Virtual Cultures

Community community community: especially in tough times

Reprinted from the Mary Margaret newsletter... but it's a good piece and wanted it to get more eyes.

One of the odd offshoots of the rise of the internet was the creation of an entirely new profession: the Community Manager.  And while still in its infancy, Community Managers do something that's likely critical to your game's success: they work with your community of players.  They're there every day (and often nights), connecting people, putting out the messages that will help your game thrive, helping to nourish a positive supplementary game experience, and bringing back all of the info they gather to your dev and marketing and CS and QA teams.  They're doing their best to grow a huge asset for your game: the community.

 

Virtual Worlds Workshop cancelled... for now

The Virtual Worlds Workshop scheduled for next month has been cancelled, though I'm sure there will be new efforts in the future - it's a great project, and a great team (Ted Castronova, Lee Sheldon, and others...). I'd been scheduled to give a keynote, and was working on something that would work in the keynote speech Ted gave at AGC (it was AGC then... ah, the good old days!), an inspiring talk that referenced Tolkein, and after which I had to go introduce myself. I love a great talk. 

Anyway, I'm still thinking about community, virtual worlds, and the impact of the new social media out there now... stay tuned.

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.