Below are some recent mainstream media stories on virtual worlds for those who might have missed them. Thoughts, comments, and links to other things welcome, as always.
Before that, though, if you should happen to be in Santa Clara County on Friday (the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, specifically), I'll be there as part of a panel talking about how trademark law should work in virtual worlds. See this page. Much more interesting, though, are the other folks who will be speaking, such as Richard Stallman, Alex Kozinski, Marty Roberts (GC of Linden Lab), Chris Kelly (Chief Privacy officer of Facebook), Zahavah Levine (Chief Counsel of YouTube), and a whole bunch of other people rather fancier than myself. Apparently, you can attend for free, although they encourage you to donate $10 to pay for cheese and such.
Now onto the news...
The Wall Street Journal on the Second Life Banking Crisis
"When virtual environments first started, they were viewed as
libertarian dreams with no interference," says Behnam Dayanim, a lawyer
who specializes in Internet law at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky &
Walker LLP in Washington. "As companies that sponsor these environments
become more accountable to investors or regulators, they are starting
to encounter real-world limitations."
The New York Times on Kid's Virtual Worlds
Club Penguin, where members pay $5.95 a month to dress and
groom penguin characters and play games with them, attracts seven times
more traffic than Second Life. In one sign of the times, Electric
Sheep, a software developer that helps companies market their brands in
virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, last week laid off 22
people, about a third of its staff.
ABC News: Can Web Worlds Teach Real Life?
Proponents of online research counter with figures that the audience
for today's "massively multiplayer" games mirror the general public far
more closely than most other video games. And in hopes of quelling the
skeptics, several studies are attempting to see if reality shines
through in the online worlds of pixels and pixies.
The BBC on the Habbo Theft
A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing
virtual furniture from "rooms" in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking
website.
(And click here for a similar hacking/virtual property story from Japan.)
Wired (Julian) on Griefers
Pwnage, zerging, phat lewts — online gaming has birthed a rich lexicon. But none, perhaps, deserves our attention as much as the notion of the griefer. Broadly speaking, a griefer is an online version of the spoilsport — someone who takes pleasure in shattering the world of play itself.