Terra Nova

It's Academic

Following on from Ted's job news, as of today I'm officially Visiting Professor in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at the University of Essex, England. The main consequence of this as far as I'm concerned is that I can use the job title Professor.

A New Issue of "The Daedalus Project"

Come browse through the latest issue of "The Daedalus Project" - an ongoing survey study of MMORPG players. Over the past 4 years, the study has surveyed over 30,000 MMORPG players. In the current issue:

- Data on the psychology of perspective preference
- An essay on the blurring of work and play in MMORPGs
- Data on players who would consider themselves addicted to the game
- A selection of great fan videos illustrating different facets of these environments
- A thought experiment about applying the psychological principle of automatic mimicry to MMORPG design
- A revision of the motivations framework for understanding why players play

And for any current MMORPG players, participate in this ongoing project at: http://www.nickyee.com/mmorpg

Star Maker

After taking the designs of Mrs Jones into the virtual world, RRR (via their Virtual World site SpaceThinkDream), are now travelling in the opposite direction with the launch of Future Fashion 04 – a competition to find new design talent in a virtual world and catapult them onto the physical catwalks of New York and London (let's hope they land a little more elegantly than you do when dropped from a great height in SL).

Categories are: Sports Wear, Evening Wear and Avant Garde – so sharpen you pixels.

Just in case anyone thinks there is a conspiracy – there is!

I’m one of the judges.

Life on the Edge

After six months of feedback on my original whitepaper on why digital worlds and the real world need to be tightly linked, I've written a new article that focuses on the two most common discussions topics: the right to play and intellectual property (new paper here) Originally written for DCC04 Workshop on Virtual Worlds: Design and Research Directions, I ended up liking the paper but decided that it wasn't appropriate for the workshop. However, it dovetails nicely into the many TN discussions about these issues.

Virtual Real Estate Story Resonates

I would have let this go without posting on it, but the amount of pickup has been extraordinary. Reuters reported yesterday on Second Life's virtual real estate sales. It is a pretty good survey of the last few months as well good coverage of Gaming Open Market and comments from a SL land baron. It's been picked up by /., cnn.com, usatoday.com, msnbc.com and others. The concept of virtual real estate resonates with people in a really powerful way.

Priceless

Julian, Richard, Dr C and Constance’s slides from last Fridays Commwork seminar are now available here on the ITUC site (thx Jonas) - enjoy!

Lunar, vacant & suburban

The Walrus (a “Canadian general-interest magazine”) has a bio piece by Clive Thompson on TN’s own Dr Castronova. As well as an interesting summary of Dr C’s work, the piece touches on a number of what we might term: virtual-physical world intersection issues. Ludlow, Balkin, Dibble, Will Harvey – they are all quoted.

But hay, the reason you should read this, the reason you _want_ to read it, is the choice descriptions of Dr C and the unmasking of his double life as a thespian.

Thanks to Brian Whitener of Games Guides Online for the tip-off.

Free

It's official: Starting Fall 04, I'll be moving to the Telecommunications Department at Indiana University.

Advertising and Branding in Virtual Worlds

New paper alert! I’ve just put the finishing touches on a paper about advertising and branding in virtual worlds.

Click here to download the paper in PDF format. Warning: It’s nearly 4 MB. (There are lots of pretty pictures.)

It’s based on a presentation I gave back in October at Miami University in Ohio. The presentation received such a great response I decided to turn it into a paper. Yes, it took me a while but hey, all this virtual worlds stuff is done in my “spare” time.

When I say advertising and branding in virtual worlds I really mean in virtual worlds. All examples discussed are various forms of in-world advertising. The marketing of vw’s to the general public is not covered. But within virtual worlds, I’ve found that advertising and branding projects have taken the following forms so far:

[1] Community members who create their own brands and ads to advertise virtual products they are creating and selling to other members

[2] Official ads for products made by the company that owns/operates the world

[3] Contextual advertising campaigns by real, offline companies who are now branding objects within virtual worlds (Nike & Levi’s in There, McDonald’s and Intel in TSO)

[4] Entire virtual worlds created to advertise or promote a company or organization (Coke Music, America’s Army, Aero House, Mokitown)

One interesting trend I also discuss in the paper is how teenagers seem to be more receptive to in-world advertising than adults are, often bringing elements of branding into the worlds themselves. In fact, many of the fully branded worlds are targeted to teens and kids.

Now that I’ve given you the cliff’s notes summary, go read it and let me know what you think. Posts are welcome here. If you prefer to discuss privately, contact me through VWR.

Ted and Julian on NPR

From the Talk of the Nation website:

The candidates are picked. The campaigns are under way. The presidential election is set for this weekend... in Alphaville. Over 1,000 strong, Alphaville is a thriving online community -- with issues. We provide a guide to virtual politics and economics.

This is in the second hour, so it should begin at noon PDT. NPR's site also says that the audio should be up by 3pm. Remember to email in your hardest questions!

Virtual Worlds Research Widens Academic Impact

I thought it's worth noting a few developments on the academic publishing front. The seminal Lastowka/Hunter piece on The Laws of the Virtual Worlds just appeared in California Law Review, and a paper I wrote on avatar attributes was accepted this week by the economics journal Kyklos. While both journals are known for being open-minded, they are nonetheless well within the academic mainstream. Meanwhile, Taylor now has several pieces placed in refereed journals, and insiders tell us that Yee's work is on its way to refereed placements (but don't hold your breath, these things take awhile). And while these are certainly not the first academic publications on avatars and virtual worlds, they do cover new disciplinary ground: law, economics, sociology, and psychology. The irony of this recent acknowledgment of the field is surely not lost on those with more experience in this area; many of the ideas that the academics are now sending off to journals were common wisdom within developer circles many years ago. Still, it's worth pausing now in January 2004 and thinking about how much the landscape has changed just within a year or two. The ideas are gradually percolating upward. We have heard, but are unable to confirm, that the publication of the Lastowka/Hunter piece brought some, ah, very influential people to this site. It's only a rumor, so don't quote us. But I guess it's a good thing that Greg's been cleaning the place up a bit.

Castronova on NPR

A ten-minute gab [scroll down for audio links] on NPR's Talk of the Nation, subject: Learning from events in virtual worlds. The interview got wrapped up in the Peter Ludlow saga, of course; that's the big news items these days. I tried to steer the discussion to broader implications. I guess I got some of that in...

In the end, no sooner than I tried to dampen the flames of the Alphaville story here on Terra Nova, I found myself fanning them again {sigh}. mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

New Rules For Prospective Authors

If you are interested in authoring here, please seek professional counseling. If that doesn't help, read the 'About Terra Nova' page for our policy regarding invitations.

Terra Nova Welcomes Dave Rickey

Rickey's credits include EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot, and he's now lead developer of one of the Worlds to Watch, Wish. While Dave writes a development-oriented column, "Engines of Creation," at Skotos, he also shares our unfortunate penchant for boring academic discourse as well. Too bad, Dave! But your loss is our gain, and we look forward to Dave's unique ability to connect gaming praxis and theory. Welcome!