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Some interesting links

July 30th, 2007 (Visited 1545 times) Tags:

Warren Spector’s new blog
A run on an SL bank
Twinity, covered one place, and WebbliWorld and JumpStartWorld in another
Kim Pallister argues that “free” is a real threat to all current MMO developers
N’Gai Croal goes after Ebert’s going after Barker on the games-as-art question

I have thoughts on Comic-Con as well, but have some errands to run over lunch, so… those are for later.

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Michael W. said on July 30th, 2007 at 12:47 pm:
I’ve heard interviews with Warren Spector before, and they were fascinating, glad to know he has a blog. Thanks for the link Raph!
Brian 'Psychochild' Green said on July 30th, 2007 at 1:40 pm:
N’Gai Croal’s article is rather interesting. A few new twists on the argument, and some new sources of information.

One of the problems is that “art” is a very emotionally-charged word. Raph has spoken about games as art, so I’m sure he can back me up on this assertion. So, when you try to say “games are art”, you get some backlash like you see with Ebert because of the automatic associations you have with “video games” and “art”; these associations are often not very similar in the mind of most people.

This is one reason why I’ve started calling this issue “legitimacy” instead. This word has less of the overloaded connotations of ‘art’, and I think it address the issue more directly. I think it would be easier to convince Ebert that games are a legitimate medium for creative expression, rather than trying to get the title of “high art” applied to games.

My thoughts.
moo said on July 30th, 2007 at 4:15 pm:
Why on earth would anyone put their real money into a bank based in Second Life, anyway? IMO, people that stupid deserve to lose their money.
Derek Licciardi said on July 30th, 2007 at 7:47 pm:
lol. Bury your money in SL and think its a stable investment. Then a massive shift in policy forces your business model out of business and you can’t even get your money out. You see, this is what spawned the Federal Reserve and all of its regulations requiring banks to keep a certain amount of cash on hand. Maybe it will make those in SL aware that even in the real world, the value of the dollar versus everyone else is a pretty big deal because when you devalue your currency with major shifts in governmental policy it has ripple effects throughout your society.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the runon the banks in SL is because of the gambling ban that wiped out half of the two money making ventures in SL. The other foot will fall and SL will struggle from there, though it will be a nice experiment to reflect back on the next time someone wants to try and mix real world money that closely with virtual money.
chabuhi said on July 31st, 2007 at 5:43 am:
I still can’t understand why anyone would carry a significant balance of Linden Dollars on their account. Anytime I had more than, say, $50US worth of Lindenbucks I’d cash out to my PayPal account, then immediately to my bank account, fees be damned (bad enough that LL might block you from your Lindens, but PayPal, too, has some shady hooks into your money).

I think a lot needs to happen with virtual banking (whether LL, or the Entropia bunch, or PayPal) before it’s anything less than high-risk — but maybe I’m just too conservative.
Todd Ogrin said on July 31st, 2007 at 2:01 pm:
In Roger Ebert’s review of “Die Hard 2,” he admits that he much prefers the sequel over the original “Die Hard.”

This doesn’t so much remove him from the ranks of people whose opinions I trust, as it blows him out of those ranks, screaming, seated in an ejection seat, propelled upwards on a fiery pillar of explosive force.
Amaranthar said on August 1st, 2007 at 1:09 am:
Giving real life value to these things that can just go away is probably the lamest con game I’ve ever seen. “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Morgan Ramsay said on August 1st, 2007 at 2:37 am:
Giving real life value to these things that can just go away is probably the lamest con game I’ve ever seen.

Anything can just “go away.” Think about it. Do you value the money in your bank account? Is that money any less valuable because you can’t hold it in your hands? Would you care if you checked your balance online and suddenly the numbers changed to $0.00? The bits and bytes that comprise your money in your bank account, like paper currency, is simply a representation of actual value. It’s merely a medium. Do you value contracts even though they can burned and transformed into energy? It’s not the medium that matters to people. What matters to people is the actual value that a medium represents.
Amaranthar said on August 1st, 2007 at 6:32 am:
Morgan, no, you’re wrong about that. There are alternate records to go to, or there are audits. In the event that your bank account mysteriously goes to 0, you can have an audit done which will show either that there was a change that shouldn’t have occured (as in a bug in the system), or that something else happened (such as the money being transfered wrongly or illegally). In the event of paper items like stocks being destroyed, the records of ownership are kept at the issuing party and can be recovered through a process (takes a year, I think). Something like an Auto title can be recovered as well. I can’t think of anything that can’t be recovered due to duplication of records and the way the law is set up to reinforce ownership.
Derek Licciardi said on August 1st, 2007 at 9:25 am:
You’re both right in different ways. Amaranthar, the laws reinforcing ownership are what gives our currency and things a sense of value. Without those laws, RL would be no different than SL. Morgan is also right in that value is created by the people. The connection here is that when a community values something, they will use governance to enact laws to protect that shared sense of value. SL users have no ability to protect their shared sense of value on anything in SL because Linden Labs runs everything and can change everything on a whim. The economic situation in SL is in effect a capitalistic dictatorship. That’s like mixing oil and water because eventually the government (Linden Labs) and the economic system (The Players) will collide on principles of value. The only result here is that the government wins and the citizens are screwed. In this case Linden Labs doesn’t value gambling in its country as much as its citizens do.

SL differs in one other way in that it is governed by a higher government and does not enjoy any kind of sovereign nation status and as such is effected by the larger governments whims as much as Linden Labs. It’s somewhat like the careful balance we maintain between state’s power and federal authority only in this case Linden Labs doesn’t have any power. So the whole notion of value is tied up in people, government, power, authority and basic economics. Screw around with any of those variables and the whole house of cards could come tumbling down.
Amaranthar said on August 1st, 2007 at 10:48 am:
Yes, SL is under no regulatory authority at all. They can say their Linden Dollars are all covered, and legally they are not obligated to be telling the truth. Sure, it would put them deeper in it in case of law suits, but no government agency or commision is going to watch them nor ask for proof. Only a court would in case of a lawsuit. Yet they are themselves giving a value to their money.

I understand what you guys are saying about player placed value, but hey, swampland in Florida can have perceived value. Now, I can understand a player willing to pay for something they want in a game. I don’t see anything wrong with that alone. But when game things that don’t exist for real are treated like investments, and when the games involved are acting like this is the new future of mankind, well how foolish can a buyer be? And how misleading can a game developer be?
Legally, quite alot.
Morgan Ramsay said on August 1st, 2007 at 11:37 am:
Derek Licciardi wrote:

Without those laws, RL would be no different than SL.

What I find most interesting/disturbing about Second Life is that Linden Labs thrives on marketing the virtual world as an actual “second life.” Look at how people talk about it! It’s almost like people believe that “the matrix” is here now. I don’t remember the players of Ultima Online ever exhibiting that sort of cult-like behavior about their virtual world. I guess what drives the church of Second Life is that the roles people play are not that of fantasy warriors, rogues, and magicians but rather they are playing themselves. In more ways than one.

Amaranthar wrote:

But when game things that don’t exist for real are treated like investments, and when the games involved are acting like this is the new future of mankind, well how foolish can a buyer be?

This is where philosophy enters the picture. The philosophy that empowers the practice of branding is the philosophy that, basically, “what what we see [experience] is not reality but instead what we see [experience] is actually our perception of reality, and because we do not see [experience] reality, we do not know reality; we only know our perception.” Because we only know our perception, the things in this world that we perceive as real are not actually real; they are perceivably real. We make all of our decisions, for better or worse, based on our perception of reality. The ultimate of this is best demonstrated by our ability to forecast. Where would the stock market be without people willing to invest in the future—a future that doesn’t actually exist but is so perceivably real that it is treated as a thing of value?