Terra Nova

MSPOG

My current game, Lord of the Rings Online, is going Free to Play. So is EverQuest II. Meanwhile, the casual game sector has sprouted some virtual-worldy features. The intense grindfest games shrink in significance; huge MMOGs have 90% solo content; asynchronous-distant play is the norm; don't grind, rather, buy virtual goods for real money so you can move forward at your desired pace.

In 2006 we learned from Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, and Moore that surprisingly few people play WoW socially. This paper, it turns out, was the first to identify online gaming's future.

One gets the impression that today, a large number of players dip into environments, sample their experiences, then move on. No subscriptions, no raids, no guilds, no groups even. No Ventrilo; only the occasional banter in general chat. No need to specialize the character or the gear. The columns of Richard Aihoshi at MMORPG.com give interesting insights into this mode of play and the business models that benefit from it.

What should we call a platform that caters to alone-togetherness? How about a Massively Single Player Online Game, or MSPOG. You can find a post on the word at FredCavazza.net. It might be a fascinating post, too; I just don't speak French well enough to know.

Weekly research seminar in Second Life

Inspired by this year's conference in WoW and an appreciation for Second Life discussion groups, some researchers decided to start a weekly seminar meeting in Second Life. So far four meetings have been held, with the fifth and sixth planned. The organizers would like to invite Terra Nova readers to attend the seminars and if they like, present their work.

The format is an informal one-hour meeting, once a week, for VW researchers to discuss problems, methods and results. While the meeting takes place in Second Life, any VW-related topic is suitable. Each week a presenter speaks about their work for part of the hour, then opens the floor to audience discussion. The presenter chooses how long they want to speak for, and the day, time and place of the talk (though lately we seem to have settled on Tuesdays at 2pm SL time). In order to be friendly to all time-zones it is envisaged that this will change week by week. Usually the presenter uses SL voice, and the audience uses text-chat for discussion and questions. As is normal in SL, individual attendees choose whether they want to reveal their RL identity.

Most of the organizing is done via the "SLRL" email list, and seminar details are available at http://vwresearchersgroup.pbwiki.com . Previous topics and speakers are listed there. If you'd like more information or are interested in presenting, please email Greg at [email protected] .

2006 in Review

So it's nearly 2007, and this is the point where lazy editors tell their lazy pundits to knock out a couple of hundred words structured around the topic: "Top Ten Moments in X for 2006", where X stands for whatever the hell the magazine/blog/thinget is allegedly about.

It turns out that I'm even lazier than those lazy editors and lazy pundits so instead I figure that you can tell me: What are the Top Ten Moments in Virtual Worlds or MMOGs for 2006? Your response only needs to be a couple of hundred words and of course Terra Nova will pay your usual freelance rate on a per word basis.

And as I sit here on the deck of the "Extraneous Load", the newly commissioned TN yacht, sipping an extremely good vodka gimlet and watching distressingly attractive women swim by, can I wish you all our best wishes for the Season. My only recommendation for this time of year is not to get into a Texas Hold'em game with Constance Steinkuehler...but that is a story for another day.

State of Play / Terra Nova Symposium

The SoP/TN Symposium went off largely without a hitch this weekend, and I'll try to find time to write some observations about it. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who attended and presented. You were great.

Some initial thoughts are available from Raph, Jesper, Mark and Daniel (twice).

Blacksnow documents

Vili Lehdonvirta over at VERN has posted the links to the documents in l'affaire Blacksnow Interactive. Essential reading.

Second Life's Security Breach: Do We Care?

It was widely reported in the past few days that there was a security breach in Second Life's user database. That opened up a discussion in the Terra Nova backchannel about whether this was worth reporting here. It seems to me that security breaches are old news and germaine to a security blog; there's nothing inherently virtual worldy about them. On the other hand, I received emails from people claiming that we are SL fanbois for not posting about it. So, OK, we can post about it. Your thoughts?

Computer Games Magazine to Launch New MMO Publication

Straight from their mouths: "MASSIVE Magazine Will Be Devoted Exclusively to Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Computer Games Magazine, published by the media division of theglobe.com, today announced it will publish MASSIVE Magazine, the first print publication dedicated solely to massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. It will provide avid online gamers a new source for the latest news, features, and previews. The premiere issue will hit newsstands for a three-month run on September 19, 2006, and will start as a stand-alone quarterly publication by January 2007. It will also include a free DVD packed with MMO demos and games.

NCs 2 b NC?

Let’s imagine that the rumour is true and media-megalopolis News Corp actually does buy NCsoft. Would that be the mainline to mainstream?

How Did We Miss This?

All of us got so excited about Sony Station going live that we somehow missed EA's attempt to sell Ultima Online items for real US$.  I say "attempt" because Stratics has details on their emergency publish to roll back all of the items.  Apparently there was a dupe bug, which is unfortunate when you had players paying $2.99 for each item (or $12.99 for all 6).  Sounds like they're going to try again once they debug their problems.  While this isn't traditional real-world transactions, selling upgraded and special items seems to be inline with the approach that would fit other EA games, like Madden, with online components.

IGE Speaks

Steve Salyer, IGE's CEO, takes some tough questions about the secondary market from okratas.

I like to watch

The Boston Globe reports that Electronic Arts is mulling over a proposal to have "Sims TV". In the words of Jan Bolz, vice president of marketing and sales for EA Europe: "One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show'."

Now the first response to this must be: Genius.

Notes from the New World

Wagner James Au aka Hamlet Linden writes:

Happy holidays, all. Thought you'd be interested in my ongoing wrap-up of the year in New World Notes, with all '04 stories archived into a dozen-plus entries, this week. Of particular interest for TN readers, I suspect, will be the compilations of stories on sex, politics, religion, and money.

And also "A Lever to Move the Civic-Minded", stories covering Second Life as a teaching and therepeutic tool, a place for benefitting real-world non-profits, and so on.

At first I thought I should be offended that he believes that I'm particularly interested in sex and money. And then I realized he was talking about you, Gentle Reader...

The Golden 1M: Please Welcome the Next Candidate, World of Warcraft

The benchmark for US virtual worlds comes from Asia, where worlds with more than a million subscribers are common. Two years ago, anyone working in this area would have picked three or more forthcoming titles as candidates for the first to reach this level. Some of those candidates have failed even to cover their development costs; others are probably profitable; but none has reached the Golden 1M. The MMORPG glut, now more than a year old, certainly played a role. Another factor is the failure of US demand to ramp up as quickly as it has in Korea, Japan, and especially China. True, the space as a whole continues to expand, judging from the most recent numbers. But we still await the first American superstar.

The next candidate launched today. World of Warcraft held an open beta two weeks ago and attracted 500,000 testers before  shutting down the sign-up system. [Edit: They have launched with 42 servers.][Edit: 71 servers as of 7pm EST 11/24.][Edit: 88 as of 8pm EST 11/25]. Exit polls suggest that more than 30 percent of the US population plans to skip work or school today [Edit: I'm kidding!]. Azeroth, are you The One?

[Update: Samantha LeCraft points us to first-day data: 250,000 box sales, 200,000 accounts, 100,000 simultaneous users.]

Rulemaking Strikes Back

Susan Crawford's blog has a link to the FCC's Proposed Rulemaking[edit to fix href] on "IP-enabled services." Susan points out that this covers email and it obviously covers all sorts of games as well. The thrust of the rulemaking effort is VoIP but the proposal is much broader in scope, including such gems as Section 16:

". . . it may become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish “voice” service from “data” service . . . ."

Wouldn't it be great if all online games and email had to support E911 service? Section 53:

"Against this backdrop, we seek comment in this proceeding on the potential applicability of 911, E911, and related critical infrastructure regulation to VoIP and other IP-enabled services."

Wait, it gets better. Section 54:

"We also seek comment on whether VoIP and other IP-enabled services are technologically and operationally capable of delivering call-back and location information"

I've previously posted about the improved rulemaking process. Perhaps this is an opportunity to put theory into practice.

Virtual Item Sales Appear in IM Services

The Wall Street Journal (no link, subscription required) reported on March 22 (p. R4) that avatar and virtual item markets are springing up in Asia, but not in the usual places. Games are mentioned in the report, sure. But it seems that avatars are viewed more as personalized ID cards for instant messaging and chat room services than as gaming vehicles. The article mentions There.com not as a spinoff from games, but from SMS: a chat room with pictures.

But whatever the deployment, the interesting thing about the avatars is the secondary market they create for virtual items. If you're going to show a face and body in an IM system, why not give yourself a killer style too? And style, as we all know, costs money.

Excerpts follow. Thanks to my brother, Tom, for the note.

Reuters: Korean Kid Plays Videogame, Spends Dad's Real Money On Virtual Items; World Loses Interest

Yet another news story about Korea's lost youth. Games are becoming the bugbear of Korean society.

" 'One 25-year-old unemployed man confessed he had once sat up three straight nights to win game items in order to sell them back to other players for real money,' Hwang Jang-min, a researcher at Yonsei University, said in a research report. The man said he made almost $1,400 by selling them." The average Korean earns $2,000 a month [edit: Java; scroll down to the link on monthly earnings].

"Committed players devote between 17 and 26 hours a week to online games." Half the time Americans spend watching TV.

"In extreme cases, game addicts have collapsed and died after playing for hours, consuming nothing but soda and instant noodles." Thousands and thousands of noodle-bloated gamers, keeling over at their desks. Medic!

" 'In most cases, heavy game players show the same kinds of problems -- they do badly at school, have problems with their friends, family and teachers, and even play truant from school,' said Lee Su-jin, a counsellor at the Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counselling, established by the government in April 2002."

Maybe game addicts have problems with their families. Or maybe problem families have game addicts. That's an important distinction for any policy response, isn't it?

Mythic v Mythica

The Wall Street Journal reports that Mythic Entertainment (makers of DAoC) have sued Microsoft for trademark infringement over MS's use of "Mythica" for their new MMOG.

Reports available via Google News.

New World Discovered, 300,000 Existing Residents Unimpressed

Like Columbus, we stumble upon a new world already filled with happy inhabitants, who - like the residents of the Western Hemisphere in 1452 - don't find the place new at all. Well, MU-Online is new to us (me anyway), but rather ho-hum to the more than 300,000 Chinese and Koreans who visit the place regularly. Thanks to correspondent Unggi Yoon for mentioning this world in a comment.

Indeed, anyone interested in the property rights debate should read his post, under "Who Owns My Lightsaber?" as it refers to recent court cases that have already gone to the highest levels in Korea and China. Bottom line: EULAs are not robust.