According to the Associated Press, prisoners in a Missouri jail had managed to get themselves some videogames. Those games have now been taken away. The reasoning: These violent criminals have already crossed a line, who knows what Grand Theft Auto might make them do. Yes... but I thought we were all one happy community just a few pages ago? Interestingly, Chapter 6 is called "Reaching Out to Your Fellow Elf: Guilds, Forums, and Conventions," so the next step is from guilds to the larger web community of EQ sites (e.g. Stratics and Allakhazam) and RL conventions of players.

It's important to note, though, that the implications of all these questions of communities colliding with technologies of collaboration extend well outside the virtual worlds fishpond. For instance, consider this post on Savage Minds (actually citing Farmer & Morningstar) about how best to handle the organization of research papers in the anthropology community. Or take this post from Anne Galloway discussing an article on Forbes about mass amateurization (something Dan and I have written about, btw) as not exactly radical, but instead pointing largely toward mass corporate commodification of amateurization. I suspect that the difference here comes down to one's view of embodiment, the avatar-as-self, and the distinction between game worlds and social worlds.

Wired (Gamers Eye Open Virtual Worlds) features Peter Ludlow beating the drum for Open Source virtual worlds. The claim that "(his) expulsion from The Sims Online may well be the highest-profile player ban in the history of video games" only serves as fuel for this metaverse fire: the proletariat want satisfaction. The real yarn, however, lies with whether or not this can be part of a calculus of virtual world liberation. After all, game development is hard and perhaps Open Source would be a poor advantage. While we've discussed Open Source and virtual worlds in the past, another question (beyond technology and its creation) is this one: I suspect that the difference here comes down to one's view of embodiment, the avatar-as-self, and the distinction between game worlds and social worlds. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us.

Statements: Different actors have different utility functions (Castronova, 2002), with different expectable challenge and consequently reward. RMT in a player sense is caused by the essentially incompatibility between challenge levels of the game and the desired or the proper one (ex. DAOC and the expansion Trials's master levels, farming in EQ or autoclicking in Project entropia) following the formula S = aR - b(C - x)^2. A programming language and a programming paradigm can shape how we engineer a world.

Currently, all RMT involves people buying items that reduce the challenge level. But what if a game was too easy? Virtual worlds maintain internal rules and structures to regulate play and organize competition. In virtual worlds law, the wider legal system impinges on this traditionally private sphere and subject the politics of the virtual worlds game to the politics of the law game. 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.

Arseni Stardoumov, Stockholm School of Economics, has written with an interesting set of propositions regarding RMT. Assume the players have a diversity of tastes for both the rewards of the game system (R) as well as its challenges (C). Assume further that there are alienable items that affect an individual's perception of C. It follows that there will always be, in that population, a market for these items. Each person has an ideal {R, C} bundle. 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. These practices are hard to ignore in especially high-stakes, risk-adverse software development environments.

This month’s lineup should prove to be an interesting mix. I’ll be speaking about virtual business brands developed by residents of Second Life. Clark Aldrich will be discussing his new book Learning by Doing: 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. These practices are hard to ignore in especially high-stakes, risk-adverse software development environments.

Strategy games have a long, checkered past with classic role-playing games. Many gamers will remember with a sense of dread some of the sword-and-sorcery to computer game translations they have seen which fail to capture the magic and dynamic of the original games.

Well, I remember one day I walked into the local arcade, and there stood one of the coolest stand-up titles I had ever seen ... Dragon's Lair. When I look back, the gameplay was basically a video version of a choose your own adventure book, but many people, like myself, just couldn't resist playing an interactive cartoon. Years later, Dragon's Lair is still floating around and has popped up in many different forms, the most recent of which is a high definition version of the classic title.

Not a sequel, Dragon's Lair 3D is more of a remake with some new puzzles and enemies. The story is the same: You play as Dirk, a knight who must rescue Princess Daphne (a damsel in distress) from the evil wizard Mordroc and Singe the Dragon. Along the way you'll battle enemies like evil knights, Giddy Goons and Firedrakes and solve difficult puzzles.