Social Dynamics of Online Games

IT Conversations has a podcast with host John Udell talking to Dmitri Williams and Jake Vickers about the Social Dynamics of Online Games. Dmitri Williams is an assistant professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication who studies the social dynamics of online games. He is also a member of a World of Warcraft guild in which George Vickers, a 17-year-old college student, plays a key leadership role. The conversation explores the ways in which leadership and organizational skills can be developed in an online multiplayer game.

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CSI in Second Life

It might seem like we’re obsessed with Second Life, but the reason that we’ve had some many posts about it lately is that there are new and interesting things going on with it. It’s a good example that the technologies underlying games are broadly applicable and their use will continue to evolve.

I’m not a CSI viewer, but I know it’s a very popular main stream program, so an episode that takes place partly in Second Space might be significant. Many are expecting a rapid convergence of computers and television that will come to full fruition as digital television becomes mandatory around the world.

Second Life is bracing itself for an influx of new members this coming week with the long awaited episode of CSI:NY does Second Life to be shown in the United States on Wednesday. The episode will see Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) entering Second Life to pursue a killer who has killed a Second Life user in a case of virtual stalking gone too far. CSI:NY fans will be encouraged to join Second Life and investigate the case by following a link on the CBS website. CSI:NY will have three options for CSI-related inworld activities. The first option will allow viewers to walk around virtual New York buildings and visit a CSI lab and play forensic games. (link)

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Brain-Computer interface for Second Life

Researchers at the Tomita and Ushida Laboratory of Keio University in Japan have developed a brain-computer interface that allows a person to control a Second Life avatar just by thinking.

“The system consists of a headpiece equipped with electrodes that monitor activity in three areas of the motor cortex (the region of the brain involved in controlling the movement of the arms and legs). An EEG machine reads and graphs the data and relays it to the BCI, where a brain wave analysis algorithm interprets the user’s imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then converts this data into a signal and relays it to Second Life, causing the on-screen avatar to move. In this way, the user can exercise real-time control over the avatar in the 3D virtual world without moving a muscle.” (link)

The range of functions supported is still limited, but are planning to support more complex movements and geatures.

The motivation is not to make your couch potato’s life even easier, but to develop the technology to “help people with serious physical impairments communicate and do business in Second Life.”

Here’s a video demonstrating mind control of a Second Life avatar.

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Halting State: a thriller set in the MMORPG industry

Halting State is a new science fiction novel by Hugo-award winner Charles Stross that the author describes as a “a near-future thriller of skullduggery and rules lawyering in the shadowy world of massively multiplayer virtual reality games”.

“In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates, a dot-com startup company that’s just been floated on the London stock exchange. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. For Smith, the investigation seems pointless. But she soon realizes that the virtual world may have a devastating effect in the real one-and that someone is about to launch an attack upon both…” (link)

If you are intrigued, you can read the first prolog and the three chapters (1, 2, 3) posted on Charlie Stoss’s blog.

Great title, by the way. Amazingly, when I googled for ‘halting state’, all but two of the top 50 results were about the book. So much for automata theory.

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New Maryland game company Zenimax Online Studios is hiring

ZeniMax Media (Rockville MD) is setting up a new game development company ZeniMax Online Studios. This will be a new separate game development company devoted to MMO game creations.

“ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of Bethesda Softworks, announced today the creation of ZeniMax Online Studios. The division will be headed by Matt Firor, a well-known expert in the field of online gaming, and will focus on the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) market segment.” (link)

Firor was formerly the Executive Producer at Mythic Entertainment

This Wednesday, September 19th, ZeniMax Online Studios will hold a career fair from 11:00am to 8:00pm at the Baltimore Marriott Hunt Valley (245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley). They are interviewing for all positions, including game designers, programmers, artists, animators, content specialists and producers. See the job listings page for a detailed list of position.

In a recent interview Matt Firor said:

“Right now my number one priority is to assemble the best MMO team possible, and this will take most of my time and energy over the next year. It doesn’t matter how good an idea you have for a game if you don’t have a team that can execute it.” (link)

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Report predicts MMO game market to triple in five years

A new report by Strategy Analytics predicts that the global online game market will triple from it’s current revenue of $4 billion per year over the next five years.

“This report, “Online Games: Global Market Forecast” notes that the rapidly expanding Massively Multiplayer Online Games market, lead by Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft franchise, is blazing the way for electronic sell-through and digital distribution of both PC and console games. … “The main driver for sustained growth in the online games market will be the continued uptake of broadband services around the world”, adds David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Additionally, the very lucrative revenue opportunity in both the massively multiplayer segment and the electronic sell through market will continue to attract new entrants into the online games market.”" (link)

The report notes that online game revenue, mostly from MMOs, is already larger that the revenue from online music and for online video. Here’s their prediction of the growth.

(spotted on ars technica)

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Bank run on Ginko Financial signals Second Life economic crisis

Technology Review reports on Money Trouble in Second Life.

“There’s a long line of avatars waiting to use the automatic-teller machines for Ginko Financial, a virtual bank in the online game Second Life. For more than a week, account holders have been demanding their money back in what some folks are calling a bank run. Set off by high interest rates and a recent ban on in-game gambling, the bank run could ultimately have a major effect on the game’s economy. The theft of approximately $12,000 from the Second Life World Stock Exchange doesn’t help matters either.”

Unlike many MMOGs, Second Life has an active economy based on the Linden Dollar (L$) and encourages users to buy and sell game goods and real estate to one another. While the currency is fictional, TR reports

“But those dollars do have real-world value: players can buy or sell Linden dollars at a rate of about L$270 to $1 on the Lindex market. Second Life’s website even boasts that “thousands of residents are making part or all of their real life income from their Second Life businesses.”

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From MUDs to Worlds of Warcraft, is it progress?

Today’s massively multiplayer games and environments like Worlds of Warcraft and Secod Life have their roots in MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) popular in the 80s and 90s. The Guardian’s games blog has an interview with Richard Bartle, co-creator of the original MUD in 1978 at the University of Essex.

The post’s title is a provocative quote from Bartle, “I’d close World of Warcraft!” MUD creator Richard Bartle on the state of virtual worlds.

Note: You can try out a version on MUD2, Bartle’s successor to the original MUD here.

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Security and games: exploiting online games

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like World of Warcraft and Second Life are large, complex, dynamic distributed software systems with hundreds of thousands of users scattered around the world. A new book, Exploiting Online Games explores a range of security issues associated with these games, including topics like the following.

• Why online games are a harbinger of software security issues to come
• How millions of gamers have created billion-dollar virtual economies
• How game companies invade personal privacy
• Why some gamers cheat
• Techniques for breaking online game security
• How to build a bot to play a game for you
• Methods for total conversion and advanced mods

Tim Wilson of Dark Reading motivated it this way in his post about the book

“You’re playing an online game in which players are warriors who can only walk, jump, or run. Suddenly, another player appears out of nowhere, draws his sword, and hacks you to bits. Game over. But were you really beaten by a superior player? Or did a hacker or cheater simply rig the game?”

This book illustrates a theme that underlies the game track in the CMSC program. Studying computer games is a good way to learn the basic principles of computer science and studying computer science is a good way to prepare yourself for a career in the interactive entertainment industry.

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Game designers test the limits of AI

An article by Scott Kirsner in the Boston Globe, Game designers test the limits of artificial intelligence, talks about research aimed at improving massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs).

“A lot of the most interesting work in artificial intelligence is being done by game developers,” says Bruce Blumberg, senior scientist at Blue Fang Games in Waltham, and formerly a professor at MIT’s Media Lab. “You have really bright kids who are dealing with problems they don’t realize are insoluble. They’re very motivated.”

In MMOGs, most of the characters are intelligent because that are controlled by people, so the behavior of computer controlled characters compare badly. Another challenge of MMOGs is that the human-controlled characters interact largely through conversations in natural language.

“You can’t talk to characters and expect a response that feels real,” Davis says. “So there are no games that are like detective stories, or romances, which are popular genres in the movies, because you can’t interview suspects or talk to other people.” … One way to get there is by having humans “train” the AI software. That’s the approach that game designer Jeff Orkin, now a grad student at the Media Lab, is taking. With a project called The Restaurant Game, Orkin invites players to assume the role of a restaurant’s wait staff. His plan is to capture their behavior and dialogue, and use it to build more realistic software-driven characters, in the same way that designers sometimes use motion capture cameras to record and replicate human movement.

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