Virtually Blind has the scoop, but in short, Blizzard won on all the major points: the court didn’t go for the copyright argument, saying they were bound by precedent and not a policymaking body; and that making this kind of software looks like tortious interference (meaning, interfering with the contract between Blizzard and users). Further analysis at TerraNova.

Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what the agreement that comes with the software says. If the court agrees in spite of MAI and its progeny (and the ruling survives certain appeal) then U.S. copyright law would protect, among other things, making copies of purchased software in RAM in order to use the software — no matter what the “license agreement” says. Resolving this issue in favor of Public Knowledge would call into question provisions in EULAs governing nearly every virtual world and multiuser online game, as well as EULAs for other software.

• Number of users in Habbo Hotel worldwide: 20,000,000
• “Hottest” book in the US last year according to Time Magazine: 1,500,000+. (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
• Best-selling graphic novel in the US last year: 80,000. (Naruto)
• Digital sales of a hit song: 2,100,000 (Leona Lewis, “Bleeding Love”)
• Average downloads of a downloadable Rock Band track: 100,000
• Viewers of the #1 show on US TV (including DVR): 28,800,000 (American Idol)
• Viewers of the #150 show on US TV: 2,400,000 (Gossip Girl)
• Users of World of Warcraft in North America: 2,500,000
• Monthly uniques for Gaia Online: 2,000,000+
• Total number of movie tickets sold in the US in one year: 1,400,000,000
• Estimated tickets sold to the new Indiana Jones movie in five weeks: 42,290,849 (using 2007 average US ticket price and grosses to date).

Just some figures that caught my eye while browsing a few different publications…

Just continuing to follow the story, and it felt interesting enough to merit its own post rather than just an addition to the comment thread.

Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what the agreement that comes with the software says. If the court agrees in spite of MAI and its progeny (and the ruling survives certain appeal) then U.S. copyright law would protect, among other things, making copies of purchased software in RAM in order to use the software — no matter what the “license agreement” says. Resolving this issue in favor of Public Knowledge would call into question provisions in EULAs governing nearly every virtual world and multiuser online game, as well as EULAs for other software.

An interesting issue which should have come to a court ages ago is being surfaced by the MDY v Blizzard suit.

As you know, most of the time when you do something on a computer, copies are being made. In fact, a LOT of copies are being made (see my old post on microtransactions for a more detailed analysis and historical point of view on this). In particular, installing a piece of software means getting a copy on a disk, copying it into memory, then copying it from memory onto your own disk, then reloading it into memory every time you launch it.

So, Blizzard put a copyright claim in their suit against MDY, makers of WoWglider. And a third party called Public Knowledge, which advocates for digital rights, filed an amicus brief (”friend of the court,” basically a side opinion because they feel they have a stake in the case) which argues that the copyright claim is, well, bogus.

MDY v. Blizzard Bot Suit Judge Requires Blizzard to Respond to Amicus Brief on Copyright Issues | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

The issue is essentially this: Blizzard claims that when third-party programs like MDY’s Glider (which automates certain World of Warcraft tasks) load World of Warcraft software into a computer’s RAM, that “creation of a copy” violates the copyright Blizzard holds in its software.

Public Knowledge argues “that Blizzard doesn’t have a claim on copyright grounds because the right of users to make the copy for use by the computer is already guaranteed by law. [...] Therefore, Blizzard cannot claim any infringement of its copyrights based upon the creation of RAM copies because the right to make those copies was never Blizzard’s to license in the first place.”

This has broad relevance outside of this one case. So it’s particularly interesting that the judge in the case has now ordered Blizzard to answer this issue specifically.

Nielsen is saying that Club Penguin is stalling out — not much, just a -7% growth year on year from last April to this April.

Of course, with the quantity of kids’ worlds coming into the market now, this is not really surprising, is it? I mean, I was at the grocery store this weekend, and there was a rack of Beanie Babies 2.0 with giant “play online!” tags hanging on them. It may be that this is the death of “Web 2.0,” when it gets co-opted for Beanie Babies.

At left here is the rack of game cards available at Target — snapped this weekend, and strongly reminiscent, finally, of similar shots I have taken in Korea, Japan, and China. For years, there was no such rack in the US. Then it was just a couple of cards, and only at some checkouts. Now it gets a rack right between the TV box sets and the top pop albums (you can see REM’s latest CD there, abandoned on the top shelf).

Besides the cards you maybe expect to see, like Club Penguin, WoW, and Zwinky, there’s also a large stack of ‘em for gPotato games (Flyff, Shot Online, etc) And Acclaim, which make their living by bringing over games from Korea. There’s WildTangent cards, and the Gaia cards are almost sold out. The diversity is interesting, as is the lack of cards for most of the core gamer MMORPGs. The strong presence of the often-marginalized Korean games is telling.

Meanwhile, I hear that Age of Conan has something like 700,000 units in the pipe for day one, which is either a business blunder or a sign of high pre-orders and pent-up demand. WoW players looking for something new to sink their teeth into?

We’re starting to see the fragmentation that can come from having so many offerings on the market. How many kids’ worlds can actually survive?

I actually think the answer is “just about all of them.” If online continues to chew through the gaming market, this rack could be the size of a Gamestop someday — one stack of cards per game, in a world where all the games try to drive alternate revenue streams regardless of platform.

Edit: In North America!

NPD has a new report out, where they are starting to track subscriptions. As part of it, they list these as the top five subscription worlds:

1.) World of Warcraft
2.) RuneScape
3.) Lord of the Rings Online
4.) Final Fantasy XI
5.) City of Heroes

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Next Generation has an informative email from Russell Williams, the CEO of Flying Lab, giving the reasons why they are having to merge servers. It’s a great insight into the complex equation involved in estimating how many servers to have.

One of the items in particular caught my eye:

Game systems
Pirates’ gameplay is very organic, designed in such a way that the different systems feed into one another. In a PvE-only game, focusing mainly on content, this isn’t a big deal. But in Pirates of the Burning Sea we have systems that require a minimum number of players to function correctly, such as our economy, and they break other systems if they’re not working correctly (such as PvP). If we didn’t have these kinds of interdependent systems, we wouldn’t even be considering server merges.

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Given the recent hack to the blog, and also given the recent news of the decompiled Eve Online client, it seemed like a good time to go over some of the ways in which a virtual world gets hacked.

The interesting thing, of course, is that all the hacks I am going to talk about are actually not hacking the virtual world at all; they instead attack the client, which is your window into the world, and also your waldo, your means of exercising control over what happens in that world. And that’s because…

The client is in the hands of the enemy.

– The Laws of Online World Design

You’ve probably heard that before — I wasn’t the first one to say it, but it constantly gets misattributed to me. That particular phrasing may have originated with Kelton Flinn, but I am sure many of us came up with it independently.

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I’m not sure there is, at least as we understand it. Not at the moment, anyway.

When we speak of “casual” we mean a cluster of things. Sometimes we mean targeting a different demographic, one not excited by the hardcore fantasy-and-sci-fi fictions we concoct. Sometimes we mean shorter play sessions. Sometimes we mean things like not requiring grouping in the worlds, which makes it easier for a less dedicated player to have fun.

More “casual” experiences often have a connotation of being shallow. One thing that is clear, though, is that it doesn’t matter how casual you make an experience, some people will use it in a hardcore manner.  And that means that it must have hidden depths of some sort. A shallow experience simply doesn’t tend to keep people.

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