Well this certainly is interesting!!! Apparently non-english World of Warcraft players are being discriminated against! Jepp! In order to join a guild, several players are demanding one or two gramatically correct English sentences. If the player fails, they’re shunned and rejected. It all started as an attempt to block out gold farmers, but this happened in the most discriminating manner! the ‘campaign’ assumed that all gold farmers were indeed ‘foreigners’ (what a laugh!)! I’ve often seen racism, sexism and any other form of discrimination in MMORPGs but I have to say…this is the first time I’ve heard of it being completely organised! Hmmm…

Thanks to Game Tycoon for making me aware of this.

… but I absolutely adore Illegal Art!

Can’t believe I haven’t mentioned it earlier, or have I?! Anyways…I’m at work and bored and don’t want to do anything constructive and well…needed a little pick me up, and this stuff always does the trick! Would ofcourse, never have found it without incredible Stay Free!

This is just too perfect! Lawrence Lessig is visiting Second Life on Wednesday (January 18th) to talk about his book Free Culture, at 5.30 pm Pacific Standard Time (which means 2.30 am for us lowly Europeans)! I’m having trouble with my Second Life installation but I’m going to try my bestest to be there! This is just an event you can’t miss!!!

For more info: New World Notes

I was just going to let this pass silently…but felt guilty in doing so!
I’ve fallen in love with yet another academic, James Grimmelmann – seriously reading his stuff has given me some interesting outlooks on quite a few questions I’ve been carrying around for some time! Therefore his papers on Virtual World Government and Law have now been added to the ‘Papers’ section of this blog (jeeeezzz…you’d think I could come up with a more creative title than that!
I’ve also added a guy called Lars Konzack…initially just to keep him available because I haven’t finished reading his paper yet. But it’s really interesting! He writes that computer games have 7 layers: hardware, program code, functionality, game play, meaning, referentiality and socio-culture. I haven’t really made my mind up if I agree with him or not….but if anything…this is a brilliant try on creating a method for computer game analysis (as usual it can all be torn apart if you’re analysing an MMORPG, but I’m used to that now…sigh)! I haven’t finished it yet because I already got stuck on page two. He writes that the description of a computer games “…should be made from two different perspectives, because a computer game consists of two different levels: a) the virtual space, and b) the playground. From what I can gather…the playground seems to be what is in ‘real’ space, controls and so forth. Now…this is how big a looser I am! I started to wonder if the actual view on the screen was ‘the playground’…I mean…should the description that it is a First Person Shooter game…be in the virtual space description or the playground? It confused me and I just had to move on before I ended up wasting my time and pondering about something meaningless for hours. But I do think that it also demonstrates the difficulty of defining the borders between virtuality and reality. I remember me and the ‘game lads’ (urgh…I have to find them a better name) ended up in endless discussions about what were ‘real’ resources and what were ‘virtual’ resources in computer games! But look at me! I’m rambling again…oh you poor thing…did you really read all the way to the end? I’m sorry!!

There’s some new screenshots of Funcom’s upcoming MMOAge of Conan out…and I have to say…it really does look beautiful!!!

Nerve.com has gathered some of the most prestigious names in game academia for an online discussion called; Voicebox: Sex, Violence and the Furture of Video Games. It’s kinda old news, I just forgot about it for a while…so sorry about my lateness!
The panel is Steven Johnson, Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Bogost, Eric Zimmerman, Henry Jenkins, Rob Levine and Katie Salen.
And the questions are:

1. 1. Is the sex-and-violence content of video games a legitimate social concern? Or are Hillary Clinton et. al. criticizing games for easy political points? And why is there so much more violence than sex?
2. If the average age of a gamer is 30, when did video games become more for grownups than kids? (Was there a Gladwellesque tipping point?) Did the Nintendo generation grow up without growing out of games, or was there a latency period in between? Is it attributable to regression or midlife crisis?
3. How will video games affect the future of online social interaction? Will they develop into an extension of online dating and IMing?
4. As video games’ interactive worlds become more complex, what ethical issues might arise that need regulation? What about commerce in gaming – do you foresee it?
5. What is the future of sex in video games, and where does the 20th-century idea of virtual reality fit in?

Right…I’ve only read the answers up to and including nr. 3! I’m saving nr. 4 for my next break! Yup…that’s right! Instead of 5 pages I’ve only written 5 sentences so far! But it’s sooo great cause I found Synthetic Worlds, Half-real and My Mother was a Computer at Studia yesterday!! Isn’t that great?! Maybe my university is finally waking up and smelling the strong virtual coffee! Ofcourse…they only had one copy of each! Urgh…how can I be expected to write when there’s just soooooo much interesting to read?!

Sorry about that little sidetrack! Just also wanted to mention my favourite comment from the above mentioned discussion, so far. For question nr. 3 Steven Johnson concludes with the question:

“…as the AI gets increasingly powerful, and your avatar starts to act more autonomously, will avatars develop flirtations on their own? You’ll log into your account in the morning, and your avatar will greet you by saying: “I med the greatest guy last night…”” – and I say “COOL!!!!“

Here’s a little charming and amusing song by comedy act Tripod all about the conflicts of a gamer’s love life! I think we can all recognise ourselves here somewhere!!!

Right! Just one more blogpost while I’m eating my dinner and then I’ll definately get the required 5 pages done before I retire for the day!!!
Julian Dibbell has recently published an article about the IRS and economic gains of virtual trading! The guy (he’s such a cool nerd) actually went to his local tax office to figure all this out! And I have to say…taxes has never been more interesting to me! There are some really wild precedents! One was involved with a gambler who had been given a $500,000 relief from his debt to a casino…now…should he have to pay taxes on that money? For he has actually been given a gift of $500,000! I find these things interesting!!

So my thoughts are basically that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes for sales or profits under a certain amount…I don’t know…$100,000? But I’m also wondering…if you have to pay taxes on your ‘real’ world profits…won’t that make you more traceable to the game producers and eventually get you banned (if the EULA bans trading of course)?! So…it’s not exactly that attractive to sell virtual money and items for ‘real’ money, does that mean that the novelty will wear off? Hmmm…just thinking out loud!!

Now…time to get back to business!!!

PS…picture stolen from Kotaku

BBC’s Newsnight has devoted an entire week to geekism (what a lovely and novel idea….why do I live in such a bad tv country?!!!!) and Paul Mason has a report on the realism of virtual worlds (my words…but best way I could sum it all up). It’s a good report, really…I think it has to be one of the best summaries of what’s going on with MMORPGs these days, that I’ve seen! Ofcourse there’s a lot of yooha that we’ve heard several times before like ‘real’ businesses, ‘real’ money and powerleveling!
So…making this a sort of summary post for myself as well…I might as well mention that Terra Nova’s blogger, Dan Hunter has an interesting post about his experience of playing a character that has been powerleveled. Something about the unrealism that and detachment he felt, it’s interesting!
Also…I might as well mention that the beginning of the new year brought the death of Asheron’s Call 2. Wonderland links us to a sad documentation of the last hours and Wired’s Clive Thompson also has an interesting article about the impact of such a world closing down! These are all great documentations of how MMORPGs are definately not just games. But we’re way passed that now, aren’t we?

So…in the spirit of a new year I’ve now tried to set up a ‘workplace’ here at the university with high hopes of being much more productive! I want to write at least 5 pages a day!
But here I am on my first ‘productive’ day in 2006, 6 hours later than I intended to be here, and well…I’ve found that the mind wonders sitting alone at a desk here as well!!
I’ve been reading James Grimmelmann’s “Virtual Power Politics”, and getting so many great ideas for my own project. I like Grimmelmann’s thoughts and it’s lovely to be entertained with amusing ‘over the top’ sentences like:

“Exploits have the feeling of alchemy: arcane secrets that produce virtual gold out of thin air”

Yet again, however I find my curiousity being lured to the information beyond my fingertips and had to look up who James Grimmelmann is! Which has then led me to this little number! It’s a parody of the opening sequence of Zero Wing, which is of course very famous for it’s “All your base are belong to us”. I thought it was amusing…and thought maybe other people might like a little light entertainment! I can’t decide whether I’m greatful for studying such a subject that leads me on to a good laugh every now and then or if it’s a royal pain in the —, because I put off all the serious work!!!