Maker Of Virtual Sex Toys Takes Online Dispute To Federal Court — happening in Second Life, of course. And over sex toys, of course. Porn is always on the bleeding edge of technology…

This is a good example of exactly what Linden wanted to happen — redirecting disputes like this away from customer service and to the real-world dispute resolution process.

At issue is actually a trademark dispute, apparently; Stroker Serpentine, the person suing, makes around $40,000 a year selling “Sex Gen” beds that permit sexual positions between avatars, and he accuses the other party of copying it and selling the copy for a profit.

I blogged about the original pass of this study. Now there’s an update. It’s focused on gamers specifically, and it looks like it was a pretty deep study — over 11,000 folks surveyed.

• Avid PC Gamers: 33%. 13.6 hours a week mostly on computers, and buy 1.4 titles a quarter.
• Secondary Gamers: 22%. 6.8 hours a week, again mostly on computers, and buy 0.8 titles a quarter. Only a third of this group owns a PS2.
• Avid Console Gamers: 20%. 10.7 hours a week, and they own 1.6 consoles and 0.8 portable platforms. 1.9 titles a quarter.
• Mass Market Gamers: 15%. 8.9 hours a week, mostly on PS2 and PC. They own 1.8 consoles — more than avid console gamers, probably because they don’t sell their old consoles for store credit. 😛
• Casual Kid Gamers: no % given, I deduce 8%. Kids 6-12, owning 1 console and 0.5 portables (which doesn’t match the kids I know, all of whom have Gameboys of some stripe). Just 3.6 hours a week of playtime, probably because of pesky parents. 0.8 games per quarter.
• Heavy Gamers: 2%. 39.3 hours a week, mostly on 360 and Wii. Own 2.8 consoles and 1.9 portables. And they buy 13.1 games a quarter, or around 4.5 a month.

Read More “NPD offers a new gamer demo study”

Kerri Knight writes,

Using the age-old client-side memory hack, or ‘teleport hack’, gold spammers have reached a new low (albeit a creative one). Using the exploit, they caused level 1 gnomes to rain from the sky in Ironforge near the bank and auction house (typically the most frequented area on a server). The bodies died upon impact and remained in the world, after a short time it became clear they were dropping in a such a way as to spell out the name of a gold-selling website. I’ve not been able to locate any news of the incident (its late, and tomorrow…err today, is a holiday). So I can only leave you with a Blue response to the issue on the CS forum for verification. (see link below)  May have been inspired by this amusing comic. Oh, and Happy Independence Day! :9

Joystiq has the scoop. I don’t actually care that basketball is already riddled with ads. I will go out of my way NOT to get an achievement that is a car or aftershave logo.

Not that I play basketball games anyway.

It is always sad to see an MMO have to close its doors. It’s now been announced officially that Sept 1st will be the last day that Auto Assault sees service.

There are further details here, from an interview with NCSoft.