mmo-industry
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The Daily Grind: Will griefers ever evolve?
The MMO industry as we know it today hasn't been around very long, really. Still, we can see definite generational shifts, particularly between the current crop of foul-mouthed, immature children (of all ages) we might label 'griefers', and the older, more stable cadre of players who just want to enjoy their hobby in peace. The generation of kids being raised on MMOs have the dubious honor of receiving input from both of these spheres. What will they become? Respect can be taught, but kids are mimetic; they'll copy behavior they find amusing. Is there a chance that griefers can grow out of their abusive tendencies and learn to behave? What will it take for that behavior to evolve?
IBM hosts Second Life attached intranet
Technically it isn't supposed to be news until Noon (US Eastern) today, when it is to be announced at the big virtual worlds conference in New York City, but Reuters accidentally jumped the gun and seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of Linden Lab's and IBM's big joint announcement. The plan, essentially, is for IBM to hold Second Life grid servers on their private corporate network, back behind the firewall, but (we gather) with enough network access to allow those servers to communicate with the central services on the Second Life grid. This would give IBM a virtual world intranet of sorts; regions that are actively locked away from the rest of the world, but giving their employees the freedom to move between internal simulators and those that are part of the main public grid seamlessly.
Linden Lab hires Resident Communications Manager
In a search lasting nearly 12 months, Linden Lab has finally hired a Communications Manager. Linden Lab originally announced the search for a Second Life Resident Communications Manager in early May 2007, but the blog posting announcing the position was silently removed some months later. You would hardly know the position had been filled, if you weren't reading closely.
Linden Lab clarifies trademarks policy
This-evening, Linden Lab issued a policy clarification to the recent changes to allowed trademark use as a part of the Second Life Brand Center announcement. It doesn't actually directly address any of the questions that we put to Linden Lab, so we are resubmitting those, and it raises a couple of extra ones which we will add to the pile. The new policy appears to seek to clarify nominative fair use as being acceptable -- after all, you can't effectively talk about Second Life or Linden Lab without using those terms (well, you could say Linden Research Inc's unnameable virtual world, if you were desperate).
Philip Rosedale to appear before congressional subcommittee
On Tuesday, 1 April at 9:30AM (US Eastern time), Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale will be appearing to testify before the Congressional Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The topic will be "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium" and this will be the first Congressional hearing to explore the ways in which virtual worlds are enhancing the means by which individuals can transcend space to communicate with each other. You can catch the live webcast of the event when it takes place, and the session will be taking place in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC, if you are interested in attending in person. The facility should be wheelchair accessible. Thanks to Linden Lab for sending us the notice on this event.
Linden Lab's laundry list of legalese: Terms of Service versus Fair Use
'I cannot read the fiery letters,' said Frodo in a quavering voice. 'No,' said Gandalf, 'but I can. The letters are English, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Lawyers, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough: 'You agree to review and adhere to the guidelines on using "Second Life," "SL," "Linden," the Eye-in-Hand logo, and Linden Lab's other trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, domain names, taglines, and trade dress..' He paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: 'These are the Master Rules, the Terms of Service that rule all accounts.'
Kapor: IPO? WTF?
Mitch Kapor speaking a few minutes ago with Cornell University's Professor Robert Bloomfield at the special Metanomics session today, straight up nixes plans for an IPO. Kapor says that he feels his earlier statements in other media were 'misconstrued', and that there are definitely no plans for an IPO. Kapor sounded rather baffled as to how his comments suggested to people that an IPO was in the wind. "My recollection is not saying that an IPO was under consideration... being able to take a company public is started 12 to 18 months in advance... it's very complex..." The audio was a bit spotty, so we will need to wait for the transcript, but the magic IPO phrase seems to be, "Gosh, I hope not."
Chadrick Baker to advise the Association of Virtual Worlds
You may previously know him as Chadrick Linden, Governance Team Lead at Linden Lab, or from earlier days as Adam Linden, before a lot of staff got a round of renaming. These days, he's Chadrick Baker of metaverse developer, Metaversatility, and now the newest member of the advisory board to the Association of Virtual Worlds.
HiPiHi appoints new CTO
Ex-Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Tokyo-based virtual worlds service firm NGI/3DI, Toshitaka Jiku, has been newly appointed as CTO of Chinese virtual world developer/operator, HiPiHi. Jiku brings quite a bit of experience and education to the table from his time with NGI, and is expected to help HiPiHi position itself and scale to the global market. As you may recall, HiPiHi has already partnered with IBM to collaborate on both massively scalable architecture and long-term interoperability, and seems to have also gained significant buy-in from US chip giant Intel. HiPiHi is on the move, and has their eye on the world stage. It will be interesting to see if this China-based virtual world can pick up broad international appeal.
Special Metanomics session: Linden Lab Upper Management Musical Chairs
In the wake of the announcement that Philip Rosedale would be moving up to chairman of the Linden Lab board of directors, and that present chairman Mitch Kapor would be moving to a key (but as-yet-unnamed) role, Cornell University Professor Robert Bloomfield (Beyers Sellers in Second Life) will be hosting a special Metanomics session this Friday at 10:30AM SLT (US Pacific time). The session will feature a one-on-one discussion with Kapor, himself. The topic? Bloomfield offers, "We will talk about his vision for virtual worlds technology and business strategy and, of course, the future of Linden Lab and Second Life." Live coverage of this special edition of Metanomics on Friday, March 28, 2008 from the CMP sim, owned by United Business Media's Think Services division, will be broadcast exclusively on slcn.tv for those who cannot attend in person, or are unable to attend the sim in person.
Linden Lab asserts control of names and images
When Linden Lab chooses to shake things up, it doesn't do it by half-measures. Easter Monday saw an announcement by Linden Lab that they were introducing a new Second Life logo program, and changing the terms under which various words and images are presented. Unfortunately, we technically can't show you the new logo, since by all rights we have to go through the application process first. Actually, after reading all the terms and conditions a bunch of times, we are not sure that we're even allowed to mention its name. It's inSL, anyway. We'll let the company lawyers sort through the paperwork.
Bridges backhands Rosedale, Second Life
Corey Bridges, founder of Multiverse another player in the increasingly large virtual world space, had a number of things to say to Worlds in Motion about the announcement that Philip Rosedale was planning to step down as CEO and step up as chairman. A sort of freehand summary would be, "Second Life can't deliver, and Multiverse can. So long, Philip, and thanks for all the fish." Intentional or not, it comes across as unbecoming smack talk, basically.
Peering Inside: Philip Rosedale regains his Second Life
With Friday's announcement of Rosedale stepping down from CEO of Linden Lab and stepping up as board chairman, things certainly start to look interesting for Second Life. You see, Rosedale was the one who really kicked off this latest generation of virtual worlds, much of it by imagination and force of will. Unfortunately, for some years he's barely been involved. But wait -- he's CEO of Linden Lab, right? Yes, that's right; which means he's probably had about as much focus on the world itself as the person who orders the beef jerky and pencils. Maybe less.
RealXtend viewer now on Sourceforge
Sourceforge - billed as the largest open source website in the world -- is now host to the source code project for the RealXTend viewer (rexviewer) for Second Life. RealXtend claims to have replaced all of the license encumbered portions of the viewer with GPL-friendly alternatives, though they are still having some issues decoupling FMOD from their VoIP solution. The project website remains at rexviewer.org, while the project page and source code (available via subversion) is now on Sourceforge. Rexviewer is only in alpha at present, but has a number of distinctly interesting technological features, and more planned.
Richard Bartle at Metanomics
Richard Bartle dips in and out of Second Life. He likens it as going to London. He might not be there for months, and then multiple times in a week. To him, Second Life is a place, much like many others. Bartle was in that place on 11 March, as a part of the Metanomics series, hosted by professor Robert J Bloomfield. Bartle often regarded as the father of the first MUD. In a sense he's the progenitor of all existing virtual worlds, both those based on games and those that are game-free.
The Daily Grind: Will your MMO still be here in 2009?
Nothing lasts forever. MMO's come and go, business plans succeed and fail, and sometimes the best will in the world keeps bleeding cash. MMOs and virtual worlds cost a bundle in power and bandwidth to operate and (for decent customer service, GMs, admins and billing) can cost even more in staffing (hint: That's why a lot of operators keep the staff counts down). All the while the developer/operator is trying to keep the cash-burn rate down and recover the costs of the game, in the hope of breaking even before the money runs out. Asheron's Call 2, Auto Assault, Saga of Ryzom, Earth and Beyond, and more are gone. Sometimes subscriptions never quite rise high enough for the long-tail model to be sustainable for an MMO. Do you think your online world will still be here this time next year as the end of Q1 2009 rolls around?
Linden Lab publishes draft Open Grid Protocol
It's only the first draft, but Linden Lab (specifically Mark Lentczner aka Zero Linden) has published the awkwardly named Second Life Grid Open Grid Protocol (SLGOGP) on the Second Life wiki. While very preliminary and far from complete, the SLGOGP is essentially the beginnings of the technical underpinning that will ultimately allow the cohesive operation of both Linden-operated and non-Linden-operated Second-Life style simulators and grids. If you're not deeply excited by protocol documents, this is probably not going to be your cup of tea. Otherwise, if raw technical protocols get you hot, this is a great starting point for technical discussion.
Iovation stops 0.365% of transactions
Iovation, a company that markets anti-fraud software to online game operators (and online dating sites) claims to have blocked over ten thousand fraudulent transactions per day out of a round-figure-billion over a year. They don't actually say how many of those billion transactions were actually fraudulent, so we must smilingly acknowledge that while their quoted figures contain some attractive round numbers, they don't actually provide any useful information on their actual success rate. Iovation's patented anti-fraud system (United States Patent 20080040802) basically involves a small piece of software dropped onto a user's machine that provides a unique system fingerprint or device identifier that can be queried alongside transactions. Unfortunately, in our experience (Linden Lab used to use essentially this same sort of system for severe user bans for years, but ultimately had to discontinue it) this kind of system is relatively easily circumvented by the determined or knowledgeable (at least without the most egregious rootkitting), and also only prevents subsequent frauds, after an initial fraud is detected by other means. Nonetheless, with an increasing focus in the online gaming world towards non-subscription-based transaction models, fraud prevention/reduction is occupying increasingly large amounts of attention from MMO/VW operators and developers who are looking for solutions. [via PlayNoEvil]
Linden Lab bulking up
Linden Lab's hungry for staff. They've got thirty-three different classes of position open that they're hiring for (we don't recall ever seeing so many at once). That would make quite an influx right there. Linden Lab will have people at Barcamp Brighton, in the UK on the 15th and 16th (Saturday and Sunday), so if you're looking to meet, greet, press flesh and have a chance to show off your charm, poise and overall coolness with a view to landing a job at the Lab (they have an office in Brighton), this is your chance to strut your stuff.
The Daily Grind: Which game has the best admins?
In-game admins (or GMs, if you prefer): they get us unstuck, they deal with bigots on the chat-channels, remove spammers, listen to us whine, look into problems and more. Nine times out of ten, all we do is carp about them when they can't help us with a problem, can't walk us through updating our video drivers, can't restore our lost inventory or when they make a judgement call that doesn't go the way we think it should. Which MMO or virtual world is sporting the best admins? Which of them should be getting awards, pay raises, and celebratory booze-ups for treating us all with respect, sensitivity, boundless patience, and taking on task after task with energy, professionalism and cheerful good humor?
