Erik Bethke’s LiveJournal has a recent post stating that he’s offering a $5000 bounty to those who can help him draft the legal form of an avatar rights document for GoPets. Among the clauses he intends the service to sign up to:

• Due process (including playe-run tribunals)
• Habeas corpus
• Free expression
• Free assembly
• Property rights
• Non-discrimination
• Account transfer rights
• Right to keep some amount of the value generated by service errors (e.g., if there’s a bug and the player benefits, they keep some of the benefit)
• Compensation to players for service outages exceeding the maximum standard downtime
• Advance notice in the event of policy changes

Maybe I’ve found my next prediction: over the next few years, more and more services will find themselves pushes towards adopting some form of the Avatar Rights document, in part because more and more platforms will be open, permit user businesses, and in general be treated as places and not games.

So, what would you change and update about the Declaration, given that 7 years have passed?

PISS-SCREEN.COM — // An interactive urinary experience – not to be mistaken with the Wii

Totilo strikes again, witha great interview of Jonathan Blow.

…I feel like unearned rewards are false and meaningless, yet so many people spend their lives chasing easy/unearned rewards. So there is a very conscious decision that you only get collectibles in “Braid” when you solve a puzzle, and you only get one per puzzle. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are hard; but you did something very explicit to get the reward. It’s not like “Mario” and every other game since then, when there are gold coins sprinkled everywhere, and you get them just by walking along a path or jumping up to some blocks, and that satisfies your reward-seeking reflex for now and pacifies you into continuing to play the game. I actually think that Skinnerian reward scheduling in general (which you see in most modern game design, MMOs being the canonical example) is unethical and games should not do it…

In a handy overview with chart, TechCrunch looks at Virtual World Hangouts: So Many To Choose From.

This is indeed growing into a crowded space. I predicted at a conference a while back that every single major toy brand would have an MMO within two years. Well, we’re getting close, what with stuff like Mattel announcing U.B.Funkeys, for example. Edit: and the BBC jumping in as well. And BarbieGirls.com has hit 4m users, and the toys just now hit the streets.

Meanwhile, we have EA’s “chief visual officer” saying that chasing graphics is no longer the point because it’s becoming about user content — something which even a year or two ago was heretical within the industry.

I’m going to have to come up with some new stuff to predict soon, because predicting the present ain’t gonna cut it.

Another step for serious game legitimaciness.