Archives for August 2010

1. New York Times (USA) – The Best Virtual Worlds Have a Touch of Reality. “What do the American frontier in 1911, a distant sector of the galaxy in 2504 and the gritty, industrial outskirts of modern Philadelphia have in common? They are the settings of the best interactive entertainment products so far of 2010: Red Dead Redemption, from Rockstar Games (for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3); StarCraft II, from Blizzard Entertainment (for PCs and Macs); and Heavy Rain, from Quantic Dream (for the PS3). As Labor Day and the traditional fall and holiday buying seasons approach, these titles have set the bar in what has already been one of the most bountiful years ever for great games. When I think about what makes each of these games so captivating and the circumstances and organizations that produced them, I see a few common threads beyond the obvious technical polish.”

2. Santa Rosa Press Democrat (USA) – Facebook game’s closure a cautionary tale. “When game publishers turn out the lights on virtual worlds, everything in them ceases to exist. But anyone who spends money on virtual goods, be they Xbox Live Arcade titles, credits in Facebook games or accoutrements for online avatars, should view the recent closure of Facebook game “Street Racing” as a cautionary tale. On Monday, social gaming juggernaut Zynga shut down “Street Racing,” one of its less popular titles. According to social games blog Games.com, the Facebook application had about 400,000 active players. To those of us more familiar with console or traditional PC games, that sounds like a heck of a lot of people, but it pales in comparison next to the nearly 60 million who played Zynga’s “FarmVille” on Facebook last month.”

3. Charisma News Online (USA) – The Wave of the Future. “Victoria Walker isn’t a hard-core video gamer, but she knows a thing or two about avatars and virtual worlds. For her doctoral dissertation, the mother of two created a counselor training facility where mental health students could hone their diagnostic skills on a licensed counselor and higher-level graduate student pretending to be patients with self-inflicted injuries and eating disorders. In the virtual world known as Second Life, where online users inhabit digital representations of themselves called avatars, Walker created a facility that users can walk into, ride an elevator up to the counseling rooms on the second floor and look inside. “They could look through one-way mirrors and see a counseling session in progress,” says Walker, 39, now director of continuing education and instructional and Web technologies at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. “Students were able to come in and interview [the patients], practice skills they had only been able to read about in their textbooks and see in videos, and practice with friends.”

4. Los Angeles Times (USA) – Video games are serious business for Blizzard CEO Michael Morhaime. “The gig: Chief executive and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment Inc., maker of mega video game franchises including World of Warcraft, one of the most popular online video games in history with more than 11 million monthly subscribers. Morhaime and two fellow UCLA students started Blizzard in Irvine in 1991. The company just released an intergalactic war game called StarCraft II, which took five years to complete. Morhaime, 42, captains the long voyages from the games’ inception to their release. In his nearly 20 years at Blizzard, the Northridge native has gone from a full-time code monkey to the big gorilla at a company whose Warcraft game alone brings in close to $1 billion for its parent company, Activision Blizzard.”

5. On Point Radio (USA) – Cheating in Social Games? – MIT’s Mia Consalvo on “Virtual” Ethics. “When I first wrote about cheating in videogames, I found that players cheated for four main reasons: they got stuck, they wanted to play God, they wanted to be a jerk, and they wanted to fast forward through content they thought was too tedious, too boring, too difficult, too whatever, for their personal tastes and abilities. (You can read in more detail about those reasons here). At that time there were a few casual games around (like Bejeweled) but no one had heard much about social games, or Facebook games, and certainly no one was tending virtual crops, or trading their real money for virtual horseshoes. What we did have were massively multiplayer online games such as Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft, where players were encouraged to engage in a long process of leveling up their characters, to become more powerful and to earn game currency. And although it was deemed against most games’ Terms of Service (and thus illegal), there were (and still are) companies that would sell you in-game currency (or in-game items) for a convenient charge to your credit card. Eliminate the tedium—get to the good stuff. Fast forward through content you consider boring, whether the game company likes it or not.”

6. Gamespy (Australia) – Digital Town, Inn Labeled WoW’s Red Light District, Blizzard Attempting Clean-up. “In what amounts to a virtual police blotter report, World of WarCraft customer service reps say, after receiving numerous complaints, they’re going to break up the digital orgy going on over at the Lion’s Pride Inn. Wow.com tracked down a forum listing from a concerned parent who said he canceled his son’s account after discovering the 15-year-old boy was getting his erotic role-play on at the Lion’s Pride Inn in the town of Goldshire on the U.S.-based Moon Guard server — a place that’s become a hot-spot for level 1 alt characters and WoW tourists looking to experience erotic role-playing. Call it the WoW Red Light District. “As a paying customer for 6 years now, I just wanted to voice my extreme displeasure regarding this disgusting server. IMO, it should be shut down,” the parent posted on the WoW forum. “T for Teen is one thing. What goes on in Goldshire on Moon Guard is appalling and beyond offensive.”

7. IT Pro (UK) – Businesses told to prepare for chaotic 10 years. “Companies will need to get ready for some chaotic times through to 2020, as much will lie out of their control, an analyst firm has warned. In the coming 10 years, there will be less cohesiveness between staff, as links become weaker and the working environment becomes increasingly virtual, Gartner has suggested. One of the firm’s predictions is there will be more work “swarms,” where employees will come together in a “flurry of collective activity” to add value to the group’s aim. These swarms, which will increase in number as a response to the need for ad hoc action needs, will form quickly to achieve a goal before disbanding, the firm explained.”

8. New York Times (USA) – The Award for Virtual Reality Goes to …“The coming “Teen Choice 2010” awards show on Fox Broadcasting will have an online complement in the form of a virtual beach party. (If only Gidget were around to get some virtual sand between her toes.) Fox is joining forces with Planet Cazmo, which creates virtual concerts, and the Mottola Company, led by the music impresario Tommy Mottola, for the promotion. It is tied to the annual presentation of the Teen Choice honors, scheduled to be broadcast by Fox on Monday from 8 to 10 p.m. (ET).”

9. Ars Technica (USA) – An edu-game that entertains? Inside The Curfew’s dystopia. “Labeling something as an “educational game” is usually the kiss of death. The recently released The Curfew is instead described as an “adventure webgame with a political thriller theme.” Commissioned by Channel 4, designed by LittleLoud, and written by Kieron Gillen, the game plays out like a point-and-click adventure crossed with a Sega CD FMV game. It’s not the most appealing description, but thanks to some excellent writing and a fully realized dystopic future, it’s an experience that’s well worth your time. The year is 2027. Once the sun goes down, all of Britain is placed under an involuntary curfew. After a second Great Depression and a near nuclear explosion in the heart of London, the country chose to elect the Shepherd Party. Now the country is run like a police state. The freedom and civil liberties that many of us take for granted are nowhere to be found. Citizens are divided into classes, and depending who you are, your movement is restricted.”

10. SIGNAL Magazine (USA) – Government Prepares For Work Force Changes. “The U.S. federal information technology work force is sandwiched between two major trends it must address to continue successful operations—the retirement eligibility of the Baby Boomer generation and the emergence of Web 2.0. The former threatens to empty hundreds of thousands of positions across the government, while the latter is shifting how the work force thinks about and uses technology. Solutions for both these issues converge in the Net Generation (sometimes referred to as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation), the demographic of youth currently preparing to enter institutions of higher learning and the job market. However, this population group is not a panacea for the government’s problems, because the ideas held by these young adults will challenge the status quo.”

1. LiveScience (USA) – Motion Sickness in Virtual Worlds. “If the idea of spinning carnival rides, reading in a car, or sitting through a 3-D movie makes you sick to your stomach, then Frederick Bonato is your new best friend. Bonato, an experimental psychologist at Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J., studies all forms of motion sickness including cybersickness – a phenomenon that occurs in virtual reality environments such as those displayed by 3-D movies. Bonato knows first-hand the pain you suffer and is dedicated to solving this problem so you can travel, read, and enjoy Avatar more comfortably.”

2. Armed With Science (USA) – Three Ways Virtual Reality Can Improve Military Training. “Efficiency of flight simulators has improved since they first appeared in the 1930s. My first flight as a commercial airline pilot was with a full passenger load because the fidelity of the flight simulator made the training so realistic that it didn’t require aircraft flight hours. We now have a similar capability available for a far broader training and education spectrum. We can now use virtual environments to train more efficiently or in environments that are too dangerous to recreate. The key to this training is a realistic immersion. You need to feel like you are present in the environment. The virtual environment provides the immersion and the scalability is drastically improved. An example of the scalability is a base exercise which is generally limited to a portion of the base. The reason for the limit is due to some portion of the mission needing to continue. However, if a weapon of mass destruction were to be used in a large city it would likely effect large portions of multiple bases (like Joint Base San Antonio). We can use a virtual environment to train such a cataclysmic event. AETC is testing large-scale exercise scenarios in a virtual environment by building the Joint Base San Antonio command post.”

3. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Realtime Worlds Announces Project: MyWorld. “Developer Realtime Worlds is entering the virtual worlds business with its latest project, a 3D world with social features called Project: MyWorld. This world uses map information from GIS services to create 3D renders of entire countries. Users can then edit the procedurally generated data using special in-game tools. The suggested use is to make buildings more closely mimic real world counterparts and Realtime Worlds is actually going to attempt to enforce a sense of realism.”

4. Philadelphia Inquirer (USA) – Second Life avatars give disabled at Inglis House new experiences. “In the blockbuster movie Avatar, lead character Jake Sully, a paralyzed military veteran, wakes up in a virtual body to find that he can stand and run and dig his toes into the earth, which he does with animated abandon. “This is great,” Sully says as he disconnects himself from medical equipment and stumbles out of a laboratory. It is great – and not just for Jake. The ability to create a cyber version of yourself has been embraced by people with disabilities stemming from arthritis, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, mental illness, and other debilitating conditions. They log on to virtual worlds, Second Life chief among them, to do things they cannot, or are afraid to, do in real life. Can’t go places without a wheelchair? In Second Life, you not only can walk, you can fly. Is your speech slurred? In Second Life, text chats can let out your inner Shakespeare.”

5. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – ReactionGrid discontinues $25 region hosting. “ReactionGrid no longer offers $25 regions, offering only entire servers starting at $150 a month, with a $500 setup fee. Each server can handle four regions, and there is a discount for educators — to $75 a region with a $220 setup fee. “The price for a $75 four-sim dedicated server actually works out to less than $25 per sim should users decide to go that route,” ReactionGrid CEO Kyle Gomboy told Hypergrid Business. According to Gomboy, the company has decided to focus on dedicated server deployments and the Jibe platform, which is accessible via the Web. Those looking to rent individual regions can go through a reseller, Gomboy said, but declined to provide any names. “If you hang out on the ReactionGrid community you will find many educators and others there who have the lower priced single sim options,” he said. “[But] I do not know the specifics of what each partner offers so from our perspective we’d rather not say you can get any particular level of hosting from a partner.”

6. The Jakarta Globe (Indonesia) – Gamers at Risk of Virtual Addiction. “Back in 2002, then-seventh-grader Surya Santoso was spending six to seven hours at a time playing “Nexia,” his favorite online game. The game, the first massive multiplayer online role playing game to hit Indonesia, was enormously popular when it debuted that year. “During those years, it was almost like my life revolved around the virtual world of my avatar, the mage Nonamushi,” he recalls. “I was obsessed with increasing my character’s power to heal and to attack, to the point where I often forgot to eat and sleep. I wanted to stop, but my mind always persuaded me: ‘Just one more level, just one more step.’ ” Now a university student, Surya has vowed never to touch another online game because he knows how casual curiosity can lead to a destructive cycle of addiction. ”

7. Thanh Nienh Daily (Vietnam) – Game over! . “Vietnamese authorities are poised to issue a stringent crackdown on the online gaming industry. Authorities claim that the move is aimed at protecting the nation’s youth from perceived social ills. Critics of the measures have decried them as unfeasible and unwise. On July 16, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, the municipal administration, submitted a proposal to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asking that he tighten the screws on online gaming. In the request, the city government noted that the number of licensed online games has increased from only two in 2006 to more than 65 today. The city hall claimed that 43 of the currently licensed games are violent in nature. The city government proposed a halt on the importation of new online games and an end to their advertisement “in any form.” It further proposed that all new games be screened for violent, gambling or pornographic content. All existing licenses should be re-evaluated; those that fail to meet the new content standards should be revoked, the city officials recommended.”

8. PhysOrg (USA) – Living in the Past and Looking Toward the Future. “Advanced computer models are changing the field by projecting the interactions between people and the landscape. They track agricultural activity, soil erosion, game animal populations, and more. Models enable archaeologists to explore life in past societies, helping them connect field observations to a sequence of events that explains them. The results may even help predict the future. Traditional archaeology limits the types of data that can be collected, said Michael Barton, a geoarchaeologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. “At best we get snapshots, usually with very tiny windows on what’s going on in the past.” Barton said that, conventionally, archaeologists compile these snapshots, which represent different times and locations, into narratives in an attempt to explain the large-scale changes within groups of people and the landscapes they inhabit.”

9. Veterans Today (USA) – Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan and how it is helping some Troops and Vets with PTSD. “Back in May 2010, we ran an article Virtual Reality Combat Simulations as a Treatment for PTSD that resulted in heated debate [60 comments] about both the negative and positive aspects of the Pentagon, and Department of Veteran’s Affairs experimentation with Virtual Reality War Simulations as a treatment for PTSD. Among those contributing to that discussion in a dignified manner was Professor Skip Rizzo, Ph.D. Associate Director – Institute for Creative Technologies and Research Professor – Psychiatry and Gerontology University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. In sum readers can conclude that Skip is the Father (or Founder) of Virtual Reality (VR) as a treatment to help heal active duty troops and Vets of PTSD. For the record, Dr. Rizzo and other proponents of VR, to treat PTSD, claim only that it is a TREATMENT not a cure for PTSD, and is to be used in conjunction with other treatments and therapies.”

10. Ars Technica (USA) – A decade to separate us: Ars reviews StarCraft 2. “Gamers have expectations for StarCraft 2 that will be impossible to meet. Players have waited a decade for a sequel to what is widely considered to be one of the best real-time strategy games of all time, and one of the world’s most-played PC games, period. Blizzard certainly isn’t afraid to make bold choices: LAN gaming is out, the title is being split into three releases, and the game is launching alongside a reboot of the popular Battle.net service that stretches across all of Blizzard’s properties.”