Via the Second Life forum I made my way to a Gamesblog interview of SL founder and CEO Philip Rosedale. From the interview:
In May 2005, the total amount traded in-world was USD$1.47 million. There were 1.3 million transactions between 19,500 unique users.
And to think this is really still in its infancy.
(edit: C|Net has latched onto this interview. you can read that entry here)
Terra Novan and mediated interaction researcher Nick Yee has posted on the Terra Nova website an announcement that World of Warcraft player data he and a few PARC researchers are collecting is now up for review and discussion on the PlayOn blog.
If you’re like me then World of Warcraft by itself doesn’t mean much other it being an online videogame. However, the information they’re extracting is pretty interesting. I may not know what’s happening at “level 40”, but comments like the following are easy to understand:
Plotting playing time against level by guild involvement shows several interesting trends. Playing time increases dramatically for guilded players right before level 40. Because of the new skills and mount granted at level 40, it makes sense that players may increase their playing time to achieve those goals. Perhaps being in a guild facilitates this because other guild members encourage and help players reach level 40 when they get close to it, thereby increasing playing time.
Sounds like the academic version of how I imagine Massive’s system operates. Interesting (and perhaps a little scary). But if I’m an advertiser, I know where I want my ads placed… right around whatever it is in level 40 that’s making players spend more time online (I’m imagining there’s some location-specific activity or item required for the player to level up).
C|Net has a slideshow from the currently in-progress Paris Air Show. Notice that the first image in the slideshow shows a UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle). Now look close and you should see a few of those flying drones/robots in the above conceptual image taken from the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) website. If you read the MIT Technology Review article I mentioned a couple months back in this post, the videogame aspect of all this is pretty obvious. Since that time however a couple more related bits have come along, including: news about swarming robots, word on an attempt to create a virtual brain, an announcement that the keel is being laid for a new kind of warship (the Littoral Combat Ship, a variation of which would presumably make an excellent platform for UCAVs), and plenty of discussion about military spending. There’s even another article similar to the MIT Tech Review piece – this time over on the Popular Science website (read “Trust Me – I’m a Robot” here) .
And all I wanted to see were some pretty pictures of the new Boeing jet I mentioned a couple days ago. Looks like pieces of this augmented reality stuff are everywhere; it’s just maybe not entirely obvious how it all fits together.
There’s an interesting bit of reality mixing over on the PlaceSite Project – a kind of mash-up of wi-fi networking, Google maps, and … zombies. No, not “Night of the Living Dead” garden variety zombies. These are the I’m-too-busy-talking- on-my-cell-to- notice-the-light- turned-green variety.
Now I’ve seen the term used to describe this particular effect before, but not so … officially. “The Zombie Effect”. Sounds catchy, if not original. I hope that label makes its way out into the public. That might make it easier to explain the kind of interaction one can have with/within a virtual environment or videogame to those who engage in neither activity. Right now they just stare at you with these blank eyes when you try to explain this stuff. Jaw hanging; mouth slightly open. You know. They look a little like … well, hell … a zombie.
My god. They’re everywhere.
(via B. Sterling blog)
New World Notes brings us this timely update to the ongoing efforts by some in Second Life to create a first person shooter (FPS) within the simulation. This isn’t a new story or a new idea, but I’m mentioning it now because it amplifies something I brought up in another post and some comments I made regarding that post on another blog. While academia focuses on the technical, I’m more interested in the social.
I’m going to pull out one line from the comment I wrote and leave it at that:
going from lines of code to 3D visuals will, i believe, have a profound effect on cyberspace not just because of the technology but because of how we react to that technology.