Massively

The Daedalus Project tracks MUD

Akela Talamasca — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Polls, Culture, Economy, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, Massively Meta, Academic, Education, Virtual worlds

Actually, it tracks MMOs, but what a clever title, huh? The Daedalus Project is the demographic/analysis website created and maintained by Nick Yee, a graduate student of Stanford University in the field of Communications who now works at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Nick's site is noteworthy both for the online surveys of MMO players that are open to anyone who wants to participate, and also for the conclusions he draws based on those survey results.

This statistical data has been used by Washington Post, CBS, TechWeek, CNET, the Associated Press, Nature.com, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Nick always has a survey or two running, so if you're interested in contributing your experiences and thoughts to the collective (and growing) body of knowledge concerning MMOs, you can do so at the 'Current Surveys' section of his site.

For those of us interested in metadata, The Daedalus Project is a genuine boon, and we hope he continues his necessary and groundbreaking work well into the future.

[Thanks, Nick!]

The Daedalus Project tracks MUD originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Study shows men's brains hard-wired for games

Chris Chester — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: MMO industry, Academic

When it comes to gaming, the popular perception is that it's a man's domain. (Of course, you'd be hard pressed to make that point around Massively HQ, as many of our most prolific writers and senior bloggers are of the fairer sex.) Traditionally, this has been pinned on sociological factors that discourage women from developing as close a relation with computers as men. While there is still probably a kernel of truth to that, a new study out of the Stanford University School of Medicine points to biological factors hard-wired into the brain as the cause. Reportedly, MRI scans taken of both men and women while playing a simple game showed a marked difference in the areas of the brain responsible for feelings of reward and addiction. Men simply got more of a buzz out of games than women, by and large.

What amused me was the description of the game they used in testing, which they described as having no real prescribed goal -- the test subjects simply clicked a series of images depicting balls as they slowly approached a wall. The more quickly they clicked the images, the more ground they gained. Without any instruction, the men in the study "appeared more motivated to acquire terrain." No real prescribed goal? Players motivating themselves to acquire terrain? Feelings of reward and addiction? If I didn't know any better, I'd swear they were using an MMO for that study! At the same time, short of casual Popcap-style games, MMOs probably enjoy one of the highest female to male ratios in the industry, so I'd stop short of saying that sociology has nothing to do with it. Still, very interesting stuff.

Study shows men's brains hard-wired for games originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold

Barb Dybwad — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Events, real-world, Second Life, MetaPlace, Academic, Virtual worlds, Massively Event Coverage

We headed to the Metaverse U event at Stanford University this weekend to hear a smorgasboard of prominent thinkers and workers in the fields of virtual worlds and online gaming have a meeting of the minds. Below is a recap (caveat: some paraphrasing involved!) of one of our favorite sessions featuring a conversation with Metaplace's Raph Koster, former Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka, and social media and online community guru Howard Rheingold.

Henrik Bennetsen (moderator): (Introduces 3 panelists and asks Raph to kick off with his thoughts on virtual worlds)

Raph: From the beginning, virtual communities has never been about the "virtual." All the oddities come from the mediation, not from human nature. We build trellises, and communities are plants growing on them... you get to shape them a little bit, and sometimes in very bad ways if you're not careful. We tend to think we have more power than we do when architecting these things. I wince at the title "community manager" ("relations" would be better) because it perpetuates the myth that we have power to control what users do. Mediation gives us a window into things that in the real world can be hard to see. Virtual communities are an opportunity to see how people tick.

Cory: Having spent 7 years building Second Life, the interactions and collisions with the real world are what make it interesting. We had only 400 users at launch and we were ecstatic! Can you imagine that today (especially for companies with big name investors)? I think about virtual worlds as communication technology. I agree there's a need for customer service and arguments about the declaration of avatar rights are important but yet I feel there's something off in these arguments... (he's referring to earlier conversation about declarations of avatar rights)

Gallery: Metaverse U 2008

Continue reading Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold

Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Stanford University's Metaverse U Conference

Akela Talamasca — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:30:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, Events, real-world, MMO industry, News items, Second Life, MetaPlace, Politics, Academic, Education, Virtual worlds, Massively Event Coverage

Virtual worlds and online gaming continue to grow in cultural importance, changing the outlook of commerce and entertainment almost daily. To make sense of these changes, Stanford University feels it's high time they convened a group of leading experts in the field to discuss what it all might mean, both today and reaching into the future. To this end, the Stanford University Humanities Lab is hosting the Metaverse U Conference, to take place on campus on February 16th and 17th.

Among the notable names speaking at this event are Raph Koster of Areae's Metaplace; Cory Ondrejka, formerly of Linden Lab; Howard Rheingold, author and critic, credited with coining the term 'virtual community', and many other guests. In fact, those three in particular will be speaking together in conversation on Saturday, an event I expect will be both illuminating and provocative.

I'll be attending with Massively's Barb Dybwad, so look for us and say hi! If you can't make it, however, don't despair -- the organizers have told us that "we are about to announce that the entire conference will be streamed for free into Second Life for anyone who wants to attend there."

Stanford University's Metaverse U Conference originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Welcome to the World of Treecraft

Samuel Axon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:30:00 EST

Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Academic, Virtual worlds

Science Daily reports that a Stanford computer scientist named Vladlen Koltun has produced a program that allows both amateur and professional creators of virtual worlds to select from countless possible types of trees (all modeled based on scientific research) and to customize those trees based on their own needs.

The program is cleverly called Dryad, and Koltun and his associates hope that it will be one of the first steps towards making the development of believable 3D online spaces an achievable goal for creative types without enormous budgets. Koltun said that there is a very small community of 3D modelers skilled in creating objects like trees, and that the rarity of the skill is partly responsible for a lull in the progression of user-generated virtual worlds.

So, if you are planning on making a 3D MMO, you can use the program for free at the Stanford website. Maybe then your army of expensive employees can be smaller! It's also just fun to play with.

Welcome to the World of Treecraft originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments