Help a student out — take this survey

 Posted by (Visited 6498 times)  Game talk
Jun 062007
 

Matt Penfield, a student at UCSD, asked me a bit ago for help getting this survey out there for his academic work. Here’s the scoop. Go help him out!

This survey is part of a market analysis project focusing on digital distribution.  The question I’m interested in answering is “Given supporting evidence from adjacent entertainment industries that both demand and infrastructure exist to support digital downloads, why is adoption so low in the game software segment?”  If anyone has any questions/insight about the survey or the project, please email me at mpenfield <at> ucsd <dot> edu.  As a special bonus, I’ll be drawing a name at random from the survey respondents to award some factory sealed PSP games.  If you’ve got a PSP (or know someone who does) be sure to enter your name and mailing address on the last page of the survey.

Survey link.

Korea may regulate user-created content

 Posted by (Visited 6790 times)  Game talk
Jun 042007
 

First the French, now Korea. The technolibertarians are getting it on all sides…

The gist of the story: the Ministry of Information and Communication is issuing some guidelines for comment. The comment end date is June 29th. They include a code of conduct, some legal rules for people to follow, and a checklist for users to ue when creating and uploading content.

The code of conduct concerns the responsibility of the UCC creator, respecting UCC copyright and the prevention of defamation. The legal guideline offers detailed information on copyright, protection of user privacy, prevention of defamation and the circulation of adulterous content.

– Korea Herald

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Speaking of boundaries and morality…

 Posted by (Visited 7920 times)  Game talk
Jun 042007
 

GamePolitics.com has word of a French lawsuit against Second Life, orchestrated by a “family values” watchdog group. It’s a good example of the way in which national boundaries and local laws and pressures may affect the operation of virtual worlds in different territories. As some commenters have already noted, it’s not a stretch to see this lawsuit in the context of the recent success of a conservative politician, Sarkozy, in the presidential elections there.

The specifics of the suit appear to be about restricting minors from Second Life — which is of course already policy on Linden’s part, and also extremely difficult to enforce. However, it seems that some ISPs have also been named in the suit.

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Monday Mailbag: full body controls, racism, forums, education, & design docs

 Posted by (Visited 9170 times)  Game talk, Mailbag
Jun 042007
 

I have this crazy backlog of messages in the Mailbag. It would be much much worse if 2/3 of the messages that come in weren’t some variant of “Please don’t post this to your blog.” So I am thinking of making the mailbag a regular Monday thing — both so that greater variety of stuff gets sent in, and so that I clear it out more regularly.

Hey Raph, I’m a big fan of yours since the UO and SWG days and this is the first time I wrote to you. What do you honestly think of MMO games that uses full body motion sensors? Do you think it will be the future of gaming? A lot of hardcore gamers have trouble with a healthy lifestyle (since mmo requires a ton of your time planted in front of the TV/PC not moving) and an mmo/game that requires you to exert some physical effort (by using full body to control your game avatar) would be a great way to have fun as well as keep in shape. Nintendo wii’s nunchuck controls is the start of this great idea. I hope someone would bring this great idea further.

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