Tag Archives: politics

Is the Second Life hype brought on by overly eager marketing types, killing Second Life?

31 July 2007

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Yesterday my feed reader was bombarded with Norwegian articles and blog posts about Second Life. Now, being a ‘job hunter’ who wants to continue working within the virtual world field, I get quite excited about such days! When I hardly have time to read all the Norwegian news about a virtual world – that means my future job prospects are looking up, right? Ssshhhh – don’t answer that – let me continue being deluded, sometimes ignorance is bliss and hopeful! ;)

The attention, it seems, comes from Wired’s “How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life” by Frank Rose about how most places in Second Life are deserted and businesses aren’t finding the consumer wealth they were looking for. I’m not certain what to make of it all. Two thoughts spring to mind: 1) Refreshing to see Second Life getting som critical press coverage from Wired 2) Do I really care enough about Second Life to go defend it on the different critical Norwegian blogs and websites? Not really.

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The Playing Columbine Trailer

31 July 2007

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The trailer to the documentary about Super Columbine Massacre RPG is out. Some may remember the controversial debate that followed after it was pulled from the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition. If anything at all this game has spurred great discussions about gameplay as documentary/storytelling/art. I’m not very opinionated about this documentary yet, except that I adore the debate and I’m looking forward to seeing the whole thing. But for some opinions check out Kotaku, Water Cooler Games and Game Politics.

Naw – lawsuits can’t happen here because it’s virtual FANTASY world!

12 July 2007

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This is an odd tv segment. I found it interesting and just really weird (even odder – I was absolutely certain I’d blogged about the case – but apparently not, must be getting confused with my del.icio.us’ing).
So for those out of the loop:

Those Creative Spammers

10 July 2007

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Goldfarmers in World of Warcraft are becoming desperate as Blizzard has now inserted a new ‘text-filter on broadcast chat messages to prevent gold farmers from spamming users about their websites’ – I don’t get how it can work, but I guess it really does!

This just impressed me so! Dead gnomes dropping out of the sky to spell an url?! I’m sorry, that just blows me away! So now I guess WoWers will have to put up with rainy days of dead gnomes instead of text spam? I have such a hard time disrespecting such creativity, but then again I’m not a WoW’er so I’m not hassled with goldfarming spam. ;)

South Korea claims tax on Virtual Goods

3 July 2007

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Worlds In Motion (which I’ll get back to later) reports that Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) “has begun adding the new tax automatically to all virtual transactions involving real money as of July 1st, says the report, translated as follows:

Sellers who do between 6 and 12 million won ($6,500 – $13,000)/half year in
business will have VAT auto applied by transaction’s middle-man.

Sellers who do more than 12 million won/half year in business will need a
business will need a business license and will pay the tax by themselves”

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CNN Future Summit on YouTube

1 July 2007

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It’s edited to the parts with glorious Nick Yee. I definitely recommend watching the whole thing although CNN’s video player annoyed me some. The program is ok – nothing really new – but a great resource (specially for someone like me who’s applying for work in a place filled with negative skepticism of virtual worlds)!
Trond Aas (Funcom) has an adorable response to Jimmy Wales‘ vision that Wikipedia will remain text based (part 6), where he shares his vision that instead of reading a speech given by Cicero in Rome you’ll be able to immerse yourself in the Roman era and listen to the speech given on the streets of Rome – by looking it up on wikipedia first. I think that’s just charming!

Virtual World Politics News

29 June 2007

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Where to start?
How about the “u gotta be kidding me!” news:
The US Congress has announced that it will be issuing a potential taxation of virtual goods report in August. I’m a bit perplexed about this. Firstly – how are they going to define what is virtual? And second of all, I don’t think we’re anywhere near ready to discuss this issue ‘officially’. I’m a bit worried that they’re going to ruin the creative gaming freedom that these virtual worlds offer by bringing up such invasive things as taxes. And when there’s just a handful of gamers this could apply to – is it really worth it? I’m all for that academics, gamers and designers discuss it, because it is important that we think about these things and have ready proposals and not in the least definitions before such matters do become official – but not the US Congress! Maybe I’m just skeptical because I’m European. I’m just not as thrilled as everyone else seems to be. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the ‘real’ value of virtual goods – I really do! And I abhore all the journalists writing headlines about virtual goods being fake – yet worth real money. I just think that the ‘realness’ of such things has to come about another way than through a governmental force like the US Congress. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, they do say ‘potential’.

This whole copyright licensing of media thing

18 June 2007

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Like the rest of the world, I became enchanted by ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent when I saw Paul Potts‘ remarkable performance on YouTube – oh the tears! This of course led to hunger for more and I randomly went through some of the related YouTube videos. At one point I thought ‘hang on – I’m sure they’ve got a website with better quality clips and a much better organisational overview’. And they do -yay! But no – I get this picture up. “This content is not for viewing outside of the UK due to rights reasons”. Urgh! My thoughts go to the delightful Ben Hammersley‘s words:

The audience is actually quite happy to pay for these things. Witness the sales of DVD box-sets, or the success of the downloadable episodes of hit shows in the iTunes Music Store. Again, though, the television industry shoots itself in the foot. Would I pay for downloadable episodes of the Daily Show? Yes. Will anyone take my money from me? No. Why? Because I’m in the wrong country. Well, I tried. I’ll be thinking about how little their broken business model is my problem as I boot up my torrent software, download the show, and watch the whole thing, including the adverts and any in-show sponsorship.It’s a curious business indeed that turns away customers. It’s exceptionally puzzling when an industry ignores offers of cash. The reason for this seemingly counter-intuitive approach to business – where those with the supply actively avoid those with the demand – is that selling programming is not the business channels are in.

The Guardian, March 20, 2006

“Get with the programme”

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Singapore

13 June 2007

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Firstly – CNN launched it’s Future Summit: Virtual worlds today.

“Originating from Singapore and Palo Alto, California, the program features creative visionaries and entrepreneurs leading us into a new age of creativity and imagination.”

Impressive list of panelists really. I don’t even know who to list here – but it’s a good mix of social networking sites experts and designers and MMORPG experts and designers. I’m really going to enjoy following this!

So speaking of Singapore – I just got my ticket for 16 August. My apartment’s getting renovated 20 August by my landlords and my adorable father thought it would be a good idea for me to visit him instead of crashing on a friend’s floor. Not a hell of a lot of protest from me! It will be good to get away and have a vacation – there’s so much I didn’t get to do last time around. Besides, I miss him – chillin’ out with dad is always delightful.

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Computer Gaming & Virtual Worlds Public Policy Workshop

14 May 2007

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Ren Reynolds is organising a think tank on public policy formation for computer gaming & virtual worlds in London on the 24th of May. This seems to be ‘the issue’ of the year, doesn’t it? As Ludium is “Video Games and Public Policy” and I’m sure more are being organised.
I really enjoy the wording in this description:

“The danger that faces society is that policies are formed based on a lack
of understanding and popularized framing of computer games as simply
‘addictive’, ‘dangerous’ or the one secret to the future of education. Such
characterizations do not lead to sound policy formation.”

We should really start considering doing something like this in Norway as well – it’s time. Maybe the IGDA chapter could organise something? Or Medietilsynet? It’s definitely high time for a public discussion about this issue. We’re such a public policy nation – it’s weird that gaming politics is mainly about slot machines – but then again – maybe I’m just not getting it.