurt that he is the head diplomat for the Goonswarm Federation, probably the most powerful (and controversial) alliance in the game (Goonswarm made TerraNova last October).

Voting for CSM7 finished at around about the time EVE Fanfest began. At the Alliance Panel hosted by CCP, near the end of fanfest, The Mittani made some controversial comments.

I’ll just copy/paste from the massively article

During a Q&A session after the presentation, he said something that has become the focus of a great deal of controversy. "Incidentally, if you want to make the guy kill himself, his (in-game) name is [redacted]," The Mittani said, adding that "he has his own corp. Find him." The talk was watched by a packed room of Fanfest attendees and streamed live to thousands of players at home. 

In the community, there was/is serious uproar. Many were quick to point out that what The Mittani had done was in strict violation of the EVE EULA and has been described as cyber-bullying. He soon apologised, and later offered his resignation from the chairman position on CSM7, but not the CSM itself.

However, CCP just announced that his conduct on the day was a “clear violation of our Terms of Service” and “According to our existing policies, we have issued a 30 day ban from EVE Online to the panel speaker” which removes him from the CSM entirely. See more from that statement here.

What I find most interesting is that *a player broke a games EULA while not even playing that game*. In the thread on the forums, several users were quick to jump on this, some more flippantly than others, “You guys should ban me because I am sitting in my room saying EULA/TOS breaking things out loud in front of the monitor”.

Now while this situation is clearly different, occurring at a hosted CCP event and live-streamed online, but if the boundary for a game EULA isn’t at the end of the game – where is it?

END QUOTE

Interesting question.

Serious Games Association Launches

A Serious Games Association is being launched, and they want to compile a directory of all the games for good out there. Please go to SeriousGamesAssociation.com to sign up, help out, and add your serious game to the list.