Virtual Cultures

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: 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.

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.

Audio Recording of our Austin GDC Panel

In September, Ron posted briefly that we were at the Austin Game Developers Conference doing a panel with Rand Miller, Blake Lewin and Eleri Hamilton (a prominent Uru fan) called The World That Players Wouldn't Let Die. For your listening pleasure, we were able to get hold of an . Give it a minute for the download...then...enjoy!

Registration Opens for Living Game Worlds IV, Dec. 1-2

Registration is now open for
Living Game Worlds IV - Interplay: Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds

December 1-2, 2008
Georgia Tech Technology Square Research Building
85 5th Street, Atlanta, GA

Step in to the vanguard of digital gaming at Georgia Tech’s 4th annual Living Game Worlds symposium to be held December 1-2, 2008.   Raph Koster and Chris Klaus headline this year’s conference which will showcase “InterPlay,” networked online play and the rapidly-growing domains of multiplayer games and virtual worlds.  The symposium will also feature a pioneers panel including luminaries Richard Bartle, Brian Green, Chip Morningstar, Randy Farmer and Pavel Curtis.  Early registration ends October 31. Register now at http://gameworlds.gatech.edu

Media Inquiries: gameworlds-media@lists.gatech.edu
All other Inquiries: gameworlds@lists.gatech.edu

NSF Workshop at UC Irvine: Part 1

Last weekend, I co-hosted an NSF-funded workshop at UCI Irvine entitled "Productive Play: The Convergence of Work and Play in Online Games and Virtual Worlds." We had a stellar cast of participants, who can be seen here: Productive Play Web Site: Participants

One of the highlights was our opening "pioneers" keynote conversation, which included Randy Farmer, Chip Morningstar, Pavel Curtis, and Bruce Damer. The four of them showed and talked about early virtual worlds dating back to 1986 and it became apparent pretty quickly that other than better graphics and higher bandwidth, we are grappling with a lot of the same issues today, and may even be moving backwards in some respects. A special treat was that Chip showed the original promotional video for LucasFilm Habitat, which is now posted on YouTube. Pavel Curtis showed Jupiter, a distributed work environment that was developed by extending the basic LambdaMOO "engine." Bruce Damer also talked about his early Avatars! conferences in ActiveWorlds.

More to follow...

Cultures of Virtual Worlds, UC Irvine

This should be proclaimed Virtual World Quarter (not to be confused with Real Earth Day) since it seems like there has been a high concentration of events on the between March, April and May. In March, Life 2.0 was held inside Second Life. Sadly, first life, especially the part of that involves classes, students and book deadlines, detained me from joining that. However, this last weekend, I was able to get myself to Irvine for the Cultures of Virtual Worlds Conference instigated by my dear friend (and one of my PhD advisers), Tom Boellstorff, along with Maria Bezaitis from Intel, who sponsored the event.

Highlights from Austin GDC

I’ve been wanting to attend Austin GDC ever since it launched, especially as it is the Mecca of multiplayer games, and I must say my expectations were met and exceeded. One reason was the handiwork of Rich Vogel (now at Bioware), who I ran into in the Speakers’ Lounge, and who was behind the two excellent keynotes that took place on Thursday and Friday morning. Rich told me that he wanted to shake up the audience by showing them two online games that rival or surpass World of Warcraft, games that most people at the conference had never heard of. The two sleeper titles in question? Habbo Hotel and Maple Story. I have been aware of both of these games/virtual worlds for some time, mostly through my exposure to teenagers, who seem to know way more about what’s hot in online games than most industry “experts.”

Report from SIGGRAPH Sandbox: Warren Spector Keynote on Emergent Gameplay

Warren Spector’s Saturday morning Keynote  for the SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium focused on a topic near and dear to my heart: emergence. Spector has been a master of emergent gameplay with titles like Thief and Deus Ex, the latter of which took some bold steps in terms of trying to leverage “emergence as a design material,” as I term it. Spector was, as always, delightfully curmudgeonly, exploring the topic with equal measures of humor and cynicism, but also providing very specific examples.

Gamasutra Article about Indie MMOG

Sorry I'm a little behind the curve on this but there's a nice article by Gus Mastrapa in Gamasutra about the Indie MMOG Conference, including an interview with Virtual Cultures co-author Pearce on the Mermaids game.

I'm really pleased to see the conference has gotten so much coverage, being a relatively small event. Kudos to John and his team at  Last Straw Productions for creating such a buzz! And thanks for bringing the rest of us long for the ride!