Design Competition

STATE OF PLAY III | Social Revolutions

MMORPG PUBLIC SPACE DESIGN COMPETITION
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 28, 2005

To Enter --- Prizes --- Rules -- Judges

Do you enjoy building things in a virtual world? Ever built a virtual house or terraformed a virtual landscape? How about designing public space for your metaverse? Maybe this public architecture resembles the public spaces of old like town squares, markets, transportation hubs or town halls. Maybe not. This competition invites designers and architects to submit examples of the best public, democratic or civic architecture in a virtual world.

Architects from virtual worlds across the universe are invited to submit their designs for public spaces and structures to the State of Play Virtual Public Space Design Competition by September, 28 2005. The State of Play is the annual conference on Law, Videogames and Virtual Worlds (http://old.nyls.edu/stateofplay) co-sponsored by New York Law School’s Institute for Information Law & Policy, Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.

Entries will be critiqued by a panel of professional architects, architectural theorists and game designers including Harvard's Nathan Glazer, renowned public intellectual and author of The Public Face of Architecture; Anne Beamish, architect and professor, University of Texas; and Yehuda Kalay, architect and professor, University of California at Berkeley and others to be announced. Submissions will be showcased at the State of Play conference on law, video games and virtual worlds in New York, October 7-9, and form the centerpiece of a panel on public architecture in the metaverse. That panel asks:

Unlike the flat, text-based web world, virtual worlds reintroduce space and place on-line. I can occupy a plot of land, build a house there, and invite guests over to break bread or man the barricades. Groups and institutions can cohere around specific geographies and community once again comes to be defined by the social and technical construction of space. But our familiar understanding of the relationship between architectural design and social regulation is dramatically altered in the virtual world. The distinction between private and public may make less sense, not only because all space is privately “owned” but also because virtual architecture is neither completely physical nor completely representational. In this panel, architects, lawyers and game designers talk about the future of public space in the virtual world.

JUDGES

PRIZES

1st Place Prize
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

2nd Place Prize
Publication in First Monday magazine; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $250

3rd Place Prize
Publication in First Monday magazine; Featured showcase at The State of Play; $100

The top 10 submissions will be displayed at the State of Play Conference and website.

TO ENTER:

Please send:
• Title of entry
• Representative screenshots (GIF or JPEG) and/or short film giving a tour of the Space (MPG, MPEG, MOV or AVI)
• Description of your public space and why it promotes public and civic engagement
• Location of entry (i.e. coordinates of where and in which virtual world the build can be found)
• Legal name and address
• Contact information (physical mail address, email and phone number)

To: stateofplay@cyber.law.harvard.edu
Subject line: Public Space Design Competition

Entries may also be mailed to:
State of Play III Conference
Attn: Public Space Design Competition
Institute for Information Law & Policy
New York Law School,
57 Worth Street, New York, NY 10013

When: On or before September 28, 2005.

Entries from all massively multi-player games and worlds will be accepted,
(no stand-alone 3D software please).

First Monday magazine (http://www.firstmonday.org) is one of the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its launch in May 1996, First Monday has published 622 papers in 110 issues. First Monday enjoys a large circulation. In 2004, 6,728,893 successful requests were processed from 835,768 distinct hosts.

Official Rules

Eligibility of Contestants
The design competition is open to anyone 18 and older in the U.S. and abroad, except in any areas where the competition is prohibited by law. There is no cost to enter the competition.

Eligibility of Entry
The contest submission (i.e. the public space image, movie and/or text) must be the original work of the submitting entrant. No infringing works will be knowingly accepted, and any works determined by the judging panel, in its sole discretion, to actually or likely infringe the rights of others will not be considered.

Ownership and Copyright
Submission of an entry does not assign or transfer any ownership of or rights in and to the content of the submission. Those rights remain with the original holder (the creator or the virtual world owner, as applicable). As a condition of entry, the entrant grants a license to the organizers of the State of Play conference to reproduce, display and perform the submission at the State of Play conference and to distribute the submission in print and on the web.

Multiple Submissions
Entrants may submit more than one submission. Each submission may contain multiple screen shots. But each submission should describe a distinct public structure, space or place.

Submission Deadline
All entries must be received by State of Play via stateofplay@cyber.law.harvard.edu by September 28, 2005, 11:59pm ET. Entries submitted after the deadline will not be considered. No extensions will be made under any circumstances.

Judging Decisions
Judges are looking for the designs, spaces and structures that foster civic engagement, promote civil society and strengthen the public sphere while, at the same time, demonstrating artistic and aesthetic vision. All decisions of the judges in connection with the competition are final and are not subject to appeal or review. The judges may in their sole discretion decide to award all, some or none of the prizes listed below.

Rules
Please be advised these rules are subject to change at any time. Any questions related to the rules should be directed to stateofplay@cyber.law.harvard.edu.