Virtual Worlds as Virtual Reality

I have been catching up on some reading that I've wanted to do, and the first on my list was Synthetic Worlds by Edward Castranova. I will post a complete review of my thoughts on the book when I have finished, but I wanted to take a moment to look at a very interesting distinction that Castranova draws early in his work.

The difference was this: the science program focused on sensory-input hardware,
while gamers focused on mentally and emotionally engaging software. As you
can imagine, a person can become "immersed" either way: either the sensory
inputs are so good you actually think the crafted environment you're in
is genuine, or, you become so involved mentally and emotionally in the synthetic
world that you stop paying attention to the fact that it is only
synthetic. It turns out that the way humans are made, the software-based
approach seems to have had much more success (Castranova 2005).

The parallel that he draws with regards to the scientific study of virtual reality and the rise of the gaming industry, specifically in the genre of online virtual worlds, is very exciting. I think that great merit lies in the underlying hypothesis that he is able to draw about human nature and our need for the emotional and mental elements that the 'synthetic worlds' provide.

The greatest distinction lies in the relevance of human social contact. In a virtual reality engine, these sensory inputs stimulate our brain to perceive those social bonds with our environment and with other members of the environment, but they do not if fact exist. I believe that on a basic 'gut' level the human brain and body will always be aware of that distinction. However when we transition to virtual worlds, the interactions with other humans through their representative avatars, we experience those same sensory mechanics, however the brain and body knows that the interaction is genuine. The world may be crafted but the fundamental societal and emotional capital within in are fundamentally real.

Torn Asunder... in a good way

I have always been a one avatar kind of guy. In my EverQuest days I tried to level alts but most often found myself either switching game play entirely or neglecting to spend the kind of grind time necessary to progress the character to a point where the investment was worthwhile. When Warcraft was released, I rolled a warlock on the first day, and then did not play another class until my wife joined the game, and I rolled a warrior to level beside her. As soon as she hit 50, I switched back to my warlock and helped her to 60, thus letting my warrior Sunzu, languish in his early 50s for about eighteen months.

Contrast that to a member of my guild who had a level 60 of every available class at the time, and you are looking at one very focused player. I play a lot, and my /played on Cyndre is a bit outrageous, but its what I enjoy, and I never saw a reason not to play that way before.

Until now that is. When raiding tapered off in the calm before tBC storm, I switched to Sunzu to farm and to finish his last few levels. He dinged 60 in Outlands on the second day of release, while Cyndre was stuck in a crashed Blood Furnace instance. As soon as Cyndre reached 70 and finished the Karazhan key, I began to level Sunzu.

Currently I am splitting time rather well between the two characters and enjoying it immensely, something I have not previously been very adept at doing. Sunzu is almost 67, Cyndre continues to round out his reps, gather epics and rares and certainly raid at every possible juncture. Now to add to the multiple personality disorder I am developing, my wife and I are starting to level some Draeni alts. She has started a Shaman and is 22, and I have begun a Priest who is a mighty level 11.

I can't help but think this is a very good thing. If anything, I have an overabundance of items on my virtual 'TO DO' list, and while I often wish I was on the other one, I seem to have developed the perfect anti-burnout strategy.

So the question to you, my readers, is do you weight your time in favor of a 'main' or do you prefer to alt it up? Taken to the next level, would two MMOs played simultaneous be possible or is that taking this too far?

Game Developer's Conference 2007

The GDC is underway in San Francisco. The largest conference of professional game developers in the world, the GDC is most definitely a hoopla of geekdom all housed in one shiny event. I am looking forward to seeing the entrants and eventual winners of the Independent Games Festival, as it has traditionally been a forum of fantastic design talent and ingenuity. Something about success and funding saps the creative freedom and courage out of a design team...

Darwinia won last year. There is a playable demo on their website, and it is a very cool game, though a little scattered thematically for my tastes. Needless to say, the talent and creativity in Darwinia is more prevalent than many of the ultra popular and success games in today's market, so its nice to see a forum for recognizing them.

Outside: The MMO

A longtime member of my guild said farewell to us and to Warcraft today and posted this as his next MMO. Good luck in the new world, Nommos.

Trinity Course Update & Observations

Via the comments section of this post, Dr. Delwiche made note that the course currently being offered does not utilize Everquest nor World of Warcraft as the medium for virtual world research. The course material this year revolves around Second Life, and the specifics can be found here.

I left out personal commentary in my last post on the subject, but I certainly have a few thoughts to share on the matter. This type of scholastic undertaking is critical in today's culture and educational environment. While it is true that the main stream media and corporate world has begun to give virtual worlds some attention, it is often from the prospective of tapping into or observing a niche market or freak counterculture. The millions of subscribers and active participants are statistics without recognizable features or social standing, thus they can be dismissed as an exclusionary minority rather than a common thread within our larger global world.

When I walk the lands of the existential worlds that I choose to inhabit, those that walk beside me represent a very fundamental cross section of our entire world community. The days of geek subculture or fringe dominance in the medium are long gone, with family oriented, professional players comprising a considerable cross section of the virtual populations. To ignore this trend and the underlying significance is shortsighted and ignorant, yet sadly indicative of the type of coverage we do receive when the glaring light of media scrutiny falls upon us.

I once read a book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community written by Robert Putnam, that struck me as visionary. His basic theory states that our culture is growing more disconnected from one another with each passing year, and our societal structure has become isolationist. More Americans bowl now than ever before, but this is dominated by individual groups of a given social network acting autonomously, rather than forming an artificial community such as a bowling league. This is just one of many examples he provides to document the trends that can be observed in all aspects of our society.

At the time I read this, I pondered whether the Internet and our shift towards an electronic culture was a cause or effect. Has our dependence on this distant medium, weakened our bonds to one another and diluted our instinctual need for 'pack?' Or has this paradigm shift progressed our psychological need for social packs, and pushed traffic to virtual worlds to compensate for the lack of social capital in our communities?

The research and time frame of Putnam's works, suggest the latter is the case, as these trends have been observed for more than a quarter of a century. Long before Norrath, Azeroth or the Lindens began to attract visitors, humans were feeling a social void subconsciously, and have turned to new mediums to find their sense of belonging.

Times they are a changin

An actual Trinty undergraduate course:

COMM 3344: Games for the web (Interactive multimedia)Spring 2005Dr. Aaron Delwiche (a delwich @ trinity.edu)
Course meeting times: T + TH 2:10 - 3:25 (RCC 400 /402)Office Hours: M + F 10:30-1:30T + TH 9:30 - 11:30Office: Laurie 363Phone: 999-8153

Course description
A staple of nerd subculture for almost three decades, role-playing games have taken on new life in the era of networked computing. High-speed connections, sophisticated graphics and powerful microprocessors have paved the way for massively multiplayer games (MMOs) such as City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, and Second Life.
The popularity of these virtual environments is staggering. At any given moment, at least 90,000 players are interacting with one another in Norrath -- the fictional world of Everquest. With game characters and virtual objects fetching thousands of dollars on eBay, sweat shops have been set up in developing nations to service this micro-economy (Dibbell, 2003). According to one recent study, the world of Everquest is the 77th richest “nation” on the planet with a per-capita GNP that outstrips China and India (Castranova, 2002).
In recent months, we have seen the emergence of second generation MMOs characterized by stunning visuals, improved artificial intelligence, and game dynamics that appeal to a broader variety of playing styles. One of these games, World of Warcraft, sold 250,000 copies in November 2004. It was the most successful PC game launch in history, outstripping the sales of Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Half-Life 2.Of course, MMOs are just one subset of a much larger videogame industry. From home gaming consoles to arcade-based machines, gamers are confronted with a staggering array of choices. As more individuals turn to interactive media for entertainment, television and film audiences are dwindling. In 1999, “total videogame software and hardware sales in the U.S. reached $8.9 billion, versus $7.3 billion for movie box-office receipts” (Poole, 2000, p. 6). Clearly, videogames are here to stay.
In this course, we will conduct an ethnographic study of the behaviors, cultural practices, and motivations of MMO gamers. Along the way, we will play and critically analyze a variety of videogames. In addition to exploring game mechanics and video-game aesthetics, we will investigate sociological and psychological dimensions of virtual worlds as well as social controversies surrounding game violence and gender representations.

We have three objectives:
1. to explore themes of cyberculture studies through sustained interaction with other residents of World of Warcraft
2. to understand the behaviors, cultural practices, and motivations of MMO players through the use of ethnographic methods
3. to develop a critical vocabulary for analyzing all types of videogames

Prior technical and gaming experience is not required for this course. Course requirements and materials
Readings will be drawn from the course packet and from two assigned texts.
Communication 3344-1: Games for the web
Richard Bartle (2003) Designing virtual worlds. Berkeley: New Riders Games.
Vernor Vinge and James Frenkel (2001) True names: And the opening of the cyberspace frontier. New York: Tor Books.
World of Warcraft game software ($45)
World of Warcraft monthly subscription ($15/month. First month is free.)
The course packet, which costs $___, is available at Kinko’s Paw Prints on the third floor of Coates Library. You are responsible for all assigned readings, even if they are not addressed during class.
Throughout the semester, we will spend a significant amount of time in World of Warcraft. This virtual world is an ideal location for studying on-line gamers, cyberculture, and videogame aesthetics. A significant amount of class time will be spent in the game-world, but you are also expected to devote at least five hours a week to ethnographic research within World of Warcraft. To ensure that everyone spends enough time in the virtual world, two group gaming sessions will be held between 6:30 and 9:00 on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. You are expected to attend at least one of these sessions each week.
You are welcome to play the game on the lab computers when other classes are not using the facilities, and you may also be able to install the game on your personal system. If you want to install the game on your home system, it must meet basic system requirements.
If your computer is more than two years old, your graphics card may not be capable of rendering this three-dimensional environment. If this is the case, you will have to access the game via the lab machines.

Finding Meaning in Azeroth

This list, Seven Things I Learned From World of Warcraft, is really awesome. You should take a minute to check it out.

Thank you to Life in Azeroth for the link.

Travian

Zubon reminded me of a MMORTS game that Tobold played for a bit last year. I had been meaning to give it a try, as it seems like the type of time commitment that you could play during MMO raids in the downtime or while meding when playing solo.

I have always loved the Civ style game, but I just do not have the time to commit to a full game, and I lose interest in single player games quite easily. After reading what little information is available about Travian, I can see myself really enjoying something like this.

I haven't fired up my village yet, but I am thinking I'll play Gaul with a more strategic, defensive strategy. I know going in that I will not have the ability to manage my empire every hour or so, making the heavy raid oriented cultures and strategies much less effective. I will prevent annihilation from aggressors by making their lives a living hell, and stashing away my resources so that attacking me is an exercise in frustrating futility.

Well, that sounds like a rosy picture anyway, except for this one little social problem that I have...

I am bloodthirsty and I don't take kindly to attacks. In EQ, my main was an anti-PK, but only in name. I viciously hunted known PK guilds and reveled in the kills. I also, secretly, had a troll shaman named Lootzu. You can guess what I did with him...

So, reality of my situation is thus... if you come to my village, and you are carrying anything other than a fruitcake or a lasagna, you better believe I will be coming for you.

Great Minds Think Alike

Excerpted from a thread on Mud-Dev, via the new archive provide by int:

This has consequences. There used to be a virtual world called NeverWinter
Nights, unrelated to the BioWare RPG, on AOL. When it was closed down, its
refugees descended on Meridian 59. They immediately wanted M59 to incorporate
every piece of NWN functionality that they could remember. In general, players
view all their subsequent virtual worlds in the light cast from their first one.

From my post a few days ago:

Isn't it strange that with each graphical improvement and feature addition, I
still compare every game to Neverwinter?

The comments from MUD-Dev are by Richard A. Bartle, from a paper he wrote called Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really! It's a good read and has been posted in its entirety at MUD-Dev in the thread I excerpted. He is well known for his collaboration on MUD, and his writings at Terra Nova.

Also, no one told me about M59 when NWN closed. I am feeling quite left out right now, but I would imagine choosing Ultima Online as my next existential world has led me here, so I can't really complain too much.

Then again, those who went to M59 took the road less traveled, and perhaps that has made all the difference?

The Red Dragon Inn

Growing up, I was blessed to have a father who was ahead of his time. He bought his first PC, an IBM in 1981 and for as long as I have been sentient, I have had a PC at my fingertips. On my ninth birthday, I was given Pools of Radiance, which ultimately led me to my first MMO.

We got the Internet and email really early. We started on Compuserve, and I used to play a text-based game called Black Dragon, which I suppose was my first experience in the genre, as it could loosely be considered a MUD, but I consider the TSR series the predecessor to the first MMO that I really played and truly loved. Neverwinter Nights on AOL.

In 1992, I was 13 years old. I had heard from some friends on Black Dragon, that they were moving to a new graphical online RPG over at America Online, and besides that, the chat rooms and the search engine were 'totally rad.' What game, I asked? Neverwinter Nights by TSR. My skin tingled... Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secrets of the Silver Blades and the Pools of Darkness were staples of my gaming diet, and this was an online game based on the best series ever!

My dad signed us up for AOL, and grudgingly cancelled his beloved Compuserve. It was cheaper anyway, so he didn't mind. I made an account named Darwin, my favorite PnP character name and walked into The Red Dragon Inn where I would spend the next few years of my life.

The Red Dragon Inn was a chat room. It was also a cesspool of decadent role playing and tavern frolicking, exactly as my pre-pubescent dungeon master mind has painted so many times with words in our basement gaming sessions. It was a scene from my wildest daydreams, and I was welcomed in from the cold reality outside and given a warm seat by the hearth of my imagination.

I spent every night in Neverwinter. It was a magical time, of monster hunts, PvP ladders and guild wars. I started the adventuring company from my D&D gaming sessions, and took them into the virtual world. My gaming buddies convinced their parents to get AOL and The BlackBlade Mercenary Company was born online. In those days, there was very little in the way of formal guild management tools. So we all created new accounts and added BB to our name, so our community could identify us. I was BB Darwin. I remember with fear and awe, other guilds that did the same... the PvP guilds KAAOS (Killing As An Organized Sport) and MECH.

AOL back then, was a per minute subscription pricing scheme, and although my parents understood my enjoyment of gaming, and tried to be supportive, our monthly bill always broke $100.00 and reached as high as $450.00 one month. They made me get a job to support my time in game. I didn't care. I was chasing the dream, that my imagination had been building since I was barley old enough to walk. I was an existential explorer, beholding foreign yet familiar sights and building ties with a tight community that continued to grow every year. I was only 13 when I started, but by the time AOL went monthly subscription and Neverwinter's population exploded, I was a gamer through and through.

The Red Dragon Inn was a home for me in those days. I would stop in and have a drink, chat with friends and role play. It was in the taproom of the Inn in the spring of '97, that I heard the news that AOL was closing Neverwinter forever. I was a seventeen year old, and I cried. I cried with married adults, and children as young as I had been when I first wandered in. It's just a game I was told, by so many. There will be other games...

There have been many, but none can ever compare to the first. I recall fondly my guilds rebirth in Ultima later that year, but it wasn't the same. We tried to role play our move to Brittannia, but role playing was not as prevalent in UO, and soon that too sputtered and died out. Isn't it strange that with each graphical improvement and feature addition, I still compare every game to Neverwinter?

It wasn't the features, or the graphics that made me return every night, or work all week to pay the subscription bill... It wasn't the content, or the developers brilliance... there were no content upgrades...

I returned night after night to the Inn, because of the community... because of my friends.

WoW Analysis and Research

Terra Nova has put together a collaborative piece published in an academic journal. It focuses on so many different aspects of MMO life and there is a ton of information. I have just started digging through it, and frankly there is some pretty good stuff here. It is going to take me a little while to digest it all, but I defiantly recommend it to all of you.

Corporations go MMO

Mainstream would be the word to describe the recent relevance of the virtual world in current tech society. With games such as World of Warcraft attracting record numbers of people, to MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach and its ilk targeting a totally new segment of the population, it comes as no surprise that leading institutions will be capitalizing on the trend in some way.

The first reported case, being IBM. IBM has begun to use Linden Lab's Second Life, as a forum to host meetings, conduct breakout sessions and employee trainings, as well as utilizing the pre-existing tools developed by the virtual world, to conduct business culture experiments. In exchange for the use of the space, IBM has done free coding of various in-world features, and provided the rights to Linden Labs.

Note to Self: Go work for a company that hosts company outings in Naxxrammas.

Existance precedes and rules essence

Over the weekend, I was asked why I consider Massive Multiplayer Online game worlds to be 'existential worlds' and thus why I named my blog as such. The short answer is, My Dad's Blog Can Beat Up Your Dad's Blog, was taken, so I had to go with my second name choice. The long answer is much more involved and takes a look at the very nature of human existence and the functions and roles of our virtual worlds.

The renowned existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartes, wrote that 'existence precedes and rules essence' in his famous work Being and Nothingness.

This simply means that man first is, and only subsequently is this or that. In a word, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself. And the definition always remains open ended: we cannot say what this man is before he dies, or what mankind is before it has disappeared. (Action Magazine Dec. 29, 1944)

This analysis of Sartes famous line has always elicited images of charachter creation at game launch. The avid gamer has read up on their most antisipated title for months, begun to define themselves on the forums and establish their identity in the budding community and ultimatly as they unwrap the freshly purchased game, and begin installation and charachter creation.

As the gamer nears the completion of his future identity in this new world, and hits Enter, he is thrust into an unfarmiliar world with no ties, no status and no destiny. It is in his free existance and presence that he defines himself in the virtual world.

Another predominant existential thinker, Edmund Husserl, coined the German term Dasein, meaning being there, in his noted work Being and Time. The basic premise is that temporality and presence in the world, the Dasein as he says, is a more definative existance, than the corporality of the world itself.

Husserl's Dasein, represents a fundamental building block in my 'existential worlds' principle. At the risk of oversimplifing a rather involved concept, our presence in the game, makes it real and our actions and choices there define us. The walls are digital, the npcs are AI, the gold is ephemeral, death is temporary... However, we as sentient beings are there, and in our precence, essence is instilled in our avatars.

So next time you take flak for spending too much time gaming, or for hiding from reality in a game, you can confidently state that they are free to define their existance and essence in whatever manner or forum they choose, and you shall do the same.

Town Square

Today's must read, from Demitri and Constance at Terra Nova. Are MMOs the town squares of tomorrow?

We need time out from our daily grind (oh, the irony), and a chance to meet new people and hang out with the regulars. In a healthy society, these places form the building blocks of good communities and civic life. Classes and ages mix, ideas are exchanged, and the pace of life is moderated. Think the Spanish town square, the Italian piazza, the Greek taberna and the American, err, umm. Ok, America just has the mall, which is pretty sad. The idea we toss out there is that MMOs, and other online spaces, are beginning to take on this key function.

What the hell is a cyndre?

Over at Kill Ten Rats, Oz has a classic post regarding the importance of our virtual identity. In MMOs, the single most defining characteristic of your avatar is your chosen name. Thus, the importance of being 'Blaznarat' as he says.

At character selection, gamers make many decision that will have a lasting impact on our role in the virtual society that we have chosen to inhabit. We can be male or female, gnome or elf, brown hair or black... No matter what choices you make in customization, however, you will still be just another brown-haired elf maiden, in a sea of elves. Thus it is the naming convention that allows us to define and hone our virtual selves.

MMOs are built and sustained on the community that develops and thus remains loyal subscribers despite any number of reasons why they should have moved on. Take Ultima Online for example. They are approaching ten years, and despite inferior mechanics, outdated graphics and a host of newer options in the marketplace, their faithful continue to log every day. It was not the choice to be female, or elf that kept Nightshade playing this long, but rather the virtual person that Nightshade has become, and the friends she has made.

So what the hell is a cyndre, you ask? Well, Cinder was a name I used for many of my D20 characters back in the day, and when I joined the grandpappy of MMOs, Neverwinter Nights back on pay-to-play AOL, my beloved name, the very spirit of who I was in my fantasy life, was taken...

Cyndre was born that day, and I have never had to race against a host of others to be Cinder, Blade, Ghost or any other iteration of oh so sought after, leet identities. I don't have to worry that my friends from UO would see my name on their new EQ server, years later and wonder if the asshole PKing the newb, was the same Cinder they knew, or later still, if I was the clown spamming /1 in Elwynn Forest who they hadn't seen since we uninstalled Norrath.

I don't need to be leet, I just want to be me.