[...] worlds merrily went on developing more elaborate systems, such as moods and adverbs, and eventually these made the jump to a couple of graphical worlds. We also saw systems like that [...]

[...] Koster had a recent post on his blog that was pretty interesting. He talked about how we’re slowly moving to a more [...]

[...] competitive advantage. Instead, it is the unique (and fragile!) community that a service fosters. What we are missing: Another Raph presentation. Worth reading if you have somehow missed the joyous [...]

[...] competitive advantage. Instead, it is the unique (and fragile!) community that a service fosters. What we are missing: Another Raph presentation. Worth reading if you have somehow missed the joyous [...]

[...] competitive advantage. Instead, it is the unique (and fragile!) community that a service fosters. What we are missing: Another Raph presentation. Worth reading if you have somehow missed the joyous [...]

[...] Raph Koster blogs about ChatBlade and Commodification   [...]

ChatBlade supports Quick Commands as Mr. Bartle suggests. ; and : are both the same as typing in /emote. In addition a few other Quick Commands are included (! = /say, @ = /guild, $ = /auction, etc. ).

Freeform /emotes are included in ChatBlade, so Richard could type in /em Laughs uproariously. But any emotes which include animations are left to the Game Studios to implement.

Players are also able to create their own Slash Commands out of existing Commands, so one could “/syn Backflip, /emote Backflips” to make a new Slash Command called /backflip, which is the same as typing in “/emote Backflips”.

Players can also modify the initial Slash Command interface to be what they are used to without having to issue a /syn command. So if the player is used to /g being group chat, they can set that up and are not reliant on what the Game Developer thinks should be the command that initiates chat with ones group. Most current MMOGs all have hard-coded Slash Commands and too often they change what the players are accustomed to.

An Underwater chat filter might be an interesting thing to see in chat.

It’s instructive to think about what the crazy things are that will be commodified to the point where they are given away: software for seamless multiserver clusters?

Errr… Project Darkstar is already an attempt to provide that for free.

The sad bit was reading an application for a patent on the basic concepts as elaborated in the OASIS lists for HumanML from a small beltway company financed by the usual suspects this year. This is why commodification has a rotten side effect: work done in the open to advance the standardization if not quickly patented or submitted as IP to an open IP organization will be harvested, rebranded and captured by a private organization.

Anyone doing open list work, in fact even contributing ideas to blogs such as this one should understand the risks.

Yes, I know, but (except for SWG) they don’t have a single character for it (ie. : or ; or both). I really don’t know why they decided that; it’s as if they wanted to discourage it.

Why just a single character? Why not an entire window? I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but I think Guild Wars uses an icon dropdown next to the input box. If you had an input box devoted to outputting emotes, you wouldn’t need a single character to trigger the emote. Just the Enter key. Or maybe mouse gestures? How could emotes be improved beyond textual input?

Voice recognition? Real-time motion capture? Do away with the chat window altogether. Equip users with mocap gloves and headsets, give the technology a big push, and there you have an advancement in human-computer interaction. But then you have to think about accessibility, so the chat window comes back for those who can’t speak or move their arms.