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12. 12 Grindless Play

11. 12
Primacy

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8.31 RMT, Gift Giving...

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*Cultural Branding: A Medium and Beyond

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Calit2

"All that is solid melts into digital air" - JD & KM

The space between everyday life and the matrix of fiber optic fantasy land continues to crumble, creating consequences both online and off. This web space is concerned with documenting that change through economic and cultural analysis of seemingly "artificial" worlds. Welcome to Ludogrind.

Mechanized Toil

December 12, 2007

Grindless Play
Replicant of A Manifesto

The words that follow are inspired by game experts and play theorists at the collaborative blog Terra Nova, especially Thomas Malaby, Julian Dibbell, Mia Consalvo, Joshua Fairfield, Edward Castronova, Mike Sellers, Raph Koster, Richard Bartle, Dan Hunter and Dmitri Williams. Yet Aristotle, Plato and rather contemporary philosophers, anthropologists and parisian thinkers are not far to be found. Look closely and you may even find some archival legends. Closely following the structure of Dziga Vertov’s influential theory of refinement and rejection of romantism following the Second Russian Revolution, an age of soviet intellectual film making and realism found as early as 1919, “Grindless Play” seeks to espouse and encourage the social value of play and human-computer interaction in a modern era of relentless capitalism and mindless distraction economies. The piece offers the distinction between gaming and play as that of work, choice, and game goals in a fantasy community setting. While this piece may be read as a preferential argument against the MMO genre in question, this line of reasoning fails to consider the Kuhnian structure of scientific revolutions and the movement from one paradigm to the next which requires a complete abandonment of that which preceded it. The piece concludes on a spiritual note, suggesting play’s irrevocable marriage to the soul.   

Primacy

November 12, 2007
Evolutionary Primacy
Numb3rs, artificial reality, and playing with emergence

100,000,000 AVATARS
6 BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY
54 ALTERNATE REALITIES
2 TECHNOUTOPIAN VISIONARIES

How do we escape the emerging pervasiveness of virtual worlds? While theater appears safe (for now), television may not be the answer, popular culture cross over multiplying by the hour. I made a trip home this weekend to be greeted by the question, "You see Numb3rs on Friday?" Well, no. I had made a temporary escape to the Barclay Theatre to see a modern adaptation of Guy Bolton's
Anything Goes. Meanwhile, it turns out the CBS Television series, Numb3rs aired an episode on evolutionary algorithms and the present future of alternate reality gaming. I was happy to know my brother taped it. So late last night I fired up the DVR and will share my response here. Hopefully the analysis will draw you past its spoiler effect, a playful world that awaits beyond the psychological effects of plot.


BBB STARS
November 10, 2007
Customer Service and Better Business
Requiem For a Dream

How do players and developers resolve disputes when in-world feedback loops fail? Traditionally, professional intermediaries have provided viable alternatives, the Better Business Bureau offering one prime example.

The purpose of the BBB system is not to act as an advocate for businesses or consumers, but to act as a mutually trusted intermediary to resolve disputes, to facilitate communication, and to provide Reliability Reports on companies. Businesses have supported the BBB for over 80 years because an ethical, self-regulated marketplace is in everyone's best interest.

And this morning I was again parsing through reports on Blizzard to see what customers have had to say and was struck by a few responses to the hacking issue which I have reposted here:

Positive:

Reviewed By: Dan

Date: 09/05/2007

I have played computer games produced by blizzard entertainment for the better part of 10 years. The recent posts regarding hacked accounts are in my opinion at the fault of the customers. My account has never been hacked, as I have followed the recommended procedures for keeping that information secure. If a customer shares their account information or visits unreliable websites to download game-enhancement programs they may become victim to spyware or hackers. The company itself provides high quality computer games and secure accounts provided their guidelines are followed.



Reviewed By: Josh

Date: 09/05/2007

I have been playing wow for about 2 years now, I have not had my account hacked like previous reviews have said. The same rules apply as to keeping other programs safe from hackers as well, people getting there accounts hacked is the user's fault not Blizzard's. As for there [sic] customer service I have had no real problems here either, except some times when waiting for a GM in/game to respond it can take a while, but its understandable everyone cannot have 100% customer satisfaction there is just to many people.

Over all a great experience


Negative:

Reviewed By: bgaley

Date: 09/28/2007

I do not even wish to give Blizzard 1 star, but this is the only choice that this form allows for signifying my disapproval and utter frustration regarding their customer service. It is beyond my ability to describe how awful we have been treated in our association with Blizzard. They take months to respond via email and we have spent over 3 hours waiting in line and being put on hold for our simple issues. There was even one time while we were waiting for a customer support specialist that were cut off completely, hung up on. It is unfortunate that Blizzard seems to be so focused upon money and not so much upon customer service.


Reviewed By: aitken

Date: 08/21/2007

my sons account was hacked. it took a total of 14 notarized faxes of my id to have his account restored. he lost items he worked 2 years to earn. customer service is nonexistent at blizzard. they are rude, confrontational and arrogant. i suggest everyone find another game and skip blizzard products.


While the positive reviews seem to cast blame, squarely on those failing to adhere to Blizzard's guidelines (the CS echo is profound), the negative reviews suggest a need for unequivocal recourse in the case of virtual identity theft. Rather than villianizing customer misfortune, virtual worlds need reliable institutions that eliminate the risk of fraud: customer friendly interaction, accountability, and reliability! No matter how wary or unaccustomed the "deity" may be, real world business demands forward progression, industry standards to be updated to deal with the reality of crime on the synthetic frontier. Anecdote: Stolen credit card? Call and have it replaced. Simple solution. Stolen avatar? Too bad, buy another one!


Despite lofty claims, do forums such as the BBB offer the feedback loops necessary to have this message heard? Or will we need to see litigation prior to companies taking the demand seriously? Can poor service be considered negligent when identities are at stake?


Outer Eve
 
October 15, 2007
Play Cycles: What Do Gamers Want?
Collaborative Competition

How do you please that which has no life? Game Over, Well Not Quite! Live to win! The moon is a harsh mistress!

Via Terra Nova and Kotaku comes an interesting discussion concerning subscriber retention and the nature of playful competition: recycling losers in PvP ecosystems such as Eve Online by redefining what it means to win the game. But don't take my word for it, let Nate Combs explain: 

Eve-Online seems to not only have been able to recycle its losers, it has built an ecosystem to nurture them for another day.  In its own way I think this speaks some to the ways social systems under stress can be resilient...First it has to a large extent (I reckon) redefined winning from the perspective of the individual away from simple metrics.   Winning to some players is belonging to an "leet" (elite) corporation or alliance.  To others it means reveling in (e.g.) "pirate" /trader /miner /mercenary /miner etc. subcultures.  Pirates may be poor, without a permanent home and with bad breath.  But what counts to them is a code of conduct that seems to bind them, for example.

An imagined community at its finest! But while it seems that playful distraction economies rule the synthetic frontier, collaborative kinship lurk as the planets are aligning. As a film and media scholar I must ask the question: what role will machinima play in the mix?

Entertainment. Team work. Community. Camaraderie. Victory!  All with 50% less dying!


Gift Chest

August 31, 2007
RMT, Gift Giving...Canada
Perceptual Aberrations

Yesterday's SURF-IT/IM-SURE Symposium was quite an end to what has been a tremendous summer research experience. Big thanks go out to Stu Ross, Said Shokair, Bill Tomlinson, Eric, Joel, Mark and all those fellow participants and Calit2. It has also been an honor working with Peter. Luckily the research will extend at least until the end of the fall quarter at which time I will finally graduate. Well...off to Seattle, Canmore and BEYOND....play?

But I leave Ludogrind readers with the question I posed on Richard Bartle's recent post on Terra Nova Attitudes to RMT a few minutes ago concerning RMT as gift giving and charitable exchange.

RMT Gift Giving Comment

On his blog last November, Matt Mihaly asked the question about the difference between RMT and gift giving, both result of out of game factors, "why is [charitable exchange] acceptable when that out-of-game factor is friendship rather than money?" See post here. Despite fierce attempts to steer the conversation away from the usual EULA debate, seeking to explore the demand side of the equation: the practices of everyday gamers rather than Chinese professionals, his bloggers repeatedly came back to the EULA. However, it seems that by looking at "perceptions" towards RMT we are finally starting to delve into this interesting facet and I look forward to Dimitri's numbers (Although I believe anything too far below 30% as RMT user base will be a low estimate). How will RMT be measured first of all? What is RMT? Does charitable exchange cease to be RMT? The way in which the survey data is measured will be of concern. I am refering to references above and those transcripts found over at Xfire Debate. Also see, Virtual Gold and Real Money (Xfire Debate Club Presents). Yet moral perceptions of RMT is perhaps very relevant to the question I seek to explore here.

There is a clear rift in perception of moral capital: that resulting from the leveraging of material capital versus social capital. But what happens when material and social capital (across boundaries) are leveraged to gain material capital across boundaries? How is value created in and around games has been the fueling motivation behind my research here at UCI. It seems there is but one life remember, and I believe there is a quite fuzzy boundary that is not normally explored in these discussions.

A personal anecdote might help explain. Since I have attempted to become a hardcore WoW researcher (raiding more books than dragons), I have found tremendously less time to "play" the game (at this point I really rather study the footage of old SoP debates than touch the grind with a ten foot pole). Some time back in May, I almost ceased playing entirely, but still needed access to the game for research purposes. Around the same time, a good friend became interested in playing, but not paying...a dime. Simply was not affordable and the subscription model conflicted with his sense of moral reciprocity. Very rational thinker mind you. A graduate in fact. Nonetheless, he decided to try my account one day, female human paladin, same PvP server. He became addicted (not in The Wall Street Journal sense of the word, but a much healthier fashion). As time passed he came to play more and more...and more (no surprise here). We had started to share an account. Please don't tell the account admin department ;) Nothing too interesting thus yet, but as time passed he quickly leveled and became quite a proficient farmer, enjoyed farming you might even say. At this point we came to a time share agreement: as I worked during the day he was free to use it during this time and after about 6pm, it would change hands, although I generally ended up deferring that time allotment back to him. It seems as if we are sharing a summer getaway home, an escape from reality, maximizing gamer surplus. Efficient use of an entertainment medium. Parlaying value? Recently I received this letter in Wow stating: "I invested in a guy’s AH Endeavors and made 60 gold on my investment—no work involved. Pretty cool, huh?...Thanks to your being nice and letting me play a lot, I have accumulated a significant amount of gold that I would like to share with you, as I find the game more fun when I find all my items." Multiple levels of gift giving, RMT and reciprocity taking place here. We have social (friendship) leading to material (access to game) to social (investment in friend's AH speculation) to social (gift for sharing the account) to material (more gold for Lavant to buy rune cloth to quickly get Darnassus rep and explore the land on a frost saber mount---not the most efficient game method to reach exalted, but the most efficient given my adversity to the grind). So I ask Terra Nova, where is the line drawn between player run gift culture and RMT? Remember, NO FARMERS involved in this question. Assume them away for a moment. It seems the subscription model is a dying means of payment, at least in dollar form...

Although comments are not yet enabled on Ludogrind, its exciting to announce that "Ludoblog" is forthcoming upon return from the North. Un nouveau monde vous attend!!! Collaboration awaits...


Loch California

August 27, 2007
Invitation au Voyage
Beyond Play: Artificial Worlds and Gaming Capital

IM-SURE & SURF-IT Symposium

Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

                             -Charles Baudelaire

Calit2- This week marks the culmination of the 2007 IM-SURE (Integrated Micro/Nano Summer Undergraduate Research Experience) and SURF-IT (Summer Undergraduate Research in Information Technologies) multidisciplinary collaborative research endeavors. See links here, here and here. In celebration, a two day symposium will held this Wednesday August 29 and Thursday August 30 with most of the presentations occurring on Thursday. The event is open to the public, so if you are in the area feel free to drop by the Calit2 building at UCI. See schedule here. Directions here. Parking information here. I understand some nourishment will be provided. Projects span a broad range of scientific, telecommunication and information technologies looking to bridge the academic/industry divide,  ranging from biomedical health care, electronics, and material and sensor technology to nomatic gaim, motion capture, blog readers, digital media, and artificial worlds. Ludo monde will be happy to know that Beyond Play will take place Thursday afternoon at 4:20 PM.

Hope to see you there!


WoW Board Game   Make Love, Not Warcraft

August 21, 2007
Cultural Branding: A Medium and Beyond
Blizzard Denies RMT Profitability, eBaying continues

The Spectacle steals every experience and sells it back to us, but only symbolically, so that we are never satisfied: via this mechanism we support the machine of endless consumption over and over.

-Laura Marz

More than a medium is at stake, but the very fabric of nation and cultural formation. In the wake of Blizzcon 2007, RMT resistance continues under the guise that the sanctity of American play is under attack by Asian trends in the MMO sphere. Sound the alarms, across land and sea, Azerothian economies are constant prey to "cheaters, scammers, and other wrongdoers seeking to exploit WoW for their own illegitimate ends." A familiar mantra with an echo that resounds loudly in recent press announcements by Frank Pearce, dismissing microtransaction models for American "subscribership" loath to the idea. Ludogrind readers will recall Blizzard's countercomplaint in the case against Michael Donnelly and MDY Inc. Now, Games Industry and Kotaku report that Blizzard has no plans to test the theory. No surprise here. The Blizzard House Un-American Activities Committee has spoken. Don't come knocking at the Account Administration Departement; Play Money is still the enemy of the virtual state.

Or is it?



Microsoft 

August 16, 2007
Legalizing Machinima: "Grand Steps"
Microsoft Institutes Content Usage Rules


Thinking Machinima? Paul Marino reports that Microsoft has taken "grand steps" towards the legalization of machinima, instituting content usage rules that will allow gamers to use a collection of popular titles to make derivative works. Unfortunately, limitations abound, prohibiting contest entry, reverse engineering, RMT, unauthorized sound usage, and story modification. Perhaps "baby steps" is a better description? But in an era of IP McCarthism, the smallest freedom to play can seem quite large indeed.


Addiction

August 13, 2007
Cheating: Not So Fuzzy Boundaries?

Friday, The Wall Street Journal ran a story about Second Life (no surprise here) and virtually real infidelity: cheating and addiction in cyberspace. Despite some familiar voices, more of the same questions and answers: virtual jackass bites virtual tramp. As the picture above suggests, at what point will the shroud of distraction fall and social accountability exist on a micro level? How will individuals rise to the challenge, rather than creating tragic despair "avalanched beyond repair?" Remember these conversations: constructing amusement, the daedalus project and the trouble with addiction?

In other news: cheating! Scratchpad reports on Mia Consalvo's new book, Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (Abe's advice)as well as some tinker prevention techniques from Intel. What are the implications for the advanced machinima process? And what happens to social norms as bright-line mechanisms possibly prevent emergent play? What room for innovation remains in the game room and across the hall? Has the LAN truly died?


Machinimators  

August 6, 2007
Machinimafest at Blizzcon
The Ultimate "Player" Community

Anaheim, CA-  If cinema can be defined as a reflection of and reaction to reality, machinima can be defined as an extension of the gaming community experience and served as an integral part of this year's Blizzcon celebration. Ian Beckman of Uncle Tom's Cabin and director of Azerothian Super Villains, Guards I & II, and That’s the World of Warcraft that You Play reports that Blizzcon 2007 featured an assemblage of cinematic proportions, bringing together World of Warcraft machinimators from across the country and around the world: Rufus Cubed, Dead Workers Party, Oxhorn, Stone Falcon, Time Gnomes Rob, The Man Who Has No Life, Myndflame, Xfire, Slashdance, WarcraftMovies, Red Sky Foundry, and Oblivious. As with any film festival there was a contest divided by three classic generic corpuses: comedy, drama, and action/adventure. For the official contest winners, nominees, and screenings see WoW Insider and The Blue Room and for some personal favorites see the machinima section here. But as with any film festival, the real winner is the film community: both spectators and audience members, gamers whose roles are not easily defined, varying from one moment to the next in endless oscillation between active and passive roles, demolishing the distinction between work and play. If only partially productive from an economic perspective, the cultural life of these intellectual properties runs deeper than formal abstractions would normally persist. All are consumers. All are producers. Most of all, they are gamers seeking to protect or at the very least relying on the freedom to tinker, defying any topdown logic of traditional media consumption. But what does this mean for particpatory culture in an era of anti-social contracts and the grind-- byproducts of a one-way flow of cultural expression? For starters, film production, like gaming is at its most enabling position when viewed as a collaborative art, and in the broadest sense of the word collaborative possible. No zero-sum game here. Instead we find community and secondary market value augmenting, supporting and sustaining the primary market. The bottom line seems not to encourage us to go outside and do productive work, but to go to WoWModel viewer and make our own meanings.


    BLIZZCON- Anaheim Convention Center

August 2, 2007
Cultural Checks and Balances
Counterveiling Forces


Irvine, CA- If we have indeed entered an era of mechanical repeatability, what is to be said of  players’ balancing interactions and developers’ gradual acceptance of emergent forms of cultural play? With Blizzcon just hours away, how do we account for the feedback loops in place to facilitate metaversal community interests and concerns? When gnomes and orcs of the world unite, do anti-social contracts melt into Azerothian air? Do we see a reinstatement of bilateral social relations? I don't fully expect to answer such ambitious questions here: rather this post seeks to explore the process by which value is created in and around virtual worlds by means of economic, yet highly cultural checks and balances at the fringe of commercial norms.

World of Warcraft remains remarkably open-ended despite Blizzard’s mightiest efforts to close the loop. Despite a hard stance policy towards hacks, mods, macros, bots, and of course real-money trade (RMT): gold farming, item trading, and power leveling, it is Blizzard’s acceptance of cultural commodification that allows for rich social and cultural bonds to form between players. A great deal of addons, interfaces, utilities and what is quite interesting: art, song, dance, and machinima have been incorporated as an integral part of marketing techniques and player events at Blizzcon 2007. If games are about rules, all your bases are belong to Blizzard: FAQ. Paradox reigns supreme: commodificaiton lives strong: Movies, Song, Dance, Costume, and Art. Encouraged RMT. $100 buys the right to contribute and access player created content. Not to mention merchandise. On the other cultural front: RMT proper. Yet it is perhaps surprising to note that Blizzard’s EULA has always allowed for the transfer of accounts, the epitome of shared value. See EULA section 3.B. Yet there remains a fine line between exploit and feature and Blizzard reserves the right to decide which is which when it comes to hacks and cheats. No matter how many accounts banned (300,000 and counting), no matter what liquidity reduction techniques (Soulbinding, faction points, etc) or systems of exploitation (allowing those banned to return after having bought a new activation key and subscription) designed to impose high transaction costs on the purchase of virtual goods and services, real-money trade (RMT) has become a popular “anomaly” to be “assiduously avoided” and eliminated from an otherwise “harmony of mathematical precision,” yet balancing force nonetheless (to quote the second installment of The Matrix). If developers represent the architect in this analogy, seeking to balance the “remainder of an unbalanced equation”, what is to be made of the black market for gold? Perhaps it embodies the Smith virus having grown completely out of control. Then again, perhaps the WoW gold industry and professional gamer sweatshops in China are more akin to Neo or perhaps the Oracle in the ability to balance and unbalance what would otherwise become stagnant processes of mundane repetition. Funny how Chinese farmers carry the burden. But do they also have all the fun? Perhaps they are Smith’s victims? Regardless of the metaphor chosen, it is worth exploring the ways in which RMT functions to counteract the mechanism by which developers seek to standardize the MMO process, a process suggesting the emergence of a New Hollywood and the mechanisms of standardization and hegemony that it entails. Could hacks, machinima and even RMT actually be allowing for a richer gaming experience by forcing developers to be on top of their game in providing innovatively fresh content, service, and support, avoiding the pitfalls of Hollywood’s Golden Era that we are just now beginning to escape? Is truly “interactive” gaming possible?

Well, off to pick up the tickets. It is surprising to note, however, that in the strangest and most tragic twist of fate, I will be unable to attend, the tickets shared with a friend much more leet than I, mourning the loss of one special grandmother at services this weekend. No RMT here, only gift culture. Luckily, non-transferability enforced at the fringe does not circumvent the gift giving process. If I had only one rez...


Madison, Wisconsin

July 13, 2007
Games + Learning + Society
Conference


Madison, Wisconsin– How do you kill that which has no life? Sue the developer? What about in the case of a "walled garden" such as World of Warcraft? The past couple of days have featured the third annual Games, Learning & Society Conference from the beautiful, yet controversial Monona Terrace. While the conference took great strides towards understanding the value of play, in large part these techniques operate under the assumption of a preexisting virtual world. But does this  formalism undermine and conceal the way capital, social, and cultural value are also created in and around games? Thomas Malaby has offered the idea of contrived contingency and unpredictability whereby Games and Bureaucracy, largely routinized and believed to be inseparable mechanized processes, exert substantial influence on one another and the sucess, failure and unintended consequences of a virtual world. Malaby points to the way Linden Labs' development process transcends traditional bureaucracy through commitment to unpredictability. But what happens in the case of addiction? In the closing moments of today's conference, Edward Castronova staged a mock trial pitting WoWcrack addict Jeffery against World of Warcraft (aka Blizzard). Anything but "Boring." Are developers to be held liable for addictive play? The verdict: NOT GUILTY!  It seems the burden still falls on parents who are given the utilities necessary to regulate children’s computer use. But as the average gamer passes 33, could developers be held liable as more and more adults of the Gamer Generation exhibit signs of WoW poisoning? What about in the case of "Professional Gamer" sweatshops and Julian Dibbell's chain smoking gold farming and power leveling? Something has gotta give! So much for play money. But that’s what happens to horde! Can the EULA mitigate the problem? It seems the answer is no. The magic circle is still evil as players must be held liable for their own actions. On top of that, these types of cases look to conceal the cultural benefit and social life of guilds on the fiberoptic frontier. The interesting question remains, however: do we want seriously productive play? Long live the Azerothian dream of endless wealth, power, teamwork, and sociality? Or did that also die in the age of mechanical repeatability?


Peter  Nathaniel  Tomlinson   Baumer

July 12, 2007
Beyond Play
Online Gaming, Blogging, and Media Economics

SURF-IT

Calit2– What does blogging and gold farming have in common? More than meets the eye. But let the folks at Calit2 explain:

On the surface, Blog readers, online game economics and nanotechnology have absolutely nothing in common. At Calit2@UCI, however, all three are hands-on research projects conducted by students and mentors under the auspices of SURF-IT, the institute’s summer undergraduate research program. And all were featured topics at the program’s first seminars held last week.

Some statistics: online and in-game advertising is expected to grow from about $100 million in 2006 to about $550 million by 2010. Forty-five percent of players in online games engage in “forex” or real-money trade, the sale or trade of virtual goods and services for real currency. As a matter of fact, the gross domestic product per capita in the game “Everquest” is $2,266, which makes it equivalent to the 77th country in the world, ahead of China and India.

Old news for those close to the RMT market I'm sure, but the full ramifications of Play Money are yet to avail themselves. More stats forthcoming.

For More see:  UCI SURF-IT Seminars Encompass Diverse Subjects


Calit2

July 2, 2007
Beyond Play
Artificial Worlds and Gaming Capital


SURF-IT

Calit2– After an unexplained adventure to the forests of the North and the coastal vineyards of San Luis Obispo, last week marked the beginning of SURF-IT (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology), in coordination with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). Interdisciplinary is the name of the game, uniting research in electrical engineering, informatics, computer science, digital arts, economics, film and media, East Asian culture, anthropology, and education from across campus here at UCI. Along with six fellow undergraduates, the next couple of months will focus on multidisciplinary efforts and  collaboration aimed to "shatter the constraints of traditional academia." See projects here.

Now settled into Bill Tomlinson’s Animation Lab, I am hard at work examining real-money trade (RMT). Working closely with Peter Krapp, the project aims to investigate the socio-cultural and economic implications of budding secondary markets in and around virtual worlds, massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) in particular, especially the extent to which players and corporations have the right to conduct trade and commodify the fruits of their labor. Time is the input, but what are the outputs? More time? Inherent in this investigation will be a discussion of the roots of gamer capital, economic, social, and cultural. Do synthetic world economies have such tangible monetary value due to artificial scarcity imposed by developers? To what extent does the scarcity exist regardless, strongly rooted in game culture and history? Where exactly does it come from? What role does gift culture play? But most of all, what are to become of games in the age of  mechanical repeatability? What would Walter Benjamin say? As we tumble down the rabbit hole, will the gamer generation be stuck with addicting, time consuming games that draw a hardline between work and play, begging us to go outside and do productive work? Or can emergent play take us towards a world of productive play seen in distant cultures? What holds for the future of game culture as virtual worlds encompass a larger and larger subset of the overall population? Thoughts forthcoming.


MCT

May 13, 2007

"Abnormal Play"

Korean "Advancement of Game Industry Act"

Prohibition of Illegal Circulation

Terra Nova– Unggi Yoon has reported that Korean policy against real-money trade (RMT) is expected to outlaw the sale of virtual goods and services "produced by the illegal way of copying, adapting, hacking or abnormal game-play in MMOGs." See here. According to the abstract drawn from a press release issued by the Korean Ministry of Culture & Tourism, certain RMT activities are to be banned in accordance with the "Advancement of Game Industry Act" as of Monday May 14, 2007. The act targets businesses "exchanging or mediating exchanges of, and repurchasing outcomes...obtained through playing games." It includes punishment provisions of up to five years in prison or fines of up to 50 million won.

But what is to be classified as "abnormal play"? Yoon suggests that it includes both identification fraud and the use of “bots” (automation software) that "evade"  Copyright protection. But to what extent do bots infringe copyrights and to what extent does this law curtail the first-sale doctrine? Western RMT traders hold this principle near and dear to their hearts as it theoretically allows the second hand trade of collectibles and other used intellectual property such as books, DVDs and CDs, but also figurines, dolls and Star Wars memorabilia. To what extent are virtual items digital collectibles?

The answers are coming. In the United States, MDY v. Blizzard (see below) seems to have precedent setting implications. However, the Korean law, as well as other attempts to squash RMT seems to ignore the way in which value is recycled as players enter and exit these worlds. Where in this mix are notions of player governance? For discussion see/post here. As simulated economies exert greater real world monetary implications, what extent do these activities maximize benefit to the whole of the gaming community? To what extent and for whom does gold farming and power-leveling provide value? IGE-corporations benefit to be sure, but what about those doctors, construction workers, delivery men, attorneys, and professors so low on time that they would never play without the ability to jump right into the action through the purchase of items, gold, and characters? What size is this demographic is a good question to be asking...


UROP

May 12, 2007

Gaming and Real-Money Trade
Gray Market Analysis


2007 UROP Symposium

UCI- An exhausting week to be sure, but one that saw three presentations on RMT, cultural tools of immersion, and the future of player governance. Inter-disciplinary was the name of the game. After engaging conversations Wednesday and Friday with ICS, IT and film and media students the week culminated on Saturday with the 2007 UROP Symposium before parents, economics professors, and other interested students and faculty. Not to mention the moderator- an overworked Dr K. The Symposium is an annual event that allows undergraduates the opportunity to present research findings in a "professional" setting. Was it work or was it play? At the very least the food was good. I have posted the abstract here along with some other easter eggs. Parlaying value Beyond Play in the months to come.


Wow Credit Card

May 3, 2007

Parlaying Value


The card that pays you to play.

With the announcement of the World of Warcraft Rewards Visa redemption program (see here), Blizzard has forged new ground in the realm of Real-Money Trade. Despite traditional opposition to the practice, banning just under 300,000 accounts since its release in November of 2004, Blizzard has figured out a way to extract surplus from those gamers yearning to recycle value in one way or another. As economies of the world unite, gamers seem to be forging significant  inroads towards productive play. Yet how mutually beneficial is this solution when compared to player auction sites and the station exchange?


MDY v Blizzard

April 12, 2007

Escaping the Grind
MDY INDUSTRIES vs. BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT
A Primer

If Blizzard bans me, ah well, time to go out and get another CD key and start it all over again, not like I lost a lot of hard work.
 -WowGlider customer


UPDATED 4-12-07

The EULA will again be front and center as Blizzard and MDY have begun to square off in litigation that will seemingly have to address the state of play, the nature of MMORPGs, contracts, and intellectual property. In light of recent reports by WoWInsider (1) (2) that Blizzard has filed countersuit against Michael Donnelly, owner and founder of MDY Industries (maker of WoWGlider, popular but highly controversial automation software for World of Warcraft), I thought it would be a good opportunity to examine some of the compelling issues surrounding this case currently underway in Federal Court. Terranova has also seized the opportunity here and Matt Mihaly here. Donnelly asserts that his business has in no way violated any rights owned by Blizzard who has in fact created “an actual controversy” through accusatory “threats and actions” (See claim). Blizzard has responded by reasserting such allegations ranging from tortuous interference with contracts, copyright, DMCA and trademark infringement to“illegitimate...cheating, scamming and exploit” (See Counterclaim). And not to mention unjust enrichment. The proposed joint mangagement plan can be found here. Yet upon closer examination, it appears that neither side has been particularly straightforward in their accusations. The legal game at its finest. Although the following article was written before the recent wave of litigation, it poses some interesting questions about Blizzard's actual losses and Wowglider's usage.


Anja

Brain Food
play money

synthetic worlds

sop

free culture

The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties

every thing bad is good for you

play between worlds

tigger happy

snow crash

Man, Play and Games

homo ludens

The future of ideas

money in an unequal world

Developing Online Games

Crime Online

wowhacking

Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games






                        













2007 Ludogrind
All opinions expressed herein are solely those of Lavant
All company and/or product names and logos are trademarks of their respective companies