Suppose you go to see a movie and find yourself sitting next to Stephen Spielberg. Two hours later, when the movie has finished, what could you possibly say to him about it? His knowledge of movie-making is so much deeper than yours that he'll have seen things you haven't seen, picked up on nuances that passed you by, understood symbols you didn't even know were symbols: it's almost as if you've watched two different movies. 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.

As an update to the post on the Accelerating Change Conference readers might like to listen to some audio of the roundtable conversation between Brian "Psychochild" Green, Jamie "Gaming Open Market" Hale, Daniel "Three Rings" James, and Steve "IGE" Salyer. The moderaterateror is our very own Cory "They like to call him "Linden Labs" but we call him "TerraNova"" Ondrejka. A programming language and a programming paradigm can shape how we engineer a world. As with our natural languages perhaps there is a cognitive dimension, but without having to even reach that far it is safe to say that engineering practices establish approaches to problem-solving that bias solutions.

Terra Nova readers are cordially invited to this Thursday’s Future Salon speaker series, an event which takes place in Second Life each month, brought to you by the Acceleration Studies Foundation. The May salon is happening this Thursday, May 26th, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM PST at the Second Life Public Library.

'[J]ust as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral...," wrote Jean Baudrillard, "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real...." I leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess what insidious purpose Baudrillard will ascribe to the nth-order simulation that is Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom, now live in "sneak preview beta" mode (via). Meanwhile, last one into their own private virtual Jungle Cruise safari boat is a rotten avatar!

So my first question is whether I'm right that the divisions in Norrath's fictional alliences run a bit deeper than the fictions of governance in other MMOGs? For instance, at the time of the Kunark expansion (circa 2000), there were 17 different deities to whom players could swear their devotion (an 18th option was the lack of faith), as well as 13 different "racial" identities, and over 100 known organizational factions.

When I was an undergrad I drove from LA out to Prescott, Arizona to visit a buddy going to school out there, and to go and try paintball with him. He'd been raving about it. So I get to the game site and it's about 40 guys, 20 of whom were Vietnam vets. My buddy and I rented paintball guns, but we quickly noticed that a good chunk of the others had brought their own. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Gold will keep your high power. On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened.

Excellent insights, Julian, but I think that maybe I wasn't clear about something. When I said social contract, I didn't mean that each player needs to endure the grind (that, after all, is a product of bad game mechanics or design). I was referring to the sense of fun and meritocracy that one gets from participating with others as equals. I love the part in JC Herz's "Joystick Nation" where she's talking about meritocracy in early social arcade gaming: It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life!

i guess i am holding out hope that if the game gets redesigned the right way, ebaying will either not happen at all or, if it does, not spoil the game. Let's say there was an effect if people talked about Britney's baby. Let's say her publicity company paid SOE to give +1 hit points every time the word "Britney" was said in conversation. Hey, you don't HAVE to say the word if you don't want - you can get your guild healer buddy to restore you instead. On the other hand, you can slap a macro on a hot key and be instantly healed just by chanting the Britney mantra.

If eBaying isn't a problem, why sell objects at all? 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. 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.

Though one might think each mission in a campaign may get increasingly difficult this is not always the case. This is not a bad thing, like real naval service sometimes a simple mission is well accepted especially after a grueling battle with multiple ships. In either case even the easiest setting can still be quite difficult, and the key to success is knowing what to do.