Entries from February 2007

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Interesting Blog on Real $$$ in MMORPGs

Check out Virtual Worlds, Real Profits: Real Money Trading (RMT) in MMORPGs, and especially the posts on Is Gambling Legal in Second Life? and Peer-to-Peer Market for RMT Trading Debuts.

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Machinima and Copyright

I know no-one is planning to write about copyright, but, as we have been talking about ip issues with respect to games, and in particular videos using game content, I thought I’d link to some material on the great Viacom Youtube takedown. EFF notes that:
Among the 100,000 videos targeted for takedowns was a home movie [...]

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Edwards Campaign in Second Life

From Slashdot,
“It may not be an official effort — yet — but thanks to a grass-roots effort, John Edwards has become the first presidential candidate to set-up-shop in Second Life. Jerimee Richir, whose avatar is called Jose Rote, paid-for and developed Edwards’ virtual headquarters, and, on a voluntary basis, is managing the in-world campaign. [...]

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Scheduling

Today concludes the first set of class meetings.
We expect your two-page topic statements ASAP. This document should include a commitment to the date on which you intend to submit your rough draft (email copies to both of us please).
Our next physical meeting is March 21, so we can touch base on [...]

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Stew’s Topic

So after thinking about it and doing a little bit of preliminary research, I think the violent video games law topic will work. Its pretty clear that given the case law and the particular aspects of games (interactivity, etc.) that the maximum strength legislation is going to be different from merely cribbing from existing [...]

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

The Implications of an All-Male Game

Upon reading the Frasca article “Playing with Fire…” it occurred to me that my younger sister (a feminist and a hardcore gamer) might have something interesting to say on the subject. When I asked her to email me a short synopsis of her thoughts, she produced this posting on her blog. It turns [...]

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Serious Games That Are Seriously Fun

Gonzalo Frasca’s article, “Serious Games And The Japanese Toilet: Extending ‘Serious Game’ Designs To Deliver More” got me thinking about some of the more intriguing serious games out there. The U.S. military has used video games to train soldiers for quite some time. Although shooting innocent civilians in a simulated battle probably provides adequate preparation [...]

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Commentary on Sony’s Item Trading Venture

Spotted at Games * Design * Art * Culture:
Some commentary today (from Raph and Terra Nova on a whitepaper from Sony Online Entertainment about item trading on Station Exchange.
Background for those who haven’t been following it: Sony set up some (but not all EQ II) servers to allow legal item and plat sales, via a [...]

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Fundraisers, Religion, Architecture in Second Life

This post from New World Notes illustrates some of the issues we’re thinking about this week, from the idea that people are locating fundraisers in SL to what a church in SL looks like. This site explores using SL as a tool for architecture. And at Archinect there is a long post which raises some [...]

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

Real Estate Prices Drop in Second Life

Linden sees further drop in real estate prices
Linden Labs has taken an interesting approach to the surge in demand for real estate in Second Life. I wonder how long it will take for either a) property owners to protest these massive land additions or b)cash out and take their money and buy property in a [...]