Here’s revised slides for my GDC Prime talk yesterday. I went through them and added in a lot of the verbal comments I made, because the slides were mostly pictures. Special thanks to Lum, from whom I ganked a bunch of pictures; and Chris Bateman for the data from his book; and apologies to Gene and Jane and Jade, whom I made examples of without their permission (Jesse gave me permission, no apologies for him). And of course, the GDCPrime folks for having me.

So here they are, in a multiplicity of formats:

• A page with all 101 slides as JPGs. Slow to load.
• A download of the PPT.
• That funky MHT format that works in a browser but only in IE.

Edit: there’s an error on the slide about Halo’s September sales; that’s actually its October sales, without the collector’s edition (which adds an extra 30,000 units or so).

My point stands, nonetheless… the views of the Harry Potter parody video that are on the next slide were a total after four days. 🙂

I am a last-minute substitution onto the schedule for GDC Prime 2007 here in San Diego, because one of the original speakers couldn’t make it. I was up very very late last night finishing up a talk, and will be there all day, so don’t expect much blogging. I’ll let you know how disastrously it went. 😉

With the settlement of the ‘Rase Kenzo’ case in Second Life, we now have a precedent for calling virtual goods “merchandise.”

Although the claims largely centered on intellectual property, if the judge — the Honorable Sandra Townes, in the Eastern District of New York — enters the consent judgment as written, including its reference to copying of “merchandise,” the judgment will stand as the first formal, if tentative, recognition of virtual property by a U.S. court. Though the judgment will not have as significant a precedential value as a contested decision on the merits would have had, it will be cited for the foreseeable future.

The legal documents are quite short and very clear — the key bit is that throughout, the copied digital items are referred to as “merchandise.”

This is not the same case as the Eros case I referenced just a few days ago, but Eros is one of the plaintiffs. This case centered on copyright and trademark — Rase Kenzo was accused of infringing upon the creators’ rights by duplicating and selling copies of the items that they create and sell within SL.

Japanese Schoolgirl Watch: OMG! MMORPG on My Cell Phone!

Mobile tech company Media Groove just launched Chipuya Town, a virtual world accessible on any Flash-enabled keitai. Users create a custom avatar, then step into a cute-ified version of Tokyo’s Shibuya shopping district that’s accurate right down to the advertising overload. (Companies pay up to $4,000 a month for ads on in-world billboards.)

Part of the reason this works in Japan is the many hours spent on trains, plus of course the radically better phone infrastructure.

Behind the Activision-Blizzard union – page 2 | CNET News.com

Q: So will all Activision Games be branded with a new Activision Blizzard logo?
Morhaime: I’m not sure about a logo–that’s something we’ll have to discuss. But I think this issue is very important from a consumer-facing standpoint, so I want to emphasize it: The Activision and Blizzard brands will remain. We’re not going to put Blizzard Entertainment logos on Guitar Hero boxes, and we’re not going to put Activision logos on World of Warcraft boxes.