At this time next week, the gaming masses--developers, publishers, journalists and fan boys--will descend upon the Los Angeles Convention Center to collectively have their hearing permanently damaged by the sound and fury of E3. We know a few things for sure: their will be announcements, sessions, unveilings, scantily clad women and large men guarding cordoned-off areas as if they housed ultra-cool partygoers sipping champagne (rather than nerds catching demos of Doom). Amidst the glitter, neon and decibles, what will matter? It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term.

Some highlights of this issue's content: I came across this transcript of "pirates" conversing with a GM over an anti-perching policy while reading through f13.net the other day: I thought it was brilliantly funny but I'd never really expect anyone besides hardcore players to see it as such. A lot of player-generated humor is also external to game worlds themselves--there's a genre of schaudenfrade-type humor focusing on especially stupid or clueless players who reveal themselves as such on game forums, for example. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term. The truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levels. Buy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life!

Humor about massively-multiplayer online games, or computer and video games in general, is notoriously an insider's art. Barely a month goes by without a pretentious independent artist or cartoonist taking a shot at the creators of PvP or Penny Arcade about the extent to which their strips require a knowledge of gaming or geek culture to be funny. My personal sounding board, aka my spouse who rigorously abstains from all knowledge of games and gaming, nevertheless finds both strips pretty amusing with some frequency. It also raises some interesting non-design problems. It looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-term.

Whether the context is PvP or PvE, that's an enormous intrinsic advantage. Stealth may also allow a player to "bypass content", e.g., to avoid battles that other players have to engage in, and therefore to farm resources and level faster. Anyway, the upshot of this is that people really, really don't like rogues now. At least they have some hope of running away if they see visible level 60s. Invisible enemies prowling around are a different matter. Many of the complaints about rogues strike me as focused on red herrings, like "stunlock". The real issue is stealth itself.

Right now anti-rogue sentiment within World of Warcraft is rising to a fever pitch. A lot of that has to do with the poor initial implementation of the game's PvP "honor system", which has not only turned players into farmable resources but which has in-built incentives which actively encourage play that many regard as griefing. A level 60 character is rewarded for killing a level 49 character--which, somewhat predictably, has led to many level 60 characters flooding into zones where level 49 characters are known to be going about their business. Rogues especially. Since I play a level 60 rogue on a PvP server, I'll confess: I've been prowling about looking for easy prey.

So here is the diversity question: On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation. We talk to the illusion of a world with many concurrent activities and a speak least metaphorically, to the agencies that can live in such places (e.g. of Non-Player-Characters and Player-Characters interacting with shared world state). In the fact of today, however, such parallelism is a fiction - most games are implemented within a single simulation thread (they just iterate through all the objects quickly but in sequence... "butcher before baker before the cat jumps over the moon..."), but this is likely to change, perhaps very soon.

Is it the case, that nomatter where you go, virtually, there *you* still are, "acting with yourself." On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation. We talk to the illusion of a world with many concurrent activities and a speak least metaphorically, to the agencies that can live in such places (e.g. of Non-Player-Characters and Player-Characters interacting with shared world state). In the fact of today, however, such parallelism is a fiction - most games are implemented within a single simulation thread (they just iterate through all the objects quickly but in sequence... "butcher before baker before the cat jumps over the moon..."), but this is likely to change, perhaps very soon.

Terra Nova now offers a targeted editing function for its users. If you do not like anything on Terra Nova's main page - an author, a link, a post, whatever - you can now delete it by clicking on the 'edit' link below: On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation. We talk to the illusion of a world with many concurrent activities and a speak least metaphorically, to the agencies that can live in such places (e.g. of Non-Player-Characters and Player-Characters interacting with shared world state).

“I came across this in one Mark Wallace's Escapist pieces: I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us. It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations.

In the past week or so there has been much discussion (e.g. Slashdot) regarding Second Life's use of a corn field as a novel means of punishing misdemeanors. As far as her personal MMO addictions, she mostly sticks to Second Life, where she enjoys dabbling in (and spying on) online sexuality. I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the time. They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at us. It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations.