I honestly don’t understand the point of bothering!

Yet another really, really important case has eluded my attention until now!

Brian Kopp, a 24 year old WoW player released a book called “The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide” in August and sold it on e-bay. Blizzard, Vivendi and the ESA responded by “sending repeated takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), asking eBay to yank the auctions because of copyright and trademark infringement concerns”. Kopp put up quite an impressive fight but in the end his eBay account (hmmm…article doesn’t say anything about his Blizzard account…I wonder if he’s still allowed to play?) was suspended.

The companies didn’t let it rest with this, however, they went on to claim copyright and trademark infringement! They claim that he couldn’t sell the book because it “attempts to trade off the substantial goodwill and recognition that Blizzard has built up in connection with its World of Warcraft product”.

I mean, COME ON!!! REALLY?!! I honestly don’t see the problem here. Now, I haven’t read the book and to be honest I’m not a big fan of books like this, but I honestly feel there’s more good publicity in consumers producing such stuff…than harm!

It looks like Kopp is quite the fighter, because he’s now filing a lawsuit against them. I thought the text was quite intriguing, so I’m just going to cut’n’paste from the CNet article:

“Kopp’s complaint argues that his book does not infringe on any of the companies’ copyrights for several reasons: The book presents a disclaimer on its first page about its “unauthorized” nature, contains no copyrighted text or storylines (ooohhh…that’s a touchy word to use in reference to MMOGs) from the game and makes “fair use” of selected screenshots under copyright law, the complaint said. In effect, if the video game industry’s actions are upheld, “then selling a how-to book about Microsoft Word would infringe Microsoft’s copyright, expecially if the book contained one or more screenshots of Word’s user interface,” said Paul Levy of the public-interest advocacy group Public Citizen, which joined in filing the suit on behalf of Kopp. “We think this cannot be the law.”

What silliness of Blizzard and what bravado of Kopp! You just gotta respect the guy for fighting back!!

Ooooh!! I can’t tell you how exciting it is to actually recognise one of the names on this list of editors and actually met the guy!! What a thrill!!!

Anyways…it’s called “SPACE TIME PLAY – Games, Architecture, and Urbanism”

Absolutely all the topics are interesting! And I have a sneeking suspicion that there are people at our department working on these exact topics who might have some stuff to share? But what do I know? I don’t know anything of what’s going on at our department as I keep missing presentations and lectures….but this is another rant, which I’m working on at the moment, but harder to blurt out my thoughts there as I tend to get quite emotional on the subject.

But anyways…thought I’d mention it in case they read this and in case someone felt compelled to share information with those interested!

This would be such an interesting read!!!

Massively Multiplayer Games For Dummies by Scott Jennings

Found this via Grimwell Online, which I’m still checking out…but looks interesting!

Yup! Raph Koster is leaving SOE!

According to Gamasutra, Terra Nova and Gamespot.

It will be exciting to see what happens next!!

As if I didn’t have enough to read, the scrumptiously gorgeous Marve led me to this interesting place:

We-make-money-not-art

It’s truely fascinating! I’ve been trying to get my head around the whole blog to give a summary here – but there’s just too much interesting to report!

I mean, there’s a great post about a collaborative Packman game!

There’s a fascinating piece on computer games and animals! I have plans of following each link to this during the course of the day! Absolutely fascinating projects, and well…kinda weird, really!!

And then there’s this ‘Net-art wrestling match’ (picture)

And all this in just one day!!!!! I wonder what lies beyond?!! Definitely looking forward to digging deeper into it!

Oh…and PS:

I saw someone reading ‘Theory of Fun’ at our department yesterday! Yippi!!!

Oooh…and I’m kinda wondering…do you think there’s much truth in Kotaku’s rumours that Raph Koster is quiting SOE and starting his own studio? That would be cool – but I guess it’s also doom for Star Wars Galaxies. Oh dear!

Oh…today is just one of those days where there’s just too much to blog about!!! So I need to just cut’n’paste some stuff and maybe, if I’m lucky, it will be quiet at work tomorrow so I can piff up with some comments of my own!!

The Dazzling Mr. Timothy Burke has a brilliant post on Terra Nova!! It’s about the MMOG Roma Victor and how they’ve implemented a punishment system for griefers entailing crusifixion! Brilliant! And, as usual, his comments are just soooooo spot on!!!

“What I like is that it’s a very good example of how I think developer sovereignty might more meaningful manifest within the terms of a given MMOG’s fictional framework. With a game like World of Warcraft, what the GMs do to players for various infractions is entirely outside the framework of the otherwise very well-developed setting of the game. The policing of players (which Blizzard does fairly actively in relation to some other live management teams) always breaks the magic circle. Moreover, because it does so, Blizzard is always under pressure to systematize and make explicit the precise formulations under which its sovereign interest in the gameworld will become active, because that’s what we expect in the real world from institutional actors, that they will precisely delineate violations that will trigger intervention.”

Yes! Yes! Yes!!

Awww…Will Wright is just such a gaming romantic!!!
He’s co-editor of Wired this month and has such a touching article ” Dream Machines”

Some great statements:

• “It turns out that we don’t use computers to enhance our math skills – we use them to expand our people skills.”
• “Games are evolving to entertain, educate, and engage us individually. These personalized games will reflect who we are and what we enjoy, much as our choice of books and music does now. They will allow us to express ourselves, meet others, and create things that we can only dimly imagine. They will enable us to share and combine these creations, to build vast playgrounds. And more than ever, games will be a visible, external amplification of the human imagination”.

Awww…well all I can say is “Skål!”

Which reminds me, if you haven’t seen this yet, OMG this is just – Amazing(I guess I just presume that EVERYONE is a Boing Boing reader):

Also…

GameSpy‘s Miguel Lopez has a genius idea for an MMO!

• “Basically, imagine a game in which you could have anything fight against anything. You could pick, say, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and put it up against an F-14 Tomcat. Or you could pit a Doom-style space marine against a group of twenty robot dogs. Or the 1981 Miami Dolphins versus Rambo riding on the back of a Dewback from Star Wars armed with Excalibur. You get the picture. Anything is possible. You know those heated discussions you had with your friends in elementary school phys. ed. about who was stronger, Wolverine, or a ninja? This is pretty much a game about those conversations”

Yeah!!! I’ve often thought that it would be incredibly cool for some form of e-game tournament where SWG guilds (sorry…they’re not called guilds are they?) would compete against WoW guilds! The battle of the MMOGs! Wouldn’t that be incredibly cool?!!

The Game Developers Conference has started and boy oh boy what a program!!

There are just too many heros there to mention, academics and developers!

Participants are doing their best to keep us updated however, bless them!!!

GDC Wki

Gamasutra has a GDC Update page – very good!

I was very suprised when Wonderland reported “…but there’s no wifi except in the very central main area, so updates will be on an as-and-when basis.”

There’s probably a lot more…but these are the ones I’ve decided to follow. There are limits, you know!!!

So…I’m still going on about the whole goldfarming thing in my thesis and I’m finding it kinda difficult to explain – who’d have thought?! Anyways…I started thinking that maybe what goldfarming companies really do is help gamers put the ‘fun’ back in MMORPGs. They help take away the ‘work factor’? You know, it would be really interesting to talk to someone who actually buys virtual currency and stuff, regularly! All the gamers, I know, are too faithful to the moral economy of their virtual gaming world to do so! I just think it would be interesting to see how passionate a regular consumer of goldfarming services is about the gameplay compared to someone who ‘works’ their way through the game – the hard way! But I’m sure someone is studying this! Probably the glorious Mr. Yee and his posse!
So yeah! What was I on about? Yeah…I wanted to describe in my thesis how a lot of the gameplay is really hard work and thought I’d hunt for a good quote from someone smarter than me and other than Castronova (he’s just already been quoted way too much!). So after being unsatisfied with the essays and books here at my desk I went online and found this beautiful little article by Glorious Nick Yee: “The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur The Boundaries of Work and Play”. I had a little huff and a puff when I started reading the words “Every day, millions of players log onto a genre of video games known as Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).” – I mean! How many times do I have to read these words! I actually had to leave my computer and gather up the patience to read on. But guess what? He does it beautifully!!! He pretty much goes straight into explaining the commerce of Star Wars Galaxy! Pure joy! And since I’m not a SWG player – extremely interesting!!!
Here’s some highlights that I loved:

• “The central irony of MMORPGs is that they are advertised as worlds to escape to after coming home from work, but they too make us work and burn us out. For some players, their game-play might be more stressful and demanding than their actual jobs. And the most tragic irony is the MMORPG players pay game companies on a monthly basis (between 10-15 USD) to work and get burned out.”

And then he, well…goes a little overboard in my opinion:

• “The point remains however that video games are inherently work platforms that train us to become better workers. And the work bein performed in video games is increasingly similar to actual work in business corporations.”
• “Beck and Wade (2004) suggested that the gamer generation is acquiring skills and developing traits that will require businesses to adapt to them, but I believe a much larger intersection is occurring. Video games are changing the nature of both work and play. It is not so much that businesses will need to adapt to gamers as much as that work and play are starting to become indistinguishable from each other.”

I think he takes it a little too far here! There definitely are distinctions between ‘play’ and ‘work’ – although it’s difficult to define! But yeah! A lot of gameplay is work and there’s a hell of a lot of obligations within the gameplay in MMORPGs (raids, economy…a.s.o) – so why do we choose to pay to work?