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May 25, 2004, 2:11pm

Some people occassionally post articles that are of interest to the
community, so I thought that the following article might be interesting to
some:

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/06/1929205&tid=1

Note the companies that are referenced about a quarter way through the
article.

-Brant

May 25, 2004, 5:16pm

Nice find, Brant. Some comments:

1) The article just drives home the point I keep making -- AW is
virtually (no pun intended) unknown to the online and offline
media/press. I saw EQ, There, Second life and The Sims mentioned in the
article, but no AW.

AW needs to revamp http://www.activeworlds.com/info/press.asp and at
least make a press release when 3.6 comes out and hype up the streaming
support. How hard is it to hire someone on a site such as eLance to make
you a press release, AWI? I want to see some PR action from Newburyport!

2) "A study by the game academic Nick Yee found that male players
'cross-dress' as female characters at least one-third of the time."

Hmm... Now who does that remind you of? Someone here in the newsgroups?
No, I must be imagining things...

3) "The U.S. military has already licensed a private chunk of There and
created a simulation of the planet on it."

I mentioned this a few days ago in another post.

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

May 25, 2004, 7:27pm

I think this is the part Brant wanted to point out:

Virtual worlds have produced some surreal rags-to-riches stories. When the
on-line world Second Life launched, the players were impressed to see a
female avatar industriously building a sprawling monster home. An in-game
neighbour stopped by to say hello only to discover she was a homeless person
in British Columbia, logging on using her single remaining possession, a
laptop. Penniless in the real world, she belonged to a social elite in the
fake one.

Not all social inequities are absent, of course. For instance, Castronova
discovered that women in the game are worth less than men, in a very
measurable way: when he compared the sale of male and female avatars, he
found than female characters sold for 10 percent less than male ones at
precisely the same power level. Players with female avatars also say it's
harder to advance in the game, at least initially - even though the female
characters are often being played, in real life, by men. (A study by the
game academic Nick Yee found that male players "cross-dress" as female
characters at least one-third of the time.) Men play as women characters
partly for the kinky thrill, but also because female characters are given
random presents of free stuff by other players, a chivalric custom known as
"gifting." "Personally, you receive a lot more stuff when you start out as a
female," as one male cross-dresser wrote to Yee.

[View Quote]

May 25, 2004, 11:43pm

So in other words Second Life is a red light district? o_O

[View Quote] > I think this is the part Brant wanted to point out:
>
> Virtual worlds have produced some surreal rags-to-riches stories. When the
> on-line world Second Life launched, the players were impressed to see a
> female avatar industriously building a sprawling monster home. An in-game
> neighbour stopped by to say hello only to discover she was a homeless person
> in British Columbia, logging on using her single remaining possession, a
> laptop. Penniless in the real world, she belonged to a social elite in the
> fake one.
>
> Not all social inequities are absent, of course. For instance, Castronova
> discovered that women in the game are worth less than men, in a very
> measurable way: when he compared the sale of male and female avatars, he
> found than female characters sold for 10 percent less than male ones at
> precisely the same power level. Players with female avatars also say it's
> harder to advance in the game, at least initially - even though the female
> characters are often being played, in real life, by men. (A study by the
> game academic Nick Yee found that male players "cross-dress" as female
> characters at least one-third of the time.) Men play as women characters
> partly for the kinky thrill, but also because female characters are given
> random presents of free stuff by other players, a chivalric custom known as
> "gifting." "Personally, you receive a lot more stuff when you start out as a
> female," as one male cross-dresser wrote to Yee.
>
[View Quote]

Jun 3, 2004, 7:37pm

Another article of interest:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/fun.games/06/03/column.livewire.reut/index.html

-Brant

[View Quote]

Jun 3, 2004, 8:24pm

Maybe AWI should start its own virtual currency...

Builderz
http://www.3dhost.net

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