Opening Address, Building Businesses in Virtual Worlds
Opening
Address: Dr Balaji Sadasivan, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs
and Information, Communications and the Arts, Republic of Singapore.
Building Businesses in Virtual Worlds
Virtual world
builders now encourage third parties to develop content inside their
worlds, and so we’ve seen the rise of businesses built inside
virtual worlds. This panel will explore the nature of these businesses,
and look at how businesses get built within virtual worlds. It will ask
whether the trend has played out, and examine the future of businesses
inside the virtual worlds.
Moderator:
• Mandy
Salomon, Swinburne University (Australia)
Speakers:
• Ken Brady, Centric (USA, China, Japan)
• Guntram Graef, Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd. (China)
•
Jerry Paffendorf, Wello Horld (USA)
• Ted Tagami, Millions of Us
(USA)
• Bret Treasure, Inside This World (Australia)
Legal experts explore how controversies related to intellectual property, real-money transfer, gaming as political speech, time-limit addiction laws and the policing of Internet cafes play out throughout the region. They will also draw our attention to culturally variable assumptions that underpin analytical approaches to these issues.
Moderator:
• Herbert Burkert, St Gallen
University (Switzerland)
Speakers:
• Charles Lim
Aeng Chang, Singapore Attorney General's Chambers (Singapore)
•
Joshua Fairfield, Indiana University School of Law (USA)
• James
Grimmelmann, New York Law School (USA)
• David Post, Temple Law
School (USA).
Education,
Kids, and Teens in Virtual Worlds
There has been
an explosion of interest in the use of virtual worlds in education. This
panel will examine what works and what doesn’t work, and will
present some ideas for the effective use of online spaces for student
learning. It will also ask examine how children and teens interact within
virtual worlds, and what this teaches us about building
kid-and-teen-friendly environments for learning and playing.
Moderator:
• Betsy Book, Makena Technologies (USA)
Speakers:
• Aaron Delwiche, Trinity University (USA)
• Angeline Khoo, National Institute of Education (Singapore)
• Karl Wolfgang Mueller-Wittig, Nanyang Technological University
(Singapore)
• Doug Thomas, USC-Annenberg (USA)
•
Connie Yowell, MacArthur Foundation (USA)
Connecting
East and West
Experts explore variations in
playing styles, the influence of game mechanics on cross-cultural
cooperation, the challenge of intercultural communication, and outcomes of
forced localization. This panel will also explore issues of society,
governance and virtual worlds as a vehicle for people-to-people
diplomacy.
Moderator:
• Allen Varney, The
Escapist (USA)
Speakers:
• Cecil Chua Eng Huang,
Nanyang Technical University (Singapore)
• Joshua Fouts, USC
Center for Public Diplomacy (USA)
• Marko Skoric, Nanyang
Technological University (Singapore)
• Judge Unggi Yoon, Busan
(Korea)
Understanding
Virtual World Inhabitants
As the virtual world
landscape matures, industry and academic researchers are developing
systematic methods of measuring user behaviors and understanding resident
attitudes. This panel explores the value of quantitative and qualitative
approaches to such investigations.
Moderator:
• Dan Hunter, New York Law School (USA)
Speakers:
• Henrik Bennetsen, Stanford Humanities Lab
(USA)
• Aleks Krotoski, University of Surrey (UK)
•
Ian Lamont, Computerworld/Harvard University (USA)
• Thomas
Malaby, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (USA)
Space,
Place and Culture Inside Virtual Worlds
The panel
will discuss issues related to the relationship between space and place,
and how ¬ or if ¬ these relationships translate from physical to
virtual worlds. The discussion is intended to cover issues ranging from
how we can recreate a sense of place within virtual environments, to how
this sense of place impacts people’s different engagements with one
another and affect their conduct and activities in particular spaces and
territories.
Moderator:
• Yehuda Kalay, UC
Berkeley (USA)
Speakers:
• Erik Champion, University
of Queensland (Australia)
• Kevin Collins, Indiana University
School of Law (USA)
• Yee Fen Lim, CAPTEL, Nanyang Technological
University (Singapore)
• Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania
(Australia)
The
Wealth of Virtual Nations
The treatment of virtual
property by some Asian courts has diverged markedly from the stance taken
in the West. Far from treating virtual artifacts as the intellectual
property of the game developer, several Asian courts recognize the rights
of players. This panel examines the current practices of wealth creation
in MMOGs. It looks at the law on intellectual property and virtual
property in a comparative perspective, and examines the recent
developments in various countries. What are the rights and
responsibilities of platform owners and operators, of players, and of
citizens in these new online societies?
Moderator:
• Gregory Boyd Esq.(USA)
Speakers:
• Nick
Abrahams, Deacons, Media and Telecommunications Group (Australia)
• M. Scott Boone, Appalachian School of Law (USA)
•
Roxanne Christ, Latham and Watkins (USA)
This panel will focus on the issues for
developing virtual worlds and MMOGs. A lot has changed now that virtual
worlds are going mainstream, and various technical and management issues
have to be addressed. This panel of experts will examine some of the
problems that they have faced, as a consequence of success.
Moderator:
• Christopher V. Sherman, Show Initiative,
LLC (USA)
Speakers:
• Richard Bartle, Essex
University (UK)
• Jean Miller, Linden Lab (USA)
• Mike
Wilson, Makena Technologies (USA)
• Hui Xu, HiPiHi (China)
• Vincent Tobler, GoGo Frog (Australia)