Protesting in a virtual world

11 March 2008

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Joseph DeLappe is an active artist protesting the war in Iraq.

On March 20th, the date of the US invasion of Iraq, DeLappe will enter America’s Army, peacefully.

America’s Army is an MMORPG designed by the US military which also functions as an active reqruiter. for the army.

He’ll be using the login name “dead-in-Iraq” and well…I’m almost tempted to download America’s Army to witness the action. But quite honestly, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. Would I be supporting America’s Army or would I be supporting Joseph DeLappe?

“As of 1/17/08, I have input 3745 names. I intend to keep doing so until the end of this war. As of 1/17/08 there have been 3929 American service persons killed in Iraq” – Networked Performance

So he’ll be manually(!) writingthe name, age, service branch and date of death of each service person who has died to date in Iraq.

Does it all sound familiar? Well, it seems he started dead-in-iraq in 2006. It kinda gives you a perspective on matters when an artist repeats his protest 3 years in a row. That’s interesting.

I have to admit I’m feeling a tad sorry for the poor MMORPG players – I mean what are they suppossed to do? Hmmm – maybe they should join him somehow? Maybe he should invite them to. It would be lovely if someone documented the discussions this sparked in-world. It seems he doesn’t engage in any social conversation…well…who could blame him with 3745 US soldiers to memorialise.

It certainly made an impression on me. I think it would be cool if they could stream the protest but I worry about the privacy rights of the players.

My women’s day thank you

8 March 2008

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Since we’ve become such a connected society, I’ve noticed that my idols are more local. They’re reachable, and I may even have talked to them. Maybe its my age, but my idols aren’t billionaires (well – at least I don’t think they are) or global popstars – instead my idols are nearby, within my reach and guess what? They’re all women! I thought about this a few months ago and thought I’d save writing about it until this womens day. As my little tribute.
First off – by idol I mean a person that truly inspires me. It’s a person I draw strength from. I don’t want to be this person, I’m quite happy with who I am. But these people help me to strive for things I really want to do. I feel inspired when I’m around them or reading/hearing their work.

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Things I’m going to

5 March 2008

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Tomorrow I’m off to Gullstikken . It’s kinda an award ceremony for the best computer games of the year, well…that’s exactly what it is actually. From what I hear, its the best place to meet the whole Norwegian games industry in one place.

So I’m looking forward to seeing who’s out there.

I’m also going to a free information meeting about Datalagringsdirektivet on Friday. It’s about the EU directive of storage of personal information. I’m still quite confused about the whole thing, and I welcome a free meeting to inform me about what its all about.

Bow Street Runners

17 February 2008

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Congrats to Channel 4’s Public Broadcast Gaming initiative! And Alice Taylor!

I just tried Bow Street Runners and by golly it’s amazing! I really enjoyed it! It’s really good lookin’ and even educational! Which seems to be the point of Public Broadcast Gaming – creating games that educate. For example – I didn’t know gin had such a societal impact on London in the 18th century. I learned that just by clicking on a bottle – they called it Madame Geneva. So after the game episode I looked it up and listened to a BBC podcast on the subject – apparently it was a female craze. Really interesting!
The game is in unison with the Channel 4 series, City of Vice, which I ofcourse aim to see now that I’ve played the first episode of the game!

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Age of Conan delayed – again

21 January 2008

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According to Dagens It (ofcourse!) Funcom’s Age of Conan is delayed, yet again to May 20th.

I worry that they’re gun shy after the problems endured after the Anarchy Online release – but then again – maybe perfection upon release is the way to go. They’ve learned from their mistakes – but then again, I don’t think perfection is completely possible before release. Is it?

While waiting, though, Massively did a great in-depth interview with Jørgen Tharaldsen (I can’t believe he’s not in Wikipedia – I’ll have to sort that out in a sec)before Christmas, which is worth a look at. They go into the politics of rating, which I found really interesting! Akela Talamasca also shot this gameplay footage:

exploration_CD.mov

Using Game Design to "foster social change"

17 January 2008

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The World Wide Workshop, an organisation commited to using the internet for educational purposes of youth and children in developing communities, has created a wonderful site called MyGLife.org, through it’s Globaloria Project. It’s still in Beta – so I haven’t been able to test it yet – but just look at this:

MyGLife.org is comprised of an open architecture of educational, programmable websites and related wikis that offer more than 100 educational activities, simulations and tutorials to play, learn, explore and contribute new ideas online.

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I, journalist, again – in Oslo

15 January 2008

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Well – by golly. I’m off to Oslo to work as a journalist for five months. Dagens It, were kind enough to offer me the position – and I instantly jumped at it! Just think of all the stuff I’m gonna learn! I’m quite pannicked about writing quickly in Norwegian for such a serious business oriented news organisation and I’m foreseeing a bunch of stress right away. But I think it’ll be worth it! There’s so much I want to learn about the IT industry in Norway, in particular the game development community – I’m hoping that what interests me, will be in unison with the paper.
It’s all happening rather fast, however – so I feel like I’m stuck in some “We’re not in Kansas anymore” whirlwind. I’m starting by covering a conference here at home, Digitale Hverdag where there’s gonna be a lot of stuff on robots, which I’m all giddy about. Don’t know why, I never really cared about robots that much – but now I do. They’ll be talking about robots in the workforce which I think is quite interesting. I may have been asleep the last few years, but I haven’t really heard that much ado about robots since the 80s (yes – I was VERY young then). It’s my impression that it all became rather dystopic – robots taking away jobs a.s.o. So does this mean that we’re warming to robots more? Have we entered an age of positive technology? I suppose we have, really – which I guess I’ve known – so why am I suprised that robots in the workforce have become a positive force of discussion?

Gamers connecting through common interests – the new market?

11 January 2008

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According to Red Herring, game developer start-up, Outspark (site unavailable at writing moment) has managed to secure $11 million in funding from Tencent (a Chinese internet service company who’s mission is “to use Internet-related technologies for the betterment of human life”), Altos Ventures (Silicon Valley venture capital firm) and DCM (another venture capital firm in Silicon Valley).
Apparently they’re combining web 2.0 applications with casual games and focusing on revenue from the sales of virtual items – such as avatar clothing a.s.o. To me it all sounds very Habbo Hotel’ish, but why wouldn’t new gaming companies focus on the Habbo model?
It seems they’re using independently developed games and using them within they’re community. As Justin Moresco writes:

“And with an office in Seoul, Korea, Outspark hopes to tap into the
much-lauded game developer pool in the country. Both its current games, Fiesta
and Secret of the Solstic, are licensed from Korean developers.
Altos Venture general partner Han Kim said Outspark will continue to source games from Korea and then “localize” them for the North American market.”

I’m intrigued by the sourcing of gamedevelopers and the localizing efforts.
They’ve already registered one million users in the course of five months, which seems cautiously promising. I’m intrigued.
Venture Beat writes:

“Users get a single ID and use the same currency across all of Outspark’s games,
so they don’t need to sign up multiple times for the same services. The idea is
to encourage Outspark users to connect through common interests, not just
through the games they play together.”

P.S. – practicing writing articles in a hectic work day and publishing quickly – for reasons I’ll come back to soon. This was read about and reported in the course of 1 hour – constantly interrupted by other things. Me thinks me needs more practice – he he!