The animals of second life: A look at Amaretto Breedable Pets

Do a search of the word Amaretto in second life, and you will find the latest craze in-world.  Amaretto makes virtual animals such as dogs and horses, which act as fully functional pets.  These animals come in all manner of colors and textures, ranging from the realistic to the fantastical.  They range in price from approximately 500 linden dollars to 20,000.  Each animal has a number of stats, such as hunger, happiness, and energy.  Pets must be given adequate food, rest, and attention in order to maintain these stats.  Amaretto sells many toys and food items to assist with maintaining a pet's health and happiness, such as food, salt licks for horses, and balls for dogs to fetch. In addition, pets have a stat called fervor, raised with a special type of food, which determines when they can breed.  Breeding animals with different characteristics can create children with different combinations of those characteristics.  Age is measured in days, with animals becoming adults 7 days after birth, and eventually growing too old to reproduce.  Animals that are not fed can even grow sick, requiring medicine to heal them.

     It is interesting to note that while many residents seem to enjoy buying Amaretto's creations, given the glut of ranches devoted to the task of selling and housing them, they don't seem to spend a lot of time caring for their new pets.  A cursory inspection of many ranches will find an abundance of unhappy, neglected animals, and virtually no residents to speak of.  This is not too great an issue, as pets do not die, regardless of how sick they are.  All things considered, it seems like a pretty good deal.  You get all of the benefits of a virtual best friend, minus the dying, the housebreaking, and the waste disposal.  If this sounds like fun to you, check it out at your nearest amaretto seller today.

Blodgett's model of protest and the EVE online Incarna demonstrations (revision)

Last year, when CCP games released the Incarna expansion to their popular MMORPG, EVE Online, they triggered a wave of protests unlike any the game world had previously seen.  The catalysts for the protests was CCP's decision to replace the old ship hangar interface with one where the player's avatar exited the ship and walked about the station.  This change was too graphically demanding on some user's systems, and interfered with their ability to play the game.  Exacerbating the situation was a new microtransaction model put into place by CCP, in which virtual clothes for avatars were being sold at exorbitant prices.  This played havoc with the in game currency and economy.

     The resulting protests were a unique and interesting event.  In And the Ringleaders Were Banned: An Examination of Protest in Virtual Worlds, by Bridget M. Blodgett, Blodgett classifies protests based upon their degree of virtualization, their legality, their cultural homogeneity, and the limits on participation.  The Incarna protests manifested in the form of violent in game riots.  Thousands of players swarmed two major trade hubs in the game, and proceeded to open fire on two large stations in game bearing large monuments.  The protest is interesting in two ways.  First, it was entirely legal, despite its potential to cause massive disruptions in the game.  The sheer number of players unleashing their weapons in the nodes, which were central trading hubs in the game world, caused large amounts of lag within those nodes.  At several points during the attacks, there were so many people in the zones in question, that other players trying to get in were locked out.  However, the world of EVE is one where the law is usually made by the one with the biggest guns, and in this case, everyone's guns were pointing in the same direction.  It was not a violation of the EULA for players to attack large NPC stations (though a single actor attempting to do so would accomplish little, and be in great peril besides), however, the unprecedented number of players acting in unison caused disruptions to the game's infrastructure.  As all protests occurred online, there were no real world authorities involved, and players had free reign to vent their rage in game.  Also interesting is the homogeneity and unity of purpose present amongst the players in what is otherwise considered to be one of the most merciless, dog-eat-dog MMO's in existence.  These protests forced CCP to do quite a bit of backpedalling, and to reconsider many features of the upcoming expansion.  They also serve to illustrate interesting aspects of Blodgett's models.

Competition between two Ultima Online gold farming titans breaks out into open warfare with heavy losses on both sides:

The face of the Ultima Online economy changed forever today as the Blacksnow group and the Cartel, two  of Ultima Online's biggest gold farming companies, went into open warfare after negotiations failed concerning a possible merger deal.  Both sides appear to be reporting each other's known characters to GMs, resulting in mass bannings.  The two sides combined were believed to have controlled well over half of the gold in UO, although the bannings may have eliminated most of these reserves.  Cartel leader Rich Thurman is reported as having said "My accounts are gone. Every last one got banned. I am dead in the water right now."

     The trouble appears to have begun as a result of failed negotiations between Thurman and Lee Caldwell of the Blacksnow group.  The two had discussed merging their operations.  Together, they would have had near complete control of the UO gold market.  However, talks faltered over a piece of code called exevents, which the cartel refused to share with Blacksnow.  Subsequently, after multiple characters from both groups were banned, Blacksnow discovered that exevents had in fact been shared with a blackmailer to keep him quiet.  Caldwell vowed revenge, and has since been reporting every cartel character he finds to the GMs.  The Cartel has responded in kind, reporting all Blacksnow characters it finds.  It is likely that both groups' presence in world will be wiped out, at least for the time being.  Stay posted for more news!

Content creation in virtual worlds

     In Escaping the Gilded Cage: User Created Content and Building the Metaverse, Cory Ondrejka argues that current technology should allow for the establishment of a large scale online world in which content is generated and owned by users.  He cites Second Life as an example of this, describing how players can make different objects with different scripts and behaviors, and how they trade these items for in game currency.  Given my current, albeit limited, experience with second life, I see two issues with his assertion that the metaverse could now be created.
     The first of these is the relative difficulty of the building tool.  While it is easy to place and move different geometric objects, putting them together and modifying them in the correct ways is difficult, and requires that a great deal of time be spent learning the building tools of the system.  If a large scale virtual world such as Ondrejka envisions is to come into being, it will be necessary for content creation to be as user friendly as possible.
     The second issue is that a cursory exploration of Second Life will reveal that much of it is deserted.  Countless players have purchased virtual land and put it to a variety of different uses.  However, much of this effort is wasted.  The countless houses and stores and towns lie unvisited and unused.  While in the real world, space is at a premium, and will not be allowed to lie vacant, in a virtual world, unused properties will continue to exist indefinitely, the only constraint being server space, which can be added with more servers.  This means that any large scale virtual world will quickly accumulate a large amount of useless creation, forcing participants to sift through the dross to find places and things of value.  Unless there is some mechanism for pruning out substandard content, users will be swallowed in an avalanche of mediocrity.  Until adequate solutions are devised, these issues will continue to preclude the development of the kind of virtual world that Ondrejka envisions.

EULA's and laws in virtual worlds

In Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds, Jack M. Balkin argues that real world legal regulation of virtual worlds is inevitable.  He claims that this conclusion results from the ever increasing commodification of many virtual worlds, and therefore the increasing applicability of consumer protection laws.  He also cites issues of free speech within virtual worlds, as well as communication torts and violations of intellectual property as possible openings for legal regulation.  He also suggests a framework for distinguishing different types of virtual worlds and regulating them as per their function.  He calls this framework interration.  Much as a corporation gains a status as a virtual person, he argues that virtual worlds should be granted the legal status of a virtual place.  Different types of virtual worlds could be subject to different regulations and expectations depending on what type of world they interrate as.  An examination of the three EULA's that we discussed in class on Thursday makes clear the necessity of such regulatory flexibility.
     An examination of second life's EULA makes clear the intense commodification of the world.  Not only is in game currency directly purchasable with real money, the EULA acknowledges that creators of in game content enjoy intellectual property rights with respect to their creations.  This subjects Linden Lab to many legal responsibilities.  One could argue that they should be limited in their ability to remove people from the game, or otherwise deny them access to their property, if they have any.  They could theoretically be entitled to reimbursement should they ever lose virtual goods as a result of actions by Linden Labs.  Furthermore, the ability of players to engage in the creation of content makes Second Life ripe for copyright violations, which must be policed accordingly.
     In a game like EVE, however, the regulation necessary is quite different.  While players and player run corporations may spend years acquiring in game wealth equivalent to large amounts of real money, the EULA explicitly states that the game shall not be played for the purpose or with the intend of making money.  Players have no property rights to anything that they may acquire in game, and therefore, CCP is not necessarily required to furnish the same consumer protections.  In fact, in EVE, where theft, extortion, fraud, murder, and other such player misbehavior are considered valid gameplay strategies, excessive regulation could threaten the game's very survival.  Due to player's inability to create their own content, it is also unlikely that serious violations of intellectual property or copyright infringement could occur in EVE.
     Minecraft presents some interesting regulatory questions.  Minecraft is in no way shape or form commodified.  Players do not even play a monthly fee to join, and servers are private affairs run by private groups, not Mojang.  As such, Minecraft, and things created by players within it, should be entitled to fairly comprehensive free speech protections.  The only case in which this could be called into question is when players intentionally violate copyrights.  However, even in this case, the question of whether Mojang or the operator of the server that the offending content is on is liable remains an open one.

The Interaction of Law and Play in Virtual Worlds: The relationship between "antinaturalistic" conceptions of law and their malleability

In her article, "Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO", Jennifer L. Mnookin discusses the creation of semi-legal structures in LambdaMOO.  She argues that LambdaMOO serves as a physical test of the theories of Roberto Unger.  Unger argues for an "antinaturalistic" view of law, in which law is viewed as a man made construct, rather than stemming from natural principles.  He believes that this would result in the formation of social structures that are more malleable and more easily disrupted.  As Mnookin points out, even though the participants of LambdaMOO were quite aware of the antinaturalistic origins of their law, the tendency over time was for a majority of players, albeit not a large one, to attempt to further formalize the law, and create more fixed legal structures.  When looking at the present state of virtual worlds, I believe that this tendency has become even more fixed, due to the nature of modern virtual worlds.
      Unlike LambdaMOO, which was developed at a college, and existed as a primarily social and experimental world, most modern virtual worlds are created and owned by companies, and are intended to generate profit.  Many of these virtual worlds are MMORPGs. and are considered to be games.  This has important implications for the legal structures present. In "Rules of Play," Greg Lastowka argues that the laws that govern MMORPGS are heavily influenced by the concepts of games and play.  He notes that games must have generally agreed upon rules.  These rules both liberate and constrain the players, specifying what they can and cannot do, and determining what strategies are valid.  The necessity of fixed rules within a game creates a potent challenge to Unger's claims.  All participants in a modern MMO, such as World of Warcraft, agree to abide by an end user license agreement and the terms of use in order to play.  Despite the fact that the rules of the game are clearly and explicitly fabricated by the developers, and thus inherently antinaturalistic, the fact that they are the rules to a game necessitates that they be relatively fixed.  As such, the rules of game worlds like WoW are written entirely by the developers, and can only be changed by them.  Unlike in less structured virtual worlds, the participants cannot be allowed to debate or alter the rules, because they would be altering the rules of a game as they played it.
     As such, the game nature of most modern MMOs greatly expands upon the formalizing trend that Mnookin observed in LambdaMOO.  Though the legal structures that develop are clearly antinaturalistic, this fact does not result, as Unger would have hoped, in more malleable legal and social structures, but rather less malleable ones, as agreement on the rules of a game must be nearly unanimous in order for the game to be playable.  This is somewhat less of an issue in less goal-oriented and more social worlds like Second Life. However, the resources necessary to run such a massive virtual world, and the for-profit nature of the company running said world do lead to the formation of arbitrary, antinaturalistic, yet nonetheless fairly immutable legal structures.

LOTRO: The first 10 levels

For class on Thursday, we had to read Taylor, T.L. "Gaming Lifeworlds: Social Play in Persistent Environments," Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture.  In this article, Taylor argues that the experience of playing an MMO is inherently social.  She claims that players must interact with other players in order to be successful, as each player is specialized for certain tasks, and no player can therefore succeed on his/her own.

     My experience in LOTRO so far does not corroborate this thesis.  However, I cannot say that I was surprised by this fact.  The first 10 levels in LOTRO have played very much like the first 10 levels in WoW, and, given my previous experience in WoW, I knew what to expect from the beginning.  Generally, at the very beginning, the quests that one undertakes function as tutorials.  As most people are still either learning the basic controls and game mechanics, or at least how their particular class functions, and due to the resulting simplicity of the introductory quests, there simply is no need for the help of other players at low levels.  This effect is compounded in a game which has been out for a long time.  At the beginning of a game's existence, level distribution among players will be even.  However, by the time a game has been out for several years, most players will have reached the higher levels, if not the maximum.  As such, there will be very few players in lower level zones.  While this does not necessarily invalidate Taylor's thesis as pertains to the endgame, I feel that the article would have been well served with this caveat included.  My experience in WoW, was that trough most of the time I spent leveling my character, I only occasionally needed to interact with other players for particularly hard quests, or specific services.  However, at high levels, the social aspect became unavoidable, as I needed to be a part of a large groups to experience endgame content such as raids or PvP battlegrounds.  It remains to be seen if LOTRO will turn out to be similar.