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Leaderboard: Community-driven development vs. company-driven development
SOE's Roadmap initiative for PlanetSide 2 is an interesting beast. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's basically a public polling system wherein proposed game features are upvoted or downvoted by the community. While there are no guarantees that the dev team will actually bend to the will of the people (it is SOE's game, after all), it's a fairly unprecedented setup in large-scale game development. It's also got plenty of naysayers, though, some of whom are concerned about the potential for the game to be affected by those who don't play it. What do you think of Roadmap and potential systems like it? Do you welcome community-influenced development decisions in your MMO of choice, or do you prefer to leave it to the pros? Vote after the break! Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
Mozilla giving Thunderbird the (effective) axe, leaving its fate to the community
Mozilla's Thunderbird mail client just hasn't enjoyed the same level of stardom as its Firefox cousin. Their developer must be feeling this discrepancy more than most, as the company has confirmed plans to take the organization out of active Thunderbird development. The shift is officially being spun as an adaptation that lets the Foundation center its energy on Firefox OS and the usual browser plans, but when Mozilla proper will only be handling bug fixes and security updates for a client that's "not a priority," we'd say it's putting Thunderbird on ice. Accordingly, leaked details from TechCrunch show Mozilla moving some of the team out of the project at some point; any new features will have to come from the community, which suggests the future upgrade schedule will be more than a bit unpredictable. The writing is on the wall soon enough that existing owners could have food for thought well before a final strategy is due in early September.
Ethnologist researches the development of social skills in World of Warcraft
A lot of players probably think that World of Warcraft breeds social skills, to the extent that contempt for one's fellow human beings can be considered a social skill. But according to Peter Stenberg of Umea University in Sweden, there are some actual developments taking place when you play. Stenberg has just released a thesis detailing the social developments he observed during his 250-day stint in the game, discussing the ways in which the virtual environment begins to blend into the real world and develop complex social structures. As Stenberg puts it, the overall atmosphere of the game forms a collective and developed society apart from the real world, something he claims "challenges the rather persistent view of the computer game enthusiast as a lone figure with only a flickering screen for company." Of course, veteran players of MMOs have no doubt noticed a wide variety of social structures that develop within a game, but Stenberg's work is interesting if for no other reason than it's meant as a serious examination of the phenomenon.
