The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. Gamasutra (USA) – Report: Universal Monsters-Themed MMO Planned. “Universal Pictures reportedly signed an agreement with SEE Virtual Worlds, the studio behind the Michael Jackson-themed MMO, to create an online game starring classic movie monsters like Frankenstein and the Wolf Man. In last month’s announcement for Planet Michael, its MMO centered on the late King of Pop, SEE Virtual Worlds said it would create a “virtual reality universe of connected planets”, with each planet tied to other licensed film, television, sports, music, and entertainment properties.”

2. Coventry Telegraph (UK) – Coventry University publishes guide to virtual worlds. “A GUIDE to using virtual worlds in higher education has been published by Coventry University. The book, A practical guide to using Second Life in Higher Education, helps teachers understand how to use the online social networking virtual world. Professor Maggi Savin-Baden is one of the UK’s leading academics on the subject and has used virtual technology extensively as a teaching resource. Professor Savin-Baden said: “This practical handbook had been designed to support teachers who want to use Second Life and provides both an overview and a detailed consideration of the opportunities this immersive world offers for teaching, learning, assessment and research.”

3. Search Engine Watch (USA) – Mingling In Virtual Worlds. “Last week I talked about games within Second Life that you could play. In theory all of these games can be social, but just how do you get social through a game? It’s much easier than you might think. Knowing where people hang out is the key. Let’s start with the obvious one, the Roleplaying Games. With these games you show up at a specific location as your avatar dressed and ready to pretend to be the character for the game.”

4. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – HuzuTech Announces Virtual World Platform. “British technology firm HuzuTech has announced that it will launch a white label 3D virtual world platform, HuzuVirtual, next week. The platform is for use by brands, publishers, film, and TV production houses that want to create promotional virtual worlds. The platform is designed to be flexible, scalable, and fully customizable. HuzuTech plans to initially work with children’s publishers and is already developing a virtual world for the Scholastic’s Horrible Histories line set to launch in June 2011. ”

5. Kotaku (USA) – A Computer Mind To Finger The Real Bullies, Pedophiles and Killers of Virtual Worlds. “When the text-heavy fantasy worlds of multi-user dungeons first invaded the mainframes of Essex University and the dial-ups of Compuserve, there were few rules in place and even fewer ways to enforce them. But today’s most modern of virtual worlds now include cutting-edge technology used to not just provide an immersive experience but also to hunt down the potential real-world predators, bullies and criminals lurking in the online games. The idea of actively policing how people play massively multiplayer online games didn’t really come about until the phrase massively multiplayer online games became not only a part of gamer parlance, but also a viable commercial genre with the 1997 launch of Ultima Online.”

6. News.com.au (Australia) – What are video games missing? Swishy skirts. “Another obstacle on the way to super-realistic video games looks set to be demolished. Over the years, games have become more and more lifelike. Clouds, trees, buildings and bodies all look pretty faithful in today’s virtual worlds. But there’s one thing game developers still struggle with — the movement of clothing. Now researchers in Germany think they’ve solved the problem with a new way of creating virtual models of actors by comparing 3D laser scans and video footage. New Scientist reported that software developed by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics was able to create “extremely realistic” avatars of actors and their costumes. When the avatars were programmed to perform new movements that the real actors never did, their clothes still swished and crinkled realistically.”

7. Gazette Live (UK) – Virtual world used to get teens talking. “Teenagers are to be encouraged to create their own virtual world to help Teesside University with key research. Researchers at the university are looking into what it means for young people to be British. They will be quizzing the teenagers about their values and aspirations using a virtual environment, as part of a citizenship project. To keep the youngsters’ identity secret, people taking part will be encouraged to create virtual worlds and their own avatar. The research is backed by a £250,000 grant, with £195,000 coming from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.”

8. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Paper: hypergrid allows virtual world to grow without limit. “The invention of the hypergrid will allow virtual worlds to grow to the size of the World Wide Web, or bigger, according to a paper made public today by OpenSim core developer Justin Clark-Casey. “The World Wide Web is much larger than any existing virtual environment system,” he wrote in the dissertation, submitted for his Masters in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford. “The World Wide Web has 1.6 billion estimated users while even the most popular online role playing game has only 11.5 million monthly subscribers.” One problem is that virtual environments are normally highly centralized — an environment’s servers, databases, even browsers are typically all controlled by a single company.”

9. San Francisco Chronicle (USA) – PlaySpan Integrates PayPal X Into its Video Monetization-as-a-Service Platform. “PlaySpan, the global leader in monetizing online games, social networks, virtual worlds and videos, announced today a partnership with PayPal to integrate PayPal X into its recently launched Video Monetization Platform. The first PlaySpan Video Monetization Platform integration to go live with PayPal X is on the PlaySpan Marketplace (PSM), where user generated commerce is transacted over virtual currency, virtual goods, games and videos. “We’re extremely excited about working with PayPal X to make PlaySpan’s in-video micropayments platform even more accessible to our media clients and providing them global reach to our gaming audience of millions of users,” Karl Mehta, CEO, PlaySpan.”

10. Kotaku (Australia) – When An MMO Dies. “A tricked-out dune buggy busts through a mural made up of post-apocalyptic imagery and battered road signs in the front of NetDevil’s Colorado offices, a lasting reminder of a world that came and went in the blink of an eye. Traditional video games are timeless. As long as one has the right equipment and their cartridge or disc is in working order, revisiting them is easy enough. Their levels, enemies and challenges live on. This is not the case with massively multiplayer online games. Massively multiplayer online games require a substantial investment. The developers spend time and effort creating these games, dedicate resources and manpower to maintaining game servers and supporting players and must continue to develop fresh content to keep players interested.”