Virtual Cultures

"Chinese Second Life Clone": Virtual Capitalism for Communists?

Thanks to Jacki Morie for bringing to our attention the Beta Launch of HiPiHi, a product that everyone is calling the "Chinese Second Life Clone." I noticed a comment about it in TerraNova from March: "Why don't you meatheads start researching and writing about what everyone is currently buzzing about? Namely, did HiPiHi really steal SL's code to make their virtual world?" (Jeff) It was also blogged around the same time by Raph Koster, who recommends an article by Bjorn Lee comparing the two.

An interesting week...

I'm horrible at this stuff, but there have been a number of recent conversations about community and culture that strike me as worth noting, for several reasons... And in the aggregate, it seems like there's a new upswell in genuine interest in and understanding of what community management means, and how online community culture functions.

New Peer-to-Peer Virtual World out of Australia

An interesting article from February about a new peer-to-peer virtual world, Outback Online, which seems to be competing with Second Life. The peer-to-peer aspect is ingriguing. Anybody know if this is a real thing or just hype?

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!

Nick Yee's Player Motivation Diagram

Interest in Nick Yee's Player Motivation taxonomy started in the comments on the OGDC presentation by Nicole Lazzaro - it's a nicely nuanced presentation of player motivations - among other things, these descriptions are not exclusive, a player can have motivational factors in several components.  The original write up is here: 

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001298.php?page=1

And I thought it might be fun to get people taking the survey, to see what we think of it.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/assess/mot_survey1.php

OGDC: Nicole Lazzaro's presentation on Emotion in Games

Nicole Lazzaro of Xeodesign has become a leading industry authority on emotion in games:  what people are feeling and how they respond to it.  She gives presentations and workshops around the world, she's cited by Raph Koster (http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/15/exceptionalism/ and others), her research is well supported, interesting, and useful.

OGDC: The Importance of Community (a new hope)

The inaugural OGDC conference in Seattle last week was a great success:  well attended, but small enough to enable a sense of common identity and purpose, a feeling that we were all in it together.  The industry participants were from a number of studios and technology companies, and the panels and presentations were very strong and informative and, amazingly enough, several voices called out for recognition of the role of community and community managers.   

IBM Building Vitual World Intranet in Torque

As many people are already aware, IBM has been tinkering with Second Life as an alternative space for distributed work.  (See C-Net: IBM Breaks Groud in Second Life) Now, according to Clickable Culture, IBM is rolling its own Virtual World, as described in this article sent to me by Bonnie Nardi of UC Irvine. It's interesting to note that for smaller groups, Torque seems to accommodate about the same number as a Second Life Island. They also cite Torque as an alternative to Multiverse, which I guess is okay if you're IBM and have the resources to build your own back-end!

New ARG from Jane McGonigal: World Without Oil

Just a quick head's up that the incomparable Jane McGonigal (who's done just a slew of great stuff, from "I Love Bees" to some great exploratory work on interactions in games online and in the default world) has now launched ... well, to quote Jane (always a great idea if you have the opportunity):

"WWO is a game for good -- the first alternate reality game to tackle a real-world problem. Gamers to save the world? Hell, yes!"

Check it out and sign up!  It'll be worth it, no question...

http://avantgame.blogspot.com/2007/05/play-now-world-without-oil-is-live.html

Europeans Predominate in Second Life

A new study by comScore indicates that Europeans Predominate in Second Life. The cultural ramifications of this are significant. For some time I've characterized Second Life as a kind of Virtual Amsterdam, a progressive party atmosphere where pretty much anything goes. This revelation certainly underscores some vastly different cultural attitudes encountered in Second Life, especially about sex, but about other things as well.