Animal Crossing might be described as a "small town sim" where kids (adults!) adopt strangely fascinating animal persona and run around in Our Town, Some Where (a few typical 2002 reviews: [1], [2] ). My weekend was spent picking pears, running errands for neighbors, and accumulating and swapping clothing aquired from the town trash dump... If recollection serves me, trash is picked up on 6am Thurdays. This brings us to the first distinctive feature: time in the game world tracks real world time. Sure, there are other worlds that do this, but more weakly. Eve-Online, for instance, uses real-time skill learning (e.g. takes a month to learn a skill - real time). The difference here, however, is that...

Frequent commenter Barry Kearns posts a commodification-resistant MMOG economy a la Randy Farmer's KidTrade. Discuss. I don't want to trigger a big pro/con steroid debate (though I actually find it a pretty interesting one - indeed the issues that pervade elite sports in terms of enhancement/recupuration/maintence are utterly compelling). But I was struck when reading that Bush quote how much it highlights what I think of as one of the most interesting aspects in the whole eBaying phenom. The issue often gets framed as one of people trying to do exactly what Bush says, take shortcuts (shortcuts that often signal a deeper failure of character).

Joaquin Keller told us about Solipsis - a peer-to-peer MMOG. Some of us have heard of another peermog, but we were asked not to bally-hoo it. Anyway: it's Kazaa meets EverQuest. Discuss. I've certainly heard of quite a few players who are already at the top-end of their MMOG game buy auction items and in this regard they seem more like someone who, having solid basic skills, invests in their own version of high tech bats, gloves, etc. (and dare we think of paying for trainers/physical therapists/sports medicine/coaches/nutrition?). I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time.

Not living in the U.S. anymore I get my updates about the hot topics there in delayed, sometimes random, ways. I had heard a bit about the steroid uproar that happened on the heals of Jose Canseco's recent book and now just got a chance to read a review of it. In it the author (Steven Shapin, The New Yorker, 18 April) talks about the how Canseco sees steroid use as actually part of a new era of "clean living" in baseball where steroid use was part of a larger fitness trend where "you saw bigger, stronger, faster, and healthier athletes, instead of those raggedy, fun-down, pot-bellied balls players of previous eras."

Several of us are in Milwaukee at Command Lines today (it's open to the public), exploring "the diverse ways in which governance is both implemented and emerging within cyberspace." So it's quite timely that James Grimmelmann of Yale Law School has just posted Virtual Power Politics on SSRN. I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time.

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.

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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.