A bigger event than the closing of Warhammer Online, this world was to be the first-person 3D update to its aging but venerable ancestor. Judging from the press release, score it gameplay 1, graphics 0. Thanks for the heads-up to Brian Whitener. Reactions from the player base have ranged from “Whoah....” to “a brilliant way to avoid hiring more employees”. For most MMOs I might think that this is just a lame way of the designers shirking their responsibilities, but ATITD is not most MMOs, the relationship between the designers and players is different, closer than in many others; also the whole point of the game was for the player base to develop into a community so it even makes narrative sense – though I’d be interested to find out when exactly Teppy thought of the ending.

Things are heating up in There this summer, with hot topics like politics and religion becoming major points of debate both in-world and in the member forums. As the U.S. election season kicks into high gear, in-world political campaigning and even voter registration booths for RL presidential candidates are being offered. Meanwhile, a born-again Christian is ruffling feathers by using There as an advertising vehicle for his particular denomination. Specifically, he's set up a large structure just outside of Karuna Plaza, There’s main entry point for newbies with glowing crosses and billboards proclaiming “Jesus is Lord.” You really can’t miss this place. We’ve discussed politics and religion’s entree into virtual worlds before on TN but this case has a new twist. It’s not so much about the mere presence of political or religious groups in a virtual world (nothing new about that), but rather about the specific ways political and religious groups are now using vw’s as forums for recruiting new members for RL interest groups.

The main source of community conflict centers around the over-zealous advertising/spamming practices of these groups. Apparently things have gotten so bad that There's customer service made the following announcement in response: Religion, other controversial issues, and the role of customer service We have been seeing a great deal of debate regarding issues of religion, both in world and in the forums. The in-world activity in particular has resulted in a number of calls to customer service and has also taken up a lot of the community team's time. As a result, we want to clarify our position and set some guidelines to assist you as we move forward. We recognize that we have a diverse community, filled with people of differing ideas and opinions. We value this diversity and view it as one of the community's greatest strengths.

1. If a person places a portazone/sign/etc. in front of his or her own house, to express a particular opinion, this is acceptable. Expressing an opinion in a way that does not violate the TOS is acceptable. 2. If you purposely place a sign in front of another person's house, and you know that this person does not support your opinion/agenda, this enters the realm of griefing. The intent here is *clearly* to harrass the person of the opposing viewpoint. If the parties cannot resolve the issue among themselves, it would be appropriate to contact customer service for assistance. 3. Placing a portazone/sign/etc. in a public area, let's say just outside Karuna Plaza, to express a particular opinion, is acceptable. Again, expressing an opinion in a way that does not violate the TOS is okay.

Xinhua Online reports on the second lawsuit brought against Bejing Arctic Ice Technology Company by a disgruntled gamer who claims he lost 5,000-yuan worth of virtual weapons and equipment. Li Xuguang complained in his petition that his virtual property in the popular online computer game Qiannian, or Millennium, was looted by a hacker and then locked up by the server. Readers will recall the same company (though a different game) was the losing defendant in the real world's first judgment finding an actionable interest in virtual assets. I imagine that ice cream would have a sedating effect. And if that's the only factor I am looking for, I will dutifully report "Study shows ice cream reduces violence in children." But how MUCH? Is it enough to be concerned about?

Wired news has coverage of an event many Terra Novans attended at State of Play, the roundtable on eRulemaking. It covers some of the discussion, has a couple of quotes from Raph, credits Professor Noveck appropriately, but in some ways mischaracterizes the discussion. The government wasn't there to get opinions from game developers about how to improve their process. Instead, they were there to solicit ideas on how to use games to educate citizens about the process. What's unfortunate is that they ignored the obvious flaws in their design. After all, they were just talking to a bunch of game designers and developers. The flaws are probably obvious to any TN reader. By moving away from publicizing rules and proposed rules in the Federal Register and allowing responses by snail mail towards electronic publishing and commenting, the government is hoping to broaden democracy and to allow more participation.

Back in September, I posted something about authorship in virtual worlds. Last week, at Henry Lowood's fun conference in Palo Alto, Kevin O'Hara from the Star Wars Galaxies team made an interesting comment with regard to authorship that got me thinking about authorship issues again: In addition to community building, O'Hara stressed the importance of player interaction in developing content and stories for the virtual world. O'Hara explains that, while there is a live events team that creates monthly story lines, it is not a very cost effective way of creating fiction on-the-fly. Instead, Sony tries to leverage the community aspect of the game to encourage players to create the content for the game themselves. Full article here. That's not really news in itself. Mr. Farmer actually made a quite similar observation way back when -- designing narrative "content" for massively social VWs is not easy.

Gearing up for Valentine's Day, thanks to Andrew at GTA for pointing out an interesting article from The Christian Science Monitor "If you kick a robotic dog, is it wrong?" The question posed by the article is "How should people treat creatures that seem ever more emotional with each step forward in robotic technology, but who really have no feelings?" Here's the opinion of Peter Danielson, director of the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia, as quoted in the article. It seems to me there's a whole ethics of fiction and toys that we're thinking through. Are you telling me I ought to treat something that looks like a kitten, but is actually a piece of plastic, better than I treat a pig, which is actually a sentient and intelligent being? You're building a taboo system that gets further and further from the actual value.

Second Life began auctioning its virtual land for $US in December. (View player to player auctions here.) "Buying land" really means buying the right to build things on the land, and on top of that you still have to pay a maintenance rent on what you buy. Buy an entire server's worth of land, and the rent becomes $200 a month. In January, reports embedded journalist Wagner James Au, a certain 'Fizik' won a hotly-contested auction for an entire server. The price was $1200. That's right, Fizik was willing to pay 2L $1200 plus $200 monthly in perpetuity, in order to make software objects that would live only in the virtual world. It turns out that 'Fizik' is a marketing agency with clientele in the fashion industry. Not everyone was happy at their arrival. Read more in Au's Notes From a New World. Pick up some general discussion here. To be clear, I don't see this as an avatar rights issue at all.

Uru is the latest installment of the pathbreaking graphics-intensive puzzle game Myst. Uru Live was supposed to be a massively multiplayer implementation of the basic Myst idea (beautiful scenery, deep mysteries, hard puzzles). It seems to me that the live service wasn't open for long at all, and in any case I never got the chance to explore it. But it didn't get enough subscribers, apparently - even though it was free - and now it will close. I wonder if anyone in the development community here knows what they were trying to do, and why it didn't work? The issues presented by robots are different. There is no puppeteer pulling strings on the bot -- except the original author of the mass-produced program/machine. So Floyd from Planetfall is designed to self-sacrifice and Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde are designed to be eaten alive (except for their eyeballs). Obviously, people do feel emotional attachments -- just see some of the letters on the GTA Post that Andrew received about Petz.