There's a killer app and advertising revenue in this for someone clever:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23unacceptable (fyi, a hash mark, #, can be added before a term to group all tweets that contain it - across users. Very useful for bundling event tweets, etc. #BIL.
Sort of like my 'irrelevant', but with more oomph.
Yay, a super-scientist with all sorts of opinions about virtual worlds and their ill effects. I am SO tired of this silliness.
Here's the lead-in:
Britons' health at risk from time spent in virtual worlds, says Dr Aric Sigman
Britons could be jeopardising their health as they spend more time in virtual worlds than the real one, according to the psychologist Dr Aric Sigman.
And the conjecture:
He claims the amount of face-to-face contact people experience has fallen by two-thirds over the past two decades, from six hours a day in 1987 to just two in 2007.
At the same time, he believes the amount of time UK citizens spend sitting in front of the TV, playing video games or visiting websites has doubled to eight hours a day.
Then:
"One of the most pronounced changes in the daily habits of British citizens is a reduction in the number of minutes per day that they interact with another human being," he said.
Does he know anything at all about virtual worlds?
He goes on to cite loneliness as a major cause of ill health:
'In an article published in the journal Biologist, he cites research that claims lonely people are more likely to suffer a stroke, develop high blood pressure or dementia and even die earlier.'
Well, in my experience (and doctoral research) VWs are a massive panacea for loneliness, a lack of belonging and other societal ills. People do NOT have to have face-to-face meetings to have meaningful and lifechanging interactions with the millions of other occupants of virtual worlds.
Any other comments? We have had lots of discussions here about what's really happening in online spaces, and how play and various online interactions (thinking discussion boards, support groups, etc.. here) can transform people's lives. How do we connect the dots to other disciplines, research communities, etc? How do we make 20 hours of WoW mandatory before writing ANYTHING about VWs? Sheesh. I'm indignant.
My good friend John Eyles is an educator, philanthropist and activist, and also leads research and alliance efforts at Telecom New Zealand. He is organizing this symposium to explore possibilities for retail endeavors in virtual worlds (ideally imagining possibilities beyond the usual brick and mortar simulacra). I am doing a session on mobile gaming and virtual worlds (a la Parallel Kingdom, which launches Oct 31st), and he is also looking for some more contributors for other sessions that might be of interest, or inspire some new thinking in this area.
It's Oct. 29th - 31st, running for 30 hours so people world-wide can participate.
More information at http://www.futuretelco.net. Schedule, etc. is forthcoming.
Truly a herculean effort has been undertaken! The Association of Virtual Worlds has compiled 'The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds", an index to 250 virtual worlds from all over our physical world, all neatly meta-tagged and linked. Oh, and there's a glossary...
In a week when Sony has announced yet more delays (another in a longer series of gaffes that has spawned endless humiliation) in the development of their much hyped virtual space, Home, and when even the roar from WoW’s success seems to be fading into an echo, a reminder about the incredible success of a little game that could... Like All in the Family or this year's indie darling Once (or the Aeron chair, for that matter), it almost never got made 'cause people making decisions about such things didn't believe Will Wright (who doesn't believe Will Wright?!) when he said it would be the best thing ever. Cause after all, who the heck would want to play in a virtual dollhouse?
Continue reading "Did We Ignore the Rise of the Personal World?" »
Amidst our talk of a possible virtual world winter, and the frantic efforts of pundits looking for bright spots in a somewhat dismal holiday retailing season, more and more suggestions that kids will fuel the next wave of virtual world development ('the most annoying trend since Beanie Babies')....
Second Life and other virtual worlds for grown-ups have enjoyed intense media attention in the last year but fallen far short of breathless expectations. The children’s versions are proving much more popular, to the dismay of some parents and child advocacy groups. Now the likes of the Walt Disney Company, which owns Club Penguin, are working at warp speed to pump out sister sites.
“Get ready for total inundation”...
Or is this just a new cog in the hype machine? What happens when your 5-year old is inconsolable when they can't log on? My prediction for 2008: a fresh crop of virtual world 'addicts', and all the requisite concerned voices to go along with them, including the likes of... wait for it... Dr. Phil.
I quite enjoy it when people get sick of hype and decide to rain all over the parade. The problem is that too often people do it when their annoyance causes any degree of balance and levity to flee, as in the case of Malcolm King writing in 'Australia's e-journal for social and political debate', who clearly has seen one too many articles about the amazing wonders of Second Life and the residents therein... Yes, he's a bit late to the SL bashing party, but the level of vitriol smells like a pile of fetid backlash to me (predicted by Ren for 2007. Check).
Continue reading "Talking trash about intellectual trash..." »
There is now a customizable digital Barbie that connects (with included cradle?) to a virtual world - 'a next-generation fashion doll and stylish MP3 player all in one'. You need the device to connect to the world, but once there can create a room, shop, and do other typical social VW stuff (all with parentally controlled permission settings). From Amazon (who are suggesting I buy one):
The hottest toy of the season is finally here! The interactive Barbie Girls let you do more with Barbie than ever before! At www.BarbieGirls.com, girls can create their own, personalized online space--everything from designing a "room" to creating a character--where they can then play games, chat with gal pals, watch videos and even shop with earned virtual money. They even play MP3's! Parents will appreciate extras such as word filters, moderation tools and other safety features to ensure that the virtual world stays friendly and fun for all visitors. Barbie Girls are the newest, coolest way to play.
Apparently the site has been up since April, but this is this first I've heard of it... anyone else got kids obsessed with Webkinz? Mine calls hers Websky.
I'm reporting from the Singularity Summit (AI and the Future of Humanity) in San Francisco where a bunch of fascinating luminaries (from MIT, IBM, Google, WorldChanging, etc.) are discussing the possibility that despite a lack of excitement in AI research lately, we might yet invent artificial intelligence that is smarter than we are. (The term singularity, though I'm sure you all know this, was first pulled from the physics/big bang/black hole vernacular and used in this context by Vernor Vinge, then popularized by Ray Kurzweil, who is speaking via video conference tomorrow). Some people get as excited about the Singularity as Christians do about the Rapture, thinking it might solve all of our problems via a positive feedback loop emerging from intelligent systems that are capable of making themselves recursively better. Others refer to it as a nerdpocalypse and tell tales of Hal-like doom and gloom or economic and network catastrophes that will inevitably arise from AIs (either malevolent or just behaving stupidly because of bad programming) running rampant.
Continue reading "The Singularity, Virtual Worlds and AI Babies" »
Sorry, kids, but I just really needed a post with this title. Did you all read this beauty (scroll down to 'Terrifying Teachers') buried in comments? Freaking awesome. They have no idea just how terrifying we are. Muahhaha!
Colleen 'momgamer' Hannon's rant about the 'hate-filled miasma' that clouds player vs. player interactions has me thinking... While I understand her point - maybe people want to be able to engage in a little friendly PvP without being subjected to a continuum of crap that begins with infantile lewdness and extends to potentially damaging attacks characterized by bigotry, misanthropy and vitriolic abuse - I can't help but wonder if there is a larger phenomenon that we're missing.
Wikipedia defines a 'virtual organization' as one that exists 'as a corporate, not-for-profit, educational or otherwise productive entity that does not have a central geographical location and exists solely through telecommunication tools'. Since the 1990s, virtual organizations and teams have seemed like a panacea for a lot of problems that arise from RL collaboration (real estate, travel costs, time wasted commuting, etc. etc.), but there hasn't been all that much useful data on what makes a virtual organization or team work well, despite the fact that there are many that are majestic examples of virtual organization (and more notably, self-organization) that flourish beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Likewise there have been horrible failures resulting from efforts to contrive a successful organization in a virtual setting (think of some of those horrible groupware experiments). And while I suppose there are those who might debate whether MMO play constitutes productive activity or not, it does seem clear that the skills one develops via participation in MMOs might be hugely relevant to other types of virtual organizations.
Via BoingBoing, news surfaces of a Chinese MMO that is inviting banned players back into the fold if they agree to donate blood. That's real life blood, of course. 1 pint of blood = 1 restored game account. Platelets FTW!
If the forthcoming Star Trek MMO isn't enough to satisfy your fantasies for epic space travel (or if you just like your MMOs served up with a healthy side of RL-relevant content), then do we have some news for you!
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, author of Simulacra and Simulations, has vacated our reality. Seems right to pause a moment and consider whether ‘hyperreality’ is truly upon us, and if so, does it mean we have sold our collective soul for the promise of bigger, better, faster, more, convincing ourselves in the process that pale imitations of precious human activities are fulfilling us?
It is more difficult for us to imagine the real, History, the depth of time, or three-dimensional space, just as before it was difficult from our real world perspective to imagine a virtual universe or the fourth-dimension. The simulacra will be ahead of us everywhere. The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. Since the world is on a delusional course, we must adopt a delusional standpoint towards the world. - Baudrillard
So, let's talk about our delusions...
Continue reading "Liberté, égalité, fraternité et réalité?" »
Finally, via Joystiq, a productive use of time for those of us who worry that repeatedly whacking monsters is not actually contributing to improvements in our zen… Or maybe it is, but soon it will be possible to learn Chinese in Zon – The New Chengo Chinese MMO, and we'll be able to both get zen and spout koans right and left in their intended language! And maybe even be able to play someday with our millions of Chinese fellow WoW fiends, or at least lambast the gold farmers appropriately...
This just in via CNET...
The International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies (IAVRT) has just announced plans for the Neuronet, an initiative that "will evolve into the world's first public network capable of meeting the data transmission requirements of emerging cinematic and immersive virtual-reality technologies".
Why?
"Today, the best and the brightest innovators in the world are pushing the boundaries of virtual reality and gaming. Virtual worlds such as Second Life, The Sims, Everquest, and World of Warcraft continue to attract legions of followers while new game systems from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft offer near life-like character renditions. In business, companies like IBM and Sun Microsystems are investing heavily in virtual reality business applications. These VR trailblazers, and many others, have been limited by the confines of the Internet. The Neuronet's communication bandwidth and real-time VR and gaming data transfer protocols will enable them to reach their full potential."
Have they really been limited? I'm not so sure. But certainly thinking about fancy infrastructure for the MMOs that might exist from 2009 onwards (the date this will be ready for 'consumer applications') must be a good idea, right?
Domain names - .vr (for 'immersive virtual reality neurosites') and .cin (for 'cinematic virtual reality neurosites') - will be available next year...
For those of you who want to escape family obligations today and tomorrow, tell them that you have to work on a submission for this call for papers! It's for a special issue of the Games and Culture journal, focused on Gaming in the Asia-Pacific region. Read on for details...
UCLA's film, television, and digital media e-journal would like to solicit contributions from the TN community for the features and reviews section of an upcoming issue.
Read on for more details... (but hurry, deadline is Jan 1, 2007!)
It’s easy to look at the graphs of MMO growth over the last few years and think that it’s a game category that will continue to grow exponentially. In fact, I have often said that since games have always been largely social (and single player gaming an anomaly that resulted largely from technological limitations), that once people have a taste of gaming with others few will choose to go back to solo play. And I do believe that. Other players represent that sort of super sophisticated AI that no NPC can begin to approach. And for me, the only thing that makes the average MMO grind at all fun, for instance, is the chaos and uncertainty brought forth by other random players. Social structures make games more complex and interesting, to be sure. But is that always a good thing?
Dmitri recently received an e-mail from Mike Fred, a Behavior Intervention Specialist who uses WoW therapeutically as part of his work with challenged kids:
I play WoW with a few of the students from my school. It has proven to be beneficial to the students socially, academically, and therapeutically. In general these students lack social skills. Even when they want to make friends, they often behave inappropriately and tend to push people away. Yet, as these students have gotten involved with playing WoW, they have made social connections - not only with each other, but with other players online. They are all active members of their online guilds… their online relationships are not deep. However, the fact that they make relationships at all is significant. Moreover, two of these students have developed a real friendship.
I swear, I need this bumper sticker.
It seems like just about every time I get together with female gamer friends, the topic of conversation inevitably (and much to my chagrin) turns to the cuteness of avatars and our frustration with the limited options we are usually given to control their attractiveness. I had a long, involved ranting session the other night, for instance, with another WoW gamer about how frustrating it is to play the Horde, mainly because the avatar customization options are limited to a few (arguably) unattractive races. We talked about how we both have female undead mages, whom we spent quite a bit of time trying to make as cute as possible, yet are still frustratingly unattractive. And how it disturbs us a bit that we care all that much, closet-inhabiting fashionistas though we might be.
But I’m gonna confess. I do care. An unattractive avatar is so disruptive to my gameplay that I will stop playing if I can’t do something about it...
Continue reading "My Other Self is an Ass-kicking Supermodel" »
Joystiq reports on a recent talk by Thomas Bidaux of NCsoft Europe at the Develop UK event where apparently it was revealed that 'everything we think know about MMOs is wrong'. Mr. Bidaux has a number of opinions about how MMOs are going to be revolutionized, turned on their heads even, via platform innovations (though anyone who played Everquest on the PS2 might be a bit skeptical that this is a positive move), Xbox Live style persistence in terms of player rankings and achievements, novel payment models, and yes, 'a lifestyle revolution' enabled by our experiments with Web 2.0, 'collective intelligence (e.g. Wikipedia) and viral content (e.g. MySpace)' that 'provide opportunites for community and collaborative efforts'.
If you’ve ever read the Everquest Widows mailing list (a bit of a guilty pleasure), you’d think that the road to nowhere good (really fast) has an MMO at every bend: players leaving otherwise satisfying RL relationships to selfishly seek their romantic pleasure online. It all starts innocently enough… normal people with normal lives start playing MMOs and voila! discover that their identities/interactions aren’t limited by the narrow physical world definitions they’ve become accustomed to. As a friend of mine recently said:
Folks glut themselves on the chance to meet, greet, and be (in)discreet with new faces - and invent their own, i.e. reinventing themselves in the context of whatever environment they like - also an opportunity most folks don't have. So you get to explore the possibilities of these new relationships, be whoever you want (and with whomever you want, however you want) - why go back to a stultifying relationship?
To be sure, this tendency sometimes leaves the devastation of abandoned/abused spouses and children in its wake, but let’s put the value judgments away for a minute...
This kind of story makes me really sad. English-speaking Orkut users are apparently up in arms because there are lots of Brazilians on the site, posting lots of stuff in Portuguese and making it difficult for English speakers to find stuff. Everyone has a different opinion about whether this is okay or not, including even Brazilians who think, ‘"The problem is to invade forums with specific languages and write in Portuguese. Brazilians are still learning how to behave in the Net.”
But isn’t the solution really quite simple? Just let people filter by language (Orkut developers, get busy!) and then we won’t have people inciting all this hatred and organizing virtual race riots. (don’t get me started on how upsetting I find it that we North Americans are really this ethnocentric – so irrelevant).
I think it’s great that people all over the world are enjoying the Internet, but yeah, a few filters definitely make it easier to manage a lot of diversity… people should be able to write and read in whatever langauage they choose – that’s the beauty of the Internet, there’s an audience for everything!
This word, ‘delight‘, keeps popping up more and more… It’s a cornerstone of the experience economy… it’s not longer enough to simply provide people stuff – they want to be made happy, too.
That’s what relevancy is all about… anticipating needs (like Dina Mehta describes in this ode to her local grocer), being thoughtful and making people feel like you’re looking out for them. It doesn’t really take much to delight people, except maybe good intentions.
Remember how I said the other day that relevancy is the obvious, simple stuff? Dina apparently agrees:
“What strikes me about these people is they have mastered the art of client delight in small, simple, ways. In ways that are personal, social and responsive beyond the ‘brief’. I am under no illusion that i am the chosen one - i know they do it for all their customers, still i feel special and it makes me so loyal to them - if on the odd day i need to, i’d rather do without, not scream my head off at their inefficiencies, and definitely not turn away from them.”
Don Norman apparently has another take on this… (or so Tom tells me – I missed his recent talk here in New Zealand, dagnabbit!)). Don doesn’t care so much about design and usability anymore – he’s all about having fun these days, or at least that’s what he says when he talks about ‘emotional design’ and why he drives a Porsche rather than the incredibly practical and usable Toyota . His basic needs are met by all sorts of options, so now he expects that little bit extra. Not that design, usability and basic customer service aren’t important anymore – it’s just that they’ve become commodities.
Those organisations that want to differentiate themselves now must also delight us. That’s not too much to ask, is it? After all, even those coffee people understand that I want comfort and inspiration with my latte…
Those crafty Starbucks people must have snuck into my brain while I was sleeping and stolen my idea about destination music/drinking stores! I swear I outlined this very idea to my boss at TowerRecords.com a few years ago, after having spent many an hour on listening stations in Tower stores looking for new music ideas (and getting thirsty and wishing I had a place to sit down). Except my idea involved alcoholic beverages, as well (everyone knows people buy more stuff, especially emotionally engaging stuff, when they’re a bit intoxicated!). So either Starbucks should get a liquor license (mmm… Irish coffees!!!) or those big microbrewery places should get into the act.
But maybe Starbucks will figure out the alcohol part on their own… the marketing guy, Howard Schultz, is obviously really smart:
“When I think about the average music-shopping experience, what I would call the sense of romance about music is gone, but when I saw Hear Music that first time, it was clear that they had cracked the code on the sense of discovery that music should have.”
Yes, yes! We all want more music, we just need help finding it! They should get SavageBeast or something, too… we used it at Tower to create a really nifty ‘Discovery Center‘ that let people find new music based on music that they like, refined along any dimension they particularly liked. I can totally see people siting in a bar/café surfing for music with their friends on a Friday night… I’d go right now if I were a bit closer to Santa Monica!
This last week I went to the first ever New Zealand Game Developers Conference in
Dunedin, a lovely city on the South Island with gorgeous views and
amazing Victorian architecture. It was a really great conference:
interesting speakers, good food (served in an awesome Harry
Potter-esque dining room), and an incredibly fabulous bag. The t-shirt
was quite good, as well. 
But more importantly, we had Sheri Graner Ray, Ernest Adams, Mario Wynands, and Daniel Sanchez-Crespo, among other really interesting people. It was really cool being at a small enough conference that we actually got to hang out with people (oh, and got to make them play SingStar and EyeToy, too!).
I also met my soon-to-be PhD supervisor, Gareth Schott, and he seems like a very excellent person with really great ideas. While there, we devised a scheme to take a much more interesting approach to the dissemination of my research… I’m very excited about the possibilities, but keeping mum for now!
As for a topic?
Still something about social learning in massively multiplayer game
ennvironments. As soon as my husband gets our new living room PC set
up, I’m going to start my fieldwork, playing City of Heroes for 10-30 hours per week. 
Oh, and one more thing… I also attended a panel including New Zealand’s chief censor, Bill Hastings, who did a remarkably good job explaining why he’s banned a couple of very violent games. I don’t believe in censorship, but I was impressed with how thoughtfully and intelligently he approached the issue… ‘Injurious to public good?’ My jury is still out on this one…
Marc Prensky has an interesting take on the whole ‘information overload problem’… He contends, as do I, that the problem is not too much information (or too much choice, as I have written before), but rather a problem with people’s ability to process information. Digital natives have been hard-wired by their interactions with technology, exposure to fast-moving images, and bombardment with heaps of information to handle a lot more than digital immigrants. Unlike their forbears whose lives unfolded at a much more leisurely pace, digital natives have evolved to process lots of stuff in parallel and make decisions quickly. Less information isn’t a solution for them (or for me, sitting somewhere between a native and an immigrant) – they just want better tools for filtering irrelevant information. This is going to be the cry in the future… give me lots of information and choices, and give me tools that help me make all that stuff relevant to my wants and needs.
I’m so glad that people are starting to catch onto this whole relevancy idea. I just found this great piece about the ’self-service’ society and how it works to everyone’s benefit:
“For the consumer, the ability to control the timing, method, and manner of a transaction is very attractive – particularly if it saves them time and effort. The attraction for the supplier is that they can off-load all the administrative costs of selling to the consumer and still give a better service.”
They also say:
“We consumers are demanding more and more. We are now looking for companies to serve us the way we want to be served and to sell us the products that we want to buy. The next generation of self-service will deliver the ultimate in market feedback – we won’t just tell vendors what we want, we will take it.”
People always worry that with too much personalization and customization provided by technology, people won’t leave the house and won’t ever talk to anyone – but, please, who enjoys those long conversations with bank tellers, telemarketers and bureaucrats at the DMV? I’m sure they would just as soon not talk to me and I’d just as soon not talk to them… well, not in that context, anyway. So give me some nice self-service apps and I’ll spend the time I save trolling my social networks for interesting people to talk to. Another article referred to a recent study looking at women’s online habits: ‘"for many women, the Internet has allowed them to actually spend more time with their families, according to the report, as it has made routine tasks far less time-consuming.” So see? It’s not all doom and gloom for sociability!
Hey, but when am I going to get ‘portable scanning devices, which permit customers to scan each item as it is picked off the shelf’ and ‘enable immediate purchase’?’. Only problem is, I might miss the nice Kiwi check-out people here in New Zealand who always say, ‘Nice Day?’ to everyone and make it seem like they really care if I’ve had a nice day or not. (one of these days when I’m feeling extra grumpy, I’m afraid I’m going to say, ‘no, I’ve had a crappy day, thanks for asking!’, but fortunately, it hasn’t happened yet!)
I’m so excited to have found another Fast Company write-up about the guy who implemented the 24-hours-a-day check-in policy at the Peninsula Beverly Hills. This is a guy who figured out what his customers really needed, then creatively engineered a way to give it to them. He didn’t do like many hotels that try to be more marketable, obssessing about mostly meaningless stuff like nicer chocolates on their pillows, fluffier towels, or expanded spa services… Instead, he looked at what really mattered to travelers… flexibility… and a soft spot to lay your poor aching body and pounding head after a long day working or traveling, not having to sit in the lobby until your room is ready, being able to shower before spending time in public, and not having to check out at 10 am, when your flight is at 4 (and you only checked in last night at 12:00 am, so it’s a total rip-off). This guy gets a gold star.
But the thing that amazes me is, isn’t this obvious? Why all the accolades for this guy who just did the right thing: being a hospitable host in the hospitality industry? People we don’t pay treat us better than this when we go stay with them…
I’ve been to a conference here in New Zealand these last few days… We learned lots of stuff and got to work on developing standards for eLearning… (oh, and I gave a presentation on ‘Education and Industry Sector Collaboration’). So now I’m mulling lots over, but will try to get back on board soon. In the meantime, check out this new gaming blog I just found, Joystiq…
This is a great rant from Rafe Needleman about organization-centric approaches to network communications and social software that limit desirable network effects (the idea that the bigger the network, the better it is)and make the applications irrelevant to many. As Rafe says, “the lack of interconnection is not purely a technical imperative, but rather a business choice. That choice is disrespectful of the consumer and slows down the adoption of new services.”
The closed approach will have to change… Someone will surely come along and figure out a way to aggregate my social networks, then provide applications that allow me to leverage all of them as one cohesive whole. I just wonder how long it will take?
When I first read headlines that McDonalds was offering digital music downloads, I thought it was the stupidest, most desperate thing I’d heard lately. But then I read this article and realized that it’s really quite smart. Get kids thinking that music is a value-added thing, not free, but give it to them for free and get them to access it in a place where they already go. Plus, it benefits everyone… music people get to get more music out there and McDonald’s has a new draw, that is if anyone’s parents let them go anywhere near the Golden Arches anymore…
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