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Midwestern Conference

IMGDC is in Minnesota. After having had conferences across the Atlantic coast, this is a nice change of pace. People hold doors and say words like “please” and “thank you.” They smile and greet you even though they have never met you and will never see you again; these are not paid employees, these are just people at the same store being friendly Midwesterners. If you turn on a blinker, people will make space for you, instead of tailgating to make sure you don’t get ahead of them.

It is like going from Something Awful to Terra Nova.

: Zubon

Virtual materialism

We’ve all heard grumbling here and there about the latest WoW patch’s new high-end loot. The new loot can be obtained much more easily than before the patch, when you had to complete high-end raids to get gear of this caliber. The grumbling generally revolves around the idea that it’s unfair and demoralizing to raiders who obtained similar gear when it was more difficult to do so.

My feeling on this is, so what? The change is not massive, and there are good reasons for it — it will help more people see high-end content before the expansion comes out. But more importantly, there’s more to WoW than gear. What about the experience of learning to work as a team? What about the satisfaction of overcoming a really tough boss fight? What about the aesthetic beauty of seeing a new dungeon? What about meeting new people and making new friends as you play together?

Being overly-focused on gear is simply materialism brought to the virtual world. It’s not a very fulfilling path. I’m not saying gear is bad, or material goods are bad, just that treating them with the proper priority is an important part of having a fulfilling life in a virtual world as well as the physical one.

Two Point Four aka The Last Freebie

Recent changes in my Real Life have forced my Online Life to pretty much be non-existent. A full time job and full time college will do that to you, plus lots of other personal obligations, such as helping my wife study for her classes – which she passed, with flying red, white, and blue colors and became an American Citizen just yesterday – but I do miss being able to pass my days away in Warcraft. Especially now that we have ‘the new shiney’ of patch 2.4.

Continue reading Two Point Four aka The Last Freebie

Behavioral Economics in MMOs, Part 1

Lately, I’ve been reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, a book on the relatively new science of behavioral economics. Classical economics states that, given all necessary information, people and therefore markets will behave rationally and in their own best interests. However, behavioral economics states that people will very often behave irrationally, and that we must modify economic theory based on that irrationality. The most interesting point, to me, and the one that the book takes its name from, is that, while people may behave irrationally in regards to economic choices, they do so in a predictable fashion. Okay, it’s interesting, but what does it have to do with MMOs? A lot, as it turns out.
Continue reading Behavioral Economics in MMOs, Part 1

On Towards IMGDC

I am here in sunny Minneapolis. My hotel is literally across the street from the Mall of America, which would be great if I liked to shop, but maybe I will poke my head in. I am here well in advance of IMGDC for another conference; if you are in town early, I am told that the exhibits hall for the Public Library Association will be stellar, and you can make back the cost of an exhibits-only pass by finding a few free books that interest you (a few months before they are published). (Not exactly what the exhibitors are hoping for, but I do post reviews of the books.)

Having driven most of yesterday, I felt as though I had fallen off the world. All day without my continuous news and internet feed! Insane! But I am obviously not so far out that I cannot blog. I need this internet thing since I wrote someone’s number down and left it by my computer at home. Bother. Isn’t my cell phone supposed to know these things? Anyway, e-mail remains the best way to reach me, granted with a delay because it is no longer continuously on.

My thanks again to Craig from Voyages in Eternity and Ethic from Kill Ten Rats for getting me into IMGDC. I expect that I will see folks there. I had been planning to suggest some sort of blogger get-together, but I noticed a 5-hour official after party on the schedule. That seems like a natural Schelling point. I am leaning towards the development track for my time at IMGDC, so sorry Nic if I miss your chat.

Comments are open if anyone has recommendations, requests, commands, etc. Cell phones are lovely things for on-site coordination of efforts. I will be sure to post comments from/about sessions afterwards, but I might not have much to say until then, having fallen off the world and all. Which is not a shot at Minnesota.

: Zubon

The depth behind ARGs and MMO’s

I poked my nose into The Lost Ring on Thursday night, and man, did I get sucked in. The Lost Ring is a very large-scale ARG designed by Jane McGonigal, one of the designers behind I Love Bees. It’s tied in with the 2008 Olympics and they’re really making it a global event — the game characters all speak/blog/write different languages, the clues are all in Esperanto, and objects are scattered all over the world.

Anyway, as I finally pulled myself out of the rabbit hole this evening, it’s occurred to me that there’s an important similarity between ARGs and MMO’s that tends to make them powerful experiences for those involved, and that is that both types of games are a lot closer to real life than other types of games. I’m not talking about sensory things, like graphics and sound (ARGs are especially good at those!). I’m talking about higher-level gameplay mechanics like relationship building and teamwork. In the case of MMO’s, you also have things like economics and sometimes ecologies.

Compared to mechanics like maneuvering tactics or aiming in an FPS, these are a lot more interesting than. They involve more parts of ourselves — more of our brain, and more of our heart. And they’re usually more relevant to the rest of our lives, as well.

One of Raph Koster’s claims in A Theory of Fun (wow, $150 for a copy now? Time for a reprint, Raph) is that fact that much of the emotional feeling of “fun” is actually our brain’s reaction to learning something. I think it’s true, and I also think there’s potential for a deeper, more meaningful sort of fun when the things we are learning reach deeper into us and have greater relevance to our overall lives.

Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse

We have blasted through malls and ghost towns full of zombies, but are you ready for the zombie apocalypse? No, seriously. After all the humorous books and online quizzes about survival, someone has been taking a real world approach for the past five years:

Zombie Squad realizes that it is quite possible for someone to live their entire lives without encountering the undead nuisance. However, we hold fast to the belief that if you are prepared for a scenario where the walking corpses of your family and neighbors are trying to eat you alive, you will be prepared for almost anything.

Have you even backed up your computer? The Red Cross has some guidance on how to prepare in case of fire, flood, or terrorist attack. You have already learned the critical lesson of looking up for aliens on the ceiling. Check your smoke alarms while you are at it.

: Zubon

Fidelity

Champions Online will be almost as similar to Champions as Dungeons and Dragons Online is to Dungeons and Dragons. Which is to say, they are keeping the names and using an entirely different set of mechanics.

To compare this system to others, there is no such thing as a “Dark Blast” or an “Ice Blast” in the HERO System. Mechanically, everything is just an Energy Blast, but with different advantages and even limitations applied. … We are using systems that are essentially the same, but fit the MMORPG genre somewhat better. In Champions Online, we will have Dark Blast, Ice Blast, etc.

: Zubon