Virtual Cultures

Community in tough times, Doctorow on why Facebook will fail, and the Indiana Virtual Worlds Seminar

We're still here!  And still thinking and, when time permits, writing.

For your viewing pleasure, a bit I did on the value of community for a business (game) especially in tough times, at the Mary-Margaret Network site (recruiters par excellence, helping me to find a new gig).

Second, Cory Doctorow on How Facebook will be killed, from two years ago.  Survey?  What do we say? (I think it's spot on... what's in the wings?).

And last, I've been invited to participate in the Indiana University Virtual Worlds Workshop, giving a talk on community management, of course, and leading a workshop with Lee Sheldon on virtual world platforms.  Really looking forward to it, from a variety of perspectives... should be a great group, and I have come to really like Bloomington.  Plus, working with Lee will be great.

Jon Radoff's slides from IMGDC

Jon Radoff of GamerDNA (which is a totally exciting and needed gamer social network) has posted his slides from the talk he did at IMGDC this year, "Ten Top Trends in Online Games".  Among other things, they're starting to collect all sorts of interesting data on player behavior... check it out:

http://radoff.com/blog/2009/04/21/top-trends-in-online-games/

Richard Bartle and the Lost Girls: IMGDC 2009 Keynote

Dr. Richard Bartle's keynote for the last day of IMGDC was quite possibly one of those events that defines an industry, creating a ripple that affects everything that comes after.  He offered a stellar analysis of a key feature, and problem, in virtual world design, suggested a solution that seems obvious (in retrospect, of course), and wrapped it all in an outstanding and compelling metaphor.  

Live from Las Vegas: IMGDC 3

The Indie Multiplayer Game Developers Conference has a special place in our (Ron and my hearts) because, although we’d been talking about starting a blog for a long time, the first IMGDC conference, held two years ago in Minneapolis, gave us the impetus to actually kick this blog off. This conference also holds a special place for me since it is the one event that fuses my two passions: multiplayer games and indie games. It’s quite a feat to pull of a conference like this in an economic downturn, and in true indie style Jonathan Stevens, IMGDC’s founder, averted disaster and managed to pull the conference together in Las Vegas against particularly daunting odds.

Ron and I decided to split the loot on this one, so I’m going to start with a summary of the first and second day keynotes, and talk about a few themes that emerged during the three days.

Metanomics Part 2 - The Aftermath

The debate seems to be heating up at Terra Nova.

Metanomics Part 2: Research Methods Roundtable, Mon. 3/30, 11am PST

Monday, March 30, at 11am Pacific (SLT), Tom Boellstorff, myself and Thomas Malaby will be doing a follow up roundtable discussion in response to some of the issues that came up surrounding our last visit to the show (see previous blogposts). Stay tuned... For more, go here.

New Social Media in Virtual Worlds (at GDC)

Just a quick note, I'll be leading a panel on new social media in Virtual Worlds - looking at existing best practices and some of the (exciting) potential there for fitting the two together.  I'll be joined by Dr. Bob Moore, Betsy Book, and Giff Constable, it should be a really good presentation and discussion, they're all great and knowledgeable folks.  Hope you can join us (it's Tuesday afternoon, part of the Worlds in Motion summit... 4:00 pm I believe).  

Experimenting with Virtual Worlds: The Phantom Rebuttal

I share Celia’s frustration, detailed in her “Denizens of Virtual Worlds as Lab Rats?” posting, with the way that Dr. Bloomfield chose to end our Metanomics discussion. His monologue was quite ill-informed: despite making strong claims about how culture should in his opinion be studied, he offered us no opportunity for a rebuttal. I actually typed in some backchat comments as he was speaking (a nifty form of resistance afforded by virtual-world technologies), but there was no chance to engage in a real dialogue. I hope that I will have the opportunity to engage in future dialogue with Dr. Bloomfield.

Denizens of Virtual Worlds as Lab Rats? A Metanomics Rebuttal

On Monday March 3, I participated in a joint interview with my close friend and colleague Tom Boellstorff on the Metanomics radio program, which is podcast on the web and presented live inside Second Life. (For a delightful parody of the event, go here.) I won’t go into too much detail about the substance of the event, which is available on the Metanomics archive. In this blogpost, I’d like to take the opportunity to respond Ron Bloomfield’s closing comments, a courtesy we were not afforded at the time.

Celia Pearce and Tom Boellstorff on Metanomics, March 2nd, Noon Pacific

METANOMICS: Av-Culturation Host Robert Bloomfield and guests Celia Pearce and Tom Boellstorff Monday, March 2, Noon to 1 PM Pacific Time Monday, March 2, Noon to 1 PM Pacific Time This Monday, from the exotic to the mundane, Metanomics explores avatar culture. Anthropologists Tom Boellstorff and Celia Pearce are developing new methods and theories about human relationships in virtual worlds. Join us as we discuss how the traditional practice of ethnography is being adapted to the study of online immersive environments and how virtual worlds shape identities, economies, communities and societies. To attend the event live in Second Life® visit one of the Metanomics Event Partners, or teleport to our event partner landing. To view live on the web, visit our Watch Live web page. If you would like to participate in the live chat, join and log in to the Metanomics website.