Fleep Tuque (aka Chris Collins), an educator who I have a lot of respect for and know through an interesting string of “chain reactions” incited by micro media, had an interesting comment on the introduction of Live Gamer into the mix…it seemed like cheating. I replied back, but my blog seems to be eating comments so I figured I would expend what thought I had left looking at this and some other topics. This is not a term paper, but more “thinking out loud”.

Fleep Speaks

To quote her comment.

My first thought regarding these game goods trading or buying/selling platforms is: how does this not just perpetuate the “person with the most money wins” paradigm that already exists in the real world? This is beginning to happen to some extent in Second Life - though indie content creators and long term residents still have the edge because they know what actually works - that advantage will disappear with time as the big boys figure out how to do things right. But in a narrative game world like WoW? It feels like outright _cheating_.

Fleep how about the sixteen year old who has much more TIME in which to play a game? What are the conditions for a “win”? Is this maxim really true for the “real world”? I certainly think having a ton of money can help, but doesn’t mean you will win and winning is often subjective. I am not sure if the indie content creators will lose their edge at all. The big boys have been wrong for a long time and television is a great example. That is why we have Ask the Ninja, Bus Uncle or even the perpetuation of shock memes like Tub Girl and GoatSe Guy. Real life is simply more entertaining than the carefully prepared baby food they want us to eat.

She goes on…

What’s the incentive to play for hours to win the Flaming Sword of Super Powerz if you can just go out and buy the thing? Sure there are gold farmers and the like, but I say most people are playing MMORPGs for the fun, the camaraderie, the _escapism_ from real world pressures. Bring in a profit motive to play and then it just becomes another job where some jerk who already has more than you in the real world can now buy her way ahead of you in the game world too. What’s the incentive to actually play the game when it can just be bought?

Because one can buy the game does not mean they will derive some the core benefits you cite like camaraderie, escapism, fun and perhaps most important- a sense of belonging to a group and shared accomplishment. WoW pros tell me, and I have asked, that they can spot a power jacked character right away and typically shun them. They may have the “loot” but they do not have the cultural mannerisms of one properly indoctrinated through blood and fire. They are missing the secret handshakes, or the native linguistic touches. They are simply a noob in +5 Plate Mail.

Suggested Science Fiction Reading

Since I am so fond of science fiction I would recommend a couple of texts written circa 1970’s. They are fantastic fiction and great metaphors for Second Life.

Roger Zelazny
The Great Book of Amber : The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)

Phillip Jose Farmer
The World of Tiers: Volume One (World of Tiers)

In the World of Tiers we meet earthlings Robert Wolff and Paul Janus Finnigan (alias Kickaha) who through strange circumstances are “gated” into a parallel pocket universe. These pocket universes are maintained by mostly insane “Lords” who are paranoid and spend most of their time trying to kill each other to stave off ennui. The World of Tiers is just that, a multi-tiered world that spans a virtual garden of Eden and changes each level until we come to a deadly palace at the top. I won’t spoil it, but the first three are really good, old-fashioned rip roaring reads.

Farmer’s books went on to inspire the late Roger Zelazny who wrote The Chronicles of Amber. He was so inspired by The World of Tiers Zelanzy actually dedicated one of the books in the series to the main characters Jadawin and Kickaha. I have found Amber to be an incredibly accurate metaphor for Second Life. (Matter of fact you might find the quixotic Chevaliers names and behavior to be quite similar to those of Amberites at times.). In the Amber stories, Amber and the Courts of Chaos are the only two “true” worlds. Everything else, even Earth, are called or simply the byproducts of “shadows”. The royal family of Amber that negotiates the Pattern, and the equivalent Chaos nobility who have walked the Logrus, can freely travel through the shadows and alter them at will. The obvious metaphor for Second Life being that of some arbitrary static reality and the existence of an infinite number of “negotiated realities”. Furthermore we have the metaphor of a scripter or builder who can literally “create” whatever they choose- it is nothing but Shadow and really quite malleable- even the physics.

The books are narrated by Corwin who suffers from amnesia, escapes, tracks down his sister Florimel, and discovers that he is a prince of Amber. He is taken by his brother Random to walk the Pattern. The Pattern is the construct which gives the multiverse its order. Walking the Pattern restores Corwin’s memory and his powers to travel through shadow…I won’t spoil the rest and since it is late I will let the Wikipedia hammer at the metaverse concepts within.

Amber and Second Life Parallels

The series is based on the concept of parallel worlds, domination over them being fought between the kingdoms at the extreme ends of Shadow—Amber, the one true world of Order, and the Courts of Chaos. Amberites of royal blood—those descended from Oberon (and ultimately his parents, Dworkin, formerly of the Courts of Chaos, and the Unicorn of Order herself) —are able to “walk in Shadow”, mentally willing changes to occur around them. These changes are, in effect, representative of the Shadow-walker passing through different realities. There are apparently infinite realities, either found by the Shadow-walker locating such worlds or by creating them (we the readers are never sure; neither are the characters).

Within this multiverse, Zelazny deals with some interesting philosophical concepts about the nature of existence, compares and contrasts the ideas of Order and Chaos, and plays with the laws of physics—they can differ from Shadow to Shadow; for instance, gunpowder does not ignite in Amber, which is why the characters all carry swords. Other Shadows have green skies and blue suns, cities of glass and Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes, and worlds out of our own fiction can come to life.

In short, as I have maintained, reality is what we mutually negotiate- like modems we will find a common protocol. A game is what we choose to make out of it and if left idle humans will create their own rules and games to satisfy their needs.

Metaverse History

I just finished The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse By Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace. This gelled or provided a much needed history for me that is often lacking in the fast-paced world of the “synthetic”- although i am not sure they are really synthetic at all- it just makes us feel better to say that.

I would add this is a must read too. It fits together so many of the missing pieces when you see how and why the refugees from the Sims Online started showing up on Second Life’s doorstep- mostly because “skilling” (playing the game) your avatars up the ladder sucked- it was more fun to form virtual mafias and berate people, perhaps the same reason we have “griefers” in Second Life. As a bonus you get to track some of the history and birth of the more interesting personalities like Ludlow or Prok who challenges me to write on the virtual chalk board about humility- in The Sims Online known as DyerBrook a.k.a. Prokofky Neva. (Yes- it was cut and paste.)

Fiction to Non-Fiction Books

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)
By Jack Balkin, Beth Noveck

Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot
By Julian Dibbell

They touch on the “cheating” phenomena and I was actually able to catch up with one of the major “gold farmers” in Dibbel’s book. The amounts being made are staggering so clearly people, and many of them want this. Perhaps this should be a clue to game makers? Are most people really mechanics driven Monty-haul gamers or dedicated role-players who love true immersion?

What to Do with Noobs

If we go back to October of last year I pulled and commented on this TechCrunch Gem.

i went on second life; its rather boringand most people where just running around changing their apperance…i’m not realy going to waste my time and money doing this; expecially since i know they got hacked and all their customer data was compromised.

probably tha main point of contention in this game for me is: i don’t get to kill anyone…it lame in that i have to have clothes and the appearance sucks; and i wanted a chance to start a business/make money…and i couldn’t figure it out…and i’m not going to stay up at night making polygons…so maybe the audience is limited to people who use animation software…not me….i want a game where i can go kill something and steal gold, and then use that to start a business or something.

i was fun walking around though…but if you’ve played online games before, like Arena, etc…its kinda boring.

Sad but true and really some of this moron’s complaints are probably valid. Their appearance probably did suck and a complicated GUI (which has improved) and dedicated skill set are needed to look better. Low and behold it wasn’t so easy to get wealthy and make money especially if you aren’t willing to sit up late and “make polygons”- that isn’t even a game- that sounds like work! This guy just wanted to kill people and steal gold and use THAT to start his business. Interesting. There is a major disconnect between the uninitiated and the real virtual world.

Why Can’t You Buy a Better Second Life?

Second Life is not easy to absorb at first- sort of like nicotine. Often veterans take for granted the amount of indoctrination that is needed. From idiosyncratic speech (e.g. Tier, Prim and Orbit) to a completely self-absorbed and alien culture where people often experience vertigo from initial participation. Then again that is why veterans put up with just about anything including frequent grid failure. Once you participate in the world, once you have earned the skills through experience- you don’t want to go. Clearly you CANNOT really even BUY a better Second Life like you can in say WoW. You can look better perhaps, but participation and friends are not bought. The only thing that shocks me are people who say “I’m bored”. I really believe there is little to no hope for them.

Virtual Scarcity

Back tracking to March of this year…

I find it an interesting parallel between buying virtual goods like World of WarCraft Power leveling or Second Life Linden buying and the swapping of “joost beta accounts” for tangible or intangible goods. Both are subjective in value. Both are desired by “fans”. Both would seem to have relatively limited life spans. The only prime difference is that one (beta accounts) are predestined to become ubiquitous. At least I am sure Joost hopes so

People were paying for Joost betas because they wanted to be first or they wanted to satisfy a need immediately.

Dusan Writer touches on many things I agree with in her follow-up. One being Edward Castranova’s desire for protecting the magic circle. Users will define what the magic circle will be and in the not so near future, if they wish, they will be creating the entire magic circle.. When does the game begin and end? It varies from individual to individual. Like turn of the century Quake matches via TCP/IP…you were not the best until you mastered Ping flood protection, learned to send a string of out of band data against your foe on TCP port 139, coordinated via ICQ, kept up with the birth of the Stooge bot and a host of other challenges. The game demanded players improve their security skills or suffer. The game went far beyond the game’s own boundaries- yet people played and they still play.

Second Life and Second Iteration

Conversely, however, platform owners can play tricks with virtual economies in ways that aren’t transparent to users who may be highly invested in particular virtual worlds. The example of Second Life pegging the Linden to the US dollar is an example. This is arbitrary, and the spread of the actual rise and fall of the Linden is covered by Linden Labs. But just as it’s in their power to control against a sudden decrease in the value of the Linden, it’s also in their power to remove their hands from the wheel (for financial or other reasons) and let the economy spin off on its own.

Let’s face it - with X billions of objects in Second Life, few of which deteriorate (although MANY of which are lost in someone’s inventory), surely the value of a shirt is worth less now than it was a year ago. How many shirts have been made? But so long as the Linden is pegged at an artificial rate, the illusion of an economy can be maintained. The real SL economy is in the island and off-world economy, but these statistics aren’t tracked (or if they are, they aren’t published).

Users often take it for granted, in a cycle of trust, that the platform owners are working in their best interests - they have an interest in working economies that don’t collapse, otherwise they lose their users. But as virtual worlds grow and real economic value starts to accrue to them, this might be courting disaster.

I have a lot of thoughts here on Second Life and new technologies like hashed validation of “virtual goods” to guarantee scarcity. I would love to reveal it all but I simply want to try it first. I will say as a micro-content “facilitator” that I see the exact SAME patterns I saw in performance marketing from late 90’s until now. Most of us were amateurs who organically built up from small operations- just like we see now in SL. We had the good fortune of being in the right place and at the right time and most worked hard. Some even made millions, but it was clear with each passing year that those who had not networked, had not built a brand, had not acquired disruptive technology or strategies were doomed.

Attention Still Equals Revenue

So called “social media” was another pocket of opportunity with a different attention=revenue pay off- influence. However, just as in performance marketing, and we will probably see it with micro or social media, the bar will rise higher and higher AND / OR technology will make it so simple it will no longer be a “skill” or barrier to entry. Second Life has clearly set itself up to be disrupted and I hope to help that along- I call it Second Iteration (Second Foundation?) and it is a good thing that does NOT make Second Life “bad”. However, the bar still has a long way to drop. I grant it is easy to create things but just like in performance marketing I do not think content creation follows The Pareto distribution or principle (aka the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) like I often hear. I think it might be better expressed as a joint ratio of 96:4- very imbalanced.

It is the big players that should be sweating when amateurs in their bedroom can suddenly duplicate the work that was walled off to the elite with high-end graphics and 3D programs. They have to have noticed by now.

What is to Come

Metaplace is a taste of what’s to come. Islands and builds in Second Life are CLEARLY a sign of things to come. Games will be created by kids in their basement, companies wanting a quick new way to train staff on a new product line, and educators wanting to throw together a virtual classroom with live collaborative project and presentation spaces.

I concur with everything but I say let us dispense with the classroom. In a world where you can create or cheaply procure whatever you need I see no reason to have classrooms or ill-fitting desks. I truly hope educators don’t try to replicate everything. The game, the world, and the experience are the real classrooms and most students, like their games, will define it if you let them. You need only enable and guide them.

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