Republished: End Game Blues

This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on January 17th, 2008. 

As mentioned previously on this blog I’ve been playing Tabula Rasa since the open beta.  Happy that it added some new elements and a sprinkle of freshness to the MMORPG genre I subscribed and (frankly far too quickly and far too easily) found myself at level 30, the final tier selection.  Character progression and specialization is, for many, one of the most important factors in an RPG, but not only do you reach that final decision far too early in Tabula Rasa, it is equally easy to do so having saved plenty of skill points at earlier levels meaning you can pick and choose instantly from the top tier skillset.  This leaves me wondering “what is there to keep me playing this game?”

I like Tabula Rasa’s environment.  Both the landscape, the flora and fauna and the enemy forces all appear lovingly crafted.  Equally the gameplay makes an immediate impact, having a pace and ferocity seldom found in other games of the genre.   But having ‘maxed out’ my character (in terms of specialization and skills that is) I feel no compelling reason to carry on to see new sights and complete quests that don’t advance my character.  I had seen suggestions that Tabula Rasa “had no end game” but I wasn’t expecting it to feel this fundamentally flawed so early on.

Account closed.

Republished: Memorable moments from MMORPG History

This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on December 7th, 2007. 

There’s a great article on MMOCrunch recounting their top five memorable moments from MMORPG history.  One of the beauties of multiplayer worlds is the ’shared experience’, and a natural extension of that is the culture and history that starts to surround it.  Seasoned veterans of MMORPGs will no doubt recognise the incidents, and for those that don’t play it’s a good article to bring you up to speed in the genres cultural past. 

Republished: Virtual Worlds in the News

This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on December 4th, 2007.

It was August when I last made this “broad brush” news posting.  Once again there’s an enormous amount going on out there, a few of the stories that caughy me eye follow.

Video Game Giants Merge 

Activision and Blizzard are merging to form the “world’s most profitable games business”, reports the BBC.  Further coverage includes Raph Koster posting his impressions on the merger,  and this factsheet on the Activision Blizzard website I found particularly informative.  Blizzard Entertainment are stated to have the “Highest margins in the game industry (>40%)”.  Sheesh that’s a company doing something right.

Shatner and Mr T in World of Warcraft Ads

The only logical way to follow such big business news is with something more light-hearted, namely the appearance of William Shatner espousing the virtues of his lightning throwing Shaman, and Mr T’s particularly watchable claims that he’s a computer genius who hacked WoW to create his unique Night Elf Mohawk character.  Amusing and carefree,  I doubt however that Blizzard are particularly in need of advertising to keep the World of Warcraft coffers stocked.

Disney Begin Localization of Club Penguin

My last virtual world news roundup reported the acquisition of Club Penguin by Disney.  It appears they are now working on their first localized version, aimed at the UK.  The release is targeted at the middle of 2008.  It also seems that Disney will extend the stretch of their ‘Cars’ IP to a virtual world presence.

Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures Television to Exhibit in Gaia Online 

Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures Television have signed separate deals to screen movies in teen virtual world Gaia Online.  When the new service begins Gattaca and The Matrix will be the first films available for viewing in the online communal environment.  Watching virtually with your friends makes this a distinctly more social experience than staring at a video streaming just to your computer, or at least that seems to be the hope here.  For more on Gaia Online visit here.

Tabula Rasa Launches

I’ll slip this in as I was on the beta test and definitely feel it’s worth a mention.  Tabula Rasa is an MMORPG with a science-fiction theme.  The storyline isn’t going to blow you away with it’s originality (aliens - Bane in TR – invade earth, humans take the fight from earth to the Bane) but it does freshen up a few of the duller elements of the genre.  A cloning system means you don’t have to play every character you create from level 1, you actually have to aim at something if you want to target it (unlike many other games in this genre) and the world comes across as being far more dynamic than many similar games, with the alien menace being delivered direct to the battlefront by dropship.

Alongside other elements Tabula Rasa might not sound overwhelmingly fresh, but it was only after reflecting back on a few hours (or days) of play that I realised I had been playing the game tangibly different to the likes of World of Warcraft.  For instance in WoW you might stand on a road scouting the wilds for a wolf you think you can just about tackle, en route to collecting one more wolf claw to complete a quest.  By contrast in Tabula Rasa it’s not uncommon to find yourself plunging headline into a whole platoon of Bane with little to no concern for how survivable the encounter might actually be.  Imperfections asides, a game that makes you play a familiar genre differently definitely deserves a pat on the back.especially when you team up to play the various quest instances.

If you’re playing and on the European server feel free to say “Hi” to (Woop, Red or Flute) Kamachi.

Republished: Games vs Virtual Worlds

This post originally appeared on Dan’s  Glass Houses blog on November 29th, 2007.

Sparked by a debate about whether Second Life deserves coverage at massively.com (a site mainly dealing with massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft) I’ve been pondering the direction of MMO games, casual games and virtual/social world spaces.

Firstly my response to the above article was a resounding ‘Yes – Second Life should be included’.  Second Life might not be a game as such (and I have no intention of opening any philosophical debates on that) but it is what it means as an emerging platform that is of significance to the gaming community.  The point of the massively post was that much of the public, press, games players and virtual worlds users make a clear delineation between game worlds and ‘other’ virtual worlds.   World of Warcraft, Everquest, Tabula Rasa and Maple Story all fit in the first camp, Second Life, There and Kaneva are firmly in the second (note: I clearly won’t even attempt a complete list).  But how long will this distinction remain?

Second Life has a number of sims (areas of land) that are owned by avid games makers.  Using Second Life as a technology platform these individuals are free to create games that are instantly available to the community as a shared, social experience.  The tools to build and script are built right into the client (you just need a little knowledge and a healthy slice of patience) and the hardships of distribution and networking (amongst others) pretty much vanish.  Second Life is a prime example of a technology that crosses, and arguably blurs, many boundaries.

And others are taking note.  Earlier this year Sony announced “a new era of connected network gaming in which community and user-generated content play a huge part.”  Using the power of the Playstation 3 the online networked community named ‘Home’ is visually far more appealling than Second Life, as can be seen in this video.  Again though this ’social virtual world’ is inevitably going to become far broader. 

I see Home, Second Life and other technologies on the horizon, not only as social worlds but doubling as 3d portals to game spaces.  The idea of a metaverse where a single avatar strides between disparate worlds might be some way off, but it’s certainly the direction things are heading, and how Sony, Linden Labs and others ring-fence their territory in such a space is a debate for another day.  However in that future lays great appeal.  Not only could the social world act as a central hub to activity, what if you could bring ’stuff’ back from the game worlds that branched off that hub?  For instance if your Tauren Hunter has spent an age collecting every last piece of the Beaststalker armour set would it not be nice to wander around that social space clad in your finest armour?  This “bleed through” from the game to the social space would likely result in few avatars comprehending the potential significance of every ’detail’ around them, but it would certainly lead to an eclectic, vibrant and colourful world of the avatars own making.

Add to that the fact that the social space itself will feature any number of casual games (.ie. it’s not just a portal, it’s a games space/engine as well) and the dividing lines between one type of world and another rapidly disappear.

So Massively.com have made the right choice with the inclusion of Second Life, and readers of the site must prepare themselves for the inevitable inclusion of more and more virtual worlds.

Republished: Schome named finalist in the Edublog Awards

This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on  November 26th, 2007.

The Schome project, which readers of this blog will know I’m intimiately involved in, has been named as a finalist in the Edublog Awards in the category of ‘Best Educational Use of a Virtual World 2007′.  If you’d like to lend your support to the voting please visit http://edublogawards.com/2007/best-educational-use-of-a-virtual-world-2007/ and vote for Schome Park.

Republished: Raph Koster on the “mainstreaming” of virtual worlds

 This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on October 29th, 2007.

There’s an excellent post on Raph Koster’s website where he considers just how close to becoming mainstream ‘virtual worlds’ really are (which of course raises the issue of what is and isn’t a virtual world).  Raph sums things up nicely:

“The bottom line is something that has been known for a very long time. Chat is never enough. Try to find a real-world business built on social interaction without something to do, and what you will find is that successful social (or “third”) places generally rely on a shared activity: drinks at the bar serving as a lubricant, bingo at the church, bowling at the lanes, a movie to ignore, and so on.

So, is there hope for mainstreaming for non-entertainment apps? Absolutely. But in my opinion, it’s not going to come from pure social virtual worlds. Entertainment is going to continue being the key driver.”

I’ve seen this in my Schome work in Second Life so couldn’t agree more.  Without the wide range of events that take place the island would be a shadow of what it is.  As with other environments (including games like World of Warcraft) the social interactions that originate on our Second Life island continue beyond the virtual world in which they begin.  The Schome forum for example includes genuine social chit chat but the largest part of conversation focuses on the many ‘things’ that the community actively engages with in Second Life.

Virtual worlds are great, as long as there is something to do in them.

Republished: Virtual world platforms and technologies

 This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on October 23rd, 2007.

I’ve found myself in an increasing number of discussions with colleagues about virtual worlds, their use in education and massively multiplayer gaming in general.  As such I’ve decided to write this post as a reference point for some of the key environments/platforms available today, as well as pointing to a few that are in development or on the horizon.  I’m not even going to attempt to list the features of each environment, so consider this a jumping point to other places you may not have heard of yet.

Second Life is arguably the most significant (non-game) virtual world at this time, and the one most people will have heard of.  Second Life opened in 2004 but only from 2006 did popularity soar.  Big name corporations moved in at (relatively) low cost, but as a shop front and/or marketing space SL arguably doesn’t work (though the associated press coverage of such developments probably made it worthwhile regardless).

SL has flourised as an educational environment, with large (and ever increasing numbers) of projects taking place on both teen and main grids.  The simteach wiki has a list incorporating details of some projects.  My primary involvement (as mentioned previously on this blog) is with the Schome project.

Linden Labs opted to open-source the client earlier in 2007.  This appears to have led to bug-fixes from the community rather than any great leaps forward in client functionality.  The burning question is if (or increasingly “when”) they will open-source the back-end, allowing individuals and institutions to host and support their own servers.

Upcoming features include media on a prim (the long awaited displaying web pages and other file types on in-world objects), the Windlight engine (improved skies and related lighting effects) and the upgrading of the physics engine to use Havok 4 (offering improved physics and less client crashes).

Arguably the two biggest limitations are the inability to host your own service and the limited number of avatars supported per sim (the unit of land).  Additionally the tools for creating the world are limited so the overall look and feel is pretty weak, especially compared to modern game worlds.  However the flipside of this is that the limited and easy to use toolset has been a critical factor in the massive amount of user-created content on which the environment depends.

In my opinion Second Life will be remembered as the platform that helped user-generated worlds take a huge leap forwards.  I wouldn’t like to speculate on popularity beyond 2008 however.

Kaneva, There and Active Worlds I am going to (perhaps unfairly) group together.  They collectively represent existing alternatives to Second Life, albeit not all platforms are functionally similar (for instance not all support user-generated content).  Whilst many projects and developments have been undertaken in these worlds I intend to highlight some of the lesser known upcoming platforms that may represent the “next generation” of virtual worlds.

Open Croquet, to quote their description, is “… a powerful open source software development environment for the creation and large-scale distributed deployment of multi-user virtual 3D applications and metaverses that are persistent, deeply collaborative, interconnected and interoperable. The Croquet architecture supports synchronous communication, collaboration, resource sharing and computation among large numbers of users on multiple platforms and multiple devices.”

The key here is that this is a tool for software developers to create more powerful collaborative environments than, for instance, in Second Life.  Version 1 of the Croquet SDK is available for download from the site

A range of projects using pre-release Croquet technologies can be found on their projects page and a showreel from August 2007 is on YouTube.

Opensim is “A BSD licensed open source project to develop a functioning virtual worlds server platform capable of supporting multiple clients and servers in a heterogeneous grid structure.”  It is being designed in the way many people believe Second Life will (or at least should go), that is to support multiple independent regions which connect to a single centralized grid.

Currently at version 0.4 Opensim does have a roadmap albeit unfortunately devoid of dates.  The feature set appears to be similar to Second Life, but with an open development and hosting structure.  Whether OpenSim becomes an important player may well be as simple as how swiftly it can deliver the release version. 

VastPark is currently in beta testing with release scheduled for December 2007.  VastPark’s virtual content platform will enable you to “create and deploy your own 3d virtual world within minutes”.  Despite the apparently imminent release there’s not a great deal of detail available, but do have a look at their website for a promo video.

There is very little detail on Avatar-Reality at the moment (this press release provides a few details), but it’s a virtual world being developed by a number of games industry veterans.  It looks at this stage that system requirements will be very demanding, but one to keep an eye on nevertheless.

Entropia Universe currently exists as a ‘game’ world, although there were rumours that in the future multiple worlds will support quite different activities, potentially including commercial and educational worlds.  As covered in a previous blog post Entropia will deploy the Crytek engine from the middle of 2008.

There are already many well known game creation technologies available, including Game Maker and Torque.  The focus for upcoming tools and environments is very definitely geared towards supporting the design and running of massively multiplayer online games. 

Multiverse released version 1 of its development platform in August 2007.  Already projects are being released with educational Lunar Quest available through the free, downloadable Multiverse World Browser.

“Lunar Quest , which calls upon design elements from the 1950s, is intended to educate players in an entertaining and social world. It incorporates flash-based mini-games to teach students about physics, science and math. The combination of an MMOG with flash supports academic experimentation by allowing game developers to easily change which pedagogical stimuli players are given. Inside the world, players act as Lunar Colonization Authority (LCA) cadets, who are tasked with preparing the moon for colonization. Lunar Quest is being developed by Retro Labs at the University of Central Florida with funding from the National Science Foundation.”

Metaplace, a bit like Multiverse, is a virtual worlds platform, but I’d recommend reading the FAQ on their website for full details (it’s one of the few faqs that is easy to understand).  The company behind Metaplace is led by veterans of the games industry whose past involvements include working on massively multiplayer online games including Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest.  Metaplace is currently in alpha testing.

Project Darkstar is touted as “…the game industry’s first open source, enterprise grade, highly scalable, online game server”.  As it says this is the server technology needed to support a MMOG/virtual world, minus the game part (game engine, art assets .etc.).  Massively multiplayer online games are notoriously expensive to develop and the idea is that by providing an open-source server the cost and complexity is reduced somewhat.  Considerable resource would still be required to create an end product on top of this however.

A further reference point of note is the virtual worlds resources page.  Despite the lengthy list their page is still not complete which only serves to underline how much activity there is in this area.

Finally I’d like to reference a feature titled “$1 billion invested in 35 virtual worlds companies from October 2006 to October 2007”.  This covers a number of major acquisitions and many substantial investments, adding to the argument that the importance of virtual worlds is only going to increase over the coming years.
 

Republished: A Community of Gamers

This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on August 22nd, 2007. 

Some would have you believe that socialising online and participating in communities of shared interest is something new, a Web 2.0-enabled revolution that happened in just the last two years or so.  Of course any gamer will laugh at such a ridiculous statement.  The thing is gaming is not (and largely never was) a lonely, isolated pastime.  I can recall achieving 4 player heaven back in the late 80’s on my Spectrum 48k heaven.  Believe it or not we crammed three pairs of young hands onto the tiny rubber keyboard, with a fourth using the joystick in order to spend some hilarious hours on 3D Stock Car Championship.

Of course this was in the days before the internet.  Indeed even at university we didn’t (in our shared house at least) have access to the internet, but that didn’t stop us setting up a LAN and playing Quake, Warcraft II and Diablo.  Quake was, as far as I recall, the first game I created my own maps for, one aspect of games old and new which contributes to a vibrant game community.  Warcraft led to a breakdown in international relations (when several housemates conspired to gang up on a Swedish house-mate, who on this occasion didn’t see the funny side), and Diablo remains in my opinion one of the finest games of all time (a point I won’t expand on in this post).
Indeed it was Diablo where my appreciation for online communities began.  First of all it was my first internet-enabled gaming experience.  Blizzard went out of their way to support multiplayer games and the Diablo community via their battle.net service (still going strong and with Starcraft 2 on the way as lively as ever), and thus I played with good friends and minor acquaintances alike.  The battle.net forums proved a hugely interesting ‘meeting’ place where people shared their tales, knowledge and expertise.  The culmination of such knowledge is exemplified by Jarulf’s Guide to Diablo, a 170 page tome on everything about everything in Diablo.  A bewildering array of information on every monster, quest, item and extremely detailed statistical analysis of how combat takes place (and therefore how to ensure you have a successful setup).

Having had my fill of Diablo I encountered, several years later, a similarly enthusiastic community centred on Laser Squad Nemesis, a squad-level turn-based strategy game.  Playing head to head on any number of isometric maps (the example below, Stalker, I designed four years ago and it’s still being played) each player selects one of four races then deploys a squad of various unit types (for instance the Marine race includes a weak but vitally important medic unit and a long range sniper amongst others).  Almost even more remarkable than the aforementioned Jarulf’s Guide to Diablo is Crank’s Grenadier’s Bible.  This 100 page manual focuses on just one of the twenty four units available in the game, the grenadier, explaining and evaluating all the tactics and nuances of the grenadiers use.  As Crank himself states: “Grunts spot. Grenades kill. The rest is filler”.

So whilst Facebook, MySpace and the tools and services that are (all too easily) gathered under the banner of Web2.0 may well represent an evolution, they certainly don’t represent a revolution.  It strikes me that computers, and gaming uses in particular, have for a long time been about social and shared experiences.  Long may this continue.

Republished: Second Life Workshop at CTSS

 This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on May 4th, 2007.

I co-presented a Second Life workshop at the Curriculum, Teaching & Student Support Conference at The Open University this week.  Held in a well-equipped information literacy suite the workshop presented an overview of “What is Second Life?”, followed by a summary of the work The Open University is currently doing on the Teen and Main Grids.  With that out the way we dived into the all important hands on portion.

Attendees included a few individuals who had spent just an hour or two in Second Life and a much larger number for whom it was their first in-world experience.  With that in mind we started with an ice-breaker activity, asking everyone to line up in age order.  Of course this had to be done using only in-world communication (despite the group being located together in the real-world), and provided an excellent lesson in movement and basic communication.

We spent a short amount of time on altering appearance before heading to the Prisoner’s Dilemma game I built specifically for Schome’s main and teen grid islands.  The workshop attendees were divided into two groups, and positioned themselves either side of a large dividing wall on our mini-’Alcatraz’ island.  The game begins with each team being caged.  The teams independently choose to ‘cooperate’ or ‘betray’ in each of the ten game rounds.  Whist we only played through the first three rounds, this demonstrated an interactive build (the game receives team choices on a private channel then displays each teams choice and score on each side of the wall), private team communications (we set up a Second Life group for each team) and how Second Life can support collaborative activities.

Finally we provided a list of interesting places so that attendees could do a bit of (guided) exploration for the last part of the hands on.  With this complete the group logged off Second Life and discussed the range of possibilities and pitfalls associated with the widespread use of it to support education.  One question that arose was whether Second Life and the mainstream games industry had a similar age and gender appeal, something which I felt I should look into more closely as I currently rely on fairly anecdotal evidence.  Linden Labs most up to date statistics (available here in a range of formats) report the average age on the adult grid as thirty, with the average age on the teen grid being fifteen.  With regard to gender the split has been very close to 58% male, 42% female for the last six months.  By comparison the Entertainment Software Associations report on game player data states that the average computer and video games player is thirty three, with a ratio of 62% male to 38% female players (this however covers only the US gaming market).  As such one must conclude that whilst Second Life is not what we would commonly understand to be a computer or video game, it has a remarkably similar demographic.

Another issue centred on the take-up and learning curve for new technology.  One attendee reflected on a bespoke system The Open University developed several years ago.  The system supported online synchronous collaboration using voice and text communication alongside tools such as a virtual whiteboard.  It was widely agreed that whilst Second Life is almost certainly going to appear strange and unfamiliar to most during their first few hours, alongside the bespoke tool it offers a far less aggressive learning curve with far greater potential for innovative educational use.

All in all the event was well attended and led to some challenging yet positive discussions that will do much to shape future involvement in Second Life.

Republished: Monitoring the use of Schome Park

 This post originally appeared on Dan’s Glass Houses blog on April 19th, 2007.

Schome Park has now been up and running since early March.  We decided a long time ago that gathering statistical evidence for Schome Park usage was absolutely essential.  Consequently I designed and scripted our first version sensors during development of our Main Grid island, SchomeBase.  These were iteratively improved and refined until team member Olly Butters added the crucial database integration.   Most recently we have turned our attention to how best to display the information.

The first display (as illustrated to the left with avatar names ’smudged’ out) shows the number of unique student avatars and cumulative time spent on the island (by students) during the life of the project.  This is then followed by a graph illustrating the peaks and troughs in time spent on the island across the week. This proved hugely useful in the early stages when we realised a number of session times had been arranged for times that turned out to be difficult for students to make.  We soon adjusted our working patterns to suit when most students were on the island, and continue to make use of this information to drive future planning and events.  

Beneath the graph we then have a list of student avatars listed in order of when they were last on Schome Park.  This provides an “at a glance” view of who was been on and when.  Additionally each avatar name is a hyperlink to a similar set of statistics focused on just that avatar.  Given our pilot is on the Teen Grid working with children this is particularly useful as we can take a view on whether individuals are spending “too long” on Schome Park.

Inspired by Jakob Nielsens use of eye-tracking to create heat maps for usability analysis (e.g. Talking-Head Video is Boring Online alertbox) we developed our own heat map of Schome Park allowing us a location-based view of where avatars were spending their time.  The hot spots in the image correlate to areas such as our arena, sandbox, and ethics & philosophy discussion area.  Given that one of our aims is to keep the island ‘moving’, it is rewarding to redesign an area (or as has happened on several occasions completely demolish one build/building and replace it with something new) and see through the heat map a surge in activity at the new site.  Indeed it could be argued that this state of flux is essential to the health of the Schome Park community.

Whilst I am delighted at how well the system functions and how useful the information has been there are, as always, issues.  Firstly in developing a very active community we set out from day one to allow students to build anywhere, relying on an acceptable use policy and good governance to steer things in the right direction.  The students took to this well, and quickly agreed a policy of creating their own major builds above 100m.  This necessitated swift action on our part to locate extra sensors to cover the sky.  Thus we actually have multiple views of the heat map, reporting on vertical slices of Schome Park space.

Secondly our system does not currently provide 100% coverage of the island.  In some ways this is not critical, as we do have coverage of the important high-traffic areas.  Ideally of course we would like 100% coverage.  That said it does mean our current cumulative total of almost 1000 hours of student activity represents only 1000 hours of recorded time.  The actual figure for Schome Park will be somewhat higher, which is wonderful.

With plans to improve the system further the value of using such a system to inform the development of quality virtual world education spaces should not be underestimated.