Dan Hunter posted an entry over on Terra Nova to a piece carried on the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school website. For those unaware, Wharton is arguably the best business school in the world (U.S. News and World Report ranked them third in a recent survey), so this attention will go a long way to raising some eyebrows within the upper levels of some business communities I imagine (about damn time, too). From their article:

While the size of the market is debatable, experts agree that virtual economies are expanding rapidly and warrant more attention. “It’s really amazing that this hasn’t gotten more attention,” says Kendall Whitehouse, senior director of information technology at Wharton. “You can learn a lot from these worlds.”

The only problem with this article is that – to me at least – it really doesn’t go very deep. The issues go beyond what’s discussed; issues I’ve raised on this blog and which include the eventual merging of PLM software and virtual worlds, as well as the real world fabrication of virtual world content and the intellectual property problems this causes. But for now, it’s good to see that Wharton and perhaps others are noticing. Hopefully there will be an increasing stream of articles that clue in the greater business community to the amazing changes headed our way.

Considering my mother is a “gaming grannie”, the aging of the videogame player population comes as no surprise to me. If it comes as a surprise to you (or if you’re just interested), check out BW’s article, “Attack of the Gaming Grannies“. And marketing types take note. There is a low-cost way to target this demographic if you just pay attention.

A couple weeks ago this blog was defaced. Just so everyone is aware, I had been tracking the attempts to hack the site and am aware of both the tool used and the originating country – Brazil. Well, I’m once again receiving the loving attention of someone who appears to be attempting to hijack the site and redirect it to some website hosted by a Brazilian registration company.

If you come to this site and see something odd, they will likely have figured out how to accomplish whatever it is they’re trying to do; including perhaps trying to create a portal through which they can deliver a worm or virus. I suppose I could try to stop them, but I figure it’s better to just report on where this stuff is originating so that everyone out there can get a sense of how wonderful the “everything free” atmosphere is that people like Lawrence Lessig promote (Brazil is well-known for supporting open-source but is also often known for turning a blind eye to the activities of software pirates and hackers).

So all I’m going to do is advise anyone who visits my blog to keep your anti-virus and firewall software updated and be cautious about any links you hit (you can right-click on a link and check its properties for the destination address). Hopefully everyone is already cautious, so my warning is falling on deaf ears.

Gamasutra has a feature article entitled “Videogame Aesthetics: The Future!” which is a nice read. Some of the issues raised have been frequent topics on some of the CG sites, so this piece does a decent job of pulling some related things together. And because I’m relatively well-informed on comic book artists, the author’s comments citing that medium as a good example of visual diversity won points with me. The only fault I really find with the article is the focus on videogames to the exclusion of other, similarly immersive experiences. It was nice to see mention of game mods and even tools like the Quake NPR renderer, but some immersive environments have done noteworthy things (to be fair, many others are as guilty as most regular videogames in their uninspired visuals). Perhaps that exclusionary focus was set up by the intro and the discussion centering on aesthetics vs gameplay (virtual worlds having no “gameplay” to speak of); but I would have liked to have seen it opened up a bit. Perhaps next time.

Nice interview over on BusinessWeek discussing the design of the US $6000 Logan automobile with designer Kenneth Melville. I thought the one-piece injection-molded dash was interesting. As was his comment on swallowing one’s pride to meet the goals of the project (anyone who has worked at a simple plastic products company where cost was a huge issue has done this). Sure seems like the design industry doesn’t speak enough to that issue.