Uru back from the dead as open source

 Posted by (Visited 6247 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Dec 142008
 

This is cool, and a step we can hope more operators of sunset games might take.

So, Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.

This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild. But we’ve poured so much into UruLive, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it whither and die. We still have hopes that someday we will be able to provide new content for UruLive and/or work on the next UruLive.

TXT: Cyan makes it official: “Myst” now in the hands of its fans.

I will be curious to see what impact this has on the exiled communities that have set up Uru groups in various other online worlds.

Worlds.com VW patents to be enforced?

 Posted by (Visited 8594 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Dec 122008
 

Virtual Worlds News is reporting that a law firm has been retained to enforce the Worlds.com patents on 3d virtual worlds. These patents are quite old — filed in the early 90s — and center around visibility culling of avatars in various ways.

Worlds owns U.S. Patent Nos. 6,219,045 titled “Scalable Virtual World Chat Client-Server System”  and 7,181,690 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space.”

Together the claims describe systems for tracking the spatial relationships of avatars and objects in client/server systems and managing their interactions as well as how many can be displayed at any given time.

It will be interesting to watch what comes of this.

Are games about torture evil?

 Posted by (Visited 16594 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Dec 122008
 

…please explain to me again why killing NPCs in games is fine but sticking them with a cattle prod is evil.

Here’s your explanation, from my theory-of-fun/game-grammar point of view.

In killing NPCs (or popping any other sort of experience balloon), we are definitely seeing a “kill” dressing put on top of a statistical exercise. We are being entrained around measuring odds, optimizing behavior towards success, and then receiving a reward. The reward is generally utilitarian in some other aspect of the game. In other words, you do it, and there’s a reason for it — you kill the mob and you get back the loot, the XP, etc.

Although the killing is itself morally dubious as a ‘dressing’ for these underlying mechanics (see my previous writings on the subject), players do learn to see past the fiction fairly quickly, and cease seeing this as a moral issue, because they are smart: they know it’s just a game, and they move onto the underlying systemic reality very quickly.

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More EQ2 research results

 Posted by (Visited 6095 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Dec 112008
 

– Contrary to expectations, women are more intense players than men, on average and among the most hard-core

– When men and women play together in a relationship, the men tend to be less happy and the women more happy

– All players under-report how much they play, but the women more so

– Men play slightly (not overwhelmingly) more to beat the game, whereas women play slightly (not overwhelmingly) more for social reasons.

– Although the men think they are healthier, it is the women who actually are

Terra Nova: Gender differences: New findings, new paper.

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