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Research Paper - Social network websites

Research Paper - Social network websites — faberNovel

Research Paper - Social network websites

faberNovel Consulting issues a new Research Paper on best practices from leading social network websites
Research Paper - Social network websites

Online social networks and meeting platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Meetic are currently developing at a frantic pace. These companies have been reporting two or three-digit growth rates and most of them have launched intensive acquisition campaigns in the last two years or are now being targeted by major media groups. The sector is beginning to structure itself around some key players, which have succeeded in becoming the reference platform within their field, as the result of their innovations and positioning.


Social networks have numerous specificities. A company’s ability to identify and understand these specificities, and offer suitable answers, results in major success within this field. Today, this sector appears mature enough to enable a study of the market’s leading firms’ development in order to identify their “best practices” and to propose a specific framework analysis for each type of website.


faberNovel Consulting, a member of the French association Silicon Sentier has taken the first step by presenting a study on social network websites. This study formulates the basic concepts of social networks and also analyses online matchmaking websites and business network websites. This third research paper is distributed under the Creative Commons license to allow for further contributions by other specialists and web users in the coming months, due to expected major industry moves.


Download this research paper here:
www.fabernovel.com/socialnetworks_en.pdf

See the press release: here
Voir le communiqué de presse : ici

Web 2.0 Templates

Web 2.0 Templates Web Templates | Web 2.0 Templates Flash Templates | Template Monster

Web 2.0 Templates Collection from Template Monster
As you know we at TemplateMonster always strive to satisfy the desires of our users as well as to follow the latest trends of Web design. That has become the reason for the TemplateMonster designing team to start producing Web 2.0 Templates. As Web 2.0 technologies greatly differ from an old web the design has also been changed. Everything starting with the background and ending with content fonts has been changed. From now on our templates are easier to use and customize.

Quantcast - Open Internet Ratings Service

Quantcast - Open Internet Ratings Service

Introducing Quantcast Internet Ratings

Quantcast is the world's first open internet ratings service. Advertisers can find reports on the audiences of millions of web sites. Publishers can ensure their sites are represented accurately by tagging them for direct measurement. The service is free to everyone.

8 things to avoid when building an MMOG server

T=Machine » 8 things to avoid when building an MMOG server

A few years ago, I wrote an article for Develop magazine - “10 MMOs you don’t want to do”.

Here’s 8 things you really shouldn’t do but that might seem like a good idea if you’ve never made an MMOG before.

All these are examples of things that have been done on real MMO projects, usually MMORPGs.

1. use off-the-shelf middleware from the enterprise industry. It’s designed for completely different usage-patterns and cannot cope with MMO style usage. Equally, initially distrust anything from traditional Big Iron companies.
2. think that Grid Computing will somehow magically solve the problems. It won’t (c.f. previous point).
3. aim to code the server in a scripting language. You *can* run some scripts embedded in the server, but not the server itself - but even that can screw you when you’re trying to run thousands of scripts at once
4. assume that front-end load-balancing will solve any problems. It won’t, all it does is increase the efficiency of your cluster by a small amount. And it usually won’t provide you with failover, because most game designs will end up kicking you from your server if it dies, so the failover never gets used at that level.
5. ignore performance testing until mid-way through the project. If performance tests at 10% of the way through production say it’s slow, that means you’re in deep trouble - it does NOT mean that “we’ll come back and optimize it later”. Optimizing netcode and server code is NOT like traditional single-threaded local-only optimization: many of the things you’re dealing with (like LANs, and TCP/IP stacks) run orders of magnitude too slowly, so your optimization comes from imaginative system-architecture, not from optimizing small chunks of code at a time.
6. ignore billing concerns in your core game design. Non-free MMOG’s are entirely about billing, which means that you have to design it in, and build it in to the tech design from an early stage. Retrospectively adding billing hooks and billing information to existing server codebases is often about as easy and effective as retrospectively making your code secure. Just don’t go there.
7. hire an academic who specializes in networking, especially a PhD student (this gets done quite often). All this means is that they’ve obsessed with a very narrow slice of the many many problems, and generally they won’t know WTF to do about the rest of the problems. That’s no better than just promoting a general programmer to become “the new Server specialist”
8. innovate on both technology AND game design at the same time. Either do a traditional MMO so you can re-use all the existing common wisdom for design, and get to market (or at least a stable GDD) fast, and use the slack that buys you to focus on better tech, or use the most boring tech you can think of (instance lots; do lowest-hanging-fruit in your tech design) and innovate on the gameplay
9.

The Game Industry Salary Survey 2007 (US)

The Game Industry Salary Survey 2007 - GameCareerGuide.com

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The Game Industry Salary Survey 2007
[09.03.07]
- Jill Duffy
#

Seventy-three thousand dollars a year.

That's the number that got a little bit of buzz this year. It's the average salary of a game developer. But it's just a number, and it's nowhere near what entry-level candidates should vie for when sealing the deal of their first industry job; nor is it a perfect bar against which to measure game developer salaries regionally, since the cost of living varies drastically between states like California, Texas, and North Carolina.

Here, we take a more tailored look at the statistics in light of what someone new to the game industry would need to know by paring down the results of Game Developer's sixth annual salary survey.

An extended version of this article, including information about developers' average level of education, differences in pay by gender, and more, can be found in the April 2007 issue of Game Developer magazine, available for downloadable purchase for $3.95.

16 Data Visualization Tools

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools
May 15, 2007 — 01:18 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow — Share This

From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. We found the following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful.

Computer Programs for Social Network Analysis

Links to Software for Network Analysis

Computer Programs for Social Network Analysis

Programs that convert data from one format into a different format

Fully Loaded Legal Windows

Fully Loaded Legal Windows at 0$ Cost » Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips

Fully Loaded Legal Windows at 0$ Cost

8 November, 2006 | written by Aibek | 15 comments

Many of my friends once in a while ask me to format and reinstall their windows system. While reinstalling is not a big deal, getting all necessary programs afterwards is. So, I decided to dedicate this post to all-needed software tools for healthy and trouble free PC usage(i.e. antivirus, spyware removal, firewall, system maintenance tools, office software, media players and etc). Based on number of downloads and user reviews I have compiled list of best software tools available which are 100% free. The cool thing about this list is that most of these programs are the best available in their particular domain. You can actually have fully loaded legal system at 0$ cost. Here it goes…
Name

Description

Review / Download
Security
Antivir Personal Edition 6 Antivirus Program link (allmost 1 mil downloads withiin 5 month)
AVG Antivirus Free Edition 7 Antivirus Program link (over 11 mil downloads within 3 weeks)
ZoneAlarm 6 Firewall (protect your computer from hackers and prevent some programs connecting to the internet without your consent) link (over 40 mil downloads)
Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4 Spyware Removal Tool link (over 80 mil download)
Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 Spyware Removal Tool link (over 220 mil downloads)
Maintenance
SyncBack 3.2 Files Backup Tool link (over 50.000 downloads within 4 month)
CCleaner System Optimization Tool / Registry Cleaner link (allmost 1.8 mil downloads in 2 weeks)
RAM Booster 2 RAM Recovery Tool(speedup your computer by recovering RAM) link (3.2 mil downloads in 11 month)
Free RAM XP Pro RAM Recovery Tool link (4.4 mil downloads in 7 month)
Office/Documents
OpenOffice 2.0.4 Microsoft Office Alternative link (over 500 .000 downloads in 4 month)
Adobe Reader 7.0.8 View and Print Adobe PDF files link (over 30 mil downloads in 4 month)
Media (Play any Movies)
VLC Media Player These 2 players in combination with codec pack below will play almost any video file you may have. I am a big movie buff and it always worked for me link (approx 3.5 mil downloads in 6 month)
DivX Player 6.2.2 link (over 50 mil downloads in 5 month)
Advanced DVD Player DVD player link (more then 400.000 downloads in 3 weeks)
Avant DVD Player DVD player link (more then 400.000 downloads in 3 weeks)
Klite Codec Pack No more hunting for codecs. link (one of the best codec packs available)
Browsers & Internet Related
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 All belowed web browser link (more then 2mill downloads in 2 weeks)
Internet Explorer 7 New version of Microsoft’s IE browser. Much better then previous releases. (IE7 vs. Firefox 2 by CNET) link (more then 8 mil downloads within 3 weeks)
Flash Player 9 Needed for viewing flash animations on the websites link (more then 8.5 mil downloads in 4 month)
QuickTime 7.1.3 Most popular player used for viewing videos integrated into websites (ex; video blogs, trailers) link (more then 16 mil downloads in 2 month)
Other
WinRAR RAR archiver link (more then 40 mil downloads in 2 month)

Once you have all fundamentals, you can tweak and dress up your system even more with some of the desktop applications we reviewed before. Enjoy!

Collection of Rapidshare Tools and Tricks » Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips

Collection of Rapidshare Tools and Tricks

21 January, 2007 | written by Kaly | 22 comments

Rapidshare is world’s biggest file storage/sharing network and one of the most trafficked websites on the web. With it’s enormous file database (ebooks, software, audio,video, etc…) it became highly popular download destination. In this article you’ll find bunch of handy tips and tools(download managers and accelerators,search engines,how to get premium account, etc) designed for rapidshare users

Coolest Brainstorming Applications

Top Picks: Coolest Brainstorming Applications » Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips

Top Picks: Coolest Brainstorming Applications

14 June, 2007 | written by Kaly | 8 comments

From basic all-accessible (students, PR folks, etc) multi-person live brainstorming dashboards TO feature-rich, techy diagram creation tools.

Free Online Games

All Games - Free Multiplayer Online Games

The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs

The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs « Free To Play

The Secret Growth Driver Behind Hit Casual MMOs
Posted by Adrian Crook under distribution , subscription , virtual items , virtual worlds , casual , mmo , broadband , america , java


At last month’s Casual Games Conference in Seattle, I spent about 30 minutes chatting with Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings. Daniel told me an interesting story about how Puzzle Pirates, the hit Java MMO, has accelerated user base growth.

Puzzle Pirates utilizes few other distribution portals outside of www.puzzlepirates.com. But one site Daniel has had phenomenal success with has been Miniclip.com, the browser-based games portal.

In Daniel’s experience, a stunning 1 million out of Puzzle Pirates’ 3 million players have come via Miniclip alone.

Because Miniclip users are younger, they don’t monetize as well as other players. Daniel’s estimation was 1% monetization for Miniclip users vs 5% among the rest of the Puzzle Pirates user base. However, according to Daniel a secondary wave of word-of-mouthers join Puzzle Pirates shortly after each wave of new Miniclip users and the conversion rate among this secondary wave is much better.

I bring this up now because of this very recent Ypulse article, which contends that Miniclip has been the primary growth catalyst for games like Club Penguin and Runescape as well. A degree of influence not surprising given the “explosive growth” of the Miniclip.com site itself, as illustrated on this chart.

Here are some quotes from the Ypulse article:

Without Miniclip, it is likely that there is no Club Penguin phenomenon. The product launched in October 2005 and was able to eke out a base of about 25,000 users. A few months later, the game was posted on Miniclip and experienced explosive growth. By September, the product had over 2.6 million users. Runescape’s user base saw a similar, if slightly less dramatic, increase from a niche game to a multi-million user success.

With a core demographic of 10-24 year olds, Miniclip has built a portal with the power to instantly launch a youth brand. What network TV was for The Transformers, so Miniclip has been for Club Penguin. Great products can travel virally, but the task is a lot easier if the starting point is 30 million exposures.

How to Become a Great Network Programmer: Part II

How to Become a Great Network Programmer: Part II - GameCareerGuide.com

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How to Become a Great Network Programmer: Part II
[08.21.07]
- Adam Martin
#

Game 3. RTS: Determinism, Replay, Sync

You've made a simple real-time game and a simple persistent game, but nothing so far has run into any of the big classic problems of network programming. That's going to change with the next game. It's time to learn about determinism.

The aim here is to create a top-down real-time strategy game with a hundred or more units running around on a map and swarming your opponent's base(s), all without any apparent slowdown in the graphical user interface.

The best way to do this is to make all your calculations deterministic so that instead of having to send the result of every single calculation across the network, you can just send the inputs of each player to each other player, and all the players' machines can work out for themselves what's happening on all the other computers. This method reduces the volume of network messages vastly, but it goes horribly wrong if the slightest bit of non-determinism sneaks into the system.

Making this work properly and play nicely with a good path-finding algorithm will give you plenty to chew on. Get something wrong, and your units will start wandering off in strange directions or giving up and not moving at all. Or, if you try to skip the determinism, you'll quickly find the volume of shared data and calculations are so great, you can't get the game to work at a decent real-time speed.

Remember, though, that "deterministic" doesn't mean you can't have random numbers -- it just means you have to seed them.

For bonus points, implement a fully deterministic AI as well.

more information in the original article

IDC: Online Gaming Revenues Soar in 2011

IDC: Online Gaming Revenues Soar in 2011 : Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News

IDC: Online Gaming Revenues Soar in 2011
By Kris Graft Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
An analyst with IDC expects worldwide online console revenue to shoot skyward from $981 million in 2007 to $10.5 billion by 2011.
ImageAnalyst Billy Pidgeon said new consoles with out-of-the-box connectivity and onboard storage would facilitate the enormous growth.

Currently, game companies are generating online revenue from subscription fees, paid downloadable content and in-game advertising.

Pidgeon, who is a program manager at IDC, said there is “huge potential” for online gaming revenues.

“Getting gamers online and enticing them to spend on content and services is crucial for vendors and publishers,” he said in a statement.

Virtually all major console game companies are vying for online revenues, whether it’s through paid subscriptions for services like Xbox Live, both new and classic downloadable games or deals with in-game ad providers.

IDC said console revenue will stand at 2.5 percent of total worldwide videogame market revenue. However, revenue in the online gaming sector is poised to expand to 18.6 percent of total market value, according to IDC’s latest report.

Other forecasts from IDC are as follows:

* Although subscription revenue for premium online services and games will grow from $476 million in 2007 to over $2.4 billion in 2011, its share of online console revenue will decline from 48.5% in 2007 (already down from a high of 86.5% in 2006) to 23.2% by 2011.
* Downloadable content (DLC) consisting of games and game-related items, which at $35 million in 2006 represented a 13.5% market share of online console revenue, will become connected consoles' primary revenue source in 2007, growing from $493 million in 2007 to $7.2 billion in 2011. In 2011, game-centric DLC will make up 68.6% of online revenue.
* Advertising revenue from sponsored services, in-game ads, and product placement in connected consoles will reach $12 million in 2007, posting the first significant online console ad spend. Advertising revenue will grow to $858 million in 2011, with an 8.2% market share of online revenue.


The data comes from the IDC report, Worldwide Connected Console 2007-2011 Forecast: Downloads for Dollars.

A June 2006 report from research firm DFC Intelligence pegged online gaming revenues--including PC gaming--to reach $13 billion by 2011.

GAME DESIGN: The Long and Short of It

GAME DESIGN: The Long and Short of It : Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News

GAME DESIGN: The Long and Short of It
By James Portnow Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
When is one game two games? Almost all the time, claims James Portnow in this week's latest game design column. But which of those games is more important?
ImageAlmost every game is actually two games, one being the minute-to-minute game and the other being the broader overall game. I’ve heard so much debate about which one is “more important” and which should be a designer’s “main focus”, that I’ve decided to put my two cents in.

Remember, there’s no fact in this article, just opinion supported by what passes for reason around here... In the end you’ll have to make up your own mind.

Game Nesting

Most games can be viewed as a series of smaller interconnected games that are tied together to make one unified whole. Consider, for example, American football: each play is a game, each “game” is a game and each season is a game. Now consider, if you will, your standard digital role-playing game: combat is a game, questing (1) is a game and leveling/character building is a game.

There is no limit to how many nested games any given game may contain. It’s largely a matter of perception anyway – and of how you define “game”. The important thing is that no matter how many unique games you’ve identified within a game, only two really matter: the action and the arc.

The Action

The action is easy to define: it’s what you’re doing most of the time. Usually you will start experiencing the action within five minutes of picking up a game (In fact, I’ve heard arguments that it’s bad game design if you don’t… I can think of arguments to the contrary though). The action is usually slightly less cerebral than the arc, engaging you in a more visceral way. The action is also brief in duration but often repeated. You can fully experience one iteration of the action in a matter of minutes, if not seconds (2).

The Arc

The arc is a little harder to define. It’s what the player understands to be “the game”. Often the arc is the reason a player continues playing a game. It takes place over a much longer span of time and, once completed, usually the signals the end of the player’s engagement with that particular game (when we feel the arc is complete we let our accounts go inactive or put the game back on the shelf). The arc is typically the headier portion of the game – in really good games it’s the section we think about when we aren’t actually playing the game.

The arc can be vaguely defined as “what the player views the point of a game to be”.

So, Mr. Portnow, Which is More Important?

I’m going to argue that the action is definitively the more important of the two. Were I working on a game and someone said to me, “We can perfect the action or the the arc. Which should we perfect?”, I would quickly answer, “The action.”

"Were I working on a game and someone said to me, 'We can perfect the action or the the arc. Which should we perfect?', I would quickly answer, 'The action.'"
Why? After all, the arc is really what holds our interest. It’s what makes a game sustainable. It’s why we continue to play… The problem is that there can be no arc if there is no action. If the action is bad no one will ever experience the arc. Imagine an MMORPG with a fantastic character system and leveling tree. Now imagine that the combat in that MMO is mind-numbingly, nay, painfully boring. No one’s going to grind through sixty levels of an MMO just to complete the arc in the way it was intended.

Now let’s take the opposite case: let’s examine games like Pac-Man or Galaga or chess. It’s easy to see these games as “all action”, but that does an injustice to our players and to our species. Humans have a remarkable capacity for contextualizing things. Often we can rely on our players to invent their own arc.

Very few people play any of the above-mentioned games once. Rather they play them again and again with the object of improving at them. They devise ways to do better than the last time. They come up with new strategies, observing the game as they play it in order to better their skills. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find people dissecting an individual game long after it’s been completed in order to fit it into their arc. If the action is good enough we make learning its own meta-game.

Should we do this often? No. Not at all. It is far far better to have a well crafted arc to lay on top of your action than to force the player to invent an arc for themselves. I’m simply saying it’s impossible to go the other way, hoping to get away with mediocre action to underpin your brilliant arc.

1. Here I define “questing” as directed progression: it can be anything from getting from one side of a dungeon to the other to getting 12 rat meat from Slern the Beggar.

2. Consider the individual play in football to be the action.

More information in the original article

Identity 2.0

OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0

OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0
Dick Hardt | Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity
Watch Dick deliver a compelling and dynamic introduction on Identity 2.0 and how the concept of digital identity is evolving.

“Dick Hardt is brilliant. Watch (and copy) the style. Learn tons from the substance.” - Lawrence Lessig

“Really captures the complexities of participating in an online world and how identity is at the center of the Web experience.” - Dan Farber

“A barn-burner of a presentation. I loved this.” - Cory Doctorow

“I watched it twice, and greatly enjoyed it both times.” - Jon Udell

Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games

Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games « Free To Play

The following 10 revenue models allow some or all of their associated game or virtual world to be played for free. The ordering is quite unscientific and I’m sure I’ve missed something obvious or messed up a detail. I leave it to the internet to correct me.

1. Virtual Item Sales
A well familiar revenue model first established in Korea and now the dominant model in Asia. Nexon - makers of KartRider, MapleStory, Audition and more - are widely seen as the leaders in this area, doing $230M of gross revenue in 2005 (the most recent year for which they’ve released figures), with 85% of that revenue coming from virtual item sales.

Virtual item sales is the practice of allowing users to purchase functional, decorative, or functional & decorative in-game items for use in and out of gameplay. A virtual item system usually uses two currencies - an attention currency (users earn virtual money via in-game activities) and a real money-based currency (users buy virtual money using real money). Typically, 5-15% of users opt for the latter currency and the influx of real world money is what provides the virtual item sales revenue stream.

What’s so compelling about virtual item sales is the unlimited ARPU (average revenue per user). According to Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, some hardcore Puzzle Pirates users have poured more than $10,000 apiece into the game via virtual item purchases. To reach that contribution level via a World of Warcraft-style $15/month subscription would take a user 55 years.

While extremely shaky sources peg the overall size of the virtual item sales market at $1.5-2B this year, without an NPD-esque measurement organization there’s no way to verify that number.

2. Subscription Tiers
Runescape, the Java MMO from Jagex, is one of the leaders in the tiered subscription space. A tiered subscription model allows users to play the core game for free, but those that desire access to elite weapons or other game content, must pay a small ($5/month) subscription fee. Over 1 million of Runescape’s 6+ million users have opted into the tiered subscription program, grossing $60M annually for Jagex.

Dungeon Runners, an NCsoft free to play MMO, offers a similar $5/month subscription package that affords players access to the elite items, a bank and the ability to stack potions. It also gives subscribers server queue priority.

3. Advertising
Several different forms of game-related advertising revenue streams have popped up in recent years. Firms such as Massive, IGA and Double Fusion do big business in in-game advertising for clients such as EA, Activision, THQ and Microsoft. Game ad agencies typically serve up static ads (ads that ship with a product and never change) or dynamic (ads that are updated in real time via the net) within game products that are contextually appropriate for advertising (i.e. sports, racing, or contemporary shooters).

The size of this conventional in-game advertising market is currently pegged at $100-200M, according to well-placed industry sources. However, the number and quality of games with dynamic advertising enabled is escalating dramatically. So much so that Yankee Group predicts the in-game ad market will reach $732M by 2010.

Other emergent forms of advertising revenue streams for games include:

* Google Adsense PPC ads (see my recent post on Maid Marian, grossing $800K/year from Google Ads alone)
* Sponsored item sales (Habbo Hotel)
* In-game video ads (Real Networks)

4. Real Estate or “Land Use Fees“
Second Life is the biggest legitimate player utilizing this revenue model whereby virtual land is sold leased to individuals. Monthly lease fees range from $5 to $195, depending on the size of land in question. Users may also purchase their own island for a one time fee of $1,675 in addition to a monthly fee of $295.

Approximately 70% of Second Life’s revenue comes from land sales and maintenance fees. Of course the virtual land ownership revenue model doesn’t come without headache, as the Bragg vs Linden suit has proven.

Entropia Universe uses land auctions as a revenue stream, but a recent headline-making $100,000 land sale has been called into question as the successful bidder is an employee of Entropia’s developer, MindArk.

5. Merchandise
In what’s become a phenomenon of Furby proportions, Webkinz plush toys and their associated Webkinz World have taken the pre-teen set by storm. Users purchase a $15 Webkinz plush toy at retail and enter a secret code to activate the associated virtual character in Webkinz World. Beyond the retail plush toy purchase, there are no additional fees for playing in Webkinz World.

Two million Webkinz toys have been sold since April 2005, with more than 1 million of those users registering their pet online. That’s more than US$20M in retail sales in just 24 months.

Another successful merchandise-based revenue model is collectible card games, or CCGs. Neopets launched a CCG in 2003 and just this week MapleStory became the latest free to play game to go this route, announcing a partnership with Wizards of the Coast. Consumers purchase MapleStory real-world cards that come with codes redeemable for exclusive in-game content in the MapleStory MMORPG.

6. Auctions & Player Trades
In June 2005, Sony set up Station Exchange on select Everquest II servers. Station Exchange facilitates player to player trade of in-game items - including the provision of an escrow service - in return for a 10% closing fee as well as listing fees ranging from $1 (items and coins) to $10 (characters).

While Station Exchange recorded only $274K in net revenue in its first year of limited release, it was enough for Sony Online President John Smedley to declare it the future of RMT. Read the SOE Station Exchange whitepaper for more.

Entropia Universe - a world in which virtual items actually decay with use and require real money to repair or replace - utilizes first party auctions as their primary revenue stream. This means that instead of merely facilitating player to player auctions and taking a cut (a la Station Exchange’s eBay model), Entropia auctions items directly to their players.

Entropia items sell for ludicrous sums, with rare weapons auctions closing at $26,000, land auctions for (allegedly) $100,000. The May 2007 auction of five in-game banking licenses brought in $404,000, total. Ironically, Entropia takes no fees for player-to-player auctions.

In the wake of this success, watch for third party virtual item auction houses such as Dan Kelly’s Sparter.com to offer developers and publishers a cut to ensure the (exclusive?) cooperation of their products.

7. Expansion Packs
The best known example of expansion packs as a primary revenue model is the Arenanet product, Guild Wars. Likened by Richard Garriott to a series of fantasy novels, Guild Wars relies not on monthly subscription fees for its revenue, but on the sale of successive expansion packs for $29.99.

The game’s creators argue that the thin-pipe origins of their technology allow their game to be run far more economically than competing titles, enabling this no-subscription free model.

Over 3 million people have purchased the previous three Guild Wars products (Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Factions and Guild Wars: Nightfall) with those numbers set to surge again with the release of Guild Wars: Eye of the North on August 31, 2007.

8. Event or Tournament Fees
Netamin’s free to play, ad-supported Ulimate Baseball Online uses event fees as an additional revenue stream. UBO’s Pay to Play tournaments cost $5 per player to enter and offer cash prizes up to $4,500.

Shot Online, a free to play/virtual item sales golf MMO, also charges users to enter tournaments.

Third parties such as Valve’s Tournament.com and Groove Game’s Skillground.com are getting into the pay to play tournament scene as well. These sites charge charging entry fees for game tournaments for games such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.

9. TrialPay
At the recent Virtual Goods Summit and again at the Seattle Casual Games Conference, I bumped into representatives from TrialPay. TrialPay is a third party facility that allows customers to pay for products (i.e. games) by trying or buying from advertisers.

What this means is that when you go to pay for a casual game or purchase virtual currency, you can instead select from a demographically targeted list of special offers. Trying or buying one of these offers - from merchants such as Avis, Geico, Vonage, etc - allows you to get your game purchase for free, as the offer merchant has paid the game provider for acquiring a new customer on their behalf.

TrialPay claims that this allows game developers to earn more per user, as some offers pay game developers upwards of $50 per user (as opposed to the $20 a casual game might normally charge).

Someone from TrialPay can jump in and give me a more relevant example of their system’s use in the game space, but all I could find was a casual games company called Dreamquest Games.

10. Donations
Clocking in at last on the list is of alternate revenue streams is player donations. Raph Koster recently blogged about meeting up with the Kingdom of Loathing guys at ComicCon in San Diego. Raph reported that while KoL’s revenue is “definitely indie,” their primary revenue stream of player donations is a sustainable one.

According to Wired, the donation revenue has allowed creator Zack Johnson to quit his day job and hire six employees to help improve and maintain the product.

That’s what Maid Marian founder Gene Endrody would call a “lifestyle business,” but I suspect most of us wouldn’t scoff at it or any of the above revenue models.

MMO Money, MMO Problems

GameTab - Viewing External Article

still have lots of designers left on the game and we continue to add more and more developers to the team. It is the nature of the industry for some people to leave while others take their place. Part of the process of growing a company especially when you are as large as we are now.

MMO Money, MMO Problems

MMO Money, MMO Problems

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 Update by Craig "Russ" Russell

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next page »

MMORPGs (Mindless Mage, Orc, Rogue, and Paladin Games) are the biggest thing to hit the internet since people grew tired of illegal music, pornography and pictures of Sonic The Hedgehog photoshopped into movies. However, I am just a simple forty year old Christian mother of two, and I don't know what the hell they are. To clarify, I asked Something Awful's own World Of Warcaft expert, Abraham. He told me that MMOs are "a bad idea made worse by a lot of people". This was an incredible waste of my valuable time, and lead to my son being more than eight minutes late for soccer practice.

Fortunately, I discovered that the SA forums had their own MMO industry insider. Going by the name of Lum_, this kind-hearted peddler of evil video games took time out from his busy schedule to give us all a little background on what it's like to witness the MMO scene from the point of the developer. He pulled no punches in answering questions from forum members, and now I'm going to thank him by making his answers public and possible costing him his job. Thanks again, Lum_!


Background:
- Worked at Mythic Entertainment on DAOC from 2001 to 2006.
- Currently at NCsoft on a secret project.
- Used to write a whiny website ranting about UO and EQ (from 1999 to 2001)

Rules:
- No trade secrets will be divulged. I still work in the industry, y'know.
- No direct commentary about competitors because that's not kosher.
- ...that's about it, really.

Software spots key players in online communities

Software spots key players in online communities - tech - 20 July 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Software that identifies the most informative people in an online community, based on their posting patterns, has been developed by researchers at Cornell University, New York, and Microsoft Research in Washington State, both in the US.

The researchers worked out how to spot key players within discussions by analysing the connections between thousands of messages on several topics.

The work could help website designers automatically reward, or highlight, the most valuable members of a community, or improve methods for searching through a conversation for the most relevant information.

Previous research has shown that certain people underpin the usefulness of a group or discussion by providing brief but straightforward and useful answers.

"You have a socially recognised role of some people as experts in some way in a community," says Howard Welser, a sociologist at Cornell University, who led the work. "That role was what we were trying to measure. The indicators we found had to do with the structure of their interaction with others."

more information in the original article

Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in MMOs

Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in MMOs and Virtual Worlds « Free To Play

Top 10 Ways to Remove Barriers to Entry in MMOs and Virtual Worlds
Posted by Adrian Crook under casual , top 10 , mmo , design


Whether you’re making a casual MMO like Maple Story or a virtual world like Habbo Hotel, here are 10 ways to remove game-killing barriers to entry and create the largest possible addressable market.

1. Free to Play
The Free to Play business model is here to stay - and growing every day. In an entertainment world filled with endless choices, asking someone to pony up $50 before they can play a game is rapidly becoming a non-starter. The focus now is on getting players through the front door, keeping them happy, then monetizing 5-15% of them. Non-paying customers become “content” for the paying minority, so don’t think you can ignore them.

2. Integrated graphics support

“If our games required a video card, we’d lose 80% of our audience”
- Min Kim, Director of Game Operations, Nexon North America

“Graphics are not important - the mind models the situation”
- Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings

Enthusiasts who purchase the latest, greatest video card make up just 4% of the market. Integrated graphics (i.e. no dedicated video card and therefore lower graphics performance) accounts for over 60% of all new computer sales. It would be foolish to develop a Free to Play product requires a video card when success in the F2P sector is partially reliant on addressing a large market and monetizing just a small fraction of your player base.

3. Multiple, regionalized payment systems
Finding the right payment method is a key success factor for Free to Play products. When a user finds a payment method they’re comfortable with, they are fiercely loyal to it. But there are nearly as many payment methods as their are markets. Erik Bethke of GoPets says his company utilizes 90 different payment systems worldwide in order to address the local preferences of each region and make it as easy as possible for users to pay.

Many factors influence payment method selection. Credit card penetration in China is low, so billing customers via their land-line telephone provider has become a widely used payment system that provides excellent security in exchange for high surcharges. In Europe, SMS payments are hugely successful and carriers take anywhere from 10-30% surcharges versus the 40-50% fees of North American carriers. PayPal, checks, points cards and more are also used.

We have three people on staff whose full-time job is to open envelopes with single dollar bills and quarters in them. The users can’t figure out how to get the cash to us. One user sent in a $5 bill in a $14.95 FedEx package so it would get to us on time.
- Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online

4. Little or no download
Get users into a game as fast as possible. If your game requires the user to download client software, make it as small as possible and give the user something to do while they wait for the game to download and install (i.e. setting up their character).

But better yet, make your game in Java, Flash, Shockwave or Silverlight so it’s playable within a browser. A game delivered via Java applet (i.e. Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy, Runescape) can be downloaded and installed in under a minute. A signed Java applet will even avoid tripping a user’s installed spyware detectors.

Only ~30% of players actually tolerate downloads at all, the other 70% preferring to play online. I believe this percentage of download-intolerant players is increasing.
- Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings

5. Deferred sign up
How many times have you been faced with filling out a mandatory sign up form before you can starting playing a new game? The barrier of filling out one more form and becoming a member of yet another online site/network/game/etc that might eventually spam you - before you even try the product - is a huge barrier to entry.

Why not let a new player name and create their character, enter and start experiencing the product, then ask for sign up information along the way? A game that gets this right is Maid Marian’s Shockwave MMO Sherwood Dungeon, which allows you to start playing immediately after you enter your desired character’s name. Despite its simplistic graphics and lack of server-side character saves, Sherwood has attracted over 1M users to its Free to Play ad-supported game.

6. Easy to understand world/lore
Pets, penguins, pirates, party goers - these are some of the most successful Free to Play virtual worlds and games. If you want to keep your game’s potential market big, utilize commonly understood worlds, characters and rules as often as possible. There are exceptions of course, but generally the more jargon and fiction you graft onto your property, the greater the barrier to entry for new players.

7. Quick to play core
Build your game or virtual world around a quick-to-play core mechanic that loops into a larger meta-game. A game that can be played in small 5 minute chunks that feed into a higher purpose.

The casual MMO Puzzle Pirates was designed with short play sessions and a solid meta-game in mind. However, the average Puzzle Pirates user spends 2.5 hours per day in the game - 30 days a month. And while some players do drop in and leave, others spend up to 9 hours a day in-game. Ultimately, the game’s short compulsion loops keep players online longer than traditional, longer compulsion loops that take 30-60 minutes to complete.

8. Warp, don’t walk
Spending precious minutes walking to destinations is, for many, a significant barrier to entry and a big waste of time. Many games and virtual worlds allow “warping” between areas to avoid long marches or simply a point-and-click interface with the world.

9. Spending limits
It seems counterintuitive, but enforcing spending caps on some or all of your player base (depending on your product’s demographics) may actually increase your user base. Habbo Hotel puts spending caps on all payment methods to control the influx of cash into their economy but also to allay parents’ fears. Users can spend money only on 2-3 predefined days of the week.

Limiting how much a player can spend spend in a short period of time benefits the game by reducing parental concern and decreasing incidents of buyer’s remorse in new players.

10. Secondary markets
The presence of a secondary market can drive the primary market. Wizards of the Coast had this observation, as told by Daniel James at this year’s Virtual Goods Summit:

Wizards of the Coast had some interesting things to say, that secondary markets, for example of Magic Online, have been incredibly valuable in driving the primary market. People will buy way more cards in the primary market because they know they can flip them. Mostly they don’t, though, they just hold onto them. Which is a great tip for people thinking about this.

So embrace secondary markets as more users will choose to participate in your primary market if they believe they can sell their goods to others when they’re done the game.

Sources:

* Integrated graphics stats
* Sherwood Dungeon stats
* Quotes & Puzzle Pirates Stats via Virtual Goods Summit

Notes:

* Thanks to Raph Koster for analyzing my previous post.

Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games

Gamasutra - MTV's Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games

MTV's Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games

MTV's Nickelodeon To Invest $100M In Online Casual Games MTV Networks' Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group has announced its commitment to invest $100 million over the next two years in development, distribution and creation of casual gaming titles, sites and platforms.

According to the company, the investment is a part of MTV's strategy to secure a leading role in the gaming space -- including casual, console and handheld games, as well as related media.

The Group's president, Cyma Zarghami, made the announcement at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Seattle, WA, in a keynote address delivered by Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group's Executive Vice President of Digital Media, Steve Youngwood.

According to the Nickelodeon Kids and Family group, the investment will produce several initiatives in the next two years, including the myNOGGIN edugaming subscription service for preschoolers (available in the fall), new multiplayer games and tournaments in the Nicktropolis online world, the kid-friendly subscription-based Nick Gaming Club (launching in 2008) and The-NGames.com, which through a recently-announced partnership with AddictingGames, will create a massive online casual gaming site focused solely on teen girls.

Additionally, the investment will support the expansion of AddictingGames to include casual MMOGs with the introduction of AddictingWorlds. AddictingGames recently partnered with Habbo, adding another virtual world to its existing partnership with sister site Neopets. The company says increased emphasis will be placed on user-submitted games on the site, including more prominent upload capabilities and game-making engines.

The company also says that increased Shockwave focus will be placed on the creation of games that will also provide opportunities for prominent integrated advertising. Jigsaw Video will be the first app to launch, while Shockwave plans to link itself more closely with family-targeted brands within Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group, like Nick-at-Nite television, to give advertisers the ability to promote their messaging across multiple platforms. Shockwave will also increase its publishing of downloadable games with Carrie the Caregiver Episode 2: Preschool, scheduled to come out later this year.

Neopets will also be transformed into Neostudios, the company says, which will focus on developing new virtual world gaming experiences online while continuing to grow and evolve the existing ones. The first of these will launch at the end of 2008 with the goal of launching a new game every other year.

"Particularly in the kids' space, with more than 86% of kids 8 to 14 gaming online, we see great momentum for online casual gaming," said Zarghami. "This investment will not only benefit our audiences, but also our marketing and distribution partners."

ASIAN POP / MMO Better Blues

ASIAN POP / MMO Better Blues

ASIAN POP
MMO Better Blues

By Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

* Printable Version
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ChinaJoy booth babes: Because bikini-clad women and unarm... More booth babes at ChinaJoy's "Dead or Alive" exhibit: J... K2 Network's Joshua Hong. Courtesy of K2 Network Sword of the New World: Just chillin' until it's time to ... More...
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Entertainment
entertainment links

Korea is the online gaming capital of Asia. But will its wares play in the U.S.?

Before our phone interview begins, K2 Network chief executive Joshua Hong has one small warning. "I want to apologize in advance if I have to put you on hold every so often," he says. "I've been dealing with a really awful cold, and I don't want to be having a coughing fit directly into your ear."

Microsoft Casual Games Partners with GoPets

Worlds In Motion - Microsoft Casual Games Partners with GoPets

Microsoft Casual Games Partners with GoPets

-GoPets, an online world established in South Korea in 2004, lets users explore, play casual games, and create and customize virtual pets. Now, Microsoft Casual Games has announced it will partner with GoPets to launch the game on Windows Live Messenger, integrating the virtual world with its instant messaging service.

The service is now available via IM to Messenger users in the U.S., Australia, Japan and Korea-- but Microsoft says it'll expand it to more than 30 countries by the end of 2007.

“GoPets is an online community where anyone can adopt a pet, customize it to their liking and interact with other pet owners anywhere in the GoPets virtual world at any time of day,” said Erik Bethke, CEO and founder of GoPets Ltd. “With direct access through Windows Live Messenger, it will be even easier for pet fans to make friends all over the world through common interests and shared experiences, such as chatting and playing games on the Windows Live Messenger and GoPets platforms.”

GoPets' basic membership is free, with special access for premium membership, and goods and currency-- "gold shells"-- for sale. Currently in an open beta phase in fifteen languages and eight territories around the world, GoPets recently surpassed 640,000 registered users, but that number is likely to grow, since Windows Live Messenger's userbase is pegged at nearly 260 million active accounts worldwide.

Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets, recently spoke at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Seattle, on his online worlds philosophy. He'd rather use the word "citizen" than "user," for one.

"I believe that when we sell something with virtual currency, people believe it's theirs," Bethke said. "They should be able to buy, sell, trade and everything."

fastest-growing virtual world ever

Guess who just launched the fastest-growing virtual world ever?: Sciam Observations

Guess who just launched the fastest-growing virtual world ever?

A. Blizzard (World of Warcraft)

B. Linden Labs (Second Life)

C. Mattel (Hot Wheels, Barbie, etc.)

All right, so it's obviously C, otherwise why is this blogger jabbering at you, right?

Last night at the Digital Life preview a Mattel rep--who, just to make the conversation extra surreal, actually looked sort of like Barbie--told me that in the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they're adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day.

Just for reference, it took Second Life 3 years to reach 1 million members.

Access to the world is free, the dolls that get you in-game pets and other goodies are not, and the whole shebang is still in beta.

Between this and the runaway success of WebKinz and Club Penguin (which, all by itself, already has a valuation of $500 million - nearly what Rupert Murdoch paid for Myspace) I can only imagine what a future populated by people who literally grew up living in virtual worlds would look like.

In other words, all the stuff that is now newsworthy in Second Life might become routine: Shareholder meetings in protected virtual spaces? Speed dating in virtual restaurants? What if the 20-years-hence successor to World of Warcraft really does become "the new golf"?

>> More on kids and their virtual worlds from a recent NYTimes piece.

UPDATE:
I had a chance to subsequently verify these figures with the PR rep whom I spoke to in the first place. Lauren Dougherty of Mattel says:

"I had referenced that we were rapidly *nearing* 3 million with 2.75 million registered users to-date and a growth averaging between 40,OOO - 50,000 new registered users per day."

2007 Persistent Worlds whitepaper (IGDA)

Online Games SIG/2007WPSB/index - IGDAwiki

Online Games SIG/2007WPSB/index
International Game Developers Association
< Online Games SIG | 2007WPSB
Jump to: navigation, search
Image:I alert-dev.gif The contents of Online Games SIG/2007WPSB/index are in-development. Please be patient while changes are formulated. Thank you!

Welcome to the 2007 Persistent World White Paper Project. The 2007WPSB section of the Wiki is the development sandbox for this ongoing project. We welcome new volunteers and contributors. To find our more about taking part in the project, please contact James Hursthouse (james at onlinegameservices dot com). We would ask that you do NOT make any direct changes to these pages before volunteering as a member of the team. Thanks!!

If you have any comments or suggestions pertaining to a particular section, please use the 'Discussion' tab at the top of the main page for that section. Section Coordinators are monitoring those pages for ideas relating to their section.!!

Practical Scheduling For Games

Gamasutra - Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games

Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games
(Page 1/7)
Next arrow

[Gamasutra is partnering with GameProducer.net, a game production resource, for a series of Q&As named 'Producers of the Round Table'. The Round Table is a place for producers who work in game industry to present their opinions in response to questions.

In this installment, which deals with scheduling issues in game development, participants include Robbie Edwards, Senior Producer at Red Storm Entertainment/Ubisoft, Peter O'Brien, Producer at Bizarre Creations, Harvard Bonin, Senior Producer last at Electronic Arts, Adrian Crook, Producer at Relic Entertainment, and Frank Rogan, Producer at Gas Powered Games.]

More information in the original article.

Practical Scheduling For Games

Gamasutra - Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games

Q&A: Producers Of The Roundtable - Practical Scheduling For Games
(Page 1/7)
Next arrow

[Gamasutra is partnering with GameProducer.net, a game production resource, for a series of Q&As named 'Producers of the Round Table'. The Round Table is a place for producers who work in game industry to present their opinions in response to questions.

In this installment, which deals with scheduling issues in game development, participants include Robbie Edwards, Senior Producer at Red Storm Entertainment/Ubisoft, Peter O'Brien, Producer at Bizarre Creations, Harvard Bonin, Senior Producer last at Electronic Arts, Adrian Crook, Producer at Relic Entertainment, and Frank Rogan, Producer at Gas Powered Games.]

Business Success May Depend on Gaming Skills

Study: Business Success May Depend on
Gaming Skills

The
leaders of tomorrow may be the hardcore gamers of today, especially players of
MMORPGs. IBM has teamed with Seriosity on a new study, which found that many of
the skills developed from playing online are similar to those needed for
corporate leadership roles.

So you've leveled up your elf
warrior, organized multiple clans, and become a true hero in a virtual world.
Now it's time to take those skills to the real world. According to a new study
by IBM and Palo Alto, CA-based Seriosity, gaming skills and online role playing
skills in particular are actually becoming more and more important to the next
generation of corporate leaders.

Download the whitepaper.

Advanced Game Production & Management

IGDA Leadership Forum » Program

Program
Posted by JasonDellaRocca on February 16th, 2007

The IGDA Leadership Forum will host two complementary tracks. The Production Track will focus on the nuts and bolts of game production, such as scheduling techniques, post-mortems, and project pipelines. The Leadership Track will cover general leadership skills as well as more advanced team management and motivation techniques. Both tracks will consist of a mix of one-hour lectures, panels, and roundtables.

For session descriptions in each track and info on speakers, please view:

* Keynotes
* Leadership Track
* Production Track
* Roundtables
* Speakers

A full conference schedule will be posted in the near-future.

Non-Recruitment Policy

The IGDA Leadership Forum has a strict non-recruitment policy. Event sponsors, advertisers and speakers will not be permitted to promote recruiting/job opportunities.

TOP SECRET PROJECT - WIKI

Main Page - TOP SECRET PROJECT - WIKI

Welcome to the Project Top Secret Wiki!

Project Top Secret was set up and is being directed by long time gaming veteran David Perry, creator of games such as Earthworm Jim, MDK, and Matrix:Path of Neo. The project is supported by Acclaim Entertainment, and the resulting game will be published by Acclaim.

The purpose of Project Top Secret is, primarily, to enlist a community of thousands of gamers to collaborate with each other in the development of a Massive Multiplayer Online Racing Game for wide distribution. The game will be free to play and advertising supported. Top Secret is also a way to help spotlight and encourage game design and development talent that can be found all over the world, and a special prize awaits one individual who stands out in a substantial way during the course of the project, which is scheduled to last approximately one year. The majority of the project will take place on the Top Secret forums, and there is room for up to 100,000 people to join the project.

The design process is split into Milestones, each one representing a substantial design phase. Once we complete a Milestone we then move to the next one. Milestones are split into Tasks, all of which must be completed before moving to the next Milestone. There may be many Tasks running at the same time.

This Wiki will be used to record the full process of the development from Day One. You will be able to see which Tasks have been completed, the results of each, and which are currently in progress.

As new Milestones or Tasks are opened or added, they will be recorded here. Until a Milestone or Task is opened, it will NOT be on this Wiki. There is no crystal ball here, but you WILL be able to see currently running tasks and those tasks already completed.

MMOBUX.com

Advanced MMOG currency research [provided by mmobux]

How this site works

MMOBUX compares prices for virtual currencies in computer games, such as Gold in World of Warcraft.

Here's how you can find the cheapest price to boost your character:

1. Find your game in the list below
2. Find your server and faction
3. Click the website of the shop where you want to buy

Photosynth demo- must see

TED | Talks | Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo (video)

Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo

About this Talk

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. "Perhaps the most amazing demo I've seen this year," wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

Middleware

MMORPG.COM - Your Headquarters for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games!

Middleware and a look at Icarus Studios
When Carolyn Koh attended the recent Online Game Developers Conference, she learned a little something about Icarus Studios and Middleware as a whole.
advertisement

Middleware is everywhere these days when you look at the MMOG industry, and more than that, entire MMOG platforms are available for the budding MMOG studio to build their world up, and Joe Ludwig of Flying Labs Software shared their Adventures in Middleware in a lecture at the recent OGDC.

A summary explanation of middleware may simply be, "The nuts and bolts, the glue that hold an MMOG together."

Using middleware can cut the development time of an MMOG by more than half. What does that mean to gamers? It means that game developers can concentrate on game design and production. It means that players will see faster game development. Games with a 2 to 4 year development cycle instead of the traditional 4 to 6 before the advent of middleware. It means, for example: less buggy code, less buggy services (such as billing). It could mean an entire platform on which to build an MMOG, including development tools and project management tools.

However, as Joe Ludwig shared with us, Developers need to select the middleware carefully.

"We used A LOT of middleware," he informed the attendees. "Some were free, some were cheap, some took so much work to integrate we're removing it from the game." Some of providers of the middleware they chose to use simply dropped out of sight!

His tips on evaluating middleware included:

* Get the source code - source is more useful for debugging than modifying
* Evaluate the provider too. Make sure they are going to be there for you when you need them
* Include more than just programmers in the evaluation. Include the artists, the sound designers and operations.
* Schedule enough evaluation time
* Don't believe the hype. Evaluate it based on what's there, not what is promised.
* Don't be afraid to reject middleware.

At OGDC, BigWorld with whom we've spoken a time or two was present, as was Icarus Studios. Icarus attempts to stand apart as they boast not only the platform, that is the network architecture and administration tools, but the tools suite which combine the best of the best as well as project services such as project consultation, prototype development, outsourcing and staffing.

"Icarus Studios provides the tools for building virtual worlds," said David Gardner, the Executive Vice President of Icarus Studios as I questioned him about what his Icarus did. "Too many people have confused the Studios with the upcoming MMORPG, Fallen Earth."

But... isn't Fallen Earth produced by Icarus Studios? David was quick to clarify, "We invested in Fallen Earth as we wanted an MMOG to showcase our studio, but we are by no means the developers of Fallen Earth."

A quick check proved that the Fallen Earth MMO project is its own company, Fallen Earth, LLC although Icarus Studios is the principle investor in Fallen Earth. So, while the companies are closely related, and Icarus Studios provides project services and the platform on which Fallen Earth is being developed, they are separate companies. Although the announcement for Icarus Studios was made only a short time ago, the platform has already been licensed twice and per David, a few more deals in the works.

"Icarus Studios has created the only suite of tools designed from scratch specifically as an integrated 3rd party environment for 3D online world creation," says Jim Hettinger, CEO of Icarus Studios. "We're launching our technology suite today after an 18-month stealth period during which our 65-person team completed our six-year development and QA testing efforts."

So, back to Icarus Studios. What exactly is it? "It's a next Gen platform," Brad Lineberger, CTO of Icarus Studios elaborated. Although much is built from scratch from when the company was formed in 2001, Icarus has also included various other 3rd party software packages in their tools. "We've licensed what we've deemed is the Best of Breed. We utilize the PhysX Ageia physics engine and Vivox for integrated voice communication, for example."

Icarus positions themselves as a comprehensive resource center, from complete project development, platform and tool licensing to studio services and library resources. Not only can MMOG developers license the Icarus platform, they can contract with Icarus to provide staff that is fully trained in using the platform and tools. For their client, Fallen Earth, Lee Hammok serves as the lead game designer with Fred Rugar heading up art.

Here are some of the services that Icarus Studios provides apart from the design platform and tool suite:

* Production Services including design consulting, prototype development, project outsourcing, staff augmentation and world hosting services.
* Studios Services including a motion capture studio, a sound studio, art creation and 3D interior scanning

From what I garnered from the short meeting at OGDC and subsequent follow through with a few white papers and the information on their website, Icarus Studios looks to supply comprehensive services, very much a "one stop shop."

Duping and its impact (german)

Olnigg

Der übliche Niedergang einer virtuellen Wirtschaft
dargestellt am Beispiel des MMORPGs Vanguard
Vorab ein Hinweis in eigener Sache:

Sie erinnern sich?
Am 18.02.2007 sprach OLNIGG in der Ausgabe 135 für das Bugparadies Vanguard eine Kaufempfehlung aus.
Wer hätte sich jemals träumen lassen, dass unserem Rat ausgerechnet die Firma Sony Online Entertainment Folge leisten und diese nicht nur das Spiel sondern alle Rechte inklusive der halben Belegschaft einkaufen würde?
Doch mehr über Hintergründe und Folgen wenn überhaupt, dann erst in einer der nächsten Ausgaben.
Ach ja, und wir möchten an dieser Stelle auch ausdrücklich eine Kaufempfehlung für OLNIGG aussprechen.
Sigil - eine Firma, die von Anfang an eine Nulltoleranzgrenze für Gold- und Itemhandel ankündigte:

What's So Great About Realism?

Engines of Creation #14: What's So Great About Realism?

What's So Great About Realism?

by Dave Rickey
2004-01-28

Reality is over-rated, dear
Don't let's be fooled by the hype
There's no such thing as tomorrow, you hear -
Amuse yourself, the time is ripe.
Reality Song, Evergreen Dayflies

When viewed objectively, the fact that the "realism" argument keeps coming up in these games would seem odd. Bringing realism into a discussion that includes fireballs, trolls, energy swords, blasters, and nanotechnology is, at first glance, totally out of place. Yet come up it does, over and over, and in the oddest contexts ("A *real* fireball would leave a smoke trail"). Somehow, in spite of the obvious incongruities, we cannot escape from the belief that reality is the default, and departures from it are suspect and probably false.

Games are where people go to escape reality, so why the push to make it "real"? Because games have to ride the line between keeping our minds busy with fantasy, yet keeping it believable enough to keep our interest, to be fun. When you go too real or too fantasy, the balance is lost and results in a game that has lost its spirit and isn't fun. So, often discussion about games revolves around making them fun. And then things get ugly, because everyone has very firm ideas about what is fun, and often those beliefs aren't accurate even for themselves. For some strange reason, like a zen koan about the eye that cannot see itself, players can play a game, have fun doing so, but not really know why it is fun.

One key to the path out of this confusion comes from recent developments in neuropsychology. What they are finding is the real fundamental workings of neural chemistry and firing that underlay the conscious and unconscious processes that we think of as "thinking". One is that, although our minds are very plastic, they contain pre-dispositions, sort of a genetically derived "BIOS" that sets the initial conditions that allow our minds to form. The brain wiring seems to contain certain hardwired functions, and one of these is termed "intuitive physics", a part of our brain that, although not directly coded with knowledge of how real-world physical processes works, is built to gather and integrate data on those workings and form them into a set of expectations. If there is any hard-wired function in this, it is a simple drive to identify causality: Observable effects have identifiable causes, and we cannot help but look for them. This tendency to identify causes for effects can get quite pronounced, such as the phase most children go through when they imagine profound or dire consequences from apparently innocuous actions. The roots of superstition probably lie in trying to establish causes for otherwise inexplicable observations. The desire to understand the ultimate causes of the world around us fuels both science and religion, this is a very powerful instinct we are talking about.

The other key comes from how the brain preserves neural pathways that prove successful at making predictions and suppresses those that fail. When we attempt something and succeed, we feel a rush of pleasure: endorphins, dopamine, and various hormonal and neurochemical effects encourage the neural connections that have just formed to be reinforced and optimized. When we attempt to reach a goal and fail, we feel frustration, shame, even anger, and similar processes discourage the neural patterns that led to the circumstances that created those feelings. When we have a successful pattern of goal-seeking established, and something that changes the circumstances so that the pattern is no longer effective, we feel confusion, disorientation, even fear, and a strong desire to re-establish the environment that fits our earlier, successful, pattern.

Out of this, we may be able to extract an answer to one of the most vexing questions in game design: What is fun? Fun is the process of establishing, seeking, and achieving goals, in a larger context that gives both the process and the results consistent meaning. Fun environments both surprise and reassure us. They surprise us by working on rules that are very different from those of the real world, and reassure us by having an internal consistancy and logic that is reminiscent of that we find in the real world. Realism is a constant theme, because the exemplar of the environment where these things can occur is the real one. The reason why the market for trading real cash for in-game rewards will never be stamped out is because ultimately, they act as stand-ins for the same thing: The underlying desire to achieve goals.

Link Management, very interesting

Jeff Freeman » I Have Many Lists of Links

I Have Many Lists of Links
April 24, 2007
[blogging]

I have bookmarks in a browser (at work and at home), a neglected blogroll here, way too many feeds at Bloglines, plus a mess of saved links in my scrapbook add-on.

Then there are my StumbleUpon likes, and - if I don’t exercise a bit of self control - Technorati’s polite offers to watch links and del.icio.us’ desire for a tag on every page threaten to spill-out additional lists.

There are many, many 3rd party services, and a few utilities, to assist in managing lists of links separately.

I made this graphic as a goof, poking fun at all the sharing sites there are now:

Paul Barnett interview

Face the Nation: Paul Barnett

MMOG Nation: For folks who don’t necessarily have a good grasp of where you’re coming from, could you give us a sense of what led you to your position on the Warhammer project?

Paul Barnett: Complete flukes, and mistakes and bureaucratic errors, and the inability for someone to look at the work I’ve done and realize I’m a charlatan and a fraud. How does that sound?

Community Relations Is Hard

Broken Toys

Community Relations Is Hard
IndustryWoW

For those following the Tseric saga, he was apparently let go/resigned this week.

For those not following the Tseric saga:

Tseric was a forum moderator/community person for World of Warcraft. His main job involved gathering feedback from players on the official forums. There are words for jobs like this. Note: there are also other words.

Late on Sunday, Tseric gave what I like to call the Roy Batty Speech. This is a speech that everyone connected to a community on the internet gives at some point if they either (a) lose perspective about their life causing rampaging self-pity, (b) undergo a significant amount of stress causing rampaging self-pity, or (c) get so drunk they have an attack of rampaging self-pity but unfortunately not so drunk as to be unable to type into a web browser. (I have given several variations of this over time.) The Roy Batty Speech is something wildly dramatic, overwrought and self-indulgent. Note that Roy Batty had an excuse for being wildly dramatic and overwrought: He was a robot, he was Rutger Hauer, and he was dying. Unless you are a dying robot named Rutger Hauer, you don’t have enough reason to give the Roy Batty Speech. Tseric’s version of the Roy Batty Speech is preserved forever, because this is the Internet.

Posting impassionately, they say you don’t care.

Posting nothing, they say you ignore.

Posting with passion, you incite trolls.

Posting fluff, you say nonsense.

Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.

There is no win.

There is only slow degredation.

Take note. It is the first and only time you’ll see someone in my position make that position.

You can be me when I’m gone.

It went on for a while. Apparently posting on the forums has nothing to do with being teargassed in anti-globalization protests, just in case, you know, you were unsure. Also, you don’t understand what it’s like dealing with forums. Also, trolls suck.

The dirty not-quite-a-secret is that everyone even tenuously connected to the oversight of online games, or other internet communities, have said much these same words in various combinations. The difference is that we didn’t actually, you know, tell the customers these words. We didn’t give The Roy Batty Speech while we were on the clock. Because while blowing off steam is important, and necessary, it’s also something you by necessity do behind closed doors. Otherwise it’s not just venting steam, it’s merely venting. And that has its own connotation, and it’s an unpleasant one.

And that’s why Tseric is “pursuing other opportunities elsewhere”. Because part of having the fancy coloration in your name when you post is understanding that, no, you can’t just dive into the muck and root around with everyone else. You lost that privilege when you got the fancy colored name. You have to be different. You have to set the standard. And yes, that means you take a lot of unjustified punches. It comes with the territory of, as the Penny Arcade comic put it, eating bees. Sometimes the bees sting, and what are you going to do? Dude, you took a job eating bees. It will happen. And you’ll bitch about it to your friends off the clock constantly - but not on the clock. Not to the customers paying your way. It’s not how communities are run.

Anyway, it’s not really that important in the scheme of things. Well, it’s important to Tseric, since he’s LFG, but for the rest of us, it’s just another inappropriate context for the Roy Batty Speech. And it’ll happen again. People being human and all.

Usability and Accessibility in games

Gamasutra - Designing Usable and Accessible Games with Interaction Design Patterns

Designing Usable and Accessible Games with Interaction Design Patterns
(Page 1/6)
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What separates games from other forms of entertainment is that they provide interaction, however providing interaction it in the wrong way e.g. different from how the player would expect it or how the player requires it, means that people get frustrated playing your game --or worse-- cannot play your game at all.

More and more people are interested in playing games who do not fit the profile of the “20 year old male” that the game industry predominately seems to target. Playing a first person shooter on a console requires you to master two analog thumbsticks, four buttons and a number of triggers and or combinations of these. Not everyone is capable of doing this easily, such as the elderly, while those who have never played games before, such as people with disabilities, all face an increasingly complicated game interaction that withholds or restricts them from playing games in the first place.

Games are different from traditional software systems in the sense that most software systems are designed with the purpose to either completely automate a user’s task (such as ATM software) making the user obsolete, or to support a user in performing a task, such as a word processor helping someone write a letter. Games are different in that respect as they are solely developed for entertainment or educational purposes.

Interaction design affects two game qualities:

* Usability: if a player cannot figure out how to play the game, if the player has to wait, if it is difficult to learn to play the game or if game objects are awkward to use.
* Accessibility: if a player cannot understand what is said in cut scenes or cannot hear the footsteps of someone sneaking up behind him or her, because the player suffers from an auditory disability or if the game does not support the use of specific input devices such as one handed controllers or sip and puff joysticks that allow severely physical disabled players to play the game.

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more information in the original article

NASA World Wind Java at JavaOne

Ken Russell's Weblog : Weblog

NASA World Wind Java at JavaOne

Quick Information Links

Today, May 10, at JavaOne 2007, NASA released the early access SDK of their revolutionary World Wind planetary visualization system for the Java platform.

This is an historic moment. Now leading-edge, high-performance, 3D geospatial visualization is available to developers on all platforms. You can embed it in your Java applications as a component. You can extend it, changing the visual appearance of the globe in any way you can imagine. This technology is deployable inside of a web browser as an applet, or as an application launched with a single mouse click, using the foundations of the Java platform and the OpenGL 3D graphics API. No manual software installation is required (aside from the Java Runtime Environment, which is pre-installed on 9 out of 10 PCs shipped today, and on all Macintosh computers).

Tom Gaskins, the technical lead of World Wind Java, and the team of Dave Collins, Lado Garakanidze, Randy Kim, and alumni Eric Dalgliesh and Chris Maxwell, led by Project Manager Patrick Hogan, have built an elegant, extensible, and embeddable architecture which will resonate throughout the software development community and the world. I extend my heartfelt thanks to them for their perseverence and hard work.

Sun's involvement with NASA World Wind Java dates back to September 2005, when Hans Muller, CTO of Sun's Desktop division, initiated a dialogue between NASA's World Wind development team and Sun. At the time, World Wind was exclusively a .NET application, written in C# and Direct3D, and ran only on Microsoft's Windows platform. Chris Campbell and I met with the World Wind development team at NASA Ames to discuss the feasibility of a Java platform port of World Wind. It turned out that NASA had already been discussing this internally and Tom Gaskins had written an article on EarthFlicks, a stripped-down version of World Wind written in Java using OpenGL via JOGL for its 3D graphics. Chris and I discussed the current state of Java 2D and 3D graphics, and we collectively discussed areas where NASA would need help in bringing World Wind to Java.

The extraordinary nature of NASA's work was immediately apparent, and I initiated discussions throughout Sun to try to help accelerate the development of a Java version of their system by providing funding enabling NASA to hire an additional contractor. My vice-president, Laurie Tolson, agreed to fund half of a collaborative research project, the other half funded by Sun's External Research Office led by Emil Sarpa. Foothill / De Anza College, which has an internship program at NASA Ames, helped facilitate the collaboration, which officially began in April 2006.

In the meantime, NASA had already begun work on a Java version of World Wind. Tom Gaskins had been providing feedback on JOGL for months, and he, Chris Campbell and I had had steady dialog during this time. His need for an easy code path to bring textures in to OpenGL prodded Chris to finish the initial version of JOGL's TextureIO utility classes. Afterward I assumed responsibility for these classes and extended them with compressed texture support which is required for World Wind to use texture memory effectively. Tom and the NASA team improved the quality of JOGL for the entire development community by uncovering several bugs in these utilities along the way which we fixed.

The entire NASA development team made extraordinary strides in a remarkably short period of time, getting quickly to the point where the globe was on the screen and continuing to refine the algorithms used and extend the system's functionality. Areas of development and discussion included the general strategy for producing the geometry and imagery for the planet's surface; support for rendering place names; support for rendering lines and polygons on the planet's surface; the algorithms used to position the camera (or the "view"); integration of new data sets; inclusion of features such as political boundaries and meridian and parallel lines; and selection of features on the surface of the planet. Patrick Hogan retargeted the team's efforts and made World Wind Java the primary focus for ongoing development.

NASA's work on World Wind Java informed bug fixes to JOGL's support for DRI rendering on X11 platforms, among other areas. Based on NASA's experience using JOGL to render text for place names, as well as extensive discussions with Phil Race from the Java 2D team, I added a TextRenderer to JOGL which provides easy, high-quality, and platform-independent text support for OpenGL applications. JOGL's TextRenderer soon after replaced the custom text rendering system built earlier in World Wind Java for rendering place names.

At OOPSLA 2006 I saw an exhibit of a virtual equipment panel out of an airplane (an F-16, in fact). Looking closer I saw the standard Java coffee cup logo in the corner of the window. The sales representative from the company (The DiSTI Corporation) indicated that this was a piece of code produced by their tool, GL Studio, and that they were showing a new Java code generator for their tool which produced Java code using JOGL. I introduced myself as the JOGL technical lead and was soon in touch with Darren Humphrey, the CTO of DiSTI. I put NASA and DiSTI in touch, as DiSTI's F-16 cockpit was a natural fit for flying over NASA World Wind Java's terrain. This resulted in the mind-blowing F-16 flight simulator demo shown at JavaOne 2007, linked below, in which you can fly over the entire world.

In recent months the NASA team has focused on refinements of the view and terrain algorithms, as well as satisfying requirements set by other sponsors of the project such as geometric highlighting of features on the planet's surface. The software has become increasingly ready for consumption by a larger audience.

NASA World Wind Java and The DiSTI Corporation's F-16 flight simulator demonstration were shown in Bob Brewin's technical keynote this past Tuesday to a wonderful audience reception. You can watch a replay of the webcast of the keynote. Part of the segment on NASA World Wind Java even made it to CNET News.com. Tom Gaskins presented an excellent technical session today (TS-3489, 3-D Earth Visualization with NASA World Wind) which was extraordinarily well received and which discussed in greater depth World Wind Java's architecture and how it can be utilized, extended, and embedded as a component.

This is just the beginning of a remarkable journey. Sun and NASA eagerly await what the Java developer and user communities will do with these capabilities. The world is at your fingertips.
For More Information

* NASA World Wind Main Page
* NASA World Wind Java
* The DiSTI Corporation
* DiSTI's F-16 Flight Simulator (click to launch via Java Web Start)

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community -- Social Networks

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

Angry people looking for fights will inevitably try to poison successful Internet communities. Columnist Cory Doctorow looks at ways to remove the poison without killing the discussion too.

By Cory Doctorow
InformationWeek
May 14, 2007 11:28 PM

The Internet Tough Guy is a feature in all Internet social forums. These are people who poison discussions with anger, hatred, and threats. Some are malicious. Some are crazy. Some are just afflicted with a rotten sense of humor. Whatever their motives, they're a scourge. It takes precious little trolling to sour a message-board. A "troll" -- someone who comes onto an online community looking to pick fights -- has two victory conditions: Either everyone ends up talking about him, or no one talks at all. And where two or more trolls gather, they'll egg each other on, seeing who can anger and disrupt the regular message-board posters the most.

It can be distressing. If you're part of a nice little community of hamster-fanciers, Trekkers, or Volkswagen enthusiasts, it's easy to slip into a kind of camaraderie, a social setting in which everyone talks about life, aspirations, family problems, personal triumphs. In some ways, it doesn't matter what brought you together -- the fact that you're together is what matters.

Then, almost without warning, your community goes toxic. Someone in your group undergoes a radical personality shift and begins picking fights, or someone new comes to the party with an agenda. Or, worst of all: Your little clubhouse achieves some small measure of fame and is overrun by newcomers who don't know that Liza is a little bit touchy on the subject of hamster balls, or that old Fred gets into a froth anytime someone asks about retrofitting a bud vase into a vintage Beetle, or that everyone here actually kind of knows Wil Wheaton from reading his blog and he's a total mensch, so jokes about shoving Wesley out the airlock are frowned upon.

Sometimes, you rebound. More often, you tumble. Things get worse. The crowds get bigger, the fights get hotter. Pathologically angry (but often funny) people show up and challenge each other to new levels of vitriol.

In extreme cases, you end up with the kind of notorious mess that Kathy Sierra found herself in, in which trolls directed such bilious, threatening noise towards a harmless advocate for "passionate users" in web-applications that she withdrew from speaking at O'Reilly's Emerging Tech conference.

You can deal with trolls in many ways. Many trolls are perfectly nice in real life -- sometimes, just calling them on the phone and confronting them with the human being at the other end of their attacks is enough to sober them up. But it doesn't always work: I remember one time I challenged someone who'd been sending me hate mail to call me up and say the words aloud: the phone rang a moment later and the first words out of my troll's mouth were, "You f*cking hypocrite!" The conversation declined from there.

Trolls can infect a small group, but they really shine in big forums.



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more information in the original article

Cryptic Studios Releases Animation Tools

MMORPG.COM

General : Cryptic Studios Releases Animation Tools Digg this article
Posted May 10, 2007 by Keith Cross
4 comments in our forums
Cryptic Studios, best known for their work on superhero genre of MMOs like City of Heroes / Villains, has announced that the Cryptic Animation Rig (Cryptic AR) is now available free for download.

Cryptic Studios, Inc., an independent developer of massively multiplayer online games, announced today its proprietary Cryptic Animation Rig (Cryptic AR) is now available free for download under the GNU General Public License.

"Our goal is to foster a community of animators by providing them the power to generate animations without having to worry about supporting a toolset. Since we were already developing the rig for our core technology team, we decided to release it to the public under the GNU GPL," said Shayne Herrera, Art Development Director for Cryptic Studios. "We feel that the development and gaming communities will benefit greatly from a professional tool like the Cryptic AR."

Cryptic AR allows animators of all experience levels to familiarize themselves with the same tools used in a professional development environment. Unlike other free animation rigs, Cryptic AR is not an approximation of production tools, but the very tools currently being used to produce next-gen game visuals at Cryptic Studios.

"We decided to add the ability to switch and create character skins called 'IDs,' or 'identities,'" said Sean Burgoon, animator and creator of the Cryptic AR. "Cryptic AR version 1.0 ships with three IDs and we plan to release more on a regular basis. We are encouraging user-submitted IDs through the animation community we are creating on our web site."

The Cryptic AR web site will also have forums to serve as the community home for aspiring AR animators. The forums will act as a place to inspire continued creativity in users and support animation needs.