1. The Australian (Australia) – Is putting real-life law into an avatar’s hands viable? “The difficult business of enforcing law and order in virtual worlds — and resolving the messy consequences when problems spill into real life — needs to be debated before knee-jerk political responses. Over the past fortnight Facebook memorial sites for murdered Queensland children Trinity Bates and Elliott Fletcher have been swamped by pornographic and obscene messages.”

2. CNET (USA) – Real-world woes shuttering virtual world There. “The pioneering virtual world There.com will shut down on March 9, a victim of the recession and the pinch on brand spending that had kept it going long past earlier troubles. The news was announced by CEO Mike Wilson on Tuesday.
The service, which launched in the fall of 2003, was a fully 3D social environment with a sophisticated economy, wonderful vehicles like hoverboard and hoverboats and, eventually, a wide variety of community-created content.”

3. Everything PR (Germany) – Real Baby Dies as Parents Raise Virtual Daughter. “When does virtual game play go to far? The parents of a starved baby may have found out, when their three-month old infant died of malnutrition. The South Korean couple left their baby to starve to death at home, while playing an internet game. The disturbing irony of it all? The web-based game they were playing involved the rearing of a virtual child.”

4. Radio National Future Tense (Australia) – Money – Part Two. “In part two of this series we look at the changing nature of currency. Is traditional state-issued tender now losing its monopoly? And how widespread is the use of alternative currencies – be they digital or virtual, or both?”

5. ZDNet (USA) – Earn 100 points – read: The reverse virutal reality world of the future. “Kevin Kelly, writing on his Technium blog points out a fascinating talk by Jesse Schell, a games designer. In “Design outside the box” Mr Schell starts by explaining out how much money is made by very simple games, such as Farmville and Club Penguin. But its the latter part of his talk that is even more interesting, when he predicts how games will be embedded into our reality through the use of cheap wireless sensors.”

6. Montreal Gazette (Canada) – ‘Avatars’ inspire us to be better people: study. “F ascination with the blockbuster 3-D film Avatar has fans tuning into real-world research indicating that virtual selves can inspire people to lead better lives. Since the release of the film, interest has surged in a Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab study showing that avatars, animated versions of people, act as powerful role models. “It is getting so hot right now,” study author Jesse Fox told AFP on Thursday. “James Camerons’s Avatar movie is out so our website hits have just spiked.”

7. IT PRO (UK) – The chief executive of Second Life thinks virtual worlds will be the future of work. “Second Life is often assumed to be a place to go and kill a lot of time, where your alien-looking avatar wanders the landscape looking for virtual sex. The virtual world is much, much more than that, argues chief executive Mark Kingdon, who believes that people thought the internet was “weird” when it first started, too. At the CeBIT conference in Hanover this week, Kingdon told IT PRO that more business functions would move to worlds like Second Life, for meetings, simulations and more – especially after the launch of more user-friendly systems, like the beta of its new viewer, which allows document sharing.”

8. People Management Magazine (UK) – BP executives graduate on Second Life. “Thirty BP executives are to undergo a graduation ceremony on computer game and virtual network Second Life, after completing a programme at Manchester Business School (MBS). The Managing Projects programme will culminate in the executives using avatars to receive their awards on the business school’s “island” inside the virtual world on Thursday this week. Since those who completed the course are based as far afield as Canada, Angola, Indonesia and Russia, the online event is the best way of allowing them to celebrate their achievement together.”

9. Michigan Radio (USA) – “Inch-vesting” In Detroit: A Virtual Realty. “Jerry Paffendorf is not your typical real estate developer. But then, the people lining up to buy into his project are not your typical investors. He calls them “inchvestors.” Paffendorf’s project is called Loveland. And it’s a hybrid: part virtual and part physical. “What we want to do is we want to build this wild social network of people that’s literally built out of the dirt and the ground,” Paffendorf says.”

10. mad.co.uk (UK) – Social Gaming. “Social gaming is growing fast and brands are eyeing it with increasing interest. But how can they integrate themselves into gameplaying in a way that looks natural to users? With Zynga’s FarmVille now exceeding 76m monthly active users on Facebook and Playfish’s Pet Society exceeding 1m, growth in social gaming has well and truly taken off, a boom further illustrated by gaming giant Electronic Arts’ (EA) recent acquisition of Playfish in a deal potentially worth $400m (£268m). Zynga CEO Mark Pincus predicts that by 2012 there’ll be 500m people involved in social games, which means the opportunities for brands to get involved and reach this rapidly growing audience are also increasing.”

1. CNET (USA) – Where virtual worlds once ruled, FarmVille dominates. “Almost every week for the last few years, it seems, I’ve gotten a press release or a pitch touting some company’s great new Facebook games network or kids’ virtual world.
And why not? Companies like Zynga and Playfish are making money hand over fist with their collections of massively popular social games, and 2D Flash games aimed at children like Club Penguin, Webkinz, Habbo Hotel, and others have garnered vast amounts of virtual world investment dollars in recent years.
But to someone who cut his virtual world teeth on more immersive, 3D environments like There and Second Life, these never-ending announcements of new companies trying to jump on the social gaming bandwagon have left me with one nagging question: Where is the innovation?”

2. Computerworld (USA) – Second Life seeks mainstream adoption. “Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life introduced a new beta version of its desktop viewer software on Tuesday, the first big upgrade in many years. Will the new software help bring about a renaissance of the once-trendy service? You remember Second Life. It’s a virtual world, a three-dimensional environment like World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto. But it’s not a game, it’s a simulation of a world. You can build virtual buildings and vehicles, create virtual clothes, play live music, role-play as a vampire or cowboy, and buy and sell virtual goods for real-world money. It’s the closest thing we have now to Star Trek’s holodeck.”

3. CLickZ (USA) – WildTangent Targets Social Media Games and Virtual Worlds. “Game-based advertising company WildTangent announced the launch of BrandBoost, a platform that enables brand marketers to tap into the audience for virtual worlds, social media games, and massively multiplayer online games. The Redmond, WA-based company said BrandBoost is already being deployed on several properties, including OutSpark.com, OMGPOP.com and Sony Online Entertainment’s FreeRealms, which already has attracted 8 million registered users since its formal launch last year.”

4. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Virtual worlds pose compliance risks. “The very aspects of virtual world that make them appealing to some enterprise users, such as the collaboration tools, also make them risky from a compliance perspective. These risks include the communication risks of the wrong information getting to the wrong people, inappropriate workplace behavior, and lack of archiving tools.”

5. Los Angeles Times (USA) – Disney hopes kids will take online World of Cars out for a spin. “Walt Disney Co. believes that World of Cars, its new subscription-based online community aimed at boys and based on the Pixar movie “Cars,” won’t get lost in the traffic of virtual worlds. Things are already a bit congested. Some 200 virtual worlds target children under 12. Each competes for a slice of the 10 hours and 45 minutes a day the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that kids spend viewing media, simultaneously vying for screen time against a growing number of portable media players and smart phones that offer their own diversions.”

6. Escapist Magazine (USA) – Are Advertisers Running Away From Home? “The failure of PlayStation Home to capture gamers’ attention may be having repercussions as advertisers jump ship to the more media-friendly Xbox Live. When PlayStation Home made its open beta debut at the tail end of 2008, gamers responded with a collective shrug of disinterest. The world had barely any of the content originally promised, felt empty and lifeless, and offered little incentive to log in more than once. Home’s failure to connect with users may be the reason for Sony’s absence from this year’s Engage Expo, believe brand analysts at Brand Week, when the hardware giant had been promoting the service as the next big thing at the Expo just a year before.”

7. Stanford Report (USA) – Can avatars change the way we think and act? “If you saw a digital image of yourself running on a virtual treadmill, would you feel like going to the gym? Probably so, according to a Stanford study showing that personalized avatars can motivate people to exercise and eat right. Moreover, you are more likely to imitate the behavior of an avatar in real life if it looks like you, said Jesse Fox, a doctoral candidate in the Communication Department and a researcher at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. In her study, she used digital photographs of participants to create personalized avatar bodies, a service some game companies offer today.”

8. FierceContentManagement (USA) – What if content management were 3D? “I recently saw the Michael Douglas/Demi Moore 1994 movie called “Disclosure.” In the movie (which explores sexual harassment in the workplace), Michael Douglas was working for a computer company that created a 3D virtual reality database. The user would put on special glasses and he was literally inside the database with the data. He could walk inside a library of content, interact with it and touch it.”

9. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – No R-rating for games does not compute. “It’s confession time. I have picked up a prostitute in a stolen vehicle and sped the wrong way down a busy highway to escape police. I have accompanied a terrorist group in an airport shooting spree. I have garrotted guards, slaughtered soldiers, decapitated dudes and shotgunned sheilas. But never have I felt the remotest desire to do any of this for real. They were computer games. Yes, I’m a ”gamer”. At 37, I’m a little older than average for a gamer, but not by much. Gen X was the first gaming generation. I can’t remember there not being computer games. I first discovered there wasn’t a Father Christmas when I found a (very primitive) computer game under my parents’ bed, and got it as a present a few days later.”

10. USA Today (USA) – Author: Librarian, cybrarian appreciation is ‘Overdue’. “Bryan Hissong is 31, happily married, and the father of a 2-year-old named Olivia. He seems quite content with his life.
But Marilyn Johnson, who is not his wife, loves him and has said so very publicly. It doesn’t matter that she has never met him. Hissong is a librarian. He doesn’t look like the clichéd librarian of old. He favors plaid shirts and is sporting a beard on his babyface — but that doesn’t matter to Johnson, either. She’s well aware that librarians wear many disguises these days. Often they’re pierced, tattooed, punk with bright blue hair. She loves them all.”

1. PC World (USA) – Lego Creating Multiplayer Online Game. “Toy construction set company Lego Group plans to launch an MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) in the second half of this year, to be called Lego Universe, said Mark Hansen, director of business development and LEGO lead for the project. Lego users have long been known for their creative use of the company’s products, so the company is hoping its users will take their creativity online, using virtual Lego bricks to create entire virtual worlds. “There are such endless possibilities for what you can do in this game,” Hansen said. Hansen revealed some of the details of the game, which was four years in the making, at the 2010 Engage youth entertainment technology conference, being held this week in New York.”

2. Venture Beat (USA) – Online firms and toy companies clash over kids virtual worlds. “For many years toy and video game companies have been battling each other for the mindshare of kids. Toy companies have strong products targeted at children from pre-school up to about second grade, when they turn 7 or 8. Then, at about age 8, video games start to replace traditional toys. The typical business model enables video game companies to license their products to toy companies to generate additional revenue. At the same time toy companies have been offering more interactive toys to reach the slightly older child. Media companies like Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney have effectively found a way to provide programming for both the younger and older kids and license their properties to toy and video game companies who in turn use their networks to market back to kids. After Disney bought Club Penguin for $350 million plus earn-outs in 2007, a wave of kids virtual worlds copycats materialized.”

3. CTV (Canada) – The world’s most expensive island – online. ” What is the most you’re willing to pay for a virtual item in a videogame or virtual world? Five, ten dollars? How about $26,500? That’s the amount David Storey, a 27-year-old graduate student living in Sydney, Australia, paid for a virtual island, the “Most valuable object that is virtual,” according to Guinness World Records. It’s easy to write off Storey, who goes by the name “Deathifier,” as a geek gone wild, but he now owns a million-dollar empire. Storey runs Amethera Treasure Island, which he purchased in the virtual world Entropia, as a rare game preserve and taxes hunters on his land. Storey says the taxes bring in more than $100,000 in real money per year.”

4. San Jose Business Journal (USA) – Xulu Entertainment provides real opportunity in virtual worlds. “Xulu Entertainment Inc. is developing a high-definition software platform for virtual worlds and gaming. It includes tools and libraries that professional developers as well as users can apply to create extreme realism and physical interactivity. Xulu’s simulation-driven software is built on an open framework and is designed to exploit the processing power of recent PCs. It is extendible to mobile devices and multiple operating systems. Xulu plans to launch an online entertainment destination to show early adventurers and developers what types of activities it will support. This will include sports, gaming and social activities. The first commercial release is planned for the end of this year.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Richard Garriott’s Portalarium Aiming At A More Mainstream Second Life? “Today Richard Garriott, former part-time astronaut and founder of Origin, announced his latest company: Portalarium. Portalarium, according to the site, was founded in September 2009 to develop and publish ” online social games, virtual worlds and related services and products.” There’s not much to the company publicly yet, but its initial release is a Torque2D-based plugin for Windows PCs (Mac support is coming in Q2 2010) allowing developers to work within social networks, but outside of traditional Flash-based environments. The Portal Player is currently in beta testing with Portalarium’s first title, Sweet @$! Poker, on Facebook. Virtual worlds are on the way.”

6. VizWorld (USA) – Scientific Research in Virtual Worlds. “When I began this series of investigative reports on Second Life, one thing I was really looking forward to was to see just how much “science” was going on in Second Life. I wanted to know is the majority of what happens inworld Social or Academic? The reality wound up being more complex than I originally thought, being heavily influenced by the perspective of who I was speaking to. Some people said science was everywhere, while some people said it was a nonexistant community. After several weeks of digging around I’ve come to some conclusions, and I share them here.”

7. The Independent (UK) – Control freak: Will David Cage’s ‘Heavy Rain’ videogame push our buttons? “Nothing so complicates a child’s relationship with his parent as the death of a sibling, and when we first see Shaun Mars and his father Ethan alone together, it’s plain that they are struggling to navigate the hostile unfamiliar territory in which they find themselves. Deprived of his co-conspirator and protector, the previously effervescent Shaun is monosyllabic and sullen; Ethan, meanwhile, is barely able to function. As the camera follows the pair into the cheerless house that Ethan has moved to since his marriage ended, there seems little reason for hope. But once they are home, it is soon clear that the bond between them has survived this terrible assault – that, in fact, it is the only thing keeping Ethan from falling apart entirely. He makes his son a snack. He asks him how his day was. He helps him with his homework. He feeds him a healthy dinner. And, eventually, the faintest echo of their former happiness becomes audible. When Ethan tucks Shaun in at the end of the evening, the future doesn’t seem so grim.”

8. Federal Computer Week (USA) – Feds look for their avatars in 3-D. “Many agencies have staked out so-called islands on the virtual world Second Life, but now the government wants software to build and host a virtual world of its own for collaboration, training, simulation and analysis. The Agriculture Department plans to award multiple contracts under a program to develop a fully immersive, persistent 3-D experience in a virtual world populated by avatars that can be customized to resemble real-life users, according to documents published on the Federal Business Opportunities Web Site.”

9. Mediaweek (USA) – Study: Women Social ‘Gamers’ on the Rise. “The increasing number of women who play games on social networks do so with a regularity normally associated with hardcore gaming. But according to a recent study conducted by the lead generation firm Q Interactive, most women don’t associate themselves with a gaming lifestyle like the PlayStation and Xbox lovers do—and don’t care for the label “gamer.” According to executives at Q Interactive (which owns CoolSavings.com), the study was conducted in January among 770 women who were likely to be familiar with online gaming and virtual worlds. It found that while 36 percent of respondents said that they play games on sites like Facebook and MySpace, 54 percent of those who do so admit to playing social games every day. Not surprising to any Facebook user: The most popular social games were identified as Mafia Wars and Farmville.”

10. TechCrunch (USA) – Moonshoot Raises $6.6 Million To Teach English Through Online Gaming. “Moonshoot, a startup with that aims to teach English to children globally through an online gaming experience, has raised a total of $6.6 million in funding led by Alsop Louie Partners and TL Ventures.The startup is also announcing that Tom Kalinske; former CEO & Chairman of Leapfrog, President of Knowledge Universe, CEO of Sega of America, and CEO of Mattel; is joining Moonshoot as Executive Chairman.”