Archive for September, 2004

The MMORPG within the MMORPG: Part 1

While TSO remains all atitter over the fact that EA has introduced a new server/city (Dianastan, or Tigger Town, or Dragons Hangnail or whatever it is), Second Life had the idea that people should be able to buy their own servers in the SL grid (avatars can actually move between servers freely in SL) and [...]

Full Story

Fallen Angel: AVG Groping Victim Falls in with One Song

Many of our dedicated readers will remember the case of the young Aphaville Government intern Gina, spoiled in the flower of her youth by the salacious advances of Mr-President. Sadly that incident has precipitated a moral decline in the young woman to the point where she has now taken employ as a dancer/camera girl with [...]

Full Story

Dragon Empires Project bites dust.

According to this report in GamesIndustry.biz, Codemasters has terminated development of their Dragon Empires game. It thus joins the great dust bin of cancelled projects that incude Ultima X, Warhammer Online, and many others. There are many interesting issues here. Will they open the source? They should. Also, if these projects are failing now, what [...]

Full Story

The Virtual Burning Man

There is a tribute to Burning Man in Second Life. I haven’t had a chance to get there yet, so I refer you to the ever excellent reporting of Hamlet Linden in New World Notes. And Hamlet even usese the phrase “temporary autonomous zone”, which basically guarantees that I will blog the story.

Full Story

Program for State of Play II: Reloaded

I was looking for a slow period to blog the program for the State of Play conference, and this looks like the time. The State of Play is a conference that brings together people from the game industry and academia to discuss legal and conceptual issues in the development of MMORPGs like TSO and Second [...]

Full Story

Computer Viruses as Art

By rights this should be a humdog post, but while we wait for the good dog to return to us, I give you the following very interesting post from amico Allesandro Ludovico of the Italian hacktivism and cyberculture magazine Neural. Computer viruses as works of art? Oddly this sort of makes sense to me.

Full Story