Dmitri WilliamsAs some on this list know, my research group has been working on a joint project with Sony Online Entertainment for the last two years. This collaboration has enabled our team to collect virtual world data on--as far as we...
Greg LThe LA Times recently mentioned an interesting feature of Habbo. Apparently, Sulake does not permit Habbo Users to spend more than $35 per month on clothes and furni for their rooms. According to the reporter, about 10% of Habbo Users...
Timothy BurkeIt is well understood that the game structures and mechanics that undergird most commercial virtual worlds today draw their underlying DNA from Diku-style text-based MUDs, though many contemporary players have only experienced the latest iterations or forms of those game...
Greg LGary Hayes recently posted a video tour of over fifty social virtual worlds -- his blog entry here (with some commentary). I had not seen many of these before. This is a neat resource to get a few seconds of...
BonnieRubergApparently my gripes over Google Lively's frustrating whisper chat were heard all the way in the kingdom of Google. After posting them here at Terra Nova I received an email from Lively's User Experience Designer, Mark Young. We got to...
Greg LProfessor Theodore P. Seto of Loyola Law School has the latest entry into the debate over the virtual tax question. You can find it here. Here's the abstract:
BonnieRubergNot to bring down the general caliber of academic discussion currently going on here at Terra Nova, but :). I recently wrote a feature for a new Village Voice Media pop culture blog I co-anchor called "Top 10 Emoticons for...
Ren ReynoldsFrom a governance perspective – what the key structural differences between Virtual Worlds and the Internet and what does this mean for national governments?