[...] A huge driver in modern MMORPG culture is “playing with the people you already know,” which is another form of exclusionary thinking. As we have seen the concept of guild mobility from game to game flower, we’ve also seen the rise of heavily self-referential cultures that carry with them the vestiges of past games, and which are largely centered around maintaining a given group’s social identity. Is this very different from the notion that jetsetting rich folks would like to hang around with the friends they’ve made at their parties in St. Tropez? Link: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/22…-public-parks/ __________________ [...]

I know, because I ran these games, and despite trying to enable democratic approaches to things, the players weren’t buying.

At least Matt gives us more of a range of group experiences, you can be nominally part of some Big Tent sort of arrangement or zoom in and define yourself by micro-differences.

Raph, I’d have to reject the idea that the plurality of particularities in these groups is a substitute for an open society, and for genuine pluralism. It’s merely a micro-brewed closed society. It also seems more important for the social worlds that some relatively neutral civic open space be kept available for people to move freely in, before they are snapped up by this or that sect or this or that Prim Diva or Game God.

WoW instead is quite focused and I don’t see how it could benefit from multiple guilds.

I thought we covered this. A friends guild, a 40 man raid guild, a PVP guild and for some a crafting/traiding cartle would be useful.

It’s just a matter of learning the coordination and concentrate the efforts (both in players’ experience and loot focus).

So mostly to have more control and stability. And a selective accessibility to that kind of endgame content.

I think it’s still all about the function.

[...] Gaia OnlineSocial networking services are looking closely at the world of MMOs for cues, and some of the first things they pick up on is avatars. Gaia Online is one I just registered for today, to check it out. It’s very very anime. You get a big-head kawaii avatar, and you can buy clothes with gold. I [...] Games for ChangeGames for Change has opened early registration. I’m going to be in New York right at the same time, doing a panel thing for Harper’s, but I haven’t thought about going or not. Hmm. Private clubs or public parksI was reading this article about aSmallWorld, the country-club-like social networking service, and it sparked some thoughts about exclusivity. An environment like aSmallWorld is a a private club, but not one like most of the other social networking services, which use exclusivity mostly as a way to seem cool but in fact want to invite in [...] The Sunday Poem: Caledonian Creation MythI was in a mythological mood, at the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland. Hence the title. And yeah, it’s a poem about sex. Sorry. At least it’s sex in the cosmic, way-the-world-turns sense, the ocean-and-earth sense. Caledonian Creation Myth It begins, a courtship Like others, earth and wave Meeting on the strands And sand, a wet periphery, an Intersection. He laps [...] What I’ve read latelyRainbows End by Vernor Vinge is “a novel of the near future.” It’s also conveniently set in San Diego, in the vicinity of UCSD. It’s ostensibly about an old poet who is cured of Alzheimer’s and has to retake high school, but it’s really about the near future of security in a ubicomp world where [...] The journey is the reward is a f—–g lieThat’s my friend Bridget holding a cartoon I scribbled years ago at a MUD-Dev conference. She’s hung onto it all these years and still brings it to gatherings, even though it is getting a bit worse for wear. The caption reads, “The journey is the reward” is a fucking lie. (People would rather have the princess). You [...] The new book: A Grammar of GameplayNow that it’s on Amazon, I suppose that I need to actually write it. This is the follow-on to A Theory of Fun for Game Design, of course, and it’s called A Grammar of Gameplay: How Games Work. It’s intended as a companion, of course, but also as an amalgam of all the thoughts on game [...] Entropia Universe vs. TerraNovaOh, the drama. Uru returnsCNet has an article on how GameTap is going to bring Uru Live back. Certainly unexpected… I assumne it will have a serious impact on the Uru communities in There, for example. ( vote for this news ) [...]

Strong guilds and so-called exclusive portals are really concerned with only allowing like-minded people to subscribe basically only to guarantee a certain resource.

Right. Early sociohistorical research classified private associations by function, which led people to believe that these functions were mutually exclusive. Recent developments in the research of private associations throughout history now focus on membership and social roles, instead of function. The "raiding guild" is a phenomenon of a restrictive set of guild features (i.e., the private rendezvous to connect with those privy a la chat rooms and buddy lists) and partly a product of new communications technology.

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