IM Roadmap

See here …

According to Philip Rosedale, today, SecondLife is potentially better able to police activities and maintain law and order than real life. Really? Hmm. Regardless of the venue or subject matter, remarks like that always seem a bit reckless to me. SL is intrinsically gameable (no pun intended) – switch avatars, create a new account, use someone else’s login, etc. It is subject to the same categories of fundamental weaknesses as any online, connected system. I would suggest that any superiority SL may have in this “policeability” is primarily due to lack of scale compared to real life.

With that said, however, SecondLife does present fantastic and interesting opportunities to conduct behavioral experiments, codify exhibited player behaviors into patterns that can be monitored and tracked (for things like in-world crime or terrorism), and much more. Lessons from those kinds of activities could be highly valuable in modeling real-world events.

Cheers,
Eric

A friend recently sent a pointer to me about Open Croquet …. a highly immersive VR environment built with an open source ethic. http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/About_the_Technology.  Apparently there is also a commercial version that’s recently been launched, at http://www.qwaq.com. Looks pretty slick.

Cheers,
Eric

FT.com / Home UK / UK – Gamers hone hypercapitalist skills online

One group, the Guiding Hand Social Club, infiltrated a corporation, assassinated its chief executive and carried out a heist. Another staged a successful IPO to raise money to build space stations. Investors lost everything when the outposts were attacked and taken over by a rival.

I want to join Eve Online!

Reuters/Second Life » Gartner sees 80 % virtual world penetration by 2011

 I’ve always thought this was the trend, but 80% penetration is remarkable.  I wonder what penetration is on social networking sites, as of now.  Perhaps virtual worlds will be seen as a next generation of social networking, with usage/penetration trends following.

If Second Life isn’t a game, what is it? – On the Level – MSNBC.com

Wow, what a great question.  I wonder if anyone has ever asked “What is Second Life?”

L Word Pam Grier interview audience on Flickr – Photo Sharing

I’m not much of an “L Word” viewer (ok, I’ve never seen it and rarely watch tv of any sort).  But if this avatar is typical, I may have to reconsider.  Hey man, don’t blame me, it’s just how things are in this crazy virtual world… ;-)

Images: Griefing in ‘Second Life’ | CNET News.com

Is the dude in the mohawk supposed to be the virtual terrorist?  Must be, he looks pretty shifty…

This post on GamePolitics.com talks about the vandalization of John Edwards Second Life campaign headquarters.  First, I’m fascintated that there is such a blog as Game Politics.  I’ll have to add it to the (nascent) blogroll over here at What Is Second Life central HQ.  Second, I’m intrigued that most (all?) of the mainstream presidential candidates are campaigning in SL.

Finally, I’m fascinated by the differences between what occurs in SL vs real life.  On the one hand, if a group of Repulicans vandalized John Edwards real life headquarters like this, it would certainly be a national scandal – therefore this would never happen in real life.  There is a vastly wider scope to propriety in SL than in real life.  No matter how much like real life it becomes, there seems to be this huge scope for wierdness in SL.  On the other hand, if the vandals had taken a more “ligitimate” real life action (say blogging about John Edwards) they would receive no media attention at all.  The ‘physical act’ in SL (vandalizing) is more acceptable and receives substantially less attention, but the ‘effective act’ (online advocacy) receives a disporportionately large amount of attention.

Am I making sense?

Reuters reports today that Second Life has eliminated subsidized “first land”…

Increasingly we have found that these cheap L$1 per meter parcels were … being immediately sold, or bought via alts, purely for profit

Arbigrage, in other worlds.  Was this a surprise?  They are running a virtual economy, and one can expect that market participants will exploit any arbitrage opportunity, to the extent allowed by transaction costs and market volume.  I wonder how many economists they have on staff at SecondLife.  I’m sure many would jump at the chance to run one of the most innovative and dynamic virtual economies in the history of the world…