Archive for 'Opinion'
Exploring Online Conflict Resolution
In an historic meeting at the State of Play, a group of game developers, lawyers, and conflict mediators met to discuss strategies for conflict resolution online. The headline idea emerging from the meeting was the thought that rather than impose uniform conflict resolution strategies in a top down manner, it might be more useful for [...]
Full StoryFree Speech for Avatars! And?like?Now!
Ludlow blasts Stratics. In a Session at The State of Play entitled Avatar Rights, Virtual Liberty, and Free Expression in Virtual Worlds, Peter Ludlow blasted the organized censorship policies of Stratics, while Fred Schauer of Harvard University suggested that the possibilities for free expression in virtual worlds should be used to explore alternative models of [...]
Full StoryStreaming Waggie, Teppie, and Uri
Whew, a week in detox has *almost* helped me to recover from my night with the gamedevs, and I can (belatedly) get back to blogging The State of Play. These posts will dribble out as I have time. First thing you might want to check out (if you haven’t already) is the streamcast of the [...]
Full StoryAhh, the crazy hijinks of GM created sexist NPCs
I was waiting for the situation to clarify before I posted on this, but it is really only getting more murky, and I do think it is very important that dedicated Herald readers check out the situation. Near as I can tell, the GMs in A Tale in the Desert 2 constrtucted an NPC trader [...]
Full StorySL modifies Terms of Service and EULA (sort of)
Well, at least they let us know when then introduce a new agreement. The new TOS seems like a lot of legal CYA without much thought to forging serious business partnerships. For example, how much are *you* willing to invest in a platform that keeps this clause in its TOS? ?7.1 Termination. Linden has the [...]
Full StoryThe Myth of Fiction
I’m happy to report that we finally got Professor Ludlow off of his fat derrier and got some product out of him — in this case a paper titled “From Sherlock and Buffy to Klingon and Norrathian Platinum Pieces: Pretense, Contextalism, and the Myth of Fiction.” Wordy mofo ain’t he? Not sure I get the [...]
Full StoryBartle Mourns the Loss of Creative Freedom in MMORPGs
In a recent post on Terra Nova, game making pioneer/god Richard Bartle (d00dz, he co-wrote the first MUD) mourns the loss of creative freedom in the new MMORPGs. Why are we all giving up our creative freedom so happily? Do we all just wanna be SOE’s beyotches or is it just that we have no [...]
Full StoryEssay: A History of the Second Jessie War
Stanford is an old, laggy simulator/server, strategically situated between the Jessie combat sim and the Federal sim, which until just days ago was home to Club Elite, the most popular destination in Second Life. Stanford was nevertheless a fairly sleepy sim until last month when a Second Life gang named ?The Associates? bought up two [...]
Full StoryCaptain Will on BBC Online
We’re going to see a lot of Will Wright as the Sims 2 release approaches, but this intereview in BBC Online is special because…well because Doc Pete is mentioned too! What does Will think about the shady side of virtual life?: “it makes the game more interesting.” We couldn’t agree more. Don’t miss the audio [...]
Full StoryHerr Doktor Professor Ludlow on German Public Radio
Well, our very own nutty professor and resident media ho, Doc Pete, has resurfaced in the infosphere — this time on German Public Radio. Since our German ist sehr schlect we don’t really know what he’s talking about (hell, we don’t know what he’s talking about when he speaks English), but we think it has [...]
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