Excellent insights, Julian, but I think that maybe I wasn't clear about something. When I said social contract, I didn't mean that each player needs to endure the grind (that, after all, is a product of bad game mechanics or design). I was referring to the sense of fun and meritocracy that one gets from participating with others as equals. I love the part in JC Herz's "Joystick Nation" where she's talking about meritocracy in early social arcade gaming: On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere.

i guess i am holding out hope that if the game gets redesigned the right way, ebaying will either not happen at all or, if it does, not spoil the game. Let's say there was an effect if people talked about Britney's baby. Let's say her publicity company paid SOE to give +1 hit points every time the word "Britney" was said in conversation. Hey, you don't HAVE to say the word if you don't want - you can get your guild healer buddy to restore you instead. On the other hand, you can slap a macro on a hot key and be instantly healed just by chanting the Britney mantra. Is the game still fine? What if it cost you a cent, would that make it fine?

If eBaying isn't a problem, why sell objects at all? Why not just give them away to anyone who wants them? If it's so great that people can just hang out with their guildies, why not let them do so without charging them $600 for their equipment? Why not just let them equip with whatever they want? On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation.

Halo 2 is a conventional multiplayer title, where games are limited to 16 players each, possessions are fleeting, and the world is reborn pristine and untouched with every new match. But the impact of bugs on the social fabric is the same, said Dibbell. "Economy is scarcity of goods and the question of how you distribute them. The Halo 2 game space does have scarcity, and the leader board is one of the only commodities around.... What (cheaters) are doing is the same thing as printing money in this world. They're counterfeiters, and they're diminishing the value of that commodity."

A recent Wired News article describes how Microsoft is attempting to combat Halo II hacks. What does this have to do with virtual worlds? Our own Ted and Julian explain: The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us.

Preparations for Accelerating Change 2005 have hit their groove and registration is open. You can check out what’s recently been added at. We’ll still be nearly doubling the amount of speakers we have listed and adding events and tutorials, but we’re looking tight enough to get the word out. Virtual World-specific, right now we have confirmed Linden Labber Philip Rosedale, two architects from the Croquet project, and a full-day Second Life tutorial (which Cory will help run), and we’ll be adding more great folks in this area. The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

Not long ago, some folks were cheering Sony Online's embrace of real-money trades (RMT) as a fatal blow to third-party RMT brokers like IGE. Well, if you believe today's rumors, we should all be so fatally, um, blown. Says Galrahn over at UO Powergamers.com: "My sources out of Florida have confirmed that IGE has completed negotiations for limited license agreements for at least 5 North American MMOGs. The official announcement is expected at E3." Otherwise, I probably would have gone crazy adding feature after feature.

Of possible interest to the virtual property mavens: Matthew Hector (a.k.a. CmdrSlack) has posted There's Gold in Them Thar Pixels! over at Grimwell. It's a law review format walk through RMT issues -- Matt's previous posts are here and here. I'm turning off comments here to push them toward Grimwell's forum. Think of all the game design, customer service, bandwidth, and infrastructure. All designed to ensnare one into a world by keeping them there, literally. The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

A while back I wrote about my household's bewitchment with Animal Crossing: When it was your turn, you loaded the game from a paper tape - another brittle and time-consuming process. Then, you played via a *really* "laggy" interface which would occasionally fail completely when paper supplies were exhausted. I seemed to recall school budgets being what they were, and JIT not having quite caught on then - there were logistic gaps. The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

Back in 1971 I was a senior in high school. My school didn't have any computers, but I had managed to "use" (read "steal") an account on a Sigma 7 at University of California, Irvine. I was trying to teach myself BASIC from a book. At the time there was a program that ran on a vector graphics terminal on the Sigma 7 that was a simple "shoot-em-up" space war game [ed: a port of Spacewar]. I wanted to make a game like that, but I only had access to an ASR-33 Teletype non-video terminal.