In addition to the inimitable Prof. Castronova, there were all sorts of extraordinary persons in attendance, including Randy Farmer (now of Yahoo!, but a pioneer in multi-user graphical games), Richard Bartle (co-author of the first MUD), Mia Consalvo (author of a new MIT text on Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames), Sarah Robbins (the ubiquitous Intellagirl), and so on. For the most part, I kept my mouth shut and listened, which seems, at least, not to have caused any harm: Prof. Thomas Malaby, the amiable and erudite UW-M anthropologist with whom I was initially teamed, went on to be elected spokesperson for the Virtual Worlds Policy. Prof. Malaby is currently at work on an ethnography of Linden Lab, and is interested in issues of online governance; his first book was on gambling and contingency in ancient Greece (by now, if you were in CCTP-688 last semester, as I rambled on interminably about Plato and Heraclitus, Ajax and Achilles, Homer and Odysseus, agon and agora, you understand why I was so pleased to be part of his little retinue). He blogs for TerraNova, and is a voice from which you’ll be hearing more in the future.

I’ve written several pages of thoughts on the experience, which (if I can get through a particularly sticky part of my dissertation) I’ll share with you presently. In the end, though, it was a thoroughly enlightening, satisfying experience.

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“The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer” by Julian Dibbell

Of course, we needn’t even think about the possible dissolution of the play frame, and concurrent intrusion of the real world: The Sims H&M Fashion Stuff expansion set shatters the play frame with VISA- and Mastercard-accepting glee. With a nod towards biological rhetorics of the ludic, it’s all about Play as Preparation… for shopping.

Must-Have Fashion Items for Your Sims from H&M! The popular European fashion retailer that is taking the US by storm with its trendsetting contemporary fashions is now coming to The Sims 2! Your Sims can choose from cutting-edge men’s and women’s clothing including dresses, jeans, and other outfits, complete with accessories—all inspired by real H&M designs.

A few years ago, during an unfortunate lapse in judgment, some academics were referring to experiences like this as “prosumer:” Essentially acts of creatively-empowered material consumption. The card-carrying Party-member in me was dubious then, and is even more dubious now.

I’m wary of the play value—and would be anxious about giving this to my neice, for example—but this is clearly the future of online retail.

FEATURES: The Go-To Place for Hot New Trends—Design your own H&M retail environment, or use new store-themed items to build an intimate H&M boutique for more sophisticated citizens.

Read more or buy it for your H&M-loving self.

http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007/presentations

The men’s magazine Maxim has released its “Hot 100 List” for 2007, ranking what they believe to be the 100 most attractive women around. Interestingly, they chose to put a synthetic girl – a Second Life avatar, to be precise – at #95. Next to her entry, Maxim writes:

“Second Life—a 3-D virtual world that’s imagined, created, and owned by its online residents—was launched in 2003 and now boasts nearly five million inhabitants around the globe. Never taken part in the nerdfest? Isn’t she reason enough?”

Many people seem to think it’s absurd to put a synthetic girl on the list, but it begs the question – how real are the “real” girls, anyway? After any photo is edited, retouched, and digitally enhanced, that’s not a real human being we’re even looking at. It’s a digital representation of a human being, in the most positive possible light. Why, then, is that so different from an image of a Second Life female avatar?

Of course, some might point out that Miss #95 could in fact be a middle-aged man in a stained undershirt eating Cheetos in front of his computer in Topeka. But that would break the veil of suspended disbelief, so I won’t go there. Instead, I’ll share this link to an image of lovely, virtual, virtually lovely Miss #95.

The New York Times ran a series of articles written by Seth Schiesel on conquering The Burning Crusade expansion pack. You can access the series at Conquering the Burning Crusade. (The author was the first to hit level 70 in his particular realm.)

This article addresses a few upcoming (and one old) MMORPGs that are looking to capitalize on the phenom as well as provide some new added functionality to the mix. To me, it looks like they’re differentiating themselves by providing niche content (Context) that will be interesting to a self-selected group of people, and in a way that will cater to their specific needs (Personalization).

Marry that with some weird form of Xbox Live (don’t ask me how to combine a MMORPG with Xbox Live) and it could be the next big thing (Vertical Search).

I’m basing my thinking on this model.

The Warcraft series had its start a long time ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and games ran in DOS. I recall reading somewhere that Warcraft was meant to be a corollary to another, older fantasy series, Warhammer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer), which explains a number of similarities (mostly in the green-skinned design of the orcs themselves). As such, Warcraft I: Orcs and Humans was a simple, straightforward clash between good and evil- evil extraterrestrial orcs invading the human lands, basically. No other races were actually introduced.

Warcraft II started throwing in more complexities: more races were introduced, including dwarves, trolls, elves, and ogres. The world itself evolved to fit, throwing in more locales, factions, and clans, and it became clearer that the (evil!) orcish Horde used demonic magics and necromancy, while the human Alliance used, naturally, holy magics and wizardry. The scale of the battling itself became broader, throwing in aerial warfare in the form of gryphons and mounted dragons, as well as nautical warfare, with wooden ships and submarine turtles alike. This game is also where Blizzard’s trademark sense of humor grew from- clicking on a unit makes it start spouting sound bytes and classic sayings (yes, this is where “Dabu” and “Zug Zug” comes from).

Then they came out with Warcraft III, which is where things started getting weird.

It turns out that the orcs AREN’T actually evil, just demon-possessed; MORE creatures, species, and races were thrown in, ranging from the tauren to the night elves to the undead to the naga to the furbolg to the OTHER types of trolls to the gnomes to the centaurs to the blood elves to the demons themselves, each with their own backstory (too many, perhaps), and it turns out that the world of Warcraft consists of more than one continent. And more than one world, to boot, which happens to be the vaguely specified homeworld of the orcs. History is expanded upon- it turns out that the demons were actually behind everything bad that happened to Azeroth, and there was a cataclysmic war between the magic elves and the hippie elves, and it ALSO turns out that certain forms of magic are addictive and/or corruptive, and dragons can actually transform into any species they want.

There is, in fact, a timeline stretching back from 10,000 years before the present day (or longer, depending on whether or not the creation of Azeroth is included). While it’s certainly not a BAD thing for World of Warcraft to be so thorough with its own history (and there’s always that visceral thrill present when a player recognizes references, characters, and events from previous games in the series), the fact still remains:

It’s still ridiculously dense.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Retcon

http://www.wowwiki.com/Retcon_speculation