A new report has been released on the utility of 'serious games' and in-game marketing in virtual spaces like Second Life; OTOinsights, the research arm of One to One Interactive, takes a look at the success (or lack thereof) of marketing attempts by major firms. They describe the results as 'uneven' and make some suggestions on how companies can better utilize virtual spaces to pitch their product(s):

"Serious games" refers to the use of games and game technologies for non-entertainment purposes. Traditionally, the education, health, and military sectors were the primary actors in this domain, but in the past few years, marketing has arisen as a major sub-domain of this area. Examples range from the selling of advertising inside video games to dozens of small, experimental corporate-sponsored spaces in virtual worlds such as Second Life, to the fully realized first-person shooter America's Army, developed as a recruitment tool for the U.S. Army. The results have been uneven, as most of these early efforts have had an experimental edge. This report releases findings that compare player engagement in some of Second Life's most successful user-generated areas compared with some of the more ambitious corporate-sponsored efforts in Second Life.

From Worlds In Motion:

In its study, the firm noted that overall, the top user-generated sites are more popular than the top corporate sites in Second Life. "Perhaps the explanation for this disparity is that corporate sites offer different content or experiences than user-generated sites, and builders of user-generated sites are more effective at offering the content users want. Or perhaps the corporate sites offer similar content, and the reason is that Second Life users are simply resisting corporate influence as a part of their hipster ethos."

Oh, snap. Starbucks, we don't want your kind here.

Serious Games for Marketing [One to One Interactive via Worlds In Motion]

Lively is already loaded with hundreds of virtual rooms of varying themes, not to mention thousands of furries, one of the stock avatars that one can then further customize. Navigating around the world, which also seems to feature some light game like elements, took some getting used to. The novelty wore of quickly for me, as chatting with strangers on the internet is more frightening than in real life, but we'll have to dig deeper to see what Google has in store.

We'll check back in with it soon.

Lively by Google [Lively - thanks, DaveKap!]

Things kick off June 23rd with a keynote speech from Linden Founder and Chairman Philip Rosedale and newly appointed CEO Mark Kingdon, both of whom better have some pretty kick-ass avatars. If they don't have at least jet packs and glowing eyes I'm laughing them off the stage. Cue my character's temporary ban in 3...2...1.

Hit the jump for details on some of the milestones that SL will be celebrating, or visit the official site for a schedule of events.

Linden Lab Celebrates Second Life’s 5th Birthday With a Virtual World Fair

Keynote Addresses by New CEO Mark Kingdon, Founder Philip Rosedale and Board Member Mitch Kapor Highlight Two-Week Long Celebration

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life® (www.secondlife.com), has announced that it will hold a two-week long Virtual World Fair to celebrate the 5th birthday of the Second Life community. The virtual fairgrounds, created in tandem by Linden Lab and Second Life Residents, will host a series of roundtable discussions, parties and exhibits that showcase the vast creativity of Residents as well as groundbreaking organizational uses of the Second Life platform. The event will be held in various regions in Second Life and will take place from June 23 – July 7, 2008.

Open to Second Life Residents, Linden Lab employees and industry thought leaders, the event will explore such topics as the evolution of Second Life’s culture, the role of virtual worlds in business and the opportunities the platform offers for education, art, philanthropy and health care, among others. Founder and former Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale and newly appointed CEO Mark Kingdon will each give an opening address and Linden Lab board member Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, will offer closing remarks.

Some highlights of the first five years that will be discussed and celebrated include:

2003

June 23, 2003 – The highly anticipated Second Life virtual world comes out of beta and launches to the public

November 14, 2003 – At the State of Play Conference, Founder Philip Rosedale announces that Linden Lab will allow Residents to retain all IP rights to the content they create in-world, a groundbreaking move that while initially questioned by industry leaders, epitomizes Linden Lab’s approach and philosophy and has greatly helped establish its leadership position

2004

June 15, 2004 – Linden adds a Custom Animation scripting engine to Second Life, enabling Residents to more fully develop and personalize their avatars by adding distinctive moods and movements

August 15, 2004 – Second Life surpasses 10,000 Residents – to celebrate the milestone Philip takes the entire office to a Giants game; by the time the game ended, residency had jumped to 13,000

2005

April 25, 2005 – Having outgrown its office, Linden Lab moves to a much larger office on Sansome Street in San Francisco. A short time later, Linden would move again to its current location at 945 Battery Street

October 3, 2005 – Linden launches the “LindeX” – its own hosted currency exchange - L$400,000 is traded on the first day of business

2006

January 5, 2006 - Second Life surpasses 100,000 registered Residents

May 1, 2006 – BusinessWeek cover story “Virtual Life, Real Money” further validates Second Life as a revenue-generating vehicle for individual entrepreneurs and businesses

September 15, 2006 – Second Life surpasses 1,000,000 registered Residents

2007

January 8, 2007 - Linden Lab announces that it will release the code to its viewer software – further opening the world and enabling Residents to have more control over their experiences. An audacious and unusual move for a company in a leadership position but indicative of the company’s approach and ethos and a key step towards Linden’s vision of a pervasive 3D online environment

March 26, 2007 – Second Life surpasses 5,000,000 registered Residents

September, 2007 – In the month of September, Second Life surpasses: a) 10,000,000 registered Residents b) 25,000,000 total monthly usage hours and c) 50,000 concurrent users logged in at one time

2008

April 3, 2008 – Linden Lab announces that IBM will host regions of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall, combining the operational scale and security of IBM’s BladeCenter with Second Life’s dynamic content creation tools and vibrant user community. Combing these solutions together has the potential to make custom-created, security rich virtual environments a viable option for enterprises

April 22, 2008 – Philip steps down as CEO of Linden Lab, assumes the position of Chairman of the Board and names Organic’s Mark Kingdon as his successor; Mark officially began his tenure on May 15, 2008

“It’s amazing to look back and reflect on everything that we’ve accomplished in such a short time. From our initial launch, to the decision to allow Residents to retain their IP, to opening up the Platform to third parties, most of the decisions we’ve made have gone against the grain of conventional wisdom and that’s made all the difference,” said Philip Rosedale, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Linden Lab. “While we’ve come a long way in our first five years and have surmounted significant challenges, there’s still plenty of work left as we continue to advance the medium. With Mark’s leadership and the passion and creativity of our Residents we are extremely excited about what the future holds and the evolving role that Second Life will play in business, arts, education and communication in general.”

Perhaps he's just happy because he's named "The Humpasaur", which is what my close friends in high school nicknamed me in the fictional life I like to picture in my head where I had close friends in high school. Hit the jump for the full picture in all its NSFW glory.

Pretty sick, right? It gets even better when you realize that this creature would theoretically have to eat from one of those openings and then pass undigested matter through the other one. Enjoy lunch!

Spore Creature Creator [PC Zone UK Forums - Thanks Velo!]

Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, checked out the average revenue per user for some casual, free to play MMOGs (Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, Runescape, and Second Life), establishing that other that SL - which pulls in a little over $9 a month in ARPU, thanks mostly to virtual land upkeep - these sorts of casual MMOGs pull in around $1.25 ARPU per month. Which, until one considers the user bases of games like Club Penguin, seems like a damn hard way to make some money:

Second Life: $9.30/mthly user/mth
Club Penguin: $1.62/mthly user/mth
Habbo: $1.30/mthly user/mth
Runescape: $0.84/mthly user/mth

Having spoken to many other MMOGs and virtual worlds on a private basis, this estimate seems to be a good gauge for what a well performing MMOG can aspire to from a free to play business model.

Left out are a number of other popular MMOGs like MapleStory; I'd be curious to see firmer statistics for a wider spread of games, though the comments section does include some speculative numbers for a few other games.

Successful MMOGs can see $1-2 in monthly ARPU [Lightspeed via Worlds In Motion]

The experiment is significant because the signals his brain sent to move the character came from the man imagining that he was walking. He also used a microphone to meet and converse with another Second Lifer. Then a swarm of flying penises surrounded him and the appalled researchers. OK, just kidding about that.

Researchers are studying a system that would let people select letters for a text message using the same type of brainwave controls. They surmise that, in the future, paralysis patients could use virtual worlds as a surrogate interaction with the real world — for example walking through a virtual mall and making purchases the same way one would in real life.

The research may also deliver mental health benefits as well as physical ones. Researchers hope that the activity will motivate and inspire people who are otherwise too depressed to attempt rehabilitative exercises they consider futile.

Paralysed Man Takes a Walk in Virtual World [AFP via Yahoo! News] [picture]

"Despite a multitude of challenges, virtual worlds present a unique marketing opportunity to target a highly sought demographic, and virtual worlds should be part of a company's marketing portfolio," according to Harvey Cohen, President of Strategy Analytics.

Hear that? You might as well sign up now. Go ahead and IM Caliban Karas on SL if you need to know where to pick up your furry avatar.

Study: One Billion Virtual World Users in Next 10 Years [GameDaily]

Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov was recently subjected to a NSFW attack from a much more realistic looking, but still fake, airborne phallus. This one was given the smackdown by a Russian karate chop after mere seconds, unlike the 15 minute long penis storm previously reported. Coincidence? We think not! But we've already stopped thinking.

Flying Penis [Sharenator via n0wak]

Ok, so virtual property disputes aren't exactly new, but there's a little wrap up on some of the current issues over at a Canadian website. Most of the issues discussed revolve around Second Life, but the questions of virtual property and other virtual issues are getting increasing attention:

[Entertainment lawyer Susan] Abramovitch said the virtual economy has opened the door to new legal issues that are only starting to be addressed around the world.

"The original question is, do we actually need to specifically regulate the virtual economy?" Abramovitch said. "Is it different enough to create challenges or do the regulations that exist in our physical world apply?"
The answer, she said, is gaining importance because private companies currently dictate the "rules" of the virtual world through their end user licence agreements.

Concerns regarding EULAs have gotten a fair bit of (academic) attention in the past couple of months, but the fact that these "virtual" cases are getting real world settlements raises a lot of interesting questions.

Virtual world disputes landing in real-world courts [Canada.com]

"To me, the CEO role at Linden Lab combines perfectly my passions for art and design, business and technology. Until Second Life, we experienced the digital world passively in two dimensions. By enabling users to create a rich and immersive virtual world, Second Life is transforming the way we connect, collaborate, learn and transact online.

Linden Lab Appoints Mark Kingdon As Chief Executive Officer Former CEO of Organic to Lead Company into Next Phase of Its Evolution

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Linden Lab®, the developer of the 3D virtual world Second Life®, today announced that its board of directors has named Mark Kingdon to serve as chief executive officer. In his new role, Kingdon will lead the day-to-day management and operations of the company, working closely alongside Linden Lab founder, former CEO and current chairman Philip Rosedale.

Since 2001, prior to joining Linden Lab, Kingdon served as chief executive officer of Organic Inc., a leading digital communications agency, establishing its reputation as a groundbreaking, innovative provider of user-centered design. Prior to Organic, Kingdon worked with idealab!, providing strategic guidance and operational support to emerging companies. Before that, Kingdon was a partner with the consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PwC), where he held a variety of senior roles throughout his twelve-year tenure. He received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from UCLA.

"Our search for the leader of Linden Lab demanded both tremendous business skills and a deep understanding and passion for Second Life and where it is going. Mark is the perfect choice," said Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of the board, Linden Lab. "His management style, unwavering leadership in the face of great challenges, and approach to team-building exactly matches Linden's needs. He is a passionate believer in the potential of virtual worlds to change the world, and I look forward to working by his side while we watch it happen."

"We wanted to find someone with an exceptional blend of strategic, analytic, business and leadership skills, but also with endless creativity and a passion for the company and growing the virtual worlds category," said Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and a Linden Lab board member. "Mark has demonstrated all of these attributes throughout his career, particularly at Organic, which, like Linden Lab, puts an incredible emphasis on overall user experience and design."

"Joining Linden Lab at this moment in its evolution, with so much growth and opportunity on the horizon, is incredibly exciting and I look forward to working with Philip and the Linden Lab team to help Second Life realize its limitless potential," said Mark Kingdon, Chief Executive Officer, Linden Lab. "To me, the CEO role at Linden Lab combines perfectly my passions for art and design, business and technology. Until Second Life, we experienced the digital world passively in two dimensions. By enabling users to create a rich and immersive virtual world, Second Life is transforming the way we connect, collaborate, learn and transact online. I am thrilled to be part of this epic transformation."

Kingdon assumes the position full time on May 15, 2008.

Finding include that only 1.3 percent of folks polled are currently playing it. That's not very many! 5.6 percent used to play. Hit the jump for the full number crunching.

Question: Do you know about the 3D online world Second Life? (Sample size=1,091)

Know about it in detail 4.7%
Know about the key features 27.1%
Heard about it in the media, but don't know the key features 32.2%
Don't know anything about it 36.0%

In the 10 months since the first survey in June 2007, awareness of Second Life has grown by 10 percentage points.

Question: Have you actually played Second Life? (Sample size-698)
Currently playing 1.3%
Used to play 5.6%
Visited the web site, but not played 18.9%
Not played it at all 74.2%

Question: Have you ever seen corporate advertising, promotional campaigns, etc within Second Life? (Sample size=48)
Frequently see/saw them 12.5%
Sometimes see/saw them 52.1%
Not seen them much 14.6%
Never seen them at all 20.8%

Second Life Poll [japan.internet via What Japan Thinks] [Pic]

Second Life is a convenient punching bag for gamers, and I feel kind of bad caning on it two days straight. But it invites the abuse with this kind of oblivious, self-serious self-parody: Rep. Ed Markey's avatar gaveling the online hearing, and in the public gallery there is "a goth character with feathered wings, a pink cat, a phantom with shimmering gray dreadlocks, a winged grasshopper, women in tube and bikini tops, and a naked man floating through the air." At least the griefers didn't show up to overrun the meeting with flying penises.

Here's something: In real life, I loathe it when some demonstration making a point I support is inevitably overtaken by stilt-walkers, puppeteers and bongo-drumming hippies. Like, way to take that message to the mainstream, folks. In Second Life, aren't they sick of having every furry, faerie and goth speak for the whole — especially in Congress? Or are they the communities busybodies, the ones who come to every Second Life PTA meeting?

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, writing about the hearing, notes that its ostensible purpose was in probing the downsides of online worlds (child exploitation, terrorist recruiting, etc.) He correctly points out that it amounted to "an infomercial for Second Life." The founder got to play a promotional video and boast that Second Life is changing the nature of communication itself. Um, no. Sequestering people at their computers for hours out of the day and ensuring their only contact with a human being — some of it sexual — is through the prism of a computer screen, is not for my money a real communication breakthrough. A variant, sure.

This reminds me of the time on King of the Hill, when Hank confronts the Christian rock band. "Listen, you're not making Christianity better, you're making rock and roll worse." I'd like to say the same thing, substituting "communication" for Christianity, and "online gaming" for "rock and roll."

Goofy Characters and Weird People — Sounds Like a Hearing [The Washington Post, thanks OriontheSmiter]

Here's an article out of Wired I spotted shortly after coming aboard. It's a great look at Second Life and EVE Online griefers, whose behavior is truly sociopathic — in those communities. In the real world, they're average ordinary /b/tards and SA Goons — OK so they're probably sociopaths in the real world, too.

But it's fascinating to me, do they have the motivation to do, in real life, anything analogous to what they do in MMOs? And even if you're not interested in the probing psychological question, Wired delivers some bizarre vignettes, beginning with the story's lead:

But shortly after 5 pm Eastern time on November 16, an avatar appeared in the 3-D-graphical skies above this online sanctuary and proceeded to unleash a mass of undiluted digital jackassery. The avatar, whom witnesses would describe as an African-American male clad head to toe in gleaming red battle armor, detonated a device that instantly filled the air with 30-foot-wide tumbling blue cubes and gaping cartoon mouths. For several minutes the freakish objects rained down, immobilizing nearby players with code that forced them to either log off or watch their avatars endlessly text-shout Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Get to the choppaaaaaaa!" tagline from Predator. [...]

Soon after the attacks began, the governance team at San Francisco-based Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life, identified the vandals and suspended their accounts. In the popular NorthStar hangout, players located the offending avatars and fired auto-cagers, which wrapped the attackers' heads in big metallic boxes. And at the Gorean city of Rovere — a Second Life island given over to a peculiarly hardcore genre of fantasy role-play gaming — a player named Chixxa Lusch straddled his giant eagle mount and flew up to confront the invaders avatar-to-avatar as they hovered high above his lovingly re-created medieval village, blanketing it with bouncing 10-foot high Super Mario figures.

"Give us a break you fucks," typed Chixxa Lusch, and when it became clear that they had no such intention, he added their names to the island's list of banned avatars and watched them disappear.

"Wankers," he added, descending into the mess of Super Marios they'd left behind for him to clear.

Honestly, I'm trying to imagine what in real life could be analogous to that.

Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World [Wired]

...we got employees from all around NASA - the 10 geographies around the country - showing up at these Tuesday afternoon meetings. We formed a community of NASA and non-NASA, started coworking in Second Life. Cultural change started to take place at the agency...

We are all learning how to use virtual environments so when we go back to the moon, we can collaborate better. We can go for the ride in a participatory collaborative kind of way.

*NASA employee walks in with 10-foot clown penis*

"Am I late?"

NASA: How CoWorking Opened Us Up [psfk][image]

Samsung Unveils Mobile Application for Second Life [koreatimes via Gizmodo]

Another popular way to teach English in "Second Life," says Boahn, involves role-playing and quests. "I once dressed up as a pirate, had a ship and everything. I was kind of rough on the students," he admits. "I put some of them in cages, and had them confront language in a shock-and-awe kind of way. They seemed to like it, and they learned all sorts of new words, like 'loot' and 'booty.'"

Boahn's approach may appear nontraditional, but he feels a new medium calls for a new way of teaching language. Even using the game's English interface gives students a chance to practice what they've learned. "We like to encourage teachers to see 'Second Life' itself as a classroom," he says.

How To Spark Remote Learning [Forbes via Worlds In Motion]

I will be 100% involved and fulltime at Linden Lab. Second Life is my life's work, and I am not going anywhere.

The people who get married in Second Life, the idea there seems to be that love is purely a product of the mind, and that just seems insane to me. The body has such a central role in our sexual lives, in our physical lives, that you can't just leave it behind.

Q&A with author Tim Guest [Nerve]

Crook points out some growth challenges to free to play, though he notes these are definitely not deal-breakers for the business model. First, there are virtual property challenges. "At some point that's going to be decided by the courts. Hopefully we're out ahead of it," Crook said, pointing out Eric Bethke's forward-thinking endeavor to create an avatar bill of rights. Second, there are differing broadband speeds. And rising development costs will become an issue now with the advent of Electronic Arts' highly-polished Battlefield Heroes. Larger-scale F2P products are going to raise the quality bar, Crook says.

The talk clocks in at a little over half an hour, but if you're interested in the free to play model, it's definitely worth taking a look at.

The Slidecast from my F2P GDC Presentation [Free To Play]
Adrian Crook Talks Free To Play [Worlds In Motion]

Caek is Delishas [S.K.Y.]

When playing Second Life, do you ever sit and think to yourself, "geez, I really wish that I could do all this pesky moving with only my mouse hand, so I had my other hand free to make my avatar gesture at other players"? Really? Well, then Sandio has a mouse for you. The Sandio 3D Game O2 Mouse lets players of second life move in all directions, fly, and crouch by using the mouse. It can also be used for RTS and RPG games for improved navigation and camera manipulation, or with CAD programs like Google SketchUp.
The mouse will be available for demo at CES, and is on sale in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and China, for US$79.99.

Sandio 3D Mouse - Your New Generation Input Device [CES Press Room]

Everyone's getting into it, for those of you not aged in the single digits, including Disney, Lego, and Mattel. The goal? Shill wares to kids while they play free games, establish brand recognition, then help them "graduate" to the next-generation of online worlds, whether it's Pirates of the Caribbean Online, World of Warcraft or simply fantasy baseball. Oh yes, it's quite dastardly. Good thing I'll be raising my kids with good Quaker morals and no electricity.

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young [New York Times - thanks, Duane!]

Depending on who you believe Cory Ondrejka, Second Life's chief technology officer, has either quit or been fired.

The Associated Press reports today that Ondrejka, who they describe as a "colorful Navy veteran who delights in mocking creationism", has resigned and will depart at the end of the year. Ondrejka, who helped write the code the created Second Life for Linden Lab, declined to comment to the AP.

But his internal email about the matter popped up over on Massively:

... I continue to believe in both Second Life and Linden Lab, but Philip and my visions for the future of Linden Lab are divergent enough that he decided to lead in his own way. While I will miss all of you, I have confidence in engineering - in all of you - to adapt and excel going forward. You are a phenomenal collection of talents and I know that both Linden Lab and Second Life will be hugely successful. ...

Meanwhile our own Valleywag, which first reported on the separation on Tuesday, says that Ondrejka was fired over the same differences of opinion that Ondrejka mentions in his email.

Second Life isn't exactly the most high-tech of gaming environments, so it's hard to tell how this will effect the game and the people who play it.

Second Life's CTO Resigns [New York Times]

Polemical rhetoric is its own art form: sometimes the extreme viewpoint must be taken in order to meet somewhere in the middle, particularly when discussing topics that are somehow beyond reproach (technophilia frequently falls into this category, as anyone who denies how great it all is tends to be immediately labeled a luddite)... but taken too far, one diminishes one's credibility (Jack Thompson is a pro at this) and completely undermines the entire effort to be a little balanced when it's more fun to get carried away by the promises of technology.

Mr. King has made this error, unfortunately. He's almost certainly right about overhype, and yes, I suppose we could be accused of some overenthusiastic mental masturbation on this topic. But, he's missed the forest for some trees to which he has assigned erroneous characteristics ....

In any case, both pieces are worth a read. This sort of backlash is inevitable, I think, when dealing with anything is overhyped, but declaring it's "time to take out this intellectual trash" is more than a bit harsh. Let's not paint all the academics concerned with virtual worlds and (gasp!) video games with the same trashy brush. It's not their fault Second Life has rocketed to the position of 'media darling.'

Talking trash about intellectual trash... [Terra Nova]

In a video of a scene from Second Life, Miller showed how a player-created character, dubbed an "avatar," walks near the hacker's avatar. Nothing appears amiss, but then a message appears saying that the walking avatar has transferred 12 Linden dollars to the hacker's avatar. The oblivious walking avatar then says, "I got hacked."

The range of the hack is approximately 100 virtual feet. Nothing can stop the hacker from cashing out that money for real dollars through various exchanges associated with Second Life. Today, about 250 Linden dollars equals one U.S. dollar.

The hackers say the scene shows they can take complete control of any player's avatar and make that avatar surrender any money and other property in its account. That's a serious security breach because many of the 10.5 million registered members of Second Life are trying to make a living in the virtual world by selling goods and services.

I'm a little surprised more of the mainstream media hasn't picked up on their virtual darling's (minor? major?) problems, but the Second Life craze seems to have subsided somewhat.

Second Life pickpockets threaten real world cash potential [San Jose Mercury News via PlayNoEvil]

The university wanted to help give its Serious Games Institute (SGI) a technology platform on which to build a digital model of the campus building, so that students' movements in both the real building and its virtual reconstruction trigger location based access to learning content and experiences. This means that content can be pushed to students by the most suitable method for their location and the device they are using.

The solution uses Cisco wireless location services to track real-world positions and movements integrated within the Giunti Labs learn eXact® learning content management system. The Giunti Labs software also allows any form of digital learning content to be repurposed 'on the fly' for use either in the virtual SGI environment or via any device connected to the Coventry University Cisco wired and wireless networks.

And there's more, naturally - while I've no doubt some people would find all this stuff useful, I'll take my in-person seminars and not having bleeding eyes from trying to do everything via mobile device.

Coventry University creates a unique mobile learning environment in its Serious Games Institute [Click Press]

Arroyo activates virtual self in Second Life [via gamepolitics] [image]

"The thing we most hope to gain by having a CNN presence in Second Life is to learn about virtual worlds and understand what news is most interesting and valuable to their residents," said Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services.

Book party in San Francisco, Wed., Nov. 7 [The Blog of the Book]

On a semi-related note, I take back anything bad that I may have once said about Pam. She does deserve Jim and I hope they are very happy together. Click the picture for a mega version.

The Office Takes Out a "Local Ad" [via joystiq]

One of the big problems with second life when they talk about preserving it is this interactive experience. Linden doesn't do things like keep careful track of what users are saying, they're not filling their disks with years and years of transaction logs - I'm sure the users are very happy about that - but it means that if I took everything on SL's servers at the moment, what I've got is the neutron bomb version of second life - a bunch of very beautiful buildings with nobody in them.

For one, is it a library's place to preserve real experience, even if it's part of a virtual world? Are they overstepping their bounds of preserving cultural artifacts and instead preserving culture directly? Or, is such a step not intrusive, but part of a natural evolution for a digital library, preserving first hand experiential accounts wherever possible?

These questions aren't rhetorical—I'm really interested how the gaming community will react. Even if you don't play Second Life, such a model could also apply to WoW, PSHome or any future MMO experience. I think the simple solution is a disclaimer. And tracking the actions of only those who volunteer could work fairly well. But the picture would only be a snippet of something we could potentially capture with 100% authenticity. So would we be doing those to come a great disservice?

But today we have a different story for you with a very different ending. The fact of the matter is, according to The Library of Congress, video games are just as important to our historical past as literature, movies and music. And at the moment, the LoC is teaming up with major universities across the country to begin a 2-year initiative with the sole intent of figuring out just how institutions can preserve video games for years to come, while making the content accessible for use and study.

So our story today doesn't present some artificial controversy ending in a sad, bleak future of debate and wasted efforts. Our story today is about the very real victory for game developers, enthusiasts and scholars, in which the top library in the nation has said they're part of this video game fad for the count.

Press Start Loading...

"We're taking baby steps here," confessed Beth Dulabahn. She's the Director for Integration Management at the LoC. "No sense on making it harder on yourself that you have to."

In truth, the Library of Congress has been collecting games since the 1980s. Due to their advantageous position—the Copyright Office is part of their organization— they've come across various collections just by receiving copies of published materials as mandated by copyright law.

"Many people would probably be surprised at the kinds of things we have here," Dulabahn explained. "For example, we have probably the US's largest comic book collection, over 100,000 comic book issues that have come in through copyright."

While their collection is currently small, only encompassing around 2,000 titles that are 100% the result of copyright deposits (as opposed to formal acquisitions or donations), they aren't yet ready to collect more. What? But we just said that the Library was crazy about video games! This brings us to the initiative and what's going on now.

The Initiative

At the moment, there are a few forces affiliated with the Library to answer a fundamental question before they can begin serious acquisition: How does one build a video game archive in the digital age?

Within the Library itself, you have the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. One can decipher their responsibility from their apt title. Now relocated to a new facility in Culpeper, VA, the division has pulled those 2,000 games out of temporary warehouse storage, and specialists are using their new lab space to examine hardware preservation while doing R&D for future solutions of game archiving.

"One of the facets we want to document with videogames [as we did with film] is not only having the actual games themselves, but many of the associated material to have the real sense of the full gamut of what videogames and the industry meant in cultural terms," said Senior Cataloger Brian Taves. Yes, he means the sweatshirts, the posters and the shoes. They want all the cultural materials they can find.

These specialists aren't just film and audio buffs who were roped into video game preservation for grant and funding purposes. On the contrary, the two members of the division I spoke with were extremely enthusiastic about the prospects of a video game archive, likening the challenges to those already faced in film and broadcast, and the cultural importance to that of any other artistic medium they archive.

"It is one way, a bit like the fabled discovery of the library's paper print collection back in the 1940s. When they found, in a closet, films that had been deposited for copyright of otherwise lost films in the very early days of filmmaking that proved to be a real treasure," said Taves. "And for us, that's what this has turned out to be and we're really excited to see this collection growing.... The Library's been collecting films for almost 70 years now on an active basis, so we see videogames now as part of that whole body of acquisitions."

So that's one aspect of Library game preservation, but at the moment, it's the smaller part of what the Library is working on. The larger initiative is called the "Preserving Virtual Worlds" project.

The National Digital Information Infrastruction Preservation Program is a huge initiative interested in digital preservation. This encompasses basically everything imaginable on Earth. Under that, there is the Preserving Creative America initiative. Here is where you see the Library's interest in preserving all sorts of creative works, like film or books, into digital formats. Then, one of the eight grants under this Creative America umbrella is the Preserving Virtual Worlds Project.

Preserving Virtual Worlds

Spearheaded by the University of Illinois, the Preserving Virtual Worlds project is a 2-year program starting in 2008 that will hopefully build a model of game and interactive fiction archiving. In a partnership with Stanford University, University of Maryland, Rochester Institute of Technology, and one commercial institution—Second Life makers Linden Lab— University of Illinois hopes to create metadata standards to make content manageable before moving forward to create case studies (ie test examples) of actual video game archiving.

I sat with the University of Illinois faculty/Project Coordinator Janet Eke and Principal Investigator Jerry McDonough recently and talked more about Preserving Virtual Worlds over lattes.

"This project is really about how do we begin to preserve this type of content, answering some fundamental questions of how will we even begin to do this," explained Eke. "And what we will begin to preserve is a huge question that will certainly come along...but we're really starting with how."

It may all seem like a load of bureaucracy - all these committees, initiatives, grants, 2-year chunks of time, etc. And then on top of it all, those running the study claim that they are nowhere near being ready to archive video games. But there really are a multitude of problems that need to be sorted out before archives can move forward on a mass scale.

Take copyright, for example. While the Library worries less about copyright due to their relationship with the Copyright Office, organizations like the University of Illinois aren't granted immunity with products that show up at their door, despite partnerships with the Library.

"... if I own a physical copy of a piece of IP, I can dispose of it as I wish," McDonough explains. Aptly, he'd been (legally) streaming the BBC in HD just moments before on his Mac. "I can sell it, I can give it to somebody, but I can't copy it. Copyright is just that, you're not allowed to make a copy without the permission of an IP owner unless it's gone out of copyright."

And to archive, McDonough thinks that copying is an absolute necessity. Because while consoles should and will be preserved (somewhere in the chain of archiving), they probably won't provide the most practical way for users to experience and research content.

"Things on five and a half inch quarter...hardware is getting scarce and the medium has almost no longevity. The only way we can make sure the stuff stays alive is getting it on an active computer system with demons monitoring it that make sure were not suffering bit corruption," says McDonough.

It's a frustrating situation to be in, but the irony is not lost on us: Copyright is meant to protect an IP, but ultimately, that copyright may prevent researchers from saving a work from extinction. Microsoft once explained to me the difficulty of tracking down IP owners to reproduce their games as XBLA titles. Protip: If Microsoft can't find the source of an IP, nobody can.

The only way to solve copyright issues moving into the future is to bring commercial partners on board. Whether or not you like Linden Lab and their game (?) Second Life, there's no doubt that it makes for an excellent archival model for the project. On one hand, we get a case study of a library teaming up with a commercial venture. On the other, we get a model for MMO archiving, if such a thing is even possible.

Brenda Gunn can explain the significance of libraries partnering with commercial groups better than I, a mere blogger ever could. She's the Associate Director of Research & Collections at the UT Austin's Videogame Archive. She's not directly related to the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, but she's keeping an eye on the study because it's the hot topic right now in video game archiving.

"This is a significant point in that [LoC] is saying libraries and archives can't do this alone; the funding simply is not there...the level of ongoing support for this videogame archive will have a direct impact on the what level of access [we] can provide."

That's why at UT Austin they've teamed up with partners like NCSoft's Richard Garriot, FPS legend Warren Spector, or even "The Fat Man" himself, video game music legend George Sanger. According to Gunn, before such partners approached Austin, a game archive "wasn't on our radar at all."

Research libraries will absolutely need the support of commercial video game publishers to archive their work. Whether it's to help create metadata (companies provide information on everything from the engine they used to their plotline) or just supplying access to those precious IPs, the commercial aid is not an option, it's a necessity.

"If you're going to do any game preservation on a large scale, it has to happen with [commercial] help. If for no other reason, they control the IP. They don't give us the content, we can't preserve it," explains McDonough. "So the question is, do they have strong enough interest in preserving the content to contribute any of their own resources towards it. How much do they care about their own game alive?"

Shimmering Hope

We opened this feature with a bang. We told you that the war was won, that the governmental and academic library community was on gamers' side. And then we went into a list of reasons why archiving still wasn't ready to happen and scared you with words like "copyright" and catchy Wall Street slogans like "IP."

But trust us. If nobody cared, they wouldn't have all these headaches. The freaking Library of Congress is onboard. And this is a major, major win.

"Perfection, we don't know what that is," says Project Coordinator Eke. "You're striving to succeed, and that striving will define what it means to succeed..."

Hmm...it sounds like they get MMOs, at the very least.

[image source]

First Life Meets Second [Tuneup Talk via Game Politics]

By next year, you'll probably know more about why I'm up here.

[Timing is] definitely a concern...But I think we've got a good understanding now of the landscape, we have a strategic plan in mind ... if a year from now we don't have anything, then we probably won't have anything.

Is Microsoft headed toward a virtual world? [via maxconsole]

It is going to happen anyway. If you think you are walled and secure, somebody will create something that's open and then people will drain themselves away as fast as possible.

Despite near-continuous coverage in the popular and business press, metaverses like Second Life are experiencing slowing growth and limited impact because of the tethered nature of their virtual world experience.