Terra Nova

The People’s Republic of Warcraft

A popular phrase these days is “If you are not paying for it, you are the product” the thing is, with social media of all types - including multiplayer games, even if you are paying for it you are still the product, what’s more you are the workforce too.  

 That is, multiplayer play can be seen as a form of ‘productive leisure’ or more simply labour.

This Christmas, Protect Your Loved One From Games

Brett Arends of the Wall Street Journal offers ten reasons why he does NOT want an iPad for Christmas. Reason number 7: The games. Writes Arends:

"Yes, they're great. But that's the problem. Computer games are as addictive as cigarettes. And this is a habit everyone is taking up, not quitting. This is why I dumped my iPod Touch. Am I alone? Maybe. But I don't think so. I know lots of people with horror stories about addiction to immersive games. Someone I know—now, as it happens, a British member of parliament—once sat down to play Civilization, a role-playing game, on a PC one Saturday evening and didn't finish until three o'clock ... Thursday morning. (He stopped when he ran out of cigarettes.) And that was on an old PC. Games on the iPad are more intense than ever. A friend recently showed me some of the serious news apps on his iPad. I noticed that to get to them he first had to "wave" us past several screens of games. Is he really using his iPad to read that article about the Indonesian economy, or is he playing Angry Birds? Hmmm. You make the call."

Step into my Neverland

On IGN, an announcement for the Michael Jackson MMO we've all been waiting for: Planet Michael.  The announcer 'couldn't stop laughing'.  No violence.  You win using 'the power of dance'.  Using your keyboard, not your actual body. Free to play. Virtual items will be available for 'real-world currency'. Charitable contributions enabled. 

From the press release:

Planet Michael will be an immersive virtual space themed after iconic visuals drawn from Michael’s music, his life and the global issues that concerned him. Entire continents will be created that will celebrate Michael’s unique genius in a way that underscores his place as the greatest artist of all time. Michael’s longtime fans will feel at home as they find themselves in places that seem familiar and yet unknown at the same time, and new generations will discover and experience Michael’s life in a way never before imagined. At its core, Planet Michael is a massive social gaming experience that will allow everyone, from the hardcore fan to the novice, to connect and engage in collaborative in-game activities with people worldwide.

Though my initial inclination was to disparage, maybe this could work... MMO universes drawn from the world-views of famous individuals.  Elvis-verse?  BeatlesWorld? DalaiLamaUniverse?  PicassoPlanet?   LadyGagaLand!  I'm impressed that Planet Michael's mechanics are designed to uphold his pacifist leaning and philanthropic efforts, and I can imagine that forays into his imaginings are ripe with possibility <chortle>.

I predict the vanity MMO will become a trend, and as much as I hate to say it, could be the break-through-to-the-mainstream (the Second Life commercial push all over again).  What do you all think?  Will we see the Housewives of Beverly Hills obsessed with their first virtual worlds?

Real Money Is Actually Virtual

Editors at a mainstream news organization have finally realized that US Dollars are no less virtual than gold pieces.

Omigod. This Is Completely Unreal.

According to a four-page article in today's New York Times, there's this 3D virtual site called Second Life where people can log on and make virtual houses. This one guy actually made a Mexican-style "villa", in a virtual "neighborhood." He says his virtual "neighbors" come over for visits with their "avatar", just like in the real world. Huh!

Proceed and Permit

Looks like we have found Get A First Life’s (GAFL) strongest supporter – Second Life. OK, Linden Lab. A link in the footer of GAFL’s page asks for “comments or cease and desist letters”.

So Linden’s lawyer sent one.

But not the letter that anyone might be expecting. Rather than ordering GAFL to stop it provides a brief legal defense of the right’s of parody under US law.

Before anyone gets cynical about this ‘master stroke of PR genius’ that the LL folk dreamed up in their Dr Evil bunker, c’mon give them a break – it follows Linden’s long standing ethos of IP use and, best of all, it’s funny.

Virtual World Has Billions of Residents

It's called First Life. Read a beta review here.

Site of TN Backchannel Discovered

Rumors of an ultra-secret Terra Nova hideout have been confirmed; a photo has come to light. Here for the first time, a glimpse into the inner sanctum of this dastardly cyber-cabal:  Witness The Terra Nova Hut.

|\| 4 + ! \/ 1 7 '/ Sillyness

"Three Mages form a PuG only to discover they share the ‘follow yonder star and drop off phat l00t’ quest."

Magic Vessel of Cheerios +5

RIT Professor Andy Phelps, creator of the MUPPETS project, has a great  essay comparing parenthood to RPG play.  It is a great read and delves into one of my favorite topics: the tension between "play" and "work":

At a superficial day-to-day level the process of managing life with a young child can be viewed as a game, a steady process of learning the ins and outs of the event/response pattern of the world around you.

And it can be just as rewarding. When she was screaming in the mall and I whip out the Magic Vessel of Cheerios +5 and hand it her, I have this weird tingle of happiness that I was able to anticipate her desires and have come well prepared to the situation. Not unlike the ending of an RPG in which you have all the items, spells, and armor to defeat evil and save the world. We place intrinsic value on the first, call it ‘good parenting’, while the latter is merely ‘wasting time.’ But what if the way we waste our time was helping us do the important stuff better?

Read the whole article here.

New Video Game Design: No Harmful Effect on Children

A template for a safe game (from the makers of the notoriously dangerous and unhealthy GTA, surprisingly enough) has emerged at the Tokyo Game Show, as reported in America's finest news source.

Ludium I Follow-up: The Toilet Paper Incident

As the elves continue working on the Ludium's final report (which should be out in a couple of weeks), they came across the following footage. Courtesy of documentarian Jeanette Castillo.

mom pwns

Oh, why not: Busted.

*war*

I’ve cracked this whole MMO marketing thang,,,

Ouch

My shoulder hurts.

"Danked!!"

In addition to the "troll" and the "flame", we now have a new forum archtype - the "Dank" - born out of this WoW forum thread.  Sometimes people do something so tragically funny that they can coin a word overnight.

New Service Added

Terra Nova now offers a targeted editing function for its users. If you do not like anything on Terra Nova's main page - an author, a link, a post, whatever - you can now delete it by clicking on the 'edit' link below:

EDIT TERRA NOVA

We're confident this tool will improve the site. Enjoy!

Down on the Pharm, Penny-Arcade Style

It is humbling almost to the point of despair to discover that fifteen dozen screenfuls of ponderous commentary produced by a small liberal-arts faculty's worth of beardy gamer geeks can, with almost zero loss of insight, be reduced to the three panels of a Penny Arcade cartoon.

Meet Mr January

Yes, There have a 2005 staff calendar available via café press.

Mr January is friend-of-the-show Bruce Boston.

For once, I think I’m lost of words.

Jan Ken Pon

For those out there looking for seasonal stocking fillers for the budding game designer, but who does not know anyone with feet big enough to accommodate Salen and Zimmerman’s magnificent Rules of Play – try The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide.  

Sure it looks silly but as the work points out, albeit lightheartedly, decision-making games of this form are ancient and cross cultural, so taking this trivially simple game seriously looks a like a good catalyst to understanding all kinds of things about human decision making and game play - it also looks fun.

TN in a nutshell

I was digging around Google last night and came across this review of TN:

- *[Terra Nova|http://terranova.blogs.com/] - Beardy men talk about the future of MMORPG's. And economics. It's academic posturing, essentially, but the contributers are important names in their respective fields. [Edward Castronova], [Richard Bartle], [Interview with Cory Ondrejka "Cory Ondrejka"] and [Ren Reynolds] all post their thoughts and big-up their latest brain-farts.

It could just be our new mission statement - just as soon as we sort out the gender reassignments and stick on beards.

Who says geeks

..can’t get a date?

Well how else are you going to explain news-fad-of-the-day: The Virtual Girlfriend from Artificial Life Inc. The business model seems to be that you buy the character stuff and, according this BBC story, ‘she’ will introduce punters “to different aspects of her life”.

So, it’s a cute Tamagotchi with a slot marked ‘keep inserting money here’?

If any one wants to send me money to reveal different aspects of my life the bidding starts at $/€ 500 per go – I promise to make something up that is almost mildly interesting.

AvA no DB

This month’s PC Gamer Magazine (UK September Edition p 19 (no I don’t know why publishing is a month in advance here either)) has an ‘Academic Deathmatch’ between: me, Dr C, Proff B and Gonzalo Frasca (of ludology.org), the scores on the doors are:

Edward Castronova: ***** (5 brains)
Gonzalo Frasca: **** (4 brains)
Richard Bartle: *** (3 brains)
Ren Reynolds: ** (2 brains)

User Created April Fools

While the SL developers changed our message of the day to pull comments from our Bugzilla quip file -- creating such MOTDs as "On a clear drive you can seek forever" and "The fact that this ever worked at all is astounding..." -- but we were soundly thumped by our users, who created an amazingly elaborate prank. It started with this forum post and website that introduced Second Life to "Direct Game Marketing." Absolutely brilliant stuff, although in classic April Fools fashion, it had a lot of folks convinced that it wasn't a joke and the protests had already begun :-)!

The forum post got things rolling:

Hello Lifers!

My name is Donovan Lonsway, I'm the CEO at Direct Game Marketing , a new company dedicated to exploring corporate media in "Virtual Worlds".

April Fool's Shenanigans

Blizzard's two-headed ogres were a joke, as was my riff on them. But the best gag of the day was from eGenesis and A Tale in the Desert...

The Crash

Ren referenced David Wong's brilliant article about the impending video game crash and it deserved a link here. A typically brilliant mix of fact and humor, it deserved a front page link to the three people who hit this site without having read /.

Multiple Server Hack: Portly NPC Appears Mysteriously in Several Virtual Worlds; Distributes Gifts, Tubers

Apparently the result of some kind of concerted campaign of disruption, the NPC was first reported about 12 hours ago in Lineage, Ragnarok, and Final Fantasy Online. Several hours later it (apparently 'he') appeared briefly in Anarchy Online and the Euro servers of Dark Age of Camelot and EverQuest. Five hours after that he was sighted in Camelot's US-Based servers, then, about ten minutes ago, in SOE's EverQuest/US and Star Wars Galaxies servers, and EA's Sims Online cities.

The mob appears to be a magic-user NPC, as he wears red cloth armor and equips a prodigious tomb or book. He has a number of deerlike familiars, though whether the pets are summoned or charmed or tamed is unclear. Another critical piece of equipment is a large red vehicle that was observed to sustain amazing top speeds and unheard-of maneuverability ratings.

The NPC's book seems to enable some sort of faction check against a PC who hails him, because, while the NPC does not give out quests, he does distribute an item apparently based on this faction check. There were some clear patterns in the loot table, i.e., with necromancers, cabalists, warlocks, any lizard race characters, and Star Wars Imperials tending to receive either A Potato or A Piece of Coal, neither of which had any special properties and appeared to be junk. Clerics, Paladins, and overt Star Wars Rebels seemed most frequently to receive a rather nice item, often one they had been wishing for. A bug seems to block the faction check against most dark elf, drow, twilek, zabrak, and fiend-type females, as if the NPC could not decide whether they were naughty or nice. The NPC was especially kind to all players on Firiona Vie (EQ), Guinivere, Percival, and Nimue (Camelot), while distributing literally tons of coal on servers like the Zeks in EQ, and UO's PvP shards. In Sims Online cities, the NPC seemed to fall into a serious pathing error, running from house to house distributing coal and potato items without responding to any hails or faction-check attempts, then de-spawning abruptly. Moreover, in all worlds, players who had been sitting in one spot continuously for more than ten hours, doing the same thing over and over and over, always got A Potato. Other attributes that led to bad faction: using numbers in place of letters in chat; kill-stealing; camp hogging; running a brothel; twinking; eBaying; doing academic research. Good faction came from role-playing, helping newbies, guild leadership, and being witty from time to time.

We await some information from devs of these worlds to determine whether this was an outside intervention or some sort of collective scheme. Early reports suggest that the player base is outraged at this obvious attempt to tie a loot-distribution system to player behavior. In most worlds, we can expect server roll-backs to 11:59pm December 24, then life as usual again.

Addicted to Games? Let Oprah Help

Yes, you can be a poster child for yet another lost generation. Here's the casting call. Me, I'm holding out for Dr. Phil.

Joho says: MMORPGs are BORING!

And he's got a point. Read more here.