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The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

May 17, 2011 by 1 Comment

1. PC World (USA) – Companies Explore Private Virtual Worlds. “Meetings, conferences and training programs in a 3D virtual world such as Second Life can be more engaging and productive than traditional online sessions and phone calls, and much less expensive than face-to-face meetings requiring travel. But some companies aren’t willing to take on the security and compliance risks of using a public platform and are instead opting for private virtual worlds created behind the corporate firewall. “Once it’s on your platform, behind your walls, it has the same security as any other intranet application,” says Steven Russell, a research scientist at Siemens Corporate Research. Siemens employees study product prototypes using OpenSim, an open-source platform that simulates the user interface, content and scripting functionality of Second Life.”

2. Information Week (USA) – DOD Explores Virtual Worlds For Military Training. “There’s no completely realistic way to prepare a soldier for the experience of today’s combat situations, in which they must battle hidden improvised explosive devices (IEDs), elusive terrorists, and other unfamiliar enemies in physical environments that are often new to them. The Department of Defense is trying to come pretty close, however, by training soldiers with a variety of tools similar to computer games that create virtual worlds simulating environments and situations soldiers may encounter during warfare. The American Forces Press Service, or AFPS–the press agency of the DOD–has posted a six-part series highlighting the department’s virtual training technology on its website. The Enhanced Dynamic Geosocial Environment, for example, prepares soldiers for encounters with IEDs and other types of explosive devices by simulating the type of physical environment in which they might find them, as well as the explosion and damage these devices create. A video demonstrating EDGE is available on the AFPS website.

3. NBC Washington (USA) – Operators of Virtual Worlds Fined $3M. “Hundreds of thousands of children under age 13 had their personal information illegally collected and disclosed and now the companies responsible are paying millions of dollars in fines. The Federal Trade Commission said the operators of 20 online virtual worlds have agreed to pay $3 million to settle charges that they violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). The FTC said Playdom, Inc., operated 20 virtual world websites where users could access online games. Some of the sites were directed to children. The complaint alleges that the company collected the children’s ages and email addresses and then enabled children to publicly post their full names, email addresses, instant messenger IDs, and location on personal profile pages without parental consent. The FTC rules require that website operators notify parents and obtain their consent before they collect, use or disclose children’s personal information. The FTC alleged that Playdom failed to meet these requirements.”

4. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – HuzuTech releases social virtual worlds platform. “HuzuVirtual is a brand new technology from HuzuTech, which promises to revolutionize the rapidly evolving social gaming market. The technology allows the creation of stand-alone, browser-based, online worlds – which can be played on any device, by multiple players. Huzutech today launched Paperworld, a technology demonstrator, which shows how social networks, virtual worlds, online communities and massively multiplayer games are all now intersecting. Paperworld offers an example of how companies can combine the mass appeal of social networks and online communities with the entertainment and engagement of multiplayer games and virtual worlds.”

5. defence.professionals (USA) – Virtual Worlds Form Defense Training Frontier . “Five years from now, if Frank C. DiGiovanni has his way, warfighters from every service will learn aspects of their trade on a world in cyberspace. The Defense Department will save money, time, and ultimately, lives, he said, and it’s his job to make that virtual world a reality. DiGiovanni is director of training readiness and strategy in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for readiness. He’s also a retired Air Force colonel and a senior aviator. “I’d love to see it happen in the next 18 months to two years,” DiGiovanni said in an interview with American Forces Press Service. “Realistically, a full-up world is probably five years away.” Over the next five years, the Defense Department will build that world in cyberspace, where the men and women of the armed forces will take another step forward in the transition from analog to digital technology that began with the public Internet and DOD websites.”

6. Global Times (China) – National stereotypes find life in fantasy worlds. “”I don’t think China should keep helping North Korea,” my friend boldly declared the other day, “You can’t trust Koreans.” “Why?” I asked. “Simple,” he said, “I was playing online with three North Koreans on the same team as me the other day, and they only talked among themselves and kept leaving me to die.” My friend’s extension of online games to international politics might be absurd, but virtual worlds are starting to play powerful role in how people see each other. This is especially the case in Asia, where online games eat up the attention of millions of young people. When I was at university four years ago, it was normal for me and my friends to spend the entire weekend in Internet cafes. Some of us even fell asleep there. It may sound weird, but the legions of Chinese in online games have an effect on how the world perceives us. Think about physical sports. The Italian reputation for being cheats and sneaks may be undeserved, but it persists in part because of the dirty way Italian soccer teams play. Equally, the Brazilian reputation for style and grace comes about, in part, because of their dedication to playing a beautiful game. ”

7. Mashable (USA) – Why Online Communities Are Redefining the Concept of Local. “When we talk about community, we talk about places and spaces. But online communities transcend geography. That tends to mess with our heads. In trying to understand the new, it helps to fall back on the old, using metaphors drawn from familiar sources. Cities have streets, blocks and neighborhoods. Why wouldn’t virtual worlds have the same? In the ’90s, when we started to colonize cyberspace by the hundreds of thousands (and then by the millions), virtual cities became all the rage. Academics and technologists argued, in all apparent seriousness, that we would click on a 3D picture of a supermarket to go shopping, then wander our avatars down virtual streets to go to our next task. Yahoo bought GeoCities — a collection of homepages organized by neighborhood. AOL and Tribune launched Digital City. Corporations from Citigroup to SAP moved into virtual terrain.”

8. Gamasutra (USA) – NCsoft Shutting Down Western Lineage Servers.”After over 12 years of operation, NCsoft said the North American servers for its MMO Lineage will be shut down on June 29, saying the aging title “is no longer financially viable in the West.” In an FAQ explaining the move, NCsoft said it had to make “a hard decision based on the business performance to focus our resources to make those games provide the best play experience as possible for our customers.” The company is no longer accepting new subscribers for the game, and will allow anyone to play for free while the servers remain up. Current subscribers will have any unused time refunded, and will receive two months of free game time in three other NCsoft titles — Lineage II, Aion and City of Heroes — as well as an activation code for the subscription-free Guild Wars.”

9. VentureBeat (USA) – National Geographic virtual world Animal Jam hits a million kids. “National Geographic Animal Jam is a rarity as a successful kids virtual world. The online world is announcing today that it has reached a million registered players in seven months. Sure, virtual worlds have lost their luster and Animal Jam isn’t growing as fast as Facebook. But there aren’t that many worlds aimed at kids ages 5 to 11 that have taken off like that lately. Animal Jam was created by Salt Lake City-based Smart Bomb Interactive, which licensed the National Geographic name. Kris Johnson, chief executive of Smart Bomb Interactive, said the growth rate has exceeded all expectations and that the property has spread through word of mouth.”

10. PC World (USA) – Tell Your Boss: Play Video Games, Work Smarter. “It’s safe to say that employers generally frown on workers who play video games during work time. As common sense dictates, you’re obviously not working when trying to win virtual gold by playing World of Warcraft or stealthily assassinating the enemy in Call of Duty: Black Ops. But gaming outside of work or even during breaks at the office can help you in ways you might never have thought possible. Indeed, studies show that gaming can boost your ability to multitask, make faster decisions, work better in team environment, and find solutions to real-world problems. Can WoW help you pack more action into the work day? Playing any one of the titles in the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 franchise can get the adrenaline flowing. As you assume the role of Gordon Freeman, you must constantly make split-second decisions when trying to decide how to kill one of the thousands of enemies you encounter. You also have to quickly decide which weapon to use, all the while trying to solve puzzles in order to advance to the next level. The decision-making process on which you rely in Half-Life or any one of hundreds of other action-game titles is called probabilistic inference. You use the thinking process to draw conclusions and make decisions based on incomplete information and fact patterns, reported researchers in Current Biology.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: ,

UWA’s third machinima challenge: what a field

May 17, 2011 by 2 Comments

The University of Western Australia’s active presence in Second Life continues with a vengeance. I was lucky enough to be asked to be on the judging panel for the MachinimUWA III: Journeys competition. The panel this time includes director Peter Greenaway and you can view the full list of judges at the bottom of this post.

Fifty pieces of machinima were submitted, with the only requirement being that they featured the UWA’s Winthrop Clock Tower at the beginning or end of the piece. One notable absence was a machinima from an Australian entrant: are we that bereft of machinima makers?

Each judge was required to choose ten favourites from the fifty entries. For what it’s worth, here are the ten I chose:

LASLOPANTOMIK YAO (Barcelona, Spain) – Beginning of Knowledge and of Sorrow

SODA LEMONDROP (Monterey, California, USA) – The Journey

TUTSY NAVARATHNA (Frenchman in Pondicherry, India) – Journey into the Metaverse

HYPATIA PICKENS (Rochester, New York, USA) – KAPHD

ERIC BOCCARA (Velp, Netherlands) – Juroney

BRACLO EBER (South Africa) – Journey to the Top

FUSCHIA NIGHTFIRE (Dorset, UK) – Take the Road Less Travelled

HUGO KRELL (Madrid, Spain) & Soriana Breda (Soria, Spain) – Proyecto XXY

Proyecto XXY from Soriana Breda on Vimeo.

OONA EIREN (London, UK) – Onward & Upward

Onward And Upward from oona Eiren on Vimeo.

VERUCA VANDYKE (Arkansas, USA) – Escape

You can view all 50 over at the UWA in SL blog

If I had to pick an overall favourite it’s hard to go past Eric Boccara’s Juroney. Congratulation to the eventual winners, which will be announced on the 22nd May at 6am SL time. Also, much kudos (again) to the UWA team who continue to show their dynamism and passion for virtual worlds creativity.

List of judges:

JUDGES
1. Peter Greenaway (RL) – Acclaimed Director
2. Professor Ted Snell (RL) – Director, Cultural Precinct, The University of Western Australia
3. Jayjay Zifanwe (SL) – Owner of The University of Western Australia (SL), Creator & co-host of the UWA 3D Art& Design Challenge
4. Yesikita Coppola (SL) – Official Machinimatographer for UWA 2011
5. Laurina Hawks (SL) – Joint Reigning UWA MachinimUWA Champion
6. Raphaella Nightfire (SL) – Snr Writer Best of SL Magazine, Owner Sanctorum Gallery (SL)
7. FreeWee Ling (SL) – Curator, UWA 3D Open Art Challenge
8. LaPiscean Liberty (SL) – CEO AviewTV and UWA Media Advisor
9. Nazz Lane (SL) – Journalist and Author
10. Rowan Derryth (SL) – Art & Design Historian; Writer for Prim Perfect Publications
11. Apollo Manga (SL) – examiner.com Writer & Novelist
12. Dr. Phylis Johnson (RL) – Media Professor, Southern Illinois Uinversity, Author – Machinima: Aesthetics and Practice (a.k.a, Sonicity Fitzroy, SL Virtual Journalist)
13. Lowell Cremorne (SL), Owner & Editor-In-Chief, The Metaverse Journal
14. Mal Burns (SL), Metaverse News Aggregator and Broadcaster
15. Paisley Beebe (SL), CEO of Perfect World Productions TV
16. Flimsey Freenote – CEO of Metamix TV (Mixed Reality Television)
17. Rhett Linden – Linden Labs
18. Bradley Dorchester – Joint Reigning UWA MachinimUWA Champion
19. Dousa Dragonash (SL) – COO Metaverse Television
20. Cristina García-Lasuén (RL) Aino Baar (SL) International Curator, Art Writer, Founder & Owner of Open This End group
21. White Lebed (SL) – Former Lead of Burning Life Art Department, Director of Special Projects @ UWA

Filed Under: Australian News, General News, User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

First quarter 2011 results for Second Life: steady sailing

May 12, 2011 by 6 Comments

Linden Lab late last week released their user metrics and Second Life economy analysis for the first quarter of 2011. Every time I cover this I’m reminded of how much more substantive these statistics used to be, but here’s what we’ve got to work with now:

New user registrations: stagnant to a minor decline. Although, as Tateru Nino notes, if you don’t read the graph carefully you’ll miss that they’ve included April in the stats to show the surge in registrations since the new registration process was launched. Beside that, the 10K signups per day is still something a lot of companies would love to have.

Average monthly repeats logins: unchanged at just under 800K i.e. nearly 800 thousand people logged into Second Life more than once during each month.

User hours: At 105 million hours per month it’s down on the previous year. Looking at each month within the quarter it’s stable at 104 million.

Linden Dollar value: an improvement here, the exchange rate has been the most positive in a while and the overall dollar value of Linden Dollars held by Second Life residents is up to US$29.3 million.

World size: Stable at just over two thousand square kilometres – equivalent to the Maritius as we stated last time.

So overall? The somewhat limited picture provided shows positive signs. If the peak in user registrations shown for April continues during May and June, and converts to users who continue to log in, then Q2 stats might be very interesting indeed.

Filed Under: General News, Metrics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , , ,

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

May 3, 2011 by 2 Comments

1. New York Times (USA) – Keyboards First. Then Grenades. “Brig. Gen. Harold J. Greene only has to look around his house to realize the challenges the Army faces in engaging young soldiers. His children, he says, are always “buried in a cellphone or an iPad.” General Greene, a senior official in the Army’s research and development engineering command, is among a cadre of high-ranking officials pushing for the military to embrace technologies that are already popular among consumers, like smartphones, video games and virtual worlds. The goal is to provide engaging training tools for soldiers who have grown up using sophisticated consumer electronics and are eager to incorporate them into their routine. At a time of shrinking budgets, these tools are viewed as relatively inexpensive supplements to larger, costlier training equipment while also providing a surprisingly realistic training experience.”

2. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – The virtual is magic. “I know the iPad is supposed to be magical. But, to me, it doesn’t come close to the magic I feel inside Second Life and OpenSim worlds. When I’m on a grid, I can wave my virtual arms and have things appear out of thin (virtual) air. I can change my clothes at will. Even change my whole body. I can teleport. I can fly. Normally, these things are only possible for Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I’ve wanted to have magical powers ever since I was a kid. Who hasn’t? Of course, virtual magical powers have some of the same limitations as Sabrina’s did. Fans of the show might remember that she wasn’t allowed to magically create brand-name products. Instead, she and visiting friends had to eat Schnickers, N and N’s and Butterthumb candy and drink Popsi. Instead of “You-Hoo,” she served “Hey, over here.”

3. The Journal Review (USA) – Web-based games replace traditional toys. “Sure you trust a purple dinosaur. But what about a green penguin? How do you know when a Web site for kids isn’t just a marketing gimmick or a meaningless time-waster? It can be hard to tell. But with Web games replacing Cabbage Patch dolls, Barbie and Legos as some kids’ favorite toys, parents need to know how to manage these online games. Club Penguin, Webkinz, Neopets, Dizzywood, Millsberry and others are online playgrounds for kids ages 6-8. They’re called virtual worlds, because they create entirely new and different environments for your children.
Typically, your children will create an avatar (a cartoon character of themselves), which they can dress up and play with in the game. Then they create their own “room,” which they can decorate and where they store all of the items they win or buy with virtual money.”

4. Technorati (USA) – Los Angeles Games Conference – Money For Nothing? How To Succeed In Selling Virtual Goods for Games and Social Networks. “The panel was moderated by Jay Baage who is the Event Director for the LA Games Conference. He lead off with some of the biggest news which concerns Facebook Credits, which will be launching 1 July , 2011. Facebook Credits will be launching its in-site currency transactional system that will allow users to purchase items in games as well as non-gaming applications. Rob Uhrich, Senior Director of PaymentsOne talked how payment methods need stream-lining as different countries use different transaction methods and in the US, most web-sites offer way too many ways to accept money making the experience messy. Teemu Huuhtanen, EVP, Business Dev. and Communications of Habbo spoke about how their web-site fosters a virtual business community that is driven by the gamers’s demands. Their “economy” functions much like the stock-market as prices adjust in real-time.”

5. MSNBC (USA) – Browse sites and cash in? TV, film fans are game. “Social gamers know virtual worlds such as FarmVille and Bejeweled Blitz all too well, but a new form of online gaming is infiltrating the entertainment industry by rewarding viewers with big prizes for sharing articles, making comments and watching trailers about their favorite TV shows and movies. From TV shows such as “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” “Top Chef”” and “Psych” to the recently released box office hit “Rio,” more people are logging online to visit TV and movie sites, read news and interact with their favorite shows and films. But to give people incentive to return to these sites, entertainment companies and various brands are making the browsing experience a game, allowing visitors to compete with other fans to get points that can be redeemed for prizes, such as brand merchandise, trips and cash prizes.”

6. The Guardian (UK) – Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal – review. “Excluding extinction, science fiction has traditionally imagined three possible futures for intelligent species: the stable, the exponential and the solipsistic. A stable future means reaching equilibrium, while an exponential one means expansion at an ever-increasing rate. A solipsistic future is the most intriguing, however – for this means a complete retreat from the universe into some other, manufactured realm. Solipsism answers the physicist Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where are all the aliens?”, with a simple proposal: they’re all playing computer games. Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken makes it clear that humanity is starting to face a related question. Globally, we now play over 3bn hours of video games each week. We are seeing a mass migration of human effort, attention, relationships and identities towards artificial worlds designed expressly to entertain and enthral us. What does this mean – and what might we learn from it?”

7. Computing (UK) – If you’re going to build, build smart. “When Birmingham City University (BCU) got the go-ahead to build a state-of-the-art building to re-house its prestigious Birmingham Institute of Art and Design facilities there were plenty of opportunities to re-think technology delivery. Primarily, how could we integrate the building’s management and environmental systems controlling such services as heating, lighting and air-conditioning with the university’s business systems to get all of the advantages that we’d heard about from a “smart” building. Smart buildings save on life-cycle costs and help mitigate the environmental effects of construction. Important issues when you consider that according to IBM by 2025 buildings will use more energy than any other category of consumer.”

8. The Boston Globe (USA) – Eye-tracking video game device subs for mouse. “I suppose there are obstacles that can come between you and victory in the fantasy video games Darkspore and Diablo. If you are a young gamer, Mom and Dad might object to the violence in these titles. Or you might lack the patience to follow the storylines. And then there are those who would play more games on their PC computers if they had something easier to use than remote controllers and keyboards. So that people with limited use of their hands might enjoy the pleasures of gaming, a Dutch engineering student at Northeastern University is developing a new interface system, one that uses an eye-tracking device and a data-gathering glove to replace the inputs most of us use with PCs.”

9. Fast Company (USA) – Blame It On The Youth. “If you want to know where the future is headed, sometimes telling clues reside in how the youth of the world interact and share with one another. With the rise of the Golden Triangle of technology, mobile, social, and real-time, technology is not just for the geeks, technology is part of our lifestyle…it is part of who we are. However, as we are all coming to learn, it’s not in what we have, it’s in how we use it that says everything about us. The way we use technology, whether it’s hardware or social networks for example, the differences are are striking. But something disruptive, this way comes. And the truth is, it’s been a long time coming. How we consume information is moving away from the paper we hold in our hands and also the inner sanctum of family, the living rooms where we huddle around televisions. In fact, Forrester Research recently published a report that documented, for the first time, we spend as much time online as we do in front of a television. Indeed the battle for your attention will materialize across the four screens, TV, PC, mobile, and tablets.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – 100m downloads for Outfit7’s Talking Friends apps – will Disney come calling? “There is now some more wildlife to file alongside Angry Birds in the ‘100m app downloads’ club. US developer Outfit7 says its Talking Friends apps have also passed the milestone, and faster than Rovio Mobile’s feathery game franchise too. The first Talking Friend app – Talking Tom Cat – was launched for iPhone in July 2010, less than 10 months ago. Nine other apps have since been released by Outfit7, including versions for Android and iPad. The company says it notched up 41m downloads in the first five months, added another 44m in the next three months, and then notched up the next 15m in little over a month.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: ,

History with purpose: MUDs and MOOs

April 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

I’ve bored friends and colleagues with my stories of discovering the power of MUDS in the early 1990s. I have a massive soft spot for the original virtual worlds (as pictured), but aside from sentimentality there remains a real role for these text-based worlds. Justin Olivetti over at Massively has a great article on MUDs that showcases some of the good ones and the people who play them.

The reason I believe these environments still have relevance is not just because of the dedicated community that still use them. They provide some great lessons in how to create engaging communities and content. Most people tend to think of MUDS as gaming-oriented platforms, which is essentially true. The thing is, their sibling the MOO (MUD, Object Oriented) has that real content creation focus that led to iconic communities such as LambdaMOO. My own experiences were with a MOO used to interact with music collaboration software and its power to engage people was incredible.

So, if you’re interested in getting people excited about a common purpose or just want a great social space, spend some of your development time wandering around a MUD or MOO. I’d also love to hear about your experiences: did you have or do you still have a favourite MUD / MUSH / MOO?

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Virtual world history, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Rod Humble: unfortunately we’re in The Promised Land

April 21, 2011 by 4 Comments

As Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble has made an impression in his first few months. He very much needed to given the challenges faced, but I’m actually encouraged by the wider view he seems to be taking on the impact virtual environments can have on all of us. Speaking at what I’m assuming is a recent event , Humble covered a fairly wide gamut on games, games as art-forms and the concept of eventual computer-generated art via games. A specific point made fell around the huge progress the games industry has made, effectively entering ‘The Promised Land’, but that perhaps this was holding progress and/or serious questioning of games outcomes back.

Have a read through for yourself and then have your say in comments. His perspective on free will is enough to start a gargantuan discussion thread, let alone the other issues addressed.

Overall, Humble’s thoughts are a deeper perspective than one traditionally expects from a CEO and it’s a welcome change. That said, applying that broad mindset to the specific challenges Linden Lab faces is the real test of mettle to come. Initial indications are favourable but there’s a long way to go yet.

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Virtual fashion mag Second Style calls it a day

April 20, 2011 by 2 Comments

Since 2006, Second Style has produced a glossy, high-quality magazine covering fashion in Second Life. The attention to detail has always stood out for me, so it’s sad to hear that the magazine’s creators have announced they are calling it quits:

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. The downturn in the Second Life economy has been difficult to combat, and our resources have become too low to maintain the magazine any longer. We’ve discussed numerous options, cutting back here or there…but it wouldn’t be fair to anyone – – our staff, our readers, or our advertisers.

It’s a shame and it further emphasises the perception issue Linden Lab faces around being in decline, even though at worst stagnation can be argued and there are even some early signs of turnaround under new executive leadership.

I still wonder how any turnaround can generate significant momentum when dedicated people like those at Second Style can’t see the viability of keeping going. Virtual pets and Facebook integration seem a little shallow in comparison don’t you think? Even if you a person that thinks fashion is the height of vacuousness.

Filed Under: Fashion, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Virtual sex: the futurist perspective

April 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Ross Dawson is an Australian futurist, prolific public speaker and creator of frameworks that assist in understanding trends. I’ve spoken on virtual worlds at a couple of get-togethers he’s organised and he certainly understands the field broadly. He’s recently launched Future of Sex, devoted to the future trends in sex. Virtual worlds feature as a key component but the site covers a lot more than that. Whether it’s interspecies virtual sex, robot unions or teledildonics, the site is focused on covering it.

Ross himself is up front on one of the main reasons he’s created the site:

As a publisher, we look for where there is a solid business model. Just over 5 years ago now I wrote a blog post about massively multi-player sex games, commenting on the broadening scope of virtual worlds. Since then, continuing until today, I have received thousands of visitors a month to that post from Google searches on related topics. Since we put into the post an affiliate link to the largest virtual sex world Red Light Center we have been making some very healthy pocket money off just that one post.

There’s no doubt virtual sex is only going to grow in both financial and public awareness terms – and as always its likely to drive innovation in virtual worlds as well as push the boundaries in areas such as avatar rights and the right to expression.

Filed Under: Australian News, General News, Politics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

April 19, 2011 by 1 Comment

1. Big Think – Learning in Virtual Worlds – not a Child’s Play. “Thanks to high speed Internet and flat rate pricing virtual worlds saw a tremendous boost over the past years. This is unsurprisingly true for online games like World of Warcraft but also for virtual worlds like Second Life and Twinity which are now able to deliver more and more realistic graphics and a better user experience for their audience. All three of them are used in education but today I want to focus on the two more “realistic” approaches of Second Life and Twinity.”

2. WoW Insider (USA) – The Lawbringer: Avatar rights as expectations. “Last week, I introduced the concept that the denizens of a virtual world may have gained, over time, the right to rights within that virtual world. Raph Koster, the lead developer of Ultima Online, explored the idea over 10 years ago when the MMO genre was in its developmental infancy. These rights synced up with a world where there was a distinction between free-to-play MUDs and for-pay subscription worlds in the U.S. and European markets. Today, the MMO has transformed into a new beast from the close-knit communities of MUDs and the relatively forgiving user base of EverQuest and Ultima Online. The people who made WoW are the contemporaries of Raph Koster and children of the MMO genre that EverQuest cemented as important. How then, in over 10 years, has Koster’s declaration of the rights of avatars held up to the incredible growth of the industry and Blizzard’s own impressive growth? The short answer: The code of conduct you follow in World of Warcraft is pretty lenient, all things considered. The long answer: Well, there’s always a long answer”

3. The Guardian (UK) – Fantastic Pets – review. “Microsoft’s Kinect may not yet be able to cope with hugely complex movements and graphics, but the hardware is already proving perfect for a younger audience. Fantastic Pets makes excellent use of the system’s strengths by letting kids explore virtual worlds free from the controllers and wires that constrain imaginations. Fantastic Pets offers a choice of buddies from a selection of animals including cats, dogs, lizards and ponies. Whereupon there is much fun to be had styling, feeding, washing and training your pet, who quickly learns to respond to voice commands.”

4. The Baltimore Sun (USA) – Learning by gaming. “For those of us who are first-generation students of video games, two words can take us back to another life: Oregon Trail. Remember? In school, we’d play Oregon Trail on a sticky PC, naming our intrepid video travelers after classmates so we could laugh at their fates. Through us, our characters made choices: Ford the river, or try the mountain pass. Sometimes they lived, sometimes not. The point is, some kind of learning was going on. Oregon Trail is now nearly 40 years old, but games in the classroom are still considered an unusual teaching choice and are rarely fully integrated. I was lucky enough to grow up with virtual tutors like Spooky, the ghost who taught typing, or Rodney, a raccoon whose endless quest was powered by solving math problems. Students today are even more used to being surrounded by digital environments, immersive worlds and devices that give them instant feedback and access to worlds of information — in their pocket. Why don’t we do more to harness that?”

5. Computerworld (USA) – Intelligence agencies hunting for terrorists in World of Warcraft. “The FBI raided the apartment of two University of Michigan students to investigate “potentially fraudulent sales or purchases of virtual currency that people use to advance in the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft.” Two students, a sophomore and a junior, share a University Towers apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but claim the feds have the wrong people as neither of them even play WoW. Records show that “laptop computers, hard drives, video game systems, credit cards, a cell phone, paperwork and other computer equipment” were seized. The college sophomore told AnnArbor.com, “They thought we were involved in some kind of fraud. I’m pretty sure they have the wrong people, but they took all my stuff.”

6. Massively (USA) – The Game Archaeologist plays with MUDs: A talk with Richard Bartle. “From talking with Richard Bartle, reading his blog, and looking over several interviews that he’s done, I’ve concluded that the co-creator of the first multi-user dungeon is, in many ways, a card. A smart one, a perceptive one, and an outspoken one, but a card nonetheless. I say this in a good way, of course, because for all of the verbal pussyfooting that often goes on in this industry, it’s refreshing to hear the voice of someone who knows what he thinks and isn’t afraid to say it, even if it goes against the grain. Dr. Bartle’s name often comes up in discussions of both MUDs and MMORPGs. His designs, work and scholarship have influenced MMOs in substantial ways, and it’s possible that if our children end up learning about massively multiplayer RPGs in school some day, Bartle’s name will be mentioned once or twice. While he’s sometimes polarizing, it’s hard to deny the incredible work he’s done, which is why I was excited to get to talk to him about this month’s subject on the Game Archaeologist. So hit that pesky jump and let’s pick the mind of a guy who really earned the right to post “FIRST!!1!”

7. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Clouds help propel OpenSim growth. “The top 40 public OpenSim grids gained more than a 1,000 new regions since this time last month, propelled partly by low-cost cloud-based regions from a new hosting provider, Kitely. There are now a total of 14,529 regions on these grids alone, an increase of 7.5 percent since this time last month. Total users increased 3.4 percent to 183,360, a gain of 6,059 new registered users. These totals do not include numbers from the SpotOn3D grids, which did not report their results this month, so actual grid region and user totals may be higher. These numbers also do not reflect land and users on the hundreds of private OpenSim grids run by schools, companies, and individuals.”

8. WKMS (USA) – Fort Campbell Soldiers Game to Train. “Thousands of 101st Airborne Division soldiers deploy out of Fort Campbell. Before they ship out, they run drills with some of the military’s most advanced vehicles, weapons, and gear, under situations that simulate real war-time experiences. The base’s latest training site isn’t a field on the Back Forty. It’s a non-descript brick building. As Angela Hatton report, inside soldiers use computer simulations based on video games to train for war. In a plain and windowless classroom, a crew of young soldiers sits a few feet away from each other at laptop computers. They’re all logged-in to Virtual Battle Space 2, or VBS2, the military’s computer training program. In the game, the group navigates a convoy along a dirt road in a patchy desert landscape, digitally rendered to look like the topography of Afghanistan. They communicate via headsets.”

9. New Scientist (USA) – Putting the DIY in DNA. “WHEN her dad was diagnosed with the hereditary disease haemochromatosis, 23-year-old Kay Aull did the natural thing, at least for an MIT graduate in bioengineering. She went online and bought a used thermal cycler for $100. She also ordered several custom-made DNA sequences, designing each to bind to a different mutation of the gene responsible for the disease. Then, using other second-hand equipment she had acquired, she set up a simple lab test in her closet and determined the likelihood that she would inherit the condition. Aull’s wasn’t the sort of achievement that earns grants or tenure. Doctors already have an effective haemochromatosis test, and most of her lab techniques were way behind the times. Aull’s test was remarkable because she did it herself, getting accurate results for a fraction of professional lab costs. As Marcus Wohlsen writes in Biopunk, “Aull’s test does not represent new science but a new way of doing science.”

10. North Country Public Radio (USA) – How To Save The World, One Video Game At A Time. “Every week, people across the globe spend 3 billion hours playing video games, but that isn’t enough for Jane McGonigal. She says video games can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems — and we really should be playing more. “If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity,” she said, “I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week by the end of the next decade.” As the audience broke out into chuckles she told them, “No, I’m serious. I am.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

A detailed map of Orgrimmar vendors and trainers

April 17, 2011 by 2 Comments

PLEASE NOTE: FULL MAP AND KEY IS NOW LOCATED HERE

How to use this map: find your trainer in the table and match the number or letter listed in that cell to find it on the map. Enjoy 😉

(full size version here)

Filed Under: Gaming Worlds, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

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