Overhaul

I did a major overhaul to my about page. Sifting through all the amazing reviews from over the years was...something. If game reviews and game sales were correlated at all, it'd be very different around here these days.

I think we're in a place we need to be. Just gotta trust the refiner knows what he's doing with this fire. Sure doesn't make for fun blog posts though.

Things People Said

A venture capitalist quoted in Wired said, "If I can make a dollar where I otherwise wouldn't, why should I be concerned?"

Having to explain the idea of a conscience to someone who doesn't have one seems like it would be remarkably difficult.

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A recent MSN article said, "Losing just 5 to 10 percent of your body weight – that's 10 to 15 pounds if you weigh 200 pounds – can provide health benefits as well as make you feel like a winner."

Apparently, it won't make you a winner at math.

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In justifying the amount of time she spends online, an anonymous woman quoted in a Guardian Unlimited article said, "The sad truth is that, in many ways, EverQuest is better than real life..."

The same article reports, "[A US economist, Edward Castronova] found that almost a third of adult [EverQuest] subscribers spend more time in Norrath in a typical week than they do working for pay in the real world. He writes: 'One can almost believe that many people do live there, wherever it is, and not on earth.'"

I don't know many people who consider "working for pay" living. So what's my problem?

"If I can make a dollar where I otherwise wouldn't, why should I be concerned?"

Because it breaks my heart.

Hypocrisy or Art?

The Matrix Online is a persistent world where people will sacrifice a portion of their real lives to navigate their online persona through a virtual Maslow's hierarchy of needs toward an ultimately saccharin self-actualization.

The game, of course, is based on a series of movies where the hero's victory depends on him sacrificing the easy rewards of an illusionary world and embracing a harder road to self-actualization in the real for the benefit of all humankind.

Ironically, the more you like the movies and their message, the more likely you are to play the game. I doubt anyone will NOT play because of the philosophical contradiction, which ultimately reinforces the movie's premise that most of us, even after we know the truth, would choose the illusion.

I have to admit, if the irony is intentional, it's the closest thing to Art I've seen in the MMO industry so far.

My brain hurts plenty after that, but if you want more...Greg Lastowka, a professor of law at Rutgers and a moderator at Terra Nova, was on the panel I reference in "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" and raises some interesting counterpoints in his comments to that post. Check them out below. (Thanks Greg)

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

So apparently the folks at the Edinburgh International Games Festival got themselves all in a tizzy when Jeff Brown, VP of Corporate Communications for Electronic Arts, had the audacity (oh, the outrage!) to claim that it would be better for young Timmy to be out mowing lawns to earn his summer allotment of disposable income rather than ebaying the bits in someone else's database (selling mmo game items for meat-world cash). This alone would've been enough to endear me to Mr. Brown, but the guy did it while on a panel with, and sitting next to, Jamie Hale of Gaming Open Market (a "service" that profits from the buying and selling of game cash for real money) and in a room full of developers, lawyers and other folks looking to profit from the economics of the make-believe ("virtual currency"). I love you Jeff Brown.

It seems obvious to me that a landscaping business has more real worth than a virtual commodities business (no matter the bandwidths of the respective revenue streams). The presence of meat-world cash wants to imply value, but I don't buy it: there's value, and then there's value. The Gaming Open Market and businesses like it remind me of the story of Dr. Seuss's Sneetches. The Sneetches' elitism is exploited repeatedly by the clever Sylvester McMonkey McBean, and although they learn their lesson in the end, McBean walks away with all of their real assets. The Sneetches trade currency with real value for status and privilege in a self-contrived system that collapses when they realize they've been had.

In Uru Live, we were happy to prevent an economy of virtual commodities by not providing trading as a feature. Value was to be found in knowledge and experience. Those things stuck to you and changed you, not your avatar. Sure, your avatar (through clothing, books and your home-Age customizations) became a visual representation of your knowledge and experience, because that's fun. But what we really wanted was for you to learn from the story, take that with you into the real-world and apply it. The cool thing about knowledge and experience is that you can share it as much as you want, and as long as there are new folks to tell, you won't run out. In trade for your real cash, we wanted to give you something with real value - something you could keep, something that would outlive our database. Did it work?

I don't know. But I do know that McBean is still out there, and he's got a whole cadre of people working with him to figure out new ways to build on his success with the Sneetches, and when he thinks of you, the mass market consumer, the casual gamer, he shivers with excitement at the potential revenue stream. When he comes asking if you'd like to buy, take a lesson from Mr. Brown and go mow a lawn.

On the other hand, maybe this is all just sour grapes on my part. Is there a moral difference between selling a virtual set of Greater Shadow Armor and selling a seat in a movie theatre? Is one business more inherently "valuable?" I want it to be...but maybe in the end, value is just whatever a buyer and a seller agree something is worth.

Massively Maslow's

In a recent post to the MUD-DEV mailing list, Raph Koster, Chief Creative Officer of Sony Online, defends the idea that MMO's are about love, self-esteem and self-actualization and therefore are "Art."

When did putting 1000 hours into your virtual Jedi-life to the detriment of your meat-world career and family become self-actualization?

The Day After

I feel less guilty about watching episodes of Firefly than playing World of Warcraft. I think it's because I can still think while I'm doing it. But, I'm definitely easing into the whole productive thing after going cold turkey on MMO's. Don't want to sprain anything.

Ubisoft comes to visit tomorrow. They've been pushing us in a few places that needed pushing, and it's making us make Something Else better. For the upcoming milestone, we're focusing on the first 30-60 minutes of gameplay - making sure it's engaging. By the end of the month, about half the game should be through it's first pass in production (including modeling, texturing, lighting and scripting). We're moving fast, but the first 95% of a game is the easy part...it's that last 5% that'll get ya.

Hi, my name is Bill...

Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also..."
- Ecclesiastes 2:15

I estimate that I spent 3120 hours playing MMO's in the last 4 years: Asheron's Call, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft. If you were to do nothing but sleep 8 hours a day and play MMO's, it'd take you 6 and a half months to rack up that many hours. If you work 40-hour weeks, it'd take you 18 months to put in that much time. It's not like if I hadn't been playing MMO's, I would've put all that time to good use. I should've slept at least a third it. So let's call it a lost work-year.

You can argue that I learned a lot that would help me in making an MMO, but that excuse stopped working in February when we stopped making one. You can also argue that it's a shameful waste of the only thing we really have: time.

It might've gone on like this, but World of Warcraft is really, really fun. Too fun. DAOC is to marijuana as WoW is to heroin. When edoublea and I did the math this afternoon, I had him change my password so I can't log in anymore. Get thee behind me Satan, I'm tired of being your junkie.