3pointD.com’s take on SoP

  10 Responses to “3pointD.com’s take on SoP”

1. Dan Hunter says:

   December 5, 2006 at 2:39 pm

   Sounds like, for whatever reason, there was a lot of self-criticism at SoP, but not necessarily a lot of self-analysis.

   wtf? Jerry Paffendorf suggested at the end of the second day (in the open Q&A) that the VW research community should incorporate Googlearth and related stuff into VW research. Some people may take this up, but, you know, it’s not central to what most people are interested in. It’s great if this is Jerry and Mark’s thing. But just because others aren’t into it, this doesn’t seem to me to be ” a lot of self criticism”.

   And we’d spent most of the previous 2 days engaged in fairly extensive self-analysis, on arcane topics like “What are the appropriate methods for the study of VWs?”, “What are the next interesting questions to look at, and who are we ignoring?” and “What are we to make of diversity issues here?” And so on. I’m not sure how we could have been more reflective on what it means to do research in this area. Frankly, we were self-analyzed up the wazoo.

   Maybe I’m being defensive since I ran the conference, but I think yours is a truly bizarre read, Raph. But, you know, whatever.
2. Raph says:

   December 5, 2006 at 3:15 pm

   I wasn’t there, so I am going off of the 3pointD commentary — that’s the vibe I got from what that post said. No offense intended, that was my summary of what Mark wrote. I was keying off of stuff like:

   One of the issues that came up regarding the Terra Nova blog specifically and its associated community was whether or not it was willing or equipped to bring non-game worlds into its ambit at all. This wasn’t really answered at the symposium (it would have been surprising if it had been), but to me these are some of the most important questions facing researchers and chroniclers of virtual worlds. Where does your interest start and end? Are you looking at game worlds only? Are you looking at all virtual worlds as if they were games? (Not all are, a point that some people often miss.) Are you looking at only the mechanics of these places? The social dynamics within them? Their impact on their users? Their relation to the broader culture and what goes on around and outside them? Are you looking at virtual worlds (or some subset of them) as leisure, as a communications medium, as functional platforms not unlike a kind of 3D Web?

   What was clear to me was that few of the people present had really answered these questions for themselves.
3. Mark Wallace says:

   December 5, 2006 at 6:13 pm

   In a shameless effort to avoid any slings and arrows, I’ll note that the OP does say, “Great panels were held on governance, methodologies of study, diversity, taxation and learning.”

   And also, Dan, I’m not saying TN or anyone else *should* be looking at Google Earth or whatever, just that — as everyone seemed to agree — it may be drawing near time to decide just what everyone *is* looking at, the better to look more closely at it. If that makes any sense.

   Hi, Raph!
4. Prokofy Neva says:

   December 6, 2006 at 8:51 am

   Terra Nova eggheads always seemed to want to look at games only. The closed nature of games helps limit their search. They also seem to enjoy playing them and leveling up in them and feeling meta about them. The core of the Group at Terra Nova just doesn’t like Second Life because it’s not a game in that closed sense. GoogleEarth just seems like an exotic map tool, not a game. When they can deal with closed systems, they have an object under the microscope they can understand. I think some TN contributors do have a larger take, but Edward Castranova himself seems to thrive only on the games in the closed worlds because then he can be an economist of highly-controlled synthetic worlds, and predict the things those controlled economies might do; when he has to face an open-ended experiment like the semi-closed economy of SL, all of a sudden, it’s too much like real-life economics and he can’t thrive and excel. That’s how I see it. I’ve been long baffled by his failure to engage with SL, given that he’s supposed to be the guru of virtual economies. I can only conclude it is too much like RL, and he will leave it to business journalism until some RL economist come along to care about.
5. Allen Sligar says:

   December 6, 2006 at 10:08 am

   A few things stood out on reading this:

   “think the major things we’ve missed are things like Habbo Hotel and the kids. There are really important things going on in the pre-teen and tween communities, stuff like Coke Studios, Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom, branding, data mining. This is one of the most massively important things in virtual worlds and we virtually never talk about it.”

   If they are never talking about it, or rather talking about WOW at the expense of these things then the approach is a shortsighted one. Because whats being missed is that the NEXT generation of VW and video game consumers and participants will be expecting, using and wonting different things in thier VW experiances. Why focus on a narrow sliver at the expense of future insight? It would be like having a vast knowledge of MUD’s, but keeping your head in the sand about how the market, desires, interactivity and consumers have changed over time, outdated knowledge like outdated data is useless, except for historical trending, something more efficiantly accomplished by a computer rather than an academic.

   As to data mining….well I’m sure someone will think of something to correct for this…

   The panel illustrated the tensions that are beginning to arise between academic approaches to virtual worlds and approaches that are more “mainstream” or “experiential,” for lack of better words.

   I’m not sure what to make of this. Perhaps its in relation to the divide
   between what business wants and what academics persue. Both can speak to eachother, like any field of study one side informs and imroves on things for the other, repeatedly, which results in the evolution of the subject.

   Several of the panelists called for more and better data on virtual worlds. But Greg Lastowka, for one, thought this was all well and good but that even more value might come from more researchers actually using the things they’re studying.

   I’m interested in this, asking for more data is one thing, participating is another. Getting input from people is a challenge, the same challenges are faced when getting input from gamers (actually less so, because they enthusiastically embrace the idea that someone cares enough to ask) as academics and *gasp* developers. Everyone wants more data, and I have a pretty good idea what executives will want to see, but understanding what data developers and academics want to see is a whole other story.
6. Michael Chui says:

   December 6, 2006 at 11:16 am

   If Ted goes and does SL, who will be working on game economies? Ted isn’t even acting as an economist anymore. He works in a department of telecommunication and is heading up the design of his own virtual world while organizing an annual conference on the side. I’m not convinced he has time for WoW or SL.

   Game worlds are in a rut, at the moment, and they’re stagnating to hell. That sounds like the perfect situation for some academics to stare at them, since they won’t move while under the microscope. Then again, non-game worlds aren’t exactly moving either.

   I probably shouldn’t get into an argument over this, here, but a reply was irresistable; it’s not like I find TN terribly interesting, these days, anyways. *opens a tab, glances through, figures he’ll read that later*

   In other news, and because it’s completely irrelevant, I passed my GREs last night, in such a way as to chortle at the people who are studying their lives away for it. Which more or less means that, starting about Friday, I get to blitz design&code that system on designing an ideal MMO. (Should that be VW, now?)
7. Allen Sligar says:

   December 6, 2006 at 11:54 am

   Raph check this out….

   its a start up in SF that went live today, already gamers are putting up graphs and numbers….

   http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/1009262
8. Michael Chui says:

   December 6, 2006 at 3:32 pm

   If you thought TN was bad…

   The Chronicle plays WoW, too.

   *sighs*
9. JuJutsu says:

   December 6, 2006 at 4:22 pm

   From the Chronicle…

   But as one academic points out, even the most sympathetic professors may not want to risk growing obsessed with life in a virtual world: “I won’t leave my house. I won’t publish. My job will disappear as I ascend to Level 60 with addictionlike tenacity,” writes the scholar.

   Those of us with tenure worry less…. 😉 It’s a shame WoW’s graphics make my eyes bleed.
10. Allen Sligar says:

    December 7, 2006 at 11:45 am

    Wither virtual world research……indeed. Dynamic AI, network and decision support database desing…..

    I was listening to a BBC program this summer, they had a director of a SW programming company that currently provides “offshore” services to western companies, I cant recall the location started with a Z (a high-tech, university city in one of the northern provences, on the coast)

    In summary this is what he said:

    Right now we’re laborer’s, learning all your systems, technology, project management, and design cycle techniques, in 10 years we will be innovating the software rather than working for the western companies. And we’ll bring it to market cheaper faster and at higher quality, we dont lack the people, we lack the knowledge and experiance….in 10 years that wont be the case.

    I think he said he had like 200 programmers and designers in his shop, and could hire 50 new grads a year because of the ramp up in thier university CS programs.

    You know Britian had the same issues at one point, all thier academics and creative people wanted to write novels, attend conferen…er hang out in solons, the chattering classes….meanwhile in America the groundwork was being laid for the industrial revolution.

    Just some thoughts…

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