Finally, there's another group that needs addressing, and that's those who are, whether they know it or not, deeply uncomfortable with attracting any broad market at all. These are the dyed-in-the-wool gamers who like the fact that the time they've lovingly spent to raise their main character to level 60 is typically equivalent to, say, the time spent in class during a little over a year of full-time college -- or if you like, three months of full-time work (according to PlayOn). In fact, as we've seen in discussion after discussion (ad nauseum) here focused on RMT, current "core" players so jealously guard the time investment required to succeed in current games that anyone who would want to circumvent this (the 'more money, less time' model) is viewed as a cheater or worse (this is not an invitation to morph this thread into yet-another-RMT thread).

The question here is whether zergs can push in from the outside and not just emerge from the inside. Jim Rossigonal seems to suggest that too much enthusiasm in Korea encourages a narrower view of the computer game: some genres and titles are apparently hard to come by. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know.

This is going to be long, but I'd like to explain what my business essentially was, and my views on things in general and why what is currently going on is quite serious for EQ. Not just for the plat sellers like I was, or just those who rely on bazaar gears and trading to equip their character, but also those at the raiding level. While it certainly impacts raiders the least, it does eventually.

There was more and more competition coming in on a weekly basis, and I never made so much as I did the first year, even though I had to work more and more. Like any business if you are one of the only places around for that product, you'll make a killing compared to being in the face of extreme competition. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know.

There were many guesses and many claims, but it was a combination of many issues. For one there were tradeskills which could be run under a macro for profit. There were many people doing this and using offset hacks to warp around or use combiners like the forges from somewhere outside the zone boundaries so you could not see them. Ever run up to a forge back then and find it was in use but nobody was standing there? Well, now you know what was probably going on. With a macro you could make a few hundred k a day per server per character you had doing it. 40 + servers at the time, times $100 a day per server, and you'd be fairly rich in short order at a steady diet of $120,000 a month.

Not only were there macros, but there were rumors of a "banker dupe" which were probably untrue, and there were also rumors of an offset hack to make the server think you dropped to a negative amount of money, which would put your character at a very very large positive amount of money. I believe the latter more, because the banker would require inside help, and while it's possible I don't think it's probable. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points.

Two different speakers from Numenta talked about the new company’s attempts to leverage Jeff Hawkins’ ideas about the neocortex from “On Intelligence.” Their demo looked a lot like typical neural net driven recognition demos and generated some serious pushback from the audience. However, if you’ve read the book you already know what they’d cover in their talks. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers. And there are huge gaps in what we don't know.

Publication in First Monday magazine; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $250 He is a strong advocate of the power of decentralized decision making, management, and production, and his work is nicely paired with Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds.” On an immediate level, one can see how Malone’s ideas have to apply to group formation and mechanics within digital worlds, where communication costs are even lower than the real world. Looking forward, his ideas support the contention that many forms of real work will migrate into digital worlds, driven by the ability to form more effective, efficient, and innovative businesses within them.

Airfare, hotel and registration for participation at the State of Play, New York, New York, Oct 6-8, 2005; Publication in First Monday magazine special State of Play issue; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $500 My one area of concern is that anyone who wants to talk about the future ends must be able to both have an open mind about new technologies and ideas, but as Feynman said, “not so open that your brain falls out.” And this is clearly a difficult balance to maintain. Dr. Daniel Amen’s talk stood out as an example.

Sure, there are different kinds of role-playing, and different intensities. Role-playing military roles is likely easier than cross-gender role-playing, for example. And yes we all do a little of it, even when not trying. Or rather we do a little of *something* without trying - we aquire a vocabulary, an accent... Wyatt's theory is that Role-Playing servers are really about acting: In many ways, what is at stake in Richard’s comments is not virtual worlds, but the same deeply traversed terrain that always comes up when in modernity talk about freedom, society and individuality, and our answers to the question of “Why can’t players be more free in virtual worlds” are likely to echo the kinds of things each of us might say about freedom more generally.