The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. New York Times (USA) – The Best Virtual Worlds Have a Touch of Reality. “What do the American frontier in 1911, a distant sector of the galaxy in 2504 and the gritty, industrial outskirts of modern Philadelphia have in common? They are the settings of the best interactive entertainment products so far of 2010: Red Dead Redemption, from Rockstar Games (for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3); StarCraft II, from Blizzard Entertainment (for PCs and Macs); and Heavy Rain, from Quantic Dream (for the PS3). As Labor Day and the traditional fall and holiday buying seasons approach, these titles have set the bar in what has already been one of the most bountiful years ever for great games. When I think about what makes each of these games so captivating and the circumstances and organizations that produced them, I see a few common threads beyond the obvious technical polish.”

2. Santa Rosa Press Democrat (USA) – Facebook game’s closure a cautionary tale. “When game publishers turn out the lights on virtual worlds, everything in them ceases to exist. But anyone who spends money on virtual goods, be they Xbox Live Arcade titles, credits in Facebook games or accoutrements for online avatars, should view the recent closure of Facebook game “Street Racing” as a cautionary tale. On Monday, social gaming juggernaut Zynga shut down “Street Racing,” one of its less popular titles. According to social games blog Games.com, the Facebook application had about 400,000 active players. To those of us more familiar with console or traditional PC games, that sounds like a heck of a lot of people, but it pales in comparison next to the nearly 60 million who played Zynga’s “FarmVille” on Facebook last month.”

3. Charisma News Online (USA) – The Wave of the Future. “Victoria Walker isn’t a hard-core video gamer, but she knows a thing or two about avatars and virtual worlds. For her doctoral dissertation, the mother of two created a counselor training facility where mental health students could hone their diagnostic skills on a licensed counselor and higher-level graduate student pretending to be patients with self-inflicted injuries and eating disorders. In the virtual world known as Second Life, where online users inhabit digital representations of themselves called avatars, Walker created a facility that users can walk into, ride an elevator up to the counseling rooms on the second floor and look inside. “They could look through one-way mirrors and see a counseling session in progress,” says Walker, 39, now director of continuing education and instructional and Web technologies at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. “Students were able to come in and interview [the patients], practice skills they had only been able to read about in their textbooks and see in videos, and practice with friends.”

4. Los Angeles Times (USA) – Video games are serious business for Blizzard CEO Michael Morhaime. “The gig: Chief executive and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment Inc., maker of mega video game franchises including World of Warcraft, one of the most popular online video games in history with more than 11 million monthly subscribers. Morhaime and two fellow UCLA students started Blizzard in Irvine in 1991. The company just released an intergalactic war game called StarCraft II, which took five years to complete. Morhaime, 42, captains the long voyages from the games’ inception to their release. In his nearly 20 years at Blizzard, the Northridge native has gone from a full-time code monkey to the big gorilla at a company whose Warcraft game alone brings in close to $1 billion for its parent company, Activision Blizzard.”

5. On Point Radio (USA) – Cheating in Social Games? – MIT’s Mia Consalvo on “Virtual” Ethics. “When I first wrote about cheating in videogames, I found that players cheated for four main reasons: they got stuck, they wanted to play God, they wanted to be a jerk, and they wanted to fast forward through content they thought was too tedious, too boring, too difficult, too whatever, for their personal tastes and abilities. (You can read in more detail about those reasons here). At that time there were a few casual games around (like Bejeweled) but no one had heard much about social games, or Facebook games, and certainly no one was tending virtual crops, or trading their real money for virtual horseshoes. What we did have were massively multiplayer online games such as Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft, where players were encouraged to engage in a long process of leveling up their characters, to become more powerful and to earn game currency. And although it was deemed against most games’ Terms of Service (and thus illegal), there were (and still are) companies that would sell you in-game currency (or in-game items) for a convenient charge to your credit card. Eliminate the tedium—get to the good stuff. Fast forward through content you consider boring, whether the game company likes it or not.”

6. Gamespy (Australia) – Digital Town, Inn Labeled WoW’s Red Light District, Blizzard Attempting Clean-up. “In what amounts to a virtual police blotter report, World of WarCraft customer service reps say, after receiving numerous complaints, they’re going to break up the digital orgy going on over at the Lion’s Pride Inn. Wow.com tracked down a forum listing from a concerned parent who said he canceled his son’s account after discovering the 15-year-old boy was getting his erotic role-play on at the Lion’s Pride Inn in the town of Goldshire on the U.S.-based Moon Guard server — a place that’s become a hot-spot for level 1 alt characters and WoW tourists looking to experience erotic role-playing. Call it the WoW Red Light District. “As a paying customer for 6 years now, I just wanted to voice my extreme displeasure regarding this disgusting server. IMO, it should be shut down,” the parent posted on the WoW forum. “T for Teen is one thing. What goes on in Goldshire on Moon Guard is appalling and beyond offensive.”

7. IT Pro (UK) – Businesses told to prepare for chaotic 10 years. “Companies will need to get ready for some chaotic times through to 2020, as much will lie out of their control, an analyst firm has warned. In the coming 10 years, there will be less cohesiveness between staff, as links become weaker and the working environment becomes increasingly virtual, Gartner has suggested. One of the firm’s predictions is there will be more work “swarms,” where employees will come together in a “flurry of collective activity” to add value to the group’s aim. These swarms, which will increase in number as a response to the need for ad hoc action needs, will form quickly to achieve a goal before disbanding, the firm explained.”

8. New York Times (USA) – The Award for Virtual Reality Goes to …“The coming “Teen Choice 2010” awards show on Fox Broadcasting will have an online complement in the form of a virtual beach party. (If only Gidget were around to get some virtual sand between her toes.) Fox is joining forces with Planet Cazmo, which creates virtual concerts, and the Mottola Company, led by the music impresario Tommy Mottola, for the promotion. It is tied to the annual presentation of the Teen Choice honors, scheduled to be broadcast by Fox on Monday from 8 to 10 p.m. (ET).”

9. Ars Technica (USA) – An edu-game that entertains? Inside The Curfew’s dystopia. “Labeling something as an “educational game” is usually the kiss of death. The recently released The Curfew is instead described as an “adventure webgame with a political thriller theme.” Commissioned by Channel 4, designed by LittleLoud, and written by Kieron Gillen, the game plays out like a point-and-click adventure crossed with a Sega CD FMV game. It’s not the most appealing description, but thanks to some excellent writing and a fully realized dystopic future, it’s an experience that’s well worth your time. The year is 2027. Once the sun goes down, all of Britain is placed under an involuntary curfew. After a second Great Depression and a near nuclear explosion in the heart of London, the country chose to elect the Shepherd Party. Now the country is run like a police state. The freedom and civil liberties that many of us take for granted are nowhere to be found. Citizens are divided into classes, and depending who you are, your movement is restricted.”

10. SIGNAL Magazine (USA) – Government Prepares For Work Force Changes. “The U.S. federal information technology work force is sandwiched between two major trends it must address to continue successful operations—the retirement eligibility of the Baby Boomer generation and the emergence of Web 2.0. The former threatens to empty hundreds of thousands of positions across the government, while the latter is shifting how the work force thinks about and uses technology. Solutions for both these issues converge in the Net Generation (sometimes referred to as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation), the demographic of youth currently preparing to enter institutions of higher learning and the job market. However, this population group is not a panacea for the government’s problems, because the ideas held by these young adults will challenge the status quo.”