Got an email (copied after the break) from a comedian seeking to drive traffic to a charity website. He and his buddies are playing games in Iron Man Mode: One death. Nice, funny premise. It's c...
So I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of the Smithsonian's Art of Video Games exhibit last week by curator Georgina Goodlander. If you're in DC, it is worth a visit, plus it will be ve...
Petra is a Finnish girl who, in the storybooks, is able to fly around the world and see many different cultures. On the Petra's PLanet MMO, the player does what Petra does: Go to different count...
Just to let TN readers know - I changed the name of the Virtual Policy Network's podcast to: Social Change Technology. That seemed to best sum up what it's about. We've done a few show...
Couple of reports from the world of the virtual currency Bitcoin indicate that it has become a hacker target. A BTC is worth about $5 at the moment; the thefts are in the 6-digit area in terms of dol...
I thought reader must be interested in the forthcoming title from Edward Elgar: Virtual Economies and Financial Crime, by Dr. Clare Chambers Jones. Here is the description from the publisher: Virtual...
So, you do something in a virtual world and you get a random item. Say, you kill a dragon. The item has real-world value. You obtained it as a result of three things: You paid or registered to play t...
We've talked before in this space about academia and industry working together, and how much the academy needs to hire expertise from game developers. In perhaps the biggest such hire ever, USC ...
Earlier we reported that Google decided not to have a virtual currency. Facebook's Credits may face legal challenges, as Joystiq reports.
Back in the day, say 2004 or 2005, some far-seeing folks tried to set up virtual currency exchanges. Traffic was too light at the time, but now it seems to be a sustainable business model with some v...
Everybody in Buffalo and Detroit jokes about their northern neighbor's "play money." But it may soon go digital in a way that looks more like Yo-Ho-Ho money than than Euros.
Google was thinking about making a virtual currency but did not, apparently due to regulatory concerns.
One Debbie Denard of Nanny.net has identified nanny characters she'd like to see in video games. I guess there'd have to be kids in games first. Wonder how The Sims nannies stack up.
Mike Fahey of Kotaku may be hitting rock bottom. He writes movingly that he can't take it any more, this pattern of stories in which gamers kill their babies. To gain perspective, let's co...
On its face, EVE Online seems such a paradise for the independent person. No laws, no restrictions, no way forward except individual merit. Can't handle it? Die or quit. Completely predictably, ...
A Serious Games Association is being launched, and they want to compile a directory of all the games for good out there. Please go to SeriousGamesAssociation.com to sign up, help out, and add your se...
You're hearing it more and more: There's a higher-education bubble. Remember bubbles? They're those things that pop and cause catastrophes. In 2008, the housing finance bubble popped a...
Once again we point to Motivate.Play for reports on game experimentation and creating social glue. I have got to go to GDC every year, there's more going on there in terms of research than you c...
The latest Virtually Policy podcast is part two of the Jon Matonis interview. In the second half of the interview Jon focuses on Bitcoin and we cover everything from human rights, Bitcoin as a cross ...
The guys at Motivate.Play are taking in GDC and have posted their first notes. Travis Ross comments on the unstated stance of many serious games speakers that making a game fun an easy part of a proj...
Ren continues to crank out interesting new podcasts on the Virtual Policy Network. Virtually Policy #2: From Ghana to Second Life – public diplomacy in the digital age In the second episode of Virtua...
The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research will be publishing a special issue dedicated to law and virtual worlds. Dan Hunter, Melissa de Zwart, and I will be editing the issue. The Call for Papers an...
Kudos to Ren Reynolds for kicking off a new podcast: Virtually Policy. In the inaugural episode, Ren interviews Arno Lodder with regard to the Dutch Runescape case, which led to the first national S...
Someone saw the movie Second Skin and wrote me asking about game addiction. He said "You gave the example of the heavy set girl who has to take care of her mother so she can't leave, she pl...
Only the Terra Novans can adequately appreciate the number of people in this Wired UK list who are involved in play, simulation, virtual worlds or things related (economics, network science, etc.) ...
Jason Wall sent me a note explaining that World of Warcraft (you've heard of it?) is doing even more to encourage the formation of ad hoc raiding groups. Back in the day, he notes, the only way ...
The Dutch Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Runescape theft case today. You can find the ruling here, and here's a Google-translated version. The ruling cites to the work of Professor Arn...
Holy hellions, Batman, 2012 is off with a bang. Too bad about SWTOR and the LEGO Universe, but Guild Wars 2 might actually ship this year, and there are some other exciting things brewing. Tera Onli...
Gamasutra just posted a rather longish essay of mine about Minecraft and what's wrong today with the intersection of games and intellectual property law. Here's the link. In some ways, I ...
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