Archiving the History of Virtual Worlds

eldavojohn writes "Some members of the University of Texas are trying to create a repository to store the histories of online virtual worlds. They hope that game makers will take advantage of this repository as they define standards of how to save interactions not only between players and the virtual worlds but also other players. How many times have I destroyed you in a duel? Let's check the records!"

Comments

Are we running out of stuff to do?

[philspear]

There aren't enough real events to chronicle, so we're moving on to virtual worlds? We've perfected news reporting with CNN and FOX so now we're going to start working on current events in WOW?

What is wrong with us?

Re:Are we running out of stuff to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't enough real events to chronicle, so we're moving on to virtual worlds? We've perfected news reporting with CNN and FOX so now we're going to start working on current events in WOW?

What is wrong with us?

I totally agree. Also why are all those authors, filmmakers, etc. wasting time chronicling completely fake events, when there are so many real events going unchronicled?

Won't somebody please think of the real events?!

Re:Are we running out of stuff to do?

[SirLurksAlot]

Didn't you hear? They redefined news reporting as sock-puppetry and regurgitated talking points. So yes, FOX news is absolutely a pinnacle of news reporting.

Re:Are we running out of stuff to do?

[Kingrames]

Your nerd card is hereby revoked.

Just because you're not "into it" doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. It's a safe bet nearly every hobby of yours would be considered a waste of time by most people.

Re:Are we running out of stuff to do?

[Lewisham]

I know this is Slashdot, and actually RTFA is rare, but had you actually done so, you'd have read this:

'"When you are trying to preserve anything you are trying to preserve the most important things about that artefact," she said. "With video games we do not yet know what is important."'

CNN and Fox are being archived very well already. But we have large gaps, and it's important to keep as much as we can, just in case.

We've been very good thus far at preserving our culture for studies by future generations, but that was because everything we made was stored in a physical entity. It didn't matter whether the creators thought it important or not, we at least could come back to it in later generations if we needed to.

The Digital Age has meant we're losing huge swathes of information because we can't keep up. Archive.org is going to be amazingly important, but it'll take later generations to figure out why.

I'm very pleased that someone has realized that the beginnings of virtual worlds will also be important. We can't possibly contemplate where they're going to go in just 50 years. We're going to want to know how they started when we get there.

Re:Who really cares?

[Moraelin]

Yeah, the online gaming industry needs to get a life. All those damn CEOs with all that money, probably a new hooker every other weekend. They're such losers.

Actually that's just the thing: those stereotypical EA and Sony CEOs probably care more about the money, than about each time M33tm1ss1le ganked PigBenis in their game.

Even for a game designer, you're just a statistic. Even the guy scratching his head about balancing priests in the next patch, probably cares more about the percentage of times a priest won against a rogue. Not about the individual events.

Heck, even looking at RL history, we're only really interested in the big picture. We may be interested in the fact that Brennus's Gaul army crushed the Roman army by totally pwning the newbs on the wings and then enveloping the centre. But nobody gives a fuck about exactly which Celtic warrior killed exactly which roman, and viceversa.

The saying that comes to mind is: not seeing the forest for the trees. That's the problem with looking at the details of billions of data points, as opposed to the big statistic.

So basically even if it were RL events, nobody would want to know it in the detail that the summary implies. For online games? Heh. In UT alone there were many millions of deaths per week after launch, or more death per second than at Kursk or the famous wipe at Cannae or Teutoburg. Nobody sane is interested in _that_ kind of level of detail.

At best, a few people will be deluded enough to think that someone else gives a flying fuck about how many times they pwned who. As the summary seems to imply. You know, that all will bow before the mighty PigBenis because of his score.

So, yeah, it's a shame that the OP will probably get modded down, because that's exactly what it is: anyone thinking that humanity is interested in knowing the how many times PigBenis won against M33tm1ss1le, needs to get a life. Not because it's a game, but because it's that fucking stupid even from the perspective of a games addict. Again, nobody is interested in that kind of detail even for RL battles that (arguably) changed the course of history. And that goes double for anyone who thinks that _he_ personally is that important and worthy of having his online exploits documented for all to gasp in awe.

Re:Griefers are already doing this

[fishbowl]

Snapzilla http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/

There are a few genuinely interesting people in Second Life still, and some of them do genuinely interesting things.
Yes the game is full of total whackjobs and idiots, but people with their heads screwed on straight tend to gravitate
toward / build locations that are simply too boring (to the griefers) to ever be messed with.

Of course, I tend to ruthlessly avoid interaction with players who hide their Real Life identities. That pares the field WAY down, which suits me fine.

I'm a musician in SL. It's really difficult for an artist with a recognizable style to hide his or her identity, and I consider it folly to do so.
I also think it's funny that people are actually concerned about the fact that, whatever the numbers are, X% of the avatars are female and X+Y% of the players are male. When you narrow your interactions down to only those players who are willing to be upfront and honest about their Real Life identities, those things are no longer a subject of consideration, and then you are simply dealing with interesting people, just like any other social networking or what have you.

Re:Time-Travel Research?

[merreborn]

Suppose that events in a virtual world were transactional and were logged to a change log, ala a DBMS system. Suppose further that you could rollback the state of the virtual world to a known point in time, apply a different transaction, and then replay the remainder of the transaction log.

The interesting component of history and time travel is not logged in transaction logs, and that's choice.

You're essentially asking, "What if someone had assassinated Hitler in 1938... and then everyone made exactly the same choices, regardless?"

The idea of simulating time travel is interesting, but it's critical that you then also simulate each actor's decision making process.