virtual-worlds
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Enterprise virtual worlds vendor ProtonMedia promises Mac client
ProtonMedia says that increasing use of Macs in businesses means it's now developing a Mac version of its respected virtual worlds software ProtoSphere, a virtual collaboration environment. Although the Windows version of its software is built on Microsoft technology, the company says its architecture means it can fairly easily port it over to the Mac. "When we looked into it, we found ProtoSphere was architected in such a way that it was entirely possible to produce a Mac version. This is not unlike how Microsoft has a version of Office for Windows, but also has a version of Office for the Mac. If you build your apps right from the get-go, portability is possible." ProtonMedia has received many requests from users for a Mac version of ProtoSphere, and the company says it's been seeing more Macs in the enterprise sector.
Predicting Battle.net's social future
If you think we've scratched the surface of Battle.net cross-game implementation with Real ID, you are going to be amazed at what is coming next. Do I know any of this for sure? No, of course not. I base my predictions on three simple facts: Blizzard has created an account-based loyalty program that has encapsulated each and every one of its games; Blizzard is chock-full of smart individuals who understand community, as illustrated by the new community website; and Blizzard has made your account mean something into perpetuity. If you think Battle.net is sharp at 2.0, you can't even imagine 3.0.
Second Life's Rod Humble on accessibility, new tech, and the future
Second Life doesn't get a ton of press anymore, partly because of its age and party because -- even after nearly eight years -- people still don't know what to make of it. Is it a game? Is it a virtual world? Is it a melting pot for anyone who has ever thought to themselves: "I know! Let's code, model, and distribute some giant free-standing genitalia!" Luckily, Rock, Paper Shotgun has stepped up to interview new Linden Lab boss Rod Humble and shed some light on the matter. Humble recently left EA after six years overseeing the second and third entries in the long running Sims franchise, and speaks about trading the relatively insulated world of virtual suburbia for the wild and incredibly untamed frontiers of Second Life. "What makes Second Life so intriguing to me is its hard to define nature. I have heard people call it a virtual world, a game, the 3D internet, a social media platform, the list goes on. I like that kind of unresolved ambiguity, I think it shows something that is not yet fully evolved and has exciting new roads to discover," Humble says. He goes on to outline plans to revamp Second Life's performance, ease-of-use, and service aspects in order to counter the recent decline in user hours.
The Lawbringer: Hacking and valuing virtual currency
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? I can't stop talking about virtual currency! As virtual worlds and economies penetrate every aspect of our lives, we are faced with the new and daunting challenge of identifying the seedy criminal element present in every human venture. There will always be someone breaking the rules, skimming off the top, or finding a way to steal their way up the ladder. Generally, as a society, we accept this as part of the process and make our rules accordingly to punish and dissuade against future criminals and all that jazz. This week, we read about a very interesting virtual theft over Zynga poker chips, in which a 29-year-old British IT businessman named Ashley Mitchell pleaded (or pled, depending on your colloquial acceptance) guilty to stealing $12 million worth of the virtual currency. You know what Zynga is -- it is responsible for FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Texas HoldEm Poker, and about 8,000 other social networking entities. The company is ubiquitous. It also sells an ungodly amount of virtual currency online and offline for its games. Zynga poker chips, however, cannot be bought offline.
Habbo Hotel touts 200 million registrations
If you haven't heard of Habbo Hotel, you might just be in the minority. Sulake, the Finnish maker of the teen-focused virtual community and social game, has just announced that the title has surpassed 200 million registrations as of January 2011. If you're curious, one registration equals one character in the long-running virtual world, but the total number of unique registered users is unclear. Habbo Hotel celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, and since its founding in 2000, it has expanded to more than 150 countries across the globe. The year 2010 represented the virtual world's most successful to date, with 42 million new registrations and over 400 million play hours logged. "The fast, continuous development of Habbo Hotel has enabled us to make quick changes and create new features according to our users' needs," said Sulake CEO Timo Soininen via press release.
Wings Over Atreia: Feeding trolls
"WoW was the first MMO." "WTF you --------- [bless the filter]." "Your mom just left here." Channel /3 will be the death of me. Or perhaps just my sanity. If not, then it may be the cause of some random homicides soon. Although I had another topic all planned out (and already mostly penned), I had an about-face for this week's article. This subject is something that is always on the edge of my mind, and as of late, it has been more front and center. In fact, this week has seen discussions on the matter with friends, colleagues, legion-mates, and even my munchkins. The hot topic? Trolls. Aion players know that /3 is the LFG (looking for group) channel, and occasionally you can actually find people looking for groups there! However, because it is the only server-wide channel, people mostly use it for any type of random chatter. And by chatter, I mean a range of sexual comments, preening, raging, and flat-out trolling. Granted, sometimes following along with /3 chatter is simply amusing, but oftentimes it becomes annoying or even outright offensive. In any case, it's hard to pick out anything of value through the fast-paced spam. Now don't get me wrong; I am all for quips and banter and building a community, but it seems that the folks with any amount of consideration and class stay quiet for the most part. If we were to judge society off of universal chat channels, I think I would be all for large-scale nuclear annihilation; people treat others in virtual worlds like they wouldn't dream of vis-à-vis. Why is that? And what can we do to increase civility, decrease trolling, and improve gaming experiences overall? Cross the bridge (don't stop to feed the trolls!) to explore these points with me and share some amusing trolling moments from your server! (Please keep it clean folks!)
MMO Family: A parent's look at Club Penguin
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family, from tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate online games for everyone in the family. Perhaps the leading name in virtual worlds aimed at the younger set, Club Penguin has taken its place as the starter game of choice for many a young online gamer. Ask around any elementary school, and you're bound to find kids who're playing this Flash-based browser game. We'd heard of the game too, of course -- but we'd never played. So let's take a look at how this virtual world of waddling friendlies stacks up against the rest of the kids' games we've reviewed in our Parent's Guide to Kids & Family Gaming.
Anti-Aliased: What happened to building worlds
I hope you guys have taken the time to check out our GDCO coverage, specifically our interview with Richard Bartle. If there's anything that has really been on my mind for these past weeks, it's been that. Dr. Bartle's approach to MMOs is very similar to my own personal approach to MMOs: these are games, but they are also worlds. And it's been that line of thinking that has lead me to today's column. What happened to creating worlds in our games? Now, I'm not saying that our games don't include vast settings for us to explore. All of our MMOs include some great settings, but they seem to fall flat anymore. Instead of focusing on how players can interact with the world and each other, many developers are focused on creating the coveted "theme park" environment. We have worlds filled with pre-planned obstacles and challenges that rarely change and evolve over time, instead of allowing players to interact with the world and vice-versa. So, with all of our new knowledge on how games work, what's stopping us from tackling the challenges we used to tackle regularly? How can we make world building and sandbox practices approachable? How can we re-ignite the creative fire?
The Daily Grind: Do you miss virtual worlds?
There's no doubt that MMORPGs have become more game-like and less world-like as the genre has gone mainstream. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends largely on what attracted you to MMORPGs in the first place. For some, combat, killing, and an endless avalanche of gear, achievements, and character stats are the main draw. For others, crafting and world-building are the raison d'etre, with small helpings of escapism and immersion on the side. With the exception of Second Life, you'd be hard pressed to find a well-known MMO that isn't an exercise in tightly controlled carrot-chasing in one form or another, and the days of highly evolved non-combat gameplay systems seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird. Today's Daily Grind question is three-fold: Do you miss the days of MMO virtual worlds, and what current-generation title do you do think best does the term justice? Finally, how do you personally define "virtual world?" Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of our readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's The Daily Grind!
Michael Jackson virtual world planned for 2011 launch
"The Ultimate Michael Jackson Online Game" may not be a virtual world you expected, but it's a very real project coming to us late next year, via Entropia Universe. SEE Virtual Worlds approached Michael Jackson's estate about producing Planet Michael, and the company is planning to focus on the King of Pop's positive impact on our culture: "Planet Michael will offer fans around the globe an innovative, first-of-its-kind interactive gaming and social experience that truly celebrates Michael Jackson's extraordinary life as an artist and humanitarian." Planet Michael will be a free-to-play themed planet created specifically for Entropia Universe with "gameplay monetization" that allows players to take on different occupations and sometimes contribute to real-world charities at the same time. The site is currently live and taking signups.
The Tattered Notebook: Behind enemy lines
"My boy, we're pilgrims in an unholy land," said Professor Henry Jones to his son Indiana as the duo warily watched a parade of goose-stepping Nazi soldiers (and throngs of their fervent admirers) in the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I spent many a summer day watching the classic action flick as a kid, and the line inadvertently sprang to mind as I logged into SOE's free-to-play EverQuest II server this past week. Now, I know what some of the politically correct types are thinking at this point: did he really just compare F2P to the Nazi party? The answer is no, not directly, but I do feel an increasing sense of isolation as seemingly everyone around me drinks the Kool-Aid, and it conjures that empty/hopeless feeling of being stuck behind enemy lines. Turn the page for more.
The robots are rising on Planet Calypso
It's not one of the largest games out there, so most people might not know what you're talking about if you mention Planet Calypso. Those who do might well only think of the highly publicized auctions and trades, in which players have spent large amounts of real-world money to purchase land and facilities (which bring in plenty of real-world money themselves, for the record). But beyond that there is an actual game world, complete with an ongoing storyline. As spotlighted in the newest game newsletter, that storyline is being turned up by a new event -- an ominous approach by robots. The last major assault by the robots left the previous capital city a smoking ruin, and not coincidentally coincided with the game's graphical update to CryEngine 2. This time, the colonists have begun decoding messages sent by the robots, and defenses are gathering to ensure that a repeat of the last event doesn't take place -- even as the robots field a new technology known as "Hydra." Several helpful links for information may be found within the newsletter, which promises plenty of enjoyment for the players in Planet Calypso.
Second Life's Emerald client facing obsolescence
Recent months have not been wholly kind to Second Life, and those circumstances don't seem finished just yet. The Emerald client, one of the most popular third-party viewers -- estimated to be used by as many as half of all players -- has fallen out of favor with Linden Labs and is no longer an officially endorsed option. Scott Jennings has posted a full rundown of the client's history, charting its progress from the earliest inception of the project to its current status of having fallen from grace. The short version (or as short a version as you can get for drama four years in the making) is that Emerald's coders included some rather... hack-tacular backdoors in the client's coding. This is a downside for reasons that should not need to be specified, but does add up to some major problems for the large playerbase still using Emerald. Second Life has had a hard time getting its users to switch to the 2.0 viewer, and about the only upside may be that the removal of Emerald will change that... but the overall drama isn't going to be kind for either the Emerald project or Linden Labs itself.
The cities and world of Final Fantasy XIV
If you're all about living the life of a pirate, then odds are good you don't mind being restricted to Limsa Lominsa in the Final Fantasy XIV beta. But if you've done the sea serpent tango more than once, Ul'dah and Gridania are no doubt sounding pretty good. So it's a good thing that MMOSite is reporting that the next phase of beta will start in September and will include the two heretofore unseen cities as playable areas. Considering the recent hands-on experience with the starter cities, we think it's well within the realm of possibility. Of course, one of the major components to making each of the starting cities and subsequent areas stand out is the worldbuilding efforts of the development team. The most recent Making of Eorzea documentary covers precisely this, and not coincidentally, it can be viewed past the cut. With a discussion of the scenery and the visual culture of the game's landscape, the video is something every Final Fantasy XIV player can enjoy, and it shows that the vibrancy of the world has been a big priority during development.
The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab goes back to basics
Yesterday, Linden Lab's interim CEO Philip Rosedale and CFO/COO Bob Komin did a talk and Q&A session in Second Life focused on where things were at, and where things were going. This week, on The Virtual Whirl, we're going to take a look at that session and see if some sense can't be made of it all.
The Virtual Whirl: User interfacing
The user interfaces for general-purpose virtual environments get a pretty bad rap. It's not surprising, actually. They've generally been pretty awful. Not that they are actually hard to learn, but they've been far from comfortable to use. That's not really very surprising. Those virtual environments don't really fit any of the accreted body of knowledge of user-interaction models, and building comfortable user-interfaces is no easy task.
The Virtual Whirl: Ill-repute
Virtual environments have a generally poor reputation in many quarters, particularly in the mass-media. Much of that reputation is ill-deserved, and some of it is entirely fabricated (eg: by the mass-media). I have to ask, what's the big deal?
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, 2008-2010 and beyond
This week, we cover the final installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (check out the first installment or the second, if you missed them). It's only possible to cover a tiny fraction of the events that took place in the space we have here, but the highlights paint an interesting picture. We'll be working our way from 2008 to June 2010, and looking at what future directions we expect from there.
Linden Lab guns for service-based Second Life viewers
Service-based viewers for Second Life are a little different to the standard kind of viewer software that users might be used to. Standard viewers are downloaded to your PC, run on them and talk directly to the servers. Service-based viewers (also sometimes referred to as 'cloud-based') are either running on a remote server through a web interface, or running on a cloud (or other remote system) and sending data and graphics to a thin client that you run locally. The ill-fated Vollee client was one such example, and Comverse is another. Most Some of the (relatively few) extant viewers for mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, et al), and web-based Second Life viewers like AJAX Life are service-based viewers (as are a number in development), and Linden Lab seems bent on closing them down.
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, the middle years
This week, we cover the second installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (or check out part one, if you missed it). From 2005, there's an impossible amount of material to cover, but there are some interesting stories lurking among it all. Join us as we work our way through some of the interesting highlights from 2005, 2006 and 2007.
