Free Video Games News

Archive for the ‘Terra Nova’ Category

Jonathan Kinkley, who has just completed his Masters Thesis in Art History at University of
Illinois at Chicago, ask if we could share his research.  We're always happy to link to new work on virtual worlds.

The full paper is available here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15860034/PostnationalSodalitiesSecondLifeJKinkley

His thesis analyzes the visual culture of Second Life and explores the complex spaces that online social networks create. Jonathan explains:

In Second Life's Caledon, we get a glimpse what an online social formation looks like. It is a society based entirely on shared interests – a themed community built of a patchwork quilt of Victorian-era iconography. Elsewhere in SL, artists like Cao Fei (SL avatar China Tracy) are fascinated with this idea of creating a sense of place out of virtual space. Her RMB city isn't about China, it's about China-ness – an amalgam of all the icons, stereotypes, and archetypes past and present of China. This paper is about the types of spaces in SL and how and why they are created out of the iconography of visual culture.

Go to Source

Thanks to Andy Schwarz for tipping us to this article in Information Week reporting on a Chinese government press release supposedly banning the sale of virtual stuff for real money. In the backchannel, Julian Dibbell reminded us that Korea did the same thing a couple of years back to no effect. No effect because it is hard to do without redesigning the virtual economy, and also because the law's intent was not actually to ban RMT. As we all know, some laws regulating a practice are not really intended to stop it – whatever the preamble might say – but to control it merely.

So: What is China up to?

Go to Source

Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life, by our own Thomas Malaby, has its official release today, and the timing couldn't be better. I'm writing from the midst of State of Play VI — "The Conference on the Serious Study of Virtual Worlds" — where Thomas's book will be feted this evening and where the mood, in general, is that of a not entirely unwelcome intellectual hangover. The hype surrounding Second Life (and the broader phenomenon of virtual worlds for which it's been so fallible a proxy) has come and, finally, gone, and there's a sense that only now can we begin to dig beneath the shiny, first-pass questions that provoked the hype and get a deeper handle on what we've been talking about. It's a challenging, exciting project, and if the thoughtful, game-changing ethnography Thomas has produced is any indication, it's off to a promising start.

That's not to say that plenty of vital ethnographic work on virtual worlds hasn't already preceded Making Virtual World. But the critical move this book makes is to 

Go to Source

Yesterday at State of Play, Bart Simon made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion: that journals like Games and Culture adopt a five-year ban on articles that focus on Second Life and World of Warcraft.

He wasn't seriously arguing that this should happen but it is a pretty useful way to poke researchers about the degree to which these two places have become defaults for study as well as for play or social interaction in virtual worlds.

So as a reminder, if you're doing research, justify a focus on them. Here's a list of legitimate reasons that I thought of right away.

1.     

Because
they constitute most other virtual worlds, maybe on a metropole-periphery model, even. E.g. that World of Warcraft now determines what most other game-like worlds will be, and Second Life will shape any primarily social world in the future, in all likelihood. (I can see the very strong influence of many Second Life institutions on Metaplace, for example.) So you study them because they're determinant, and because in many other worlds, you'll just studying them from a distance.

On the other hand, there are a whole host of casual games, kids' worlds and so on which aren't determined by these two poles.

2.     

Because
any virtual world is just as good as any other for studying certain problems or questions. E.g., throw a dart at the dartboard, and if it lands on WoW, and what you're interested in happens there, why not?

3.     

Because the researcher is attracted to/interested in a given world, or have an investment of time
that allows him/her a good qualitative understanding of a given world. We don't tend to admit in some cases that we pick our fieldsites because of a prior affinity for that place or culture, or at least that doesn't express itself as a justification for that work in formal publication. But it's still a good reason: if you know a place, and more people know Second Life and WoW than other games, why not make use of that experiential knowledge?

4.     

Because
WoW or Second Life has a particular feature that is most distinctively realized
or expressed in them, or a sociology that is best vested there. If you're interested in the sociology of raiding, arguably WoW is now one of the best places to study that.

5.     

Because
there’s a literature, a canon, and it lets the researcher not have to explain everything
that I would have to explain about a more obscure game; or because there is a
community of colleagues who provide scaffolding/support. Obviously that's a kind of closed feedback loop which if you take it too seriously means that there is never any reason to study something which is not already heavily studied.

6.     

Because there are tools or affordances, some created by other researchers, which make the collection of data in these two worlds easier. I don't think that actually works as a justification for World of Warcraft, which is still a frustrating thing to study (or to demonstrate to classes).

Others? Still, the point is sound: there are other worlds that are studied, and some which should be studied vastly more than they are. (Yes, I know what you're all going to say next, EVE Online, and I agree. Maybe that's another post: why isn't EVE studied even more than it already is?)

Go to Source

The regulation and governance of technology has tended to be based
around industry sectors such as film, radio, television etc., or on things such as the radio spectrum or personal data.

I propose that we change this on a global scale and frame regulation in terms of the relationship between Functions and rights.

The Problem
Any practical taxonomy (including the one that I propose) has gaps. In the world of ‘old’ media this was not too much of a problem as media were relatively separate and static. Radio was Radio, TV was TV.

In the world of Convergent media (to use Jenkins’s term) this type of notion becomes problematic. Not only do particular technologies and notions of media change rapidly, they also blend, overlap and re-mediate each other. What’s more taken at face value even the notion of ‘media’ be it convergent or not may be inadequate to capture key features of the socio-technical practices that we see around us.

For example – ideas of virtual worlds as ‘places’ where speech may occur is a much more useful concept than ‘media’ for many purposes, though for other purposes is inappropriate.

We are thus left in a position where governance in its many forms has gaps, overlaps and contradictions. We also have initiatives that are likely to find that as their ink dries the intended objects of governance have evaporated.

The Solution
There is no simple solution to this. However what I believe will help as an approach to (at least some) regulation and governance bodies is – to see the universe of regulatatory objects in terms of Functions and collections of Functions, and not in terms of industries or applications.

What’s a ‘Function’?
Search, is a Function, as is User Registration, or Ranking. Each of these are processes that:

• occur in a number of application;
• have been relatively stable over time;
• are capable of being understood in within regulatory frameworks and boundaries.

Now this is already partially applied in various forms of regulation; e.g. the EU have specific laws on the treatment of personal data. However statute in this area tends only to be at a highly abstracted level. Here I propose to move up one level of abstraction from notions such as ‘personal data’ and ‘common carrier’ to ‘Function’.

Across and Down
Let’s look at this two ways.

First let’s take ‘Registration’. What I mean by this is the bundle of processes whereby a user registers with something. Here we have a mixture of best practice and pre-existing statute e.g. the Data Protection Act in the UK which regulates how certain data are stored and treated. Though we might want to include other things into the understanding of what might be governed as a Function e.g. display and consent to terms and conditions during the registration process – which might be subject to industry best practice.

When we look at things in these terms we can see that there can be quite a rich set of Functional sets that would be highly common across applications. So registration for Club Penguin is very much the same as for Flickr and Facebook and Maple Story or for the Huffington Post.

To take a second Function – Ranking. There has been a recent controversy over YouTube’s ranking system wherein ‘Most Viewed’ and ‘Most Favorited’ videos are in fact not Most Viewed etc., as certain content is demoted. This seems the kind of area that may companies might want to do.

I’m not going to get into whether this is correct or not, rather note that this seems exactly the kind of Function that all stakeholder might want to see a consistent approach to – even if that approach is clarity (exempting trade secrets) in how the system works. It would help me as a user to know what I’m looking at if I’m told something is the most popular room in Metaplace or most popular group in Facebook – and I don’t want one to fall under ‘virtual world regulation’ and another to fall under ‘SNS regulation’ excepting in those places where there is something conceptually exceptional.

Now if we look down the Functional stack and take, say, Flickr we can see that it might have a bundle of Functions that overlap in many places with Second Life – especially in the areas of user generated content / IP. Second Life and World of Warcraft may be common when it comes to in-world money (though there we have an interesting question of sub-division which is well worth debating – I suspect there is a large common set between all virtual currency systems from a regulatory point of view).

EULA Freebie
Readers will probably be ahead of me here also in noting that with such a system we can see how at a certain level we can also start to move towards a common system of EULA not just across virtual worlds (as has been discussed in a few places) but across all online applications that have EULAs.

More Functions
Below I’ve suggested a few more Functional areas that look like they may be suitable objects of governances. As you see this is list is nested. I think this is critically important as it allows people to agree one what is common and leave what is unique or contested at the appropriate level of details – hence, while we might not know a specific thing about a virtual currency in a game with a fictional setting, this does not mean that we don’t know a whole lot about how virtual currencies in general should be governed.

• Ranking
• Registration
• Search
• Virtual Currency
  • Closed economy (no RMT)
    • Fictive / game based
    • Non-fictive
  • One way exchange (currency buy systems)
  • Exchange based (fully exchangeable virtual currency)
• Provider based content provision
• User Generated Content
• Synchronous textual / symbolic communications
  • one-to-one
  • one-to-several
  • one-to-many

Governance
Almost lastly I should point that that I am not advocating a highly top down system of government regulation. I’m NOT suggesting more governance – in fact viewing the world this way may expose overlaps which would lead to less governance (should we live in a world were redundant statutes etc were ever taken off the books).

What I am suggesting is that we look at what the objects of governance might be in a more rational way for the internet age and then decide whether they need to be governed at all and if so who by.

We may determine that some things are simply down to user choice, other things may fall under standards created by industry or even cross-industry groups and / or by regulators and state actors.

The framework I propose is wholly neutral about the from of governance that may or may not apply to any Function, what the contents of that governance, if any, are and who the governing actors are – it’s and empty framework.

Rights
I made not of ‘Rights’ at the top of this post as I tend to think about these matters in terms of individual and group rights.

Let’s think globally for a moment – after all, that’s what the internet is, global. This proposal might help to set the scene for a slightly different tenor of internal debate.

There are various rights frameworks such as: those from the UN, EU Convention on Human Rights and the US Constitution. The Functional approach may open up an illumining debate about matters such as the various conceptions of free expression and Functions related to things like User Generated Content and Search.  A US / EU debate over raking systems as interpreted under Article 10 of the Convention on Human rights and the 1st amendment would be a fascinating thing.

Again, while not a panacea this is another way to approach the international debate over regulatory harmonization (or lack of) and the burden that this places on any business seeking to use the internet and any user seeking to use a system based on the internet.

Endnote
Lastly as with any sweeping suggestion like this I awaited someone to tell me that there is an entire library on the subject, or it’s been tried and failed or it’s exactly what’s going on already. I’ve not read anything that propose this form of governance but please supply reverences if it’s already out there it will simply add weight to the idea.

Oh, and the pun that this is both a system of Functions and a system that should actually Function is well intended

Go to Source

This August, Lee Sheldon and I are hosting VW², a one-week workshop on the possibilities and pitfalls of using virtual worlds for business and research. Our aim is to help professionals who are new to the field from wasting several years and heaven knows how many millions of dollars re-learning the same old lessons. Our focus is practical, not academic: Here's what you do, and here's what you DO NOT do.

In designing the program, we've been fortunate to have the input of an illustrious advisory board. Rich Vogel and Ron Meiners are coming to give keynote lectures. Participants will learn by developing applications specific to their own environment. This includes pitching ideas, writing design documents, setting up hiring plans, choosing tools, and building their own virtual environments. On exit, participants will have created a shovel-ready virtual world project for their home organization.

More information about the board and the workshop here.

Go to Source

At the Digital Entrepreneurship conference, I remarked on the rising number of bankruptcies of virtual worlds or companies that develop them (most cleverly illustrated by Woody Hearns' bugzapper at gucomics, here, here, and here).  I'm interested in what we can learn about the bankruptcies of virtual worlds. 

What I wanted to ask the Terra Nova community is this: Is there anything special that we should think about or plan for when a virtual world goes under?

Questions include:

• Can virtual property be used as collateral for loans, such that secured lenders get first priority in bankruptcy? 
• If courts treat users as having merely non-exclusive licenses for software, can users enforce those licenses over the world creator's objection under Bankruptcy Code 365(n)?
• Can virtual worlds use 365(n) to retain rights under licenses governing user-generated content?
• Is there less, or more, of a problem valuing virtual assets than valuing intellectual property in bankruptcy more generally – on the one hand, we have grey-market economies to provide a value baseline.  On the other hand, the world only has value on its own terms: if the world is gone, its assets aren't worth much.
• Is there any reason to treat intangible assets like virtual property differently than, say, a bank account (given that both are more or less contract rights in an entry in an electronic database)?

I value your questions and ideas more than those I've posted above! What catches your fancy about the end of worlds?

Go to Source

My article, Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance of Virtual Worlds, just came out in the McGill Law Journal.  I profited enormously from the great discussion on Terra Nova when I first proposed the piece, so my thanks to this wonderful community.   Of course, I always learn a lot while writing a paper, and it’s that further thinking that I want to write about.   (Some of this thinking is based on or responds to Michael Risch's excellent piece, Virtual Third Parties.  I agree with him on many points and disagree on a few, but I think that he has done a fantastic job of presenting the other point of view, and the paper is very short and well worth reading.)

Some background: there are two broad challenges to EULAs, unconscionability and privity.  The first argues that EULAs are unfair due to oppression or surprise; the second asserts that a contract between A and B contracts shouldn’t bind or benefit C as a default matter.  (I talk about third-party beneficiaries below.)

The fairness argument, legally speaking, is that EULAs are so one-sided as to “shock the conscience.”  The problem is that these unconscionability arguments are often unconvincing.  I view most EULAs with a certain dull resignation, not with shock and outrage—and I think that’s the experience of most players.  I am also not particularly convinced that standardized contracts necessarily unfairly surprise consumers.  People know what is in the contract: the player loses, the game god wins. 

So if the argument from unconscionability is not appealing as a theoretical matter (and let me reiterate that these broad unfairness charges are the only thing that have worked to date – as in Bragg), what is the alternative?  In Anti-Social Contracts, I argued that traditional limits of privity might provide a way to understand what has gone wrong with virtual world EULAs.

This privity argument does capture something of the problem.  Can players sue each other for violations of virtual world EULAs?  Should they?  It is just plain odd to use a contract between A and B to govern C’s behavior.  This seems to speak to some of the current cases:  Hernandez arguing that he can benefit from IGE’s promises to Blizzard, or Blizzard arguing (successfully) that MDY is bound by Blizzard’s agreements with its customers.

We can use third-party beneficiary terms to permit C to benefit from an A-B contract; and we can use tortious interference to bind C to the terms of an A-B contract, but both of those actions provoke horror from attorneys I’ve talked to.  First, to quote one inhouse counsel, “my job is to make sure there’s nothing in a contract that can be construed as granting third parties rights.”  And we can see why: game gods really do not want their customers bringing lawsuits against each other for blue chat on third party beneficiary theories.  And companies generally do not want to be subject to suit by parties with whom they did not contract.

Risch asserts, correctly, that the law is quite capable of finding third parties to be beneficiaries of other people's contractual promises even where the contract is silent (but where the court nevertheless detects an intent for the contract promise to run to the third party).  That is, unless game gods actively state that their players cannot sue each other for blue chat or griefing, courts may find that players can in fact sue each other for such EULA violations.  (I would argue that in such circumstances courts should find that players are not intended beneficiaries of the contract.)

But from my conversations with game designers and their lawyers, I find that player-to-player lawsuits were not what they intended.  Some player-to-player suits gain popular support, of course — lots of people were pleased about Hernandez's attempt to sue IGE for RMT.  But outside of the RMT context, it's worth wondering whether players want to run the risk of suit by other players based on EULA violations.  And by extension, it's worth wondering whether game gods want to allow or disallow those lawsuits.

The extension of the obligations of contract terms (e.g., “Thou shalt not use botware”) to third parties is just as problematic, in my view.  We can talk about whether the court’s determination in MDY was limited to its sense of MDY’s knowledge of infringement and profit motive, but the bottom line is that both of those components are present in any commercial software developer.  It bothers me that a game god would be permitted to restrict what software third parties can develop.  I understand that Glider doesn’t seem to have a non-infringing use, and that’s fair enough.  But a few baby-steps away from that, and we enter disturbing territory: game gods using their contracts with customers to block competition, for example.  What if a software provider created botting software that was useful in playing multiple games, including Star Wars Galaxies, in which scripting and botting were part of the game?

It is of course possible that we will limit the lessons of Hernandez (there is no holding there, but perhaps a warning for RMTers) and MDY to cases where a person is violating a EULA in something resembling bad faith.  That seemed to matter to the court in MDY and certainly accounts for most of the discussion that I read about IGE.  But I wonder whether instead we may see EULA provisions applied in less emotionally appealing circumstances–and then, given that "bad faith" has no real part in the legal tests described, I am curious to see what will happen.

Specifically, I am interested to see which way the 3PB issue is resolved.  Will game gods expressly make their customers beneficiaries of each others' promises to the game gods? (My guess is that this is unlikely.)  Will game gods expressly negate 3PB designations?  (I find this more likely.)  Or will game gods not move on this issue until there is a high-profile case in which one player sues another based on the EULA, and then take steps to expressly negate 3PB designations to soothe customer concerns over being sued for Barrens Chat? (I find this most likely.)

I'm interested in your thoughts.

Go to Source

Calling all VW grad students…

Go to Source

The Council of Europe (CoE) has developed two sets of Guidelines that seek to interpret Human Rights in an online context. On 6 May 2009 there is a Council convened workshop in Strasbourg to explore the guidelines. Prof Bartle and I (with my think tank hat on) are speaking at the meeting.

In this post I’ve provided a short background to the context of the documents and some of my views on the way that key concepts are constructed in the guidelines intended for online game providers. I think that the Council would appreciated a wide set of views on these guidelines as they seem sincere in trying to gather input from a wide set of actors, hence I post these views here to gather your comments.

The guidelines at hand are"

• “Human Rights Guidelines for Online Games Providers”
• “Human Rights Guidelines for Internet Service Providers”

These seek to outline how these two industries can promote rights as defined in the “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms” in the context of their customers and citizens generally.

The rights focus of both of these documents is Article 10 of the Convention:

Looking at the document “Human Rights Guidelines for Online Games Providers” I want to look at the opening section of the document (see below). Given its title I am taking this to be an overall conception of the key actors involved in the rights at hand and a normative view of what roles they should take, I believe this needs some examination.

"Understanding the role and position of online games providers in respecting and promoting human rights

Providers (designers and publishers) of online games design and make available products which can promote the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the freedom to express, to create and to exchange content and communications while respecting the rights of others. Designed and provided in an appropriate manner, games can be powerful tools to enhance learning, creativity and social interaction, thereby helping users to benefit from the information society.

However, like other content, online games may also inadvertently impact on the rights and sensibilities of individuals, in particular children, as well as their dignity. The potential impact of such games may increase as they allow the gaming experience to become more creative and interactive (as the possibilities for expression, interaction and exchange of content with other gamers increase) and ever more realistic (as the visual effects of games develop).

Online games can play an important positive role in the lives and development of individuals, especially for children and young people. It suffices to consider the importance of rights and freedoms, values and dignity, into the embedded design and marketing of games. In this regard, it is recalled that the exercise of freedom of expression carries with it duties and responsibilities, in particular as regards the protection of health and morals and the rights of others, which publishers of online games are encouraged to bear in mind when deciding on the content of their games.

Games designers and publishers are therefore encouraged to promote and facilitate gamers’ well-being and should regularly assess and evaluate their information policies and practices, in particular regarding child safety and responsible use, while respecting fundamental rights, in particular the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy and secrecy of correspondence. At the same time it should be noted that member states, civil society, other private sector actors, parents and gamers themselves have important roles to play in engaging in multistakeholder co-operation, promoting gaming literacy for children and assisting game providers in fulfilling their role.

In this regard, designers and publishers of online games are encouraged to take note of, discuss and make their best efforts to comply with the following guidelines (below) and to consider making reference to them within their games and in their enduser agreements.

The appended guidelines are without prejudice to and must be read in conjunction with the obligations applicable to online games providers and their activities under national, European and international law.” (Human Rights Guidelines for Online Games Providers page 4)

The key actor here seems to be the ‘online game provider’. Interestingly the guidelines conflate designer and publisher – whereas of course these are often separate entities with very different outlooks and drivers.

What providers do under this text is exercise ‘freedom of expression’ while moral constraints are covered there seems no recognition of economic and social factors that might constrain this ‘freedom’.

While the text goes on to say that providers are ‘encouraged’ in respect of ‘gamers’ wellbeing. There are a several instances in the text where providers are reminded that they have ‘duties and responsibilities’ in respect of rights.

The artifacts under consideration are variously referred to as ‘product’, ‘content’, ‘embedded design’ and ‘marketing’. The artifacts have the ability it assumed to ‘promote’ the exercise of rights and have a role in the ‘development of individuals; as well as potentially being able to  ‘inadvertently impact’ actors. It is also noted that the ‘gaming experience’ can become more ‘interactive’ allowing the gamer to exercise expression. Many other potential social goods that can result through interaction with an online game are noted.

Here the artifacts seem at once to be static entities but at the same time things that can have a complex role in lives and inter relations of actors. So while it is acknowledged that there is increase interactivity neither the agency of the actors nor the affordances of the artifacts seem to play much of a part in this description. Critically, it seems to me, the technical-social nexus of the online game as a site in which the rights at hand can be expressed or restricted by the actors that use the online game seems to be passed over setting rights guardianship into an implied hierarchy where the end user is almost passive.

What’s more as I have noted in previous works the act of giving primacy to the ‘artifact’ nature of online games, as opposed to the ‘place’ like nature or ‘contractual’ nature that many of them have sets any discourse about them in a particular direction.

Lastly the other key actors appear to be ‘children’, ‘users’, ‘individuals’, ‘gamers’, ‘member states’, ‘civil society’, ‘other private sector actors’ and ‘parents’.

As noted above, the relationship between the users of the artifacts and the creators and other actors seems to imply a hierarchy. What’s more the text sees to put emphasis on protecting and keeping children safe.

There are many categories that are overlooked by this typology, those I suggest are useful to incorporate into an analysis of online games include the following:

‘adult gamers’ – while this is possibly the larges single category of gamer it often seems overlooked. From a policy point of view this strikes me as problematic as it does not seem to me that it is self evident that the rights of child gamers trump those of adult gamers in all circumstances, and even if they do the case needs to be explicitly stated.

‘player community’ – in many online games the notion of and the feeling of belonging to a community is key the experience of the game and many of the goods suggested by the guidelines.

‘user generated content’ – there is mention of users and expression the idea that users might them selves be active in the generation of game content for other users which might include: text, the act of gaming, mods, fanfic and other content that some how becomes part of the gaming experience – seems missing. 

In these categories it seems to me that their might be an implication of active-agency that seems lacking in the text in relation to the notion of any agent using an online game.

Other categories we might consider include: ‘game designers’, the ‘games industry’, ‘retailers’, ‘self governance structures’, ‘guilds’, ‘consumers’ and ‘professional and industry bodies’.

In summary this definition of roles appears to set up an industry with freedom that is bounded only by rights-related duties and users, primarily children, that interact with relatively fixed artifacts in ways that have relatively defined outcomes on them that they have little control upon. A key invisible category is assumed presence of the Council of Europe itself the author of the document.

I suggest that a more rounded approach to rights online should include a more granular understanding of how the practices of game production and use come about through a much more complex interplay of actors. What’s more key elements of context to take into account include the notion of a game as a system of constraints and acts within a game as being fictional or symbolic.

 In a further post I may explore in detail the actual guidelines that are suggested in the document.

Go to Source