A long while ago, I blogged about Adobe’s Open Screen Project, which is a big consortium pushing Flash onto as many devices as possible. Well, here appears to be some of the first fruit of it:

Adobe® Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) and Intel Corporation today announced plans to collaborate on the development to port and optimize Adobe® Flash® technology for the Intel® Media Processor CE 3100. This effort is expected to provide consumers with richer and more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences through advanced Intel-based cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail connected AV devices….

— Intel and Adobe to Extend Flash Platform to TVs.

They go on to mention plans to ship this chip within 2009, as well as an initiative around Air. We’ll see what comes of this… Intel has to get that chip adopted, after all.

In the meantime, I also noticed over the holidays that Microsoft is beta testing a new download center that requires Silverlight — that’s a way to push plugin adoption right there…! Of course, they also push it via pop-up on Microsoft’s front page… the war continues.

Newlively is a VRML-based clone of Lively, based out of China. And I mean clone, they claim one done in a month. Not yet feature complete to match the original, but apparently actually backed by a company with funding (though the website doesn’t say who).

Not surprisingly, looks like there’s Lively folks moving over already.

We are often emotionally moved by thoughts of past experiences and occasions. Likewise, if we could create a cyberspace environment and an Avarat where users are already familiar, we help lessen the impact of loneliness and disappointment. After the closure of Lively, there is no greater happiness than to duplicate Lively for the sake of the Lively users. We understand that this activity would generate a certain degree of legal risk. However, whenever I remember the disheartenment and disappointment of that many Lively users, this risk is worth taking and the users will support us. Google is a great company. Its greatness develops upon quality customer care. What we create is similar to Google Lively, which the users like. Based on this, there should be no problems. We want to prove it. Google Lively’s concept is great and good. Besides, we are not using any codes whatsoever from Google Lively. The entire platform was created new from scratch. Only the concept and the interface remained as Google Lively and the amount of work involved in doing this was quite insignificant in comparison to the creation of the entire system. Moreover, in our understanding of the kinds of platforms, copyright privileges should go to the content providers. As long as these content providers are willing to transfer the platform to Newlively, there will be no issues.

– from the FAQ

QBlog writes on the controversy going on over the possible deletion of the article on Threshold MUD. I’ve run into the fact that Wikipedia isn’t a great resource for research into the history of virtual worlds many times before; the articles are of wildly uneven quality, and a recent crappy game can have pages and pages worth of content, whereas historically interesting stuff doesn’t.

LegendMUD’s entry was deleted without even a debate a while ago, despite there being other articles that reference it and point to it, including a whole page on the Karyn affair. Worlds of Carnage has no page at all, despite it serving as the incubation place for scripting in DikuMUDs and for many developers who went on to work on the first wave of MMOs in the US. At least there’s a good DartMUD page.

Curiously, I am used as a reference or citation many times in Wikipedia, yet I suspect my writings would not meet Wikipedia’s guidelines. The challenge here is creating material that does — with so much existing only as oral history or as community-driven sites, little will qualify to be in Wikipedia, with the result that the history is often lost.

This is also the gripe I have about my own entry… very cool that I have one at all (though it came up for deletion once too! Morgan saved it) but it makes no real mention of why I should have one, which makes it read just like a resume. There’s no mention of game grammar, theory of fun, “worldy” MMORPGs, online game design patterns, the timeline, avatar rights, or community management — though it managed to find time to mention that I played MUME for a bit — even though I played dozens of muds as long as I played MUME.

This isn’t just me being whiny about my entry… Bartle’s entry spends more time on whether he is controversial when discussing WoW, than on the core philosophical statement in his writings, which include the ideas that virtual worlds are means of self-discovery, and that they are artistic statements by designers.

Now, I love Wikipedia, and use it all the time. But I am at a loss as to how to help out the Threshold entry, or in general help the cause of VW history there. This sort of thing is why people (ahem) end up setting up their own timelines instead.

Between Left 4 Dead, and The Last Guy, I think something got into my head.

Since the Zombies Came

Since the zombies came, you can’t get decent sushi;
Zombie sludge, it spoils fish like nothing doing.
And all the second hand stores, they had to close up shop…
Stains just don’t wash out the way they used to, do they?

Stuff that’s better – well, the horror flicks, of course. Duh.
Extras just show up. And don’t need paid, or credit.
Watch at home, though! Darkened cineplexes…
Real bad news. Though crowds are thinner at the malls now.

‘Sides, the zombies, mostly peaceful, right? Like yoga,
Tai chi, meditation, all that shit. OMMMM, then
Nom nom BRAAAIIIINS. They mostly stand and stare in corners
Seeing into places we cannot with jelly

Eyes and dreaming of the sushi and the clothes, the
Pay and credit, ordinary hungers (BRAAAIIIINS), good
Posture, faces still intact, more moods than one… sad.
Pity them; resent them, for the sushi’s sake.

Worse? It could be worse, sure. Aliens are worse, right?
Zombies get you, BRAAAIIIINS, you’re dead, undead, whatever.
Aliens, you live on screaming, tentacles in
Awkward places, slaved. I’d rather eat my friends, thanks.

Read the rest of this entry »

No, not me. Razakius, over at Razakius.com, who is working on what looks like an ongoing project to revisit every Law of Online World Design.

This does happen every few years — someone decides to do a series revisiting them. I think this is healthy. The last new Law was “Socialization requires downtime,” which was a while ago.

One of the nicest things about the Laws, I think, is that when you read them they are so clearly high level that so many of the little design cul-de-sacs the Diku genre has fallen into are obviously not applicable. Nobody has asked for “PvP is evil” or “PvP must always be in RvR form” or some such to be put on there, for example.

On the other hand… never had to remove one yet, either. Not sure whether that is troubling or not!

A while back I mentioned that Worlds.com had made known the intention to sue over their virtual world patents.

Now the other shoe has dropped, as Virtual Worlds News reports that they filed suit against NCSoft on Christmas Eve.

The patents in question deal with the notion of network culling on the server in 3d worlds, trimming down the set of things sent to the client based on server-side visibility algorithms.

Worlds.com really is a pioneer in the space — WorldsAway Worlds Chat being one of the early VW systems in the first half of the 90s. The earliest forms of the patents were filed in 1996, so pretty much all of the big 3d MMOs are later.

That said, there’s still plenty of earlier work done on network culling and yes, even 3d, and of course there’s a lot of money at stake, so expect a fight.

Flora's Dare by Ysabeau Wilce

Just finished the lavishly titled Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room), which is itself the sequel to the similarly sesquipedalian Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog.

Picture (if you can) an alternate San Francisco named Califa, where magic is spoken in sigils called Gramatica, where there lives an adventurous fourteen year old girl named Flora, descended from a noble house (all the noble houses have what appear to be semi-Scandinavian names, despite the liberal use of Aztec and other Mexican verbiage).

Flora desperately wants to be a Ranger, like her paperback (sorry, “yellowback”) idol Nini Mo. She seems to be well on her way, as long as she doesn’t get killed what with the entanglements with the tentacles in the trendy club’s potty, the fact that her maybe-boyfriend has gone Goth with the Warlord’s daughter, her maybe-psycho father is forcing her to take lots of lessons over her school break, and oh, let’s not forget the city may crumble because of earthquakes and it’s possible that the precarious political situation of Califa may crumble, what with the anarchists and all.

If Harry Potter had been written by China Mieville, maybe it would read like this. It’s worth your time.  Besides, the Official Web Site of Ysabeau Wilce gets across enough of the flavor that you should be able to decide that Califa (and Flora!) are worth visiting. After all, it’s not like you were going to read Twilight, right? You have better taste than that. Plus, the author’s name is Ysabeau. Come on, you can’t possibly resist.

Am also midway thru Elantris, and so far it deserves its acclaim…

Once you know the shape of the passage, and just how rough the road,
You’d think that it would be easier, but it’s still so hard to go.

We always have to part at the doorway, as I put on my shoes;
You give me a jacket and that wistful smile, and say “Careful out there, silly goose.”

Maybe the issue is the things that I can see that are left behind;
There are parts of me you’re keeping close, and parts of me lost to time.

There are boxes full of our old aspirations, and that one there holds our youth,
There’s crazy music coming from that one — and that one used to have truth.

When there are bridges to cross that sway in the wind, and adventure at every turn,
Wild jungles full of mystery and so many new things to learn,

I always mention that you could come, but you just always shake your head:
“Too much to do here at home, someone has to make the bed…”

But do these shelves hold all of the meaning?
If the dust is blown off, can we fly with the sun?

Or do these these pages sit here, quiet,
until all of the sun setting is done?

I try to remember to bring back a gift, from all those foreign climes
But somehow most of them are dust, even if I get them home in time.

“I swear, this was gold, that was precious diamond, and this one here was fragrant wine…”
But you brush them aside with relief in your eyes, and choose instead to hold me tight.

You say you know the shape of the passage, and just how rough the road.
You act like it should be easy for you now, but it’s still so hard to let go.

The Experimental Gameplay Workshop has issued its call for submissions for 2009. Jonathan Blow says

It’s a two-hour showcase of unusual and cutting-edge game designs. Each designer gives a ten- or fifteen-minute presentation of each game, including a live demo.

We’re now looking for submissions for the 2009 workshop, which will be happening in March. If you make unconventional kinds of games, I encourage you to apply. Or, tell your friends. Or do both.

For me “telling your friends” means blogging it, so I did.

In another display of the ways in which the world of PC gaming is shifting, laptop shipments exceeded that of desktops for the first time ever in the third quarter of ‘08.

A big part of the reason? Netbooks, which are

• skimpy on graphics hardware, and can’t run big AAA games
• often don’t even have an optical drive from which to install big games
• super-portable, thanks to small screens that have resolutions as low as 1/4 the resolution of a desktop monitor
• fundamentally designed to be connected

The shift here is notable, because it all speaks to convenience rather than immersion. Small bites, not big ones. In fact, the Acer Aspire One netbook was the #3 seller in consumer electronics, behind a 52 inch TV and the 8GB iPod.

I was struck by the fact that there’s a whole song on the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog DVD commentary musical “Commentary!” (uh… just go get it, it’s too hard to explain) that is about a game. Not Far Cry 2. Not Left 4 Dead. No, it was about Ninja Rope. Usually if our industry gets big shoutouts from other media, it’s for a AAA game… But they played Ninja Rope on an iPhone — a transitional device halfway between a phone and a netbook itself.

Meanwhile… Amazon doesn’t even mention the PS3 and the 360 sales this holiday season, focusing instead on how the Wii dominated the charts; going into Xmas, there were as many Wiis in households as 360s and PS3s combined. Again — lower res, simpler controls, simpler games (which has some folks really mad!).

I wonder what a true AAA game designed for a netbook would look like?