Seth Sivak of gametruth.org reminds us that Matrix Online has been launched, and points us to what might be a unique feature or might be just dressed-up GM'ing: Actors who will play out narrative sequences live. While I can almost hear the eyes of the MUD-Dev-ers rolling, Seth asks some good questions about this. 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. 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.
On World of Warcraft's Elune server, two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge, with the exception of premium-priced high-level weapons and armor (e.g., they bought all the trade goods) and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price. Which, for the most part, people were willing to pay. The same players have also been running an informal storage service designed to underprice the Ironforge bank, but with a bite to it: if you don't pay the storage fee on a weekly basis, they auction off all the goods you've stored with them. This is an attitude (deeper than that, it's a disposition) which I'd suggest is rooted in developer practice generally, and computer games developer practice specifically.
In Cyworld, you can set up avatars who interact with your visitors. If you want better avatars, you need to pay for them with acorns ('dotori'). Acorns are available from the company, for the equivalent of 10 cents US each. You can buy them with your cell phone and give them as gifts.
The April 2005 Regional Economist suggests that employment success is often dependent upon an "appearance-wage" bias (see "So Much for That Merit Raise: The Link between Wages and Appearance"). It would seem that folks who are more physically appealing tend to do better. Thinking about virtual worlds... This is an attitude (deeper than that, it's a disposition) which I'd suggest is rooted in developer practice generally, and computer games developer practice specifically. It is a view which recognizes that which is scripted, modeled, or otherwise generated according to the practice of software development as seemingly both the (only) site of creativity and (therefore) the ultimate locus of value. Cheap FFXI Gil are on hot sale on all servers, especially on American servers.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a medium that enables radical transformations of locations, objects, bodies, and identities into living fantasies of idealistic perfection. A medium that purportedly allows people to achieve more fully realized, well-rounded, capable, or desirable selves. Sound familiar?
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.
Maybe the issue is the "larger" community. It's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that level. But I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going on. I don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to be. But then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet.
Maybe the issue is the "larger" community. It's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that level. But I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going on. I don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to be. But then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet.
Maybe the issue is the "larger" community. It's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that level. But I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going on. I don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to be. But then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet.
Maybe the issue is the "larger" community. It's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that level. But I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going on. I don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to be. But then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet.