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I know your response was as tongue-in-cheek as mine was meant to be, but the last couple of notes had enough 'hint of bitterness' that they're worth responding to:
7) The act of creating isn't doing anything? Awesome, I'll be sure to send that memo over to Da Vinci.
Relativism, ahoy!

I'm not sure the it logically follows that "since DaVinci created masterpieces, that all acts of creation are therefore valuable"?

8) Because the contingent there were racist homophobes who shot their neighbors?
Funny, I thought it was because the inhabitants of Jesse were hypocrites that believed in the freedoms of speech and thought only when it agreed with their utopian religion (not to be confused with actual religion, with, like, God and stuff). If I recall correctly, the "Jesse War" BEGAN with the suppression of the WW2OLer's FREEDOM OF SPEECH (viz http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59675,00.ht ml or http://secondlife.com/notes/2003_07_07_archive.php #20030707) because the hippies objected to the pro-war postings and tried to cover them.

It was absolutely hilarious to us (by now you've probably realized I'm one of "them") that the hippies didn't understand the real ramifications of being in Jesse....ie that the rules of the area allowed a Hobbesian resolution to the conflict. The only reason 'we' effectively lost was because Linden Labs broke their OWN rules and intervened like a Politically-correct Deus ex Machina. That was probably very validating for the hippies, we imagined, because it dovetailed so nicely with their general pro-nanny-state politics (again, ONLY as long as it agrees with their Leftish beliefs). So the WW2OLers lost in actuality, but IMVHO won a giant moral victory.

Screw entertainment, Second Life makes it exceedingly easy to create elaborate 3D online multimedia projects, machinima, games, you name it. I've been developing large projects on it since the damn thing opened, and I now run a 12-person company that focuses exclusively on Second Life development. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people living off Second Life already. How's that for utility?
Check out a list of all the profitable businesses developing stuff for SL:
http://secondlife.com/developers/
Now, I know just about everyone there on that list, and I can assure you that we are all pretty busy. Heck, I'm not even *ON* that list and I have about 8 projects going and I'm hiring all the time. (know LSL? know PHP? send me your resume! we may need up to 40 mini-games done in three months, among other things)
SL includes a firefox-based web browser, and can fully integrate with web servers as it contains a scripting language that allows programmatic communications with the "outside world" through email, XMLRPC or even HTTP.
Think of it as an easy way to make web applications, except with fancifully interactive 3D graphics. If you think there are no practical applications for SL then surely you must think the same thing about the web. E-commerce, banking, casinos and puzzle games, or even full-scale commercial quality games. Those little flash games everyone plays now and then? You can now do the same in 3D, and people are loving it.

Given that it is against the Terms of Service in WoW to exchange in-game currency or items for real life currency or items, I can't see that there would be any legal standing here.

Also, I believe Second Life's ToS explicitely states that Linden dollars have no legal value, also trumping any sort of tax law.

But then, neither was the income tax...

The SL grid had an unscheduled shutdown at about 6:15AM (Pacific) this morning, after the grid "Gods" as they call themselves gave only a 10 second warning that it was kicking everyone off. This did not allow time for people to take up their projects back to their inventory, save their scripts, or even finish a conversation.

As of this writing, it has been down six hours, but apparently the person in this marketing promo was admitted back into the closed grid, while a few thousand residents are all shut out while LL hobbles around looking for yet another permissions exploit.

This sudden grid closure thing has been happening a few times a week lately due to replicator attacks, exploits, or just random centralized server failures. It seems like LL's only goal lately is to hit that 1,000,000 total registered users milestone, everything else be damned. Nevermind that their concurrency:registered ratio is 1/4 of what it was a year ago this time. Nevermind that stability and customer service is at an all time low. Nevermind that they have to spend all of their time on fixing scalability problems instead of fixing long-standing bugs and feature requests. All that seems to matter anymore is that "total registered" number on their home page, which is really only a gauge of how many net-monkeys filled out the "gimmie a free account" form and logged in maybe once.

But it's nice to know the third party marketing promo accounts still get first class access to stay on the grid while they kick everyone else off because they can't be trusted.

But that's the Tao of Linden way I suppose.

The SL grid had an unscheduled shutdown at about 6:15AM (Pacific) this morning, after the grid "Gods" as they call themselves gave only a 10 second warning that it was kicking everyone off. This did not allow time for people to take up their projects back to their inventory, save their scripts, or even finish a conversation.

As of this writing, it has been down six hours, but apparently the person in this marketing promo was admitted back into the closed grid, while a few thousand residents are all shut out while LL hobbles around looking for yet another permissions exploit.

This sudden grid closure thing has been happening a few times a week lately due to replicator attacks, exploits, or just random centralized server failures. It seems like LL's only goal lately is to hit that 1,000,000 total registered users milestone, everything else be damned. Nevermind that their concurrency:registered ratio is 1/4 of what it was a year ago this time. Nevermind that stability and customer service is at an all time low. Nevermind that they have to spend all of their time on fixing scalability problems instead of fixing long-standing bugs and feature requests. All that seems to matter anymore is that "total registered" number on their home page, which is really only a gauge of how many net-monkeys filled out the "gimmie a free account" form and logged in maybe once.

But it's nice to know the third party marketing promo accounts still get first class access to stay on the grid while they kick everyone else off because they can't be trusted.

But that's the Tao of Linden way I suppose.

WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"
WIKIPEDIA != "THE WIKI"

Wikipedia wasn't the first wiki. It came about 6 years after the first wiki. Referring to it as "the wiki" in this context made me think you were talking about the Linden Scripting Language Wiki, or some wiki dedicated to SL. Please don't refer to Wikipedia as just "wiki". It makes it sound like WP was the first wiki, and/or makes people think that you're talking about some dedicated wiki.

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Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Yeah, it does.

http://secondlife.com/community/linux-alpha.php

Then you didnt really go to their website as they have both a MAC and a Linux client.
Nice try though, troll. http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php

Second Life Linux download IA32 only though.

Beware of the Grey goo there! Don't turn into it.

"I believe that many people will be doing lots of 'natural experiments' with collective intelligence in the next few years -- with or without us,"

-Eric

Linden Labs means Second Life, which could mean some VERY interesting things in the near-future of broadcasts. I know a number of events organised by news studios and bands have already taken place inworld, but this sounds a lot more solid than the minor contracts before. Screw Microsoft, I wanna see the BBC go virtual.

It even runs on Linux. Linux-Alpha 32bit Intel that is.

If you want to talk about the metaverse. Check out second life. Also check out The Metaverse Roadmap. The metaverse is comming the ground work is being laid now. It is people like you that have no vision and will be left behind when the revolution happens.

It would be cool if your character could get a job in this game.

They need a way to buy guns in the game so you can mug people.

Please take a look at this: second life. You can even look for stuff on Ebay for completion of research!

This "game" seems to trade high-level gear and other collectable items for (virtual) land.

Be ready to find it unbelievable.

Second life allows it, and even supplies an exchange rate on their site (based off what people are willing to buy from what I can tell)

You only get One Life

Errrr fixed link

As a gamer and an animator, I like Havok and I think it adds volumes to creating a realistic and vibrant 3D environment that moves as it should.

'Spore's unprecedented level of user-generated content is sure to send ripple effects through and beyond the video-game world. Could the mass-market game provide the tipping point for the burgeoning retail trend of mass customization? How will it redefine the roles of game designers and publishers alike? We asked a variety of experts to predict the economic, educational, legal, and other effects of the game.'

Hasn't anyone heard of Second Life? From what I've seen of Spore, only creatures are user created. You can't sell them and don't own the IP rights.

In Second Life you can create creatures, vehicles, gadgets, pretty much anything and sell them in-game while retaining the IP rights. Yes, the graphics suck in SL. But when people talk about the "economic, educational, legal and other effects" of a game they should look to SL, not Spore.

Have you ever played Second Life? Admittedly not the same thing, but you will definitely find it interesting.

I can lead a real life on second life if I want.
http://secondlife.com/

I think for this to work, there needs to be some kind of lego-type feature for building new, creative things. You start with a basic, finite set of elements, and allow for their combinations to affect the world in novel ways. Put them in people's hands and you will witness creativity you never thought possible.

Have you tried Second Life? It sounds sort of like what you're talking about here, but instead of doing neat creative things they mostly just try to sell each other porn or put on a female avatar and act as "escorts".

There's potential there to do much more, it's just that most people don't seem interested. Maybe you could show 'em what they should be doing. =)

You either design the game so that its *not possible* for other players to affect your progression in any way (which is extremely limiting from a design point of view), or you use an open-drain economy and do your best to track and contain farmers and manage the farming problem.

What the fuck are you talking about? LSL isn't undocumented and it isn't dynamically typed!

http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=HomeP age

Actually I think I confused it with some other game.

What the author seems to want is a many thousand player MOO or MUSH. I'm sorry to be the one to break it to him, but most people just have no interest in such an open-ended environment. MOOs and MUSHes were always more niche and less popular than their MUD brethren (though there were big ones out there, don't get me wrong.) But whereas anyone is capable of typing in a few lines of text and thus creating an object in a MOO, a modern game requires the ability to create 3D Models. And not only that to animate them. And not only that to do so well enough that it warrants repetitious viewing.

What you are describing is Second Life, and I hate to break it to you but it's becoming immensely popular for exactly the reasons set forth by the author. Because it's so open-ended, people come -- and stay. They're over a couple hundred thousand in population now, and the rate of increase is growing all the time.

-JT

I tend to have balanced views on most things, and this is no exception.

Being 'balanced' in saying something banal like "both sides were at fault" doesn't make your assertion correct.

If I create a virtual world and I give you permission use it, and - if you want to - to resell items created in it for real money and make it clear I can take it all away if I feel like it at any time, that's my right and I've done nothing wrong. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere and should not use the software. That is the stance LL take and it's made very clear.

How US law might view this is completely irrelevant to whether it was actually right or wrong, because ethically it was 100% wrong.

No it's not, LL can do this at any time they feel like it and customers are informed before they signup, in fact they are required to indicate they have specifically read and accepted the terms of service before they use the software. You did read Section 2.6 didn't you?

I'm guessing you've never played Second Life. The creator of any given object in Second Life can set bits that say whether or not you can copy/edit/sell that object. The game then enforces those bits. As it is done on the server and only the compiled textures and polys are sent to the client, there's no much you can do to get around this form of DRM. The end result is a pretty distopian vision of the future. You walk around in this world where you are free to conjure anything you want out of thin air, but you are prevented from using the things you see around you as a base for your creations by absentee content owners. Often an object of some beauty will be created by someone who has left the game entirely. There is absolutely no way for a regular player to get the DRM removed from the object so it can be reused. There are some players who release all their work with none of the DRM bits turned on, but they are few and far between. I can imagine a time where this ability to conjure things into existance will be provided to us in the real world using nanotechnology or some other new technology. Will our creations be DRM infested? Surely they will, because we all still live under the belief that we have some innate right control what others do with our creations.

It's called http://secondlife.com/.

Dude, try the linux alpha client http://secondlife.com/community/linux-alpha.php it runs *really* well, much faster than the windows version :) -- assuming you have an nvidia graphics card.

If you want to believe the post above, I have a bridge in FUD to sell you.

You seem to be mushing (har har) all virtual world games into one with your comment. Alphaville for example has nothing to do with Second Life. Alphaville is in the Sims Online - which is not Second Life.

There IS an economy in Second Life, and it's based on "Linden Dollars". Players have to pay REAL dollars to Linden Labs for an account, but only if they choose to own land.

You might want to read up on Second Life's economic system a bit at http://secondlife.com/whatis/marketplace.php

I got those figures from the Second Life website. Your post says that you have some deal by which you are not charged a monthly (or the one time) fee. If so, I would be interesting in finding out how that is possible. That page mentions a free basic account, but I had to ante up the $9.95 to make it last beyond the first week, so I assumed it was referring to the 7-day trial period. Either that or the Lindens need to put more work into their accounting system.

Or is your point that you have been able to make a profit in-game that more than covers your subscription fees?

Being that the game is wide open and totally driven by user content, it can be as fun as you can make. Second Life is currently running a Game Development Contest that looks like it could have some very entertaining entries.

A related idea I had recently which I wanted to toss into the open...

Lately on slashdot we've been having a few stories about the (Snow Crash-like) Second Life virtual world, and its active virtual economy. Take this article from Wired:

Wired: Making a Living in Second Life

I think it would be quite interesting to try using Second Life's economy and scriptable world to create an in-game prediction market, similar to that described in the NYT article. Instead of using a purely reputation-based currency such a market could use the game's Linden Dollars, which can be exchanged with US dollars. The use of Linden Dollars would also help get around some of the anti-gambling laws one runs into when US dollars are involved. It seems that in-game scripts can communicate with external servers via email or XML-RPC, so one could probably have such an in-game script placing orders with a server running the open-source prediction market software like Foresight Exchange or Zocalo.

One might even imagine creating a Futarchy-like system, with bids made on decisions about how to make the market (or organization running the market) prosper in the Second Life world. That could be interesting. I've lately been musing a bit on how such a system might be a cute way to create a seed superintelligence, or more precisely, a self-improving collective intelligence.

I think this line of thinking is absurd. It makes no sense from a gameplay perspective. To use the aformentioned example, if the crack dealer from GTA shouldn't drop in on the Sims BBQ, why have that ability? Even in MMOs, one of the major points of the game, ostensibly, is to experience the world. If the worlds are all the same, or can be transversed easily, why bother? There has already been an attempt at this, it's called Second Life. You can, in fact, have a magic castle next to an urban wasteland. Gameplay suffers, and at it's best, SL is a giant chatroom with a pretty (if slow) interface.

This is a half-baked idea that falls apart in the face of even casual reasoning.

Side note: are there any MMOGs that have a graphic interface that is built around a user's imagination?

Secondlife at http://secondlife.com/

The official site claims about 156,000 users. 70% of 156K = 109,200. 109.2K divided by 23K hours = about 4.75 hours of work to create an artifact.

Conclusion: People are stupid.

I don't think size is as important. I don't think big ensures success (eg: profits). All one really needs is enough user base to over the costs of development and operations--everything above that is gravy.

Project Entropia has been around for like 8 years now. At first, there were not many players. But today they have over 300K players. Second Life has been around for about 3 yrs and is boasting around 30K user base. And these games are going strong. I'm sure theres lot of other games that have made it by being small too.

I'm a resident of Second Life, an online virtual world. Very different than a MMORPG, it's basically an open-ended place for people to socialize, build, et cetera. Second Life is also unique in that you own the copyright of any content you create in-world. This has lead to some really creative and clever objects.

More to the point though, the phenomenon of live music has really taken hold within Second Life. There are several artist residents (Astrin Few and Flaming Moe are two I can think of) who hold regular concerts, play in virtual taverns, and overall take advantage of the relatively cultured community that exists within the world (the client supports streaming audio via ShoutCast servers). I also know of a Live Music Festival (organized by a resident named Nethermind Bliss) that will be happening this year, with both a true live venue on the east cost and a virtual venue in-world. This hybrid event will be a great opportunity to expose residents to some talented artists.

-JT

Second life is an online virtual world. So, what is needed for something to be like the Metaverse? In my opinion that will be a virtual world with photorealistic graphics, realistic physics and advanced capabilities for its users to create the world and in-world services.

Second Life is still a bit primitive is this regard, but it's the best there is. I remember the first virtual online worlds I saw back around 94 or so, they really sucked. A bit later came Active World, in my opinion that sucked too, so much that i wasn't usable. Second Life is the first virtual online world that is starting to get usable. It's not a game in itself, but can be used to make games.

The graphics in Second Life is still far from photorealistic, eveything is streamed over the internet so it's limited by bandwith and also that today's computers are still too slow. Most of the things in-world are created by users. The objects are made of something called primitives, that each has a set of parameters stored on a server. When you go somewhere these parameters are streamed from a server and plugged into some algorithm in the client that will turn them into 3D objects and render them. In many cases this can use less bandwith than meshes, but support for meshes made in software like Maya and 3D studio is eventually inevitable and necessary and has been used in earlier worlds like Active Worlds. It's currently starting to get interesting, but it give 5 more years and it should start to get good.

The physics is the Havok 1 physics engine, it's pretty basic and the collision detection is a bit inaccurate. Havok 3 is currently in the process of being implemented as a replacement for Havok 1, it should improve the situation quite a bit, but realistic realtime physics simulation still requires more horsepower than is available today at a reasonable price. Especially in an environment like this where there can be lots of users on one server who're all interacting with the physics engine in more or less complex ways. Faster CPUs and perhaps physics processing units has the potential to make this much better in a few years. Don't get me wrong, the physics is still good for many things, it's already possible to create simple mechanical devices like catapults, but complex mechanical machines are still a bit off.

Second Life has a built-in scripting language called LSL, the langauge is not very mature and developing complex things takes much more work than would be needed with a more mature language, although it's still good for simple things. Mono is currently in the process of being implemented on SL servers as a replacement for the current virtual machine. It's only in testing stages yet though so it's probably a few months until it's installed on user accessible servers. Mono as the virtual machine will eventually later this year mean that it will be possible to write code in C#, Boo, Python or whatever instead of using LSL(LSL will still be available but won't be developed more as a language). This will basically mean that you can use the publically available SL API (found at http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=funct ions) with any programming language that is supported by Mono. This API is still a bit high-level which makes some things impossible to make, but it's slowly moving forward.

Second life is a free MMO in which the players create and trade content for in game currentcy which is called Linden dollars. Yoou can also buy and sell the in world currency for U.S. dollars.

I got on and played around with it for about 2 hours last night. While it's an interesting concept and neat to explore and talk to people. I havent really found anything yet that would want to make me place a huge time investment into it. I'll probably try it out a bit more and see if I find anything look me up if you get on my name is Darthmalt Demar.

If you want a very fancy 3D chat room check out Second Life. It is something like a very primitive version of the Metaverse. It's actually a pretty fun alternative to WoW when you get sick of chasing that epic armor set and just want to chat and build things.

Free at more basic levels, there are payments due from more advanced players. Checkout this broacher!

ahref=http://secondlife.com/whatis/pricing.phprel= url2html-5010http://secondlife.com/whatis/pricing. php>



Note: the preview for the link is looking weird so I'm including this as an old fasion cut 'n paste just in case: http://secondlife.com/whatis/pricing.php

Also, all online games come with a warning from the ESRB: "Experience may change during online play."

-Aaron

Yeah, if you want any kind of non-standard relationship, you need to get a life... available here. ;)

Although it seems (and may be) discriminatory, we have to keep in mind a few things. First of all, this is a computer game. And like someone else already mentioned, Blizzard wants to keep the focus of the game on the gameplay, and not on the politics/religion/race/sexual orientation of the players. The intent of the game is NOT to recreate real life, but to create a fantasy world, and effectively entertain the players. However it is part of the gameplay to establish a sense of community and fellowship with other gamers whom you like and play with. Not only is this desirable in the "hippy" sense but it is fiscally wise for Blizzard because the more fellowship for users the more likely they will continue to play their MMORPG. To deny recruitment for certain communities without outright banning all recruitment is outright discrimination. Especially when you factor in /ignore capabilities. Secondly, Blizzard has a lot to lose from allowing a free-for-all on their forums & servers. Yes, we should encourage tolerance and understanding, but a fantasy online world is probably one of the worst places to do so. Besides, by allowing the free-for-all that would probably ensue if they maintained a hands-off approach, the persecuted members would probably leave because the harassment ruined the game, some of the persecutes would leave out of disgust that Blizzard allowed the persecuted, and everyone would be a little turned off by the inevitable flamewars. No they really don't, they have nothing to lose by allow people the freedom to create [and encourage] communities for any reason. Hell 2nd life[secondlife.com] maintains only the legally minimalistic control over their universe and are certainly not plagued by flamewars and destructive anarchy. Those offended by GLBT recruit would ignore those members and those who reacted immaturely and offensively to that recruitment would be ignored by the recruiters. Thirdly, you must remember that Blizzard owns WoW. It's a business. And their priority is to make money. If that means asking some players with unpopular real-world views or characteristics to keep said views or characteristics to themselves in order to keep more people happy and paying, so be it. They are not infringing on those players' rights to free speech elsewhere, or their religion/race/sex/orientation/whatever in real life. It's a private institution, and they can set and enforce the rules as you see fit. Finally you have to remember that Blizzard is a United States business and their servers are located here and thus they must maintain all US laws. This means they cannot discriminate based on race/gender/religion or whatever. Integration pretty much did away with all that happy crappy. They are indeed a private institution but they can only set the legal rules they see fit.