Seth Sivak of gametruth.org reminds us that Matrix Online has been launched, and points us to what might be a unique feature or might be just dressed-up GM'ing: Actors who will play out narrative sequences live. While I can almost hear the eyes of the MUD-Dev-ers rolling, Seth asks some good questions about this.

On World of Warcraft's Elune server, two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge, with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons and armor (e.g., they bought all the trade goods) and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price. Which, for the most part, people were willing to pay. The same players have also been running an informal storage service designed to underprice the Ironforge bank, but with a bite to it: if you don't pay the storage fee on a weekly basis, they auction off all the goods you've stored with them. The ensuing discussion interests me partly because it conforms to the picture I sketched out in my "Rubicite Breastplate" article of a sociocultural divide between players that manifests in contests over the purpose and nature of a MMOG economy.

Of course, with such small unit prices, acorns are only a $200,000 business. Every day. I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us. It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations.

The April 2005 Regional Economist suggests that employment success is often dependent upon an "appearance-wage" bias (see "So Much for That Merit Raise: The Link between Wages and Appearance"). It would seem that folks who are more physically appealing tend to do better. Thinking about virtual worlds... I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a medium that enables radical transformations of locations, objects, bodies, and identities into living fantasies of idealistic perfection. A medium that purportedly allows people to achieve more fully realized, well-rounded, capable, or desirable selves. Sound familiar? I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us. It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations.

It can feel so cold and lonely. I think that the sound of the wind combined with the emptiness of the desert, lack of NPS and low population overall add to this deep sense of emptiness that it can create – while camps by contrast can feel very homely. Of course, in the classic Terra Nova tradition, feel free to ignore these questions and start a more interesting discussion about Frogloks or something... The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

NPCs seem much more robotic. Yet I still get some sense that is greater than the data presented. The only way I individuate these feelings are that WoW has a sense of place whereas SWG has a sense of landscape. On the whole I find much of WoW to be artificial and distancing, many surfaces are so obviously texture mapped and the images seem to be stretched and distorted a little too much. But now I'm discovering new areas the feeling of place is starting to flesh out. Based on my own experiences with WoW, CoH, DAoC, and a few others, that certainly seems to be the case, but my impression is that Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, and some of the other big MMOGs portray fairly factionalized systems of government. Second, does this diversity peg EQ as a more "MUDish" MMOG?

I remember the warmth of the sun, the feel of breeze and the exotic scents that it brought. I remember friends and the spaces we made sacred by being there together. But of course none of this had physical reality. Or even, in some cases, virtual reality. My memory filled in the details – the smells and warmth etc. It also conveniently forgot the physical space I happened to be in at the time, the instrumental actions I was taking with keyboard and mouse, the pain in my arms and fingers (though this is getting better now - thx all).

I'm hardly an Everquest expert, but I'm in the process of writing an essay about law and governance in Norrath, and I was drawn into a side issue on which I wanted to elicit comments. (So beware, I'll steal your thoughts if I like them). The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

This may be a synthetic worlds version of 'Edict of Nantes' decreed by King Henry IV in 1598, France. The history after the Edict of Nantes shows us the Divorce of King (ie the Publsher) and the Pope (ie the Developer), the Secularization of Politics (Playing) compared to the renewal of the Catholic church (traditional Gaming), the emergence of legal person or incorporation (ie the Virtual Commune) in accordance with market & cities growing, and revolutions and civil or people's right (the Glorous revolution, the American revolution, the French revolution, the Russian revolution) that brings spring of the Modern, and the fall of the Middle ages.