Archive for 'Opinion'
Op/Ed: The Case Against an Adults-Only Server
By Lady Julianna Contrary to proposals made by Urizenus in recent press interviews, I think age-segregated servers are a very bad idea. The game would die if Maxis were to create an adults only server.
Full StoryOP/Ed: TSO Failure Analysis
By Kiss I?m a 44-year-old Manager for a company that develops simulations and software for the military and have been playing TSO since Beta (November ?02). I have never been a member of any of the Mafia?s, never received or given an enemy link other than to play with my friends, and have pretty much [...]
Full StoryEssay: Whoring in Alphaville
by The Pat Caliphia once wrote a paper called ‘Whoring in Utopia’, suggesting that a great number of virtues could be accrued for both john and prostitute if whoring were to become an acceptable practice. Caliphia reckoned that the openness in sexuality would result in net benefit; the whores would be safer and those in [...]
Full StoryInterview with John Suler on Griefers and How to Manage Them
John Suler is a PhD in Cinical Psychology and is currently Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rider University. He has worked on topics ranging from mental imagery to psychoanalysis and eastern religions, but he is best known by netizens for his work on the psychology of cyberspace and in particular on the psychology [...]
Full StoryAdults Only for Alphaville?
In the discussion threads to a number of articles people have discussed the possibility of making Alphaville an adults-only server. I thought it might be good to have a thread dedicated just to this issue. Actually, there are two questions to consider. 1) Is it a good idea?2) Is it technologically feasible? I declare the [...]
Full StoryOf Interest & Rebuttal
Fristly, Lawmeme’s James Grimmalman has posted an Excellent discussion of the State of Play Confereance and what it’s ramifications are and may be. It is officially required reading for the lot of you. Here is a direct link to said article. For those of you interested below you will find a rebuttal to recent comments [...]
Full StoryGames, World-Games Games-in-Worlds, Worlds and Realities, Part 1
Hi everybody, sorry to break from the gossip and muck-raking but I thought I would post the first part of my latest endeavor. It’s an attempt to codify exactly what it is that we’re doing here, are we playing games? Are we building virtual worlds? Both? Neither? Any attempt to answer this crucial question involves [...]
Full StoryThe State of Play: Post 2
Sorry I’m being so slow about posting summaries of these sessions. Here it is almost a week later and I’m only up to my 2nd post. Nevertheless… Session 2 on Friday was entitled “‘Century 21′: Property, Intellectual Property and Creativity in the Virtual World.” The session included presentations by Dan Hunter, Ted Castronova, and Yochai [...]
Full StoryTSO: High School Redux?
Most MMORPGs have some way of marking achievement (moving up through a guild or acquiring weath, for example), and TSO is no exception; the game is designed so that one can achieve both by acquiring virtual goods and currency and by attaining social status (which is indicated by posted rankings). The problem is that the [...]
Full StoryReview of On the Internet, by Hubert Dreyfus
Forthcoming in Teaching Philosophy Peter Ludlow (aka Urizenus) The first time I saw a talk by Jacques Derrida, he was expounding on a claim (which he attributed to Heidegger) that the sign of a great thinker is that he has but one thought. I think his point was that leading intellectual figures can take one [...]
Full Story
Recent Comments