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It was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone 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 pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile 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 developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well

But overall, I like to think that the attendance demonstrates that developers are interested in what academics might be able to tell them (again I will point out: no fruit was thrown)And all week, I talked with developers who were interested in what was going on with research, from the smallest to the largest companiesMaybe the issue is the "larger" communityIt's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that levelBut I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going onI don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to beBut then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet

You can Buy SWG Credits, a professional, loyal and reliable Final Fantasy XI Gil exchange corporation work groupWe are fairly confident that, in fact, Bob Moore is the brains behind the operation (Bob, if you're reading this, give me a call)But since we were uncertain about who was responsible for all the good work, we decided to grab as many of them as we couldEspecially those who, like Eric, are big fans of Jane Austen, have spent years living in Southeast Asia, and who hold the conviction that every American 13 year old should be packed off to live with a Third World family for a yearEric is particularly interested in quantititative methodologies of research in MMOGs

So, welcome Eric! Glad to have you aboardAnd please, no fighting with Nic, ok?

Now you might think that this would be a Bad Idea, but apparently the players love itIt may have something to do with the academic cycle, but it seems that people are willing to play a virtual world that they know will only last 3 or 4 months before it resets entirely

Imagine it wasn't an academic textual world, though, but was a commercial graphical worldWould people still play it, or something like it?

I'm guessing they wouldIf there were new shards starting all the time, so newbies were never dumped in a "lame duck" instantiation, a fixed time limit could be attractive in several ways:

You only have to commit for a fixed period, not indefinitely

There's greater narrative scope for the designers

As most of the characters will be of the same "level" anyway, the concept of levels can be replaced by some less grindy means of measuring success

You're free to reinvent yourself periodically, instead of having to wear a character that might have been appropriate for you two years ago but who just isn't "you" any more

Content can be arranged so that players will want to be in similar geographic areas at similar timesYou won't need so many players per shard to get that "village" feel

Lots more...

...Are you good at multitasking? Would you like to have a specially trained character ready for Shiva's release?...For a limited time, CCP is offering current EVE players the opportunity to create an additional account with 6 months of game play for only 35.85That's an amazing 6 months for the price of 3

As MMOGs go, Eve Online seems especially ALT friendly: not much to role-play; little social stigma associated with alts (although the eternal trust issues are compounded by them); and there is lots of real dirty, highly specialized work that needs to be done in outer spaceALTs are handy and to top-it-off, the distances are huge - it is sure convenient to have "Our Man in Havanna."

Yes, ALTs are everywhere in virtual worldsThe joke is that there aren't really N players on that server, there are M players and N accountsBy and large, I'm sure the developers don't mind the extra cash and activity in their worlds, but do they outright encourage it in your world?