Archives for virtual-worlds category
Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, Academic, Virtual worlds
One of the major problems of a game in which you can do anything is that… well, there’s not necessarily much of a reason to do anything. That’s a Terrible Idea recently had an interesting piece on the difficulty of generating goals and objectives in MMOs, especially in contrast with single-player games where your goals are equally pre-generated. The difference, as the article notes, is that single-player games have individual characters with a large impact on the game world. There’s no issue of making quests compatible with a wide variety of characters of different races and classes, until the individual motivations and goals can no longer fit into the equation. You don’t have anything but the end of content to shoot for.
So what’s the answer? The original post notes that it’s not really possible to reconcile anything but achievement-oriented goals within MMOs due to the fact that the character will still inhabit a static world no matter what you do. Certainly, there are attempts to create larger-scale impacts for individual characters, but so long as every character goes through the same content or has the same opportunities, there’s less of a sense of distinct accomplishment. Player-generated content in games such as City of Heroes offers an opportunity for a different path for each character, but there’s still not much of a difference in the actual process. Procedural generation is also bandied about as a solution to the issue, though it lacks any truly successful implementation at this point. Is there even a solution, or is this simply part of the weakness of the genre?
The trouble with goals in MMOs originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 29th, 2009 at 8:00pm by Eliot Lefebvre
Filed Under: academic, city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, cov, cox, culture, game-mechanics, opinion, player-generated-content, thats-a-terrible-idea, virtual-worlds
This week, Linden Lab announced that it was going to start charging listing fees and minimum commissions on its Second Life Xstreet Web-shopping adjunct in the near future. Within hours, vendors took down thousands of products, many abandoning the service entirely in favor of alternative services.
It’s unclear just how many vendors have abandoned the Xstreet SL system, but it apparently was enough to temporarily overload the Web-sites of third-party sites such as Slapt.
Continue reading Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products
Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 20th, 2009 at 5:00pm by Tateru Nino
Filed Under: business-models, culture, economy, linden-dollars, linden-lab, opinion, second-life, sl-policy, slapt, virtual-worlds, xstreet, xstreet-sl
Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Virtual environment operator Linden Lab has partnered up with 888 Holdings plc’s Gisland/Dragonfish division to provide payment processing for non-US Second Life customers.
A spokesperson for Linden Lab told us, “We’re working together with Gisland on a cashier interface and other tools that will give Residents more payment options and make it easier for Residents to pay in a wider range of native currencies than they can now. Gisland will also help Linden Lab implement appropriate anti-fraud measures as we expand these payment options. In addition, Gisland will assist Residents directly with payment-related issues, including failed transactions.”
That last part is fascinating, as that would be something of a first insofar as Second Life payments processing goes, as is the tantalizing hint of expanded payment options – something that is of considerable interest to users outside North America.
Continue reading Linden Lab partners with Dragonfish for non-US payments processing
Linden Lab partners with Dragonfish for non-US payments processing originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 9:00pm by Tateru Nino
Filed Under: 888-holdings-plc, business-models, dragonfish, gambling, gisland, linden-lab, m-linden, mark-kingdon, mmo-industry, second-life, virtual-worlds
Filed under: Business models, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Telstra BigPond (a major Australian Internet Service Provider, with an approximate 50% market-share) has had one of the most popular corporate presences in the virtual environment of Second Life, even including a customer service center staffed eleven hours per day, five days per week. In a nation with expensively metered bandwidth, BigPond even refrained from metering a portion of the data sent to its customers from Second Life. All of this for what has basically been an experiment.
That, however, appears to be coming to a close. BigPond intends to shutter its Second Life presence on 16 December.
Continue reading Telstra BigPond to shutter Second Life presence in December
Telstra BigPond to shutter Second Life presence in December originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 17th, 2009 at 12:00pm by Tateru Nino
Filed Under: australia, bigpond, business-models, craig-middleton, second-life, telstra, virtual-worlds
Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Back in 2007, Linden Lab formed regional partnerships with companies to operate localized portals for the Second Life platform, called the Global Provider Program (also sometimes referred to by the Lab as the Gold Provider Program, though distinct from the Gold Solution Provider Program). Linden Lab identified three non-English regional markets that it felt were priorities for support and localization: Brazil, Korea and Germany.
The first of the providers was Kaizen Games in Brazil, followed by Barunson Games (then called T-Entertainment) in Korea in October 2007. Bokowsky and Laymann might constitute a third partner in this program for Germany, but the the actual arrangement there isn’t very clear.
Continue reading Second Life Global Provider Program troubled?
Second Life Global Provider Program troubled? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted on November 16th, 2009 at 9:00am by Tateru Nino
Filed Under: barunson-games, bokowsky-laymann, brazil, choi-he-suk, germany, kaizen-games, korea, korea-herald, linden-lab, mainland-brasil, mmo-industry, second-life, second-life-viewer, sera-korea, sl-global-provider-program, t-entertainment, virtual-worlds
