Clay Shirky delivers a knock out punch yesterday on Second Life (SL) and other virtual chat worlds. Or at least, many pro-game, less-VW people wish he did. His article unpacks a lot of the new history of virtual worlds (VW) and compares how they and games, like content delivery tools (e.g. Pointcast, email) will have some survivors and some duds. And the single best indicator for success of wide scale adoption is…. wide scale popular use. This was why the controversy over Shirky’s last criticism over the slipperiness of the membership numbers of SL was so relevant. Either these online services are popular and being used, or else they are interesting, but niche, offerings. A lot of gamers understand that reasoning. I like Eve Online, ATitD, f13 and small communities. Hell, being an MMO gamer is itself still really a niche activity (just ask Gabe & Tycho). But while I can support niche, and I can’t really get behind VW’s as much as I do games, I don’t really want to agree with Shirky wholesale.

The reason I’m uncomfortable is that Shirky basically positions WoW in contrast to SL and things like LagunaBeach. But curiously, however, he misses HabboHotel, Neopets, ToonTown, and Audition Online, which are social environments first and gaming spaces secondarily. These are VW’s with strong gaming elements, like prizes, advancements, events, etc. They take what’s best from games, things like collecting, and use them to accent social spaces. Point being, while we can define what goes in a game, when we start to worry about socializing online we have to broaden our categories necessarily. As we see from reality TV, we can still compete, and we can do it non-cooperatively in social situations. There are lots of games going on IRL.

But I think what Shirky is really concerned about is population size and thus wide scale adoption. In fact, the reason he starts asking about popular acceptance and behaviors is that he may be after SL in its marketing of itself as the “metaverse”. He sort of asks, “If people want to live “virtually” are they doing so *now* where they are invited to act virtually, or wherever they find it convenient?” Do we need SL and similar explicit virtual social spaces, or is there something already going on somewhere online? For Shirky, the battle is over. games will continue to dominate the list of well-populated environments for the foreseeable future, rendering ineffectual the category of virtual worlds, and, critically, many of the predictions being attached thereunto.

So, the centers for the greatest populations of online social activity are in games, Shirky notes. Morever, he argues, people can adopt a more “natural” or immersive set of behaviors (I guess whatever one does online) in a game than in a VW. …games are not just special, they are special in a way that relieves designers of the pursuit of maximal realism. There is still a premium on good design and playability, but the magic circle, acceptance of arbitrary difficulties, and goal-directed visual filtering give designers ways to contextualize or bury at least some platform limitations. These are not options available to designers of non-game environments; asking users to accept such worlds as even passable simulacra subjects those environments to withering scrutiny.

Again, I don’t know if I agree with all this, because clearly the trend is towards a hybrid competitive social space — neither WoW or SL. But I wonder if we won’t continue to see more articles like this (and more pro/anti SL stuff) because there’s some kind of struggle going on for the hearts & minds of people communicating online. Or maybe more accurately, a battle for the mind share and thus the wallet space of consumers online.

Anyone notice this?  Thing is, I haven’t seen any other clear statements like that elsewhere (and no new news release on areae.net).  It also happened over the Davos week.  So I wasn’t sure if Raph mentioned something recently or not.  Or maybe just a reprint by Mashable with some added speculation.   San Diego-based Areae has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Charles River Ventures and Crescendo Ventures, it emerged today. Areae is an MMOG similar to Second Life – it’s led by Raph Koster, the lead designer of the massively successful online game Ultima Online and creative director of Star Wars Galaxies. It also has a name that’s really hard to spell, although we’re not sure whether that’ll be the name of the world itself.

In other news, Raph seems to now have an entire fan forum devoted to him.  There’s more private forums over there than I’ve ever seen.  I don’t know if this is guild forum or what.    

Bit of a cheap post and cheap title , but I honestly didn’t get any of the drama or concern about furries recently. The announcement of Matt Mihaly’s (of Iron Realms, and his blog, The Forge) “Earth Eternal” created a bit of a derail on f13. Zubon on KTR spotted there was a specific FAQ about this today. So, I’m just linking the two together, FWIW. And I’m gonna leave this issue at that.

This game looks awfully ‘furry.’ Is it?That depends on your point of view. We, the developers, are not developing this as a ‘furry’ game. None of us are furries and the game doesn’t really embrace what we, at least, think are furry themes (though as we’re not furries, we’re not experts on this).

Having said this, we realize that our choice of anthropomorphic characters (ie humanoid animals) is likely to attract a fair number of furries. We’re ok with that, and if there are enough furries, we’ll consider creating a dedicated furry server. We will not, however, be ok with public sex, and won’t be providing any sexual animations or content, furry or otherwise.