Virtual Cultures

Quick Update from Ludium II: All Hail the Speaker!

Ludium II, Edward Castronova's synthetic worlds game/conference/congress just concluded.  Bloomington of a summer's evening is a rare treat, a blend of warmth and humidity and the simple joys of summer, food and drink and excellent company, that create the kind of wonder and satisfaction that can somehow also be found in the right virtual world, for you, the one that rings like a bell, opening vistas you'd never dreamed to be able to explore.  And I think all of us at the Ludium shared that sense of wonder and potential,

Big Game for Social Change

The Emergent Game Group is working on a new project that may be of interest to Virtual Cultures readers. We are producing ActionQuest, an activist Big Game in conjunction with the U.S. Social Forum, taking place in Atlanta June 27-July 1. Players venture forth do engage in activist quests throughout the city. Quests range from going on a site recon with homeless activists The Made Housers, exploring Atlanta in a wheelchair and reporting barriers to access, group tree hugs, wildflower seed bombs thrown into empty lots, serving as a guerilla crossing guard, collecting stories about Atlanta's activist history, and a slew of others. We're looking for participants as well as volunteers to help run the game! More info at www.actionquest.us.

AMA and the virtual world, danah boyd on the red carpet

This last week saw a couple of interesting occurrances which, I think, have a couple of interesting similarities, which probably boil down to one underlying principle ... very close to the heart of online culture.  First, the AMA began official undertakings to classify video game and MMOG addiction, including this remarkable statement: "....Current theory is that these individuals achieve more control of their social relationships and more success in social relationships in the virtual reality realm than in real relationships."   Imagine my delight...

Recognizing Game Marriage

Vis a vis my April 28 post on Gay Marriage in MMOGs,I had a thought last night that began as a silly pun, but the more I thought about it the more interesting it became. What if we reversed the formula and instead of asking for recognition of gay marriage in virtual worlds, what if we asked for recognition of game marriage in the real world? 

Community, unconferences, and conversations

I'm writing as Jim Cashel's Community Unconference is going on... having just missed (due to a meeting conflict) the session that intrigued me most.  The title was community and culture, and it highlighted what has come to be, to me, one of the key ways of understanding the nature of an online community, and especially as a working framework for the community manager - perspectives that are not (yet) current in the profession.  This was especially highlighted given an amazing chat I had last night with my dear friend M., a member of the Burning Man community who's become an avid WoW player also.  The conversation last night had a lot of different aspects, but two struck me as especially fun in this context.

Article in the Guardian about Virtual Worlds

Wow this is a busy week! While little in this article in the Guardian is particularly new, especially to those of us who track these things, what is interesting is the critical mass the article portrays. Naturally, it has the usual hypey tone of these things. I would be surprised if this reporter had actually visited any of the virtual worlds in question. However, it's interesting to hear claims like "virtual worlds will create 10,000 jobs in China" and "Second Life...claims to have created the equivalent of 6,000 full-time jobs." Also, note the sub-heading: "People to work from home in an alternate reality." These tidbits speak to the conflation of work and play that a number of us have been taking about for the past year or so.