Two notable articles

 Posted by (Visited 4895 times)  Game talk
Jun 182007
 

The first one, entitled “Second Earth,” over at Technology Review, is an excellent summary of many of the “metaverse” trends. Mirror worlds, Google Earth, MMORPGs, etc etc — it’s all here. Trivia question for the audience: what MMORPG was John Hanke once involved in?

The second one is Julian Dibbell’s New York Times article “Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer.” (reg may be required). Until Ge Jin’s documentary comes out, this is one of the best glimpses into what the life of gold farming is actually like in China.

  8 Responses to “Two notable articles”

  1. We can “solve” the problem of gold farming by providing incentives toward more productive play patterns:

    http://kingludic.blogspot.com/2007/06/very-shuang.html

  2. Trivia question for the audience: what MMORPG was John Hanke once involved in?

    Here’s a hint: I know the answer rather well. 🙂

    A bit more obscure question: Which other developer from the same game also works on the Google Earth project? (At least he did back when it was called Keyhole.)

  3. I don’t have any idea what you are talking about, Psychochild. hehehe
    I think everyone knows but doesn’t want to say because it was just too easy. But that second part, that’s a tougher one.

  4. Duh, Psycho, that should’ve been a spoiler alert.

  5. Obviously I didn’t spoil it enough for Amaranthar. 😉

    But, now you can answer the bonus question, Ola!

  6. Then I will give Amaranthar another hint: In Raph’s collection of laws there is a law called Hanke’s Law… (I think we are playing a game here?)

    Brian, I’ll answer your question when you tell me what my next blog-entry is going to be about. Hint: Amaranthar ought to know…

  7. We should keep pushing the trivia to the retro arcade game scene and the recent purchase by Viacom, and see if people connect the dots on just how small a biz it is. 😉

  8. Hey, folks, I was teasing Psychochild. I knew the answer as soon as I did a search after first reading it. That’s why I said it was too easy. But Psychochilds second part is trickier, since I can’t find any direct results from a search. When I get time I’ll do some cross referencing to see if I can find it, if no one beats me to it.

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