I’ve seen this coming for a while in the development of real products: auctioning off development services to the highest bidder instead of developers submitting competitive quotes to get a project. I think for Industrial Design it’ll happen pretty soon, especially when companies start to see the profession as filled with distinctly different kinds of designers: from the “make it pretty” crowd that doesn’t think too much to the “design the entire experience” people who also understand a client’s business (including their limitations). It’ll happen because along with most everything else, manufacturing is slowly becoming democratized.

Posting stuff like the entry on the architecture plans that were up for auction (reLink) is all about this shift. It’s why I followed eBay’s move to offer/endorse digital downloads last December and finally blogged about it in February (reLink). It’s where I plan to be … and why I delayed mentioning it to be honest.
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This is pretty big news: Microsoft appears to be looking to buy videogame ad company Massive (about whom I’ve blogged rather frequently). This definitely plays into my earlier thoughts on where MS is headed (reLink). Here’s basically the whole news blurb being carried on Yahoo/Reuters (Link) which will probably disappear in a few weeks:

Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT) plans to pay $200 million to $400 million for Massive Inc., a privately held company that places ads in videogames, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.

The deal to buy the two-year-old start-up highlights the increasing importance of advertising in nontraditional media, the report said. It noted Massive’s clients include Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO), Honda Motor Co. (7267.T) and other advertisers that are boosting spending on ads in videogames.

I bet this goes closer to the high end of the price range. Of course no one is talking, but based on Dell’s acquisition of Alienware, we know that denial doesn’t matter anyway.
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I came across a post on the Second Life forum (Link) this morning that starts to touch on a part of the lecture and critique system I mentioned in yesterday’s post (reLink) dealing mostly with the protoSat build in Second Life. Here are excerpts from the post by avatar Nyx Divine:

I see ‘auctions’ for people, from time to time in ‘events’, most for love or companionship and some, rarely, for charity, since I am currently STARVING for knowledge I’d like to set up and help host an auction that sells knowledge.

I know there are some absolutely wonderful places to take classes in SL (TeaZers, ASL, NCI, just to name the ones I know) but this would be different. This would be those of you that have the time and the inclination, as well as the talent, to auction yourselves off to the highest bidder. BUT……you would, prior to bidding time, outline in a notecard exactly what you would be ‘WILLING’ to do for the winner of YOU! And for how long. So the bidders know EXACTLLY what they are bidding on.
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My ‘ideal’ is that the proceeds of this would go to a worthy cause in SL and NOT to the teachers….so altruism would be the word of the day.

And here’s my response: Continue reading →

Back in 2000, ID Magazine in its Interactive Media Design Review edition gave Relic Entertainment‘s videogame, Homeworld, a Silver Award. I purchased the game based mostly on that recognition, and when I first played it five years ago I was impressed. Here is what ID Magazine said about the game back then that intrigued me:

“There is so little in our media that uses a sense of emptiness effectively,” Lantz said. “In a world of digital games overwhelmed by spectacle, the emptiness of Homeworld is refreshing and very effective.” Whereas some of the jurors questioned the game’s obsessive level of detail, Smith argued that to “construct a certain level of realism, you need that level of precision.” Stryker confessed that she wasn’t a gamer but was convinced by the game’s intoxicating high resolution.

I have to admit it was the “obsessive level of detail” and “intoxicating high resolution” comments along with the printed images that really got me interested. By today’s standards, however, Homeworld is most definitely not high resolution; and those details now look like low resolution texture maps to me. This past weekend, at wits end over something else space-related, I reloaded Homeworld and played it through again. While I might have noticed the decidedly low resolution models when I first started, the immersion took over. It still plays great.
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There’s an article over on BusinessWeek, “My Virtual Life” (Link), that does a fairly comprehensive job of covering the virtual world Second Life. Much of the information will be a rehash for SL residents – whether it’s a repeat of previously-reported news (e.g. Anshe Chung’s success) or the kind of information mostly gathered from reading the forums (e.g. Shaun Altman’s virtual stock exchange). There are, however, interesting tidbits. In particular, here’s a piece that I enjoyed reading:

All this has some companies mulling a wild idea: Why not use gaming’s psychology, incentive systems, and social appeal to get real jobs done better and faster? “People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games,” notes Nick Yee, a Stanford University graduate student in communications who has extensively studied online games. “What if we could tap into that brainpower?”
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