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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review If you’re interested in the issues surrounding the metaverse (especially in terms of economics and policy), Metaversed is pairing up with the Cornell Johnson School of Management to offer a series of speakers and a website to discuss issues within the metaverse: economics, law, policy, technology, etc. Robert Bloomfield explains the goal and scope of the series over at Terra Nova:
Thie series is open to anyone who wants to hear from – and engage with – academics, industry leaders, regulators and influential virtual-world residents…
…Events are only the grain of sand in the oyster. We hope to get pearls from constructing a way for people interested in metanomics to engage with the speaker and with each other in serious discusion before and after the session, and create an archive that future can serve as essential reading for future metanomicists (ok, that word doesn’t work so well. Metanomists?).
We plan to accomplish this by having suggested readings before each session, inviting readers to suggest readings of their own, as well as questions for speakers. After each session, we will post archives of the event, along with post-event analyses.
It’ll be taking place in everyone’s favourite virtual world, Second Life, but will be available to everyone whether you want to venture into Second Life or not.
Metanomics blog [via Terra Nova]
Wow, it seems like only a few days ago we had no idea that Ninja Gaiden II was going to be announced, and now GameVideos has not one, but two clips of actual gameplay up for your viewing pleasure. Maybe it’s just the small size of the vids, but I’m not exactly feeling a lot of excitement for the title. I guess after playing the first game three times across two different systems jaded me a little. Hit the jump for the second clip.
Leigh Alexander has a interesting/terrifying history of Final Fantasy VII roleplayers up over at The Escapist. She describes it as “the story of a tragic love affair a group of enormously devoted fans had with a game they couldn’t let go of (sob) …. It’s a story of open-source gaming in practice, and how the kind of fanatics who love a story enough to make it their own are also the kind who will probably completely ruin it for everyone else”. In a gaming landscape that pushes user-driven and created content more and more, Alexander points out that this sort of stuff is nothing new: there’s a whole legion of people who “didn’t need Advent Children to tell them what happened after the end of the game; they were light years ahead already”. And maybe a little behind on normal life skills:
When the son of Sephiroth broke up with his redheaded barmaid girlfriend, the real-life girl tracked down the other player’s telephone number and phoned him at night, weeping. They ended up moving in together – in the real world. A young man who played the indisputable leader of a prominent ShinRa faction was arrested for some disciplinary trouble in school, and in his one quintessential jailhouse phone call, he telephoned not his parents, but his roleplaying lieutenant. “What will happen to the ShinRa?” he cried in a panic. FFRPers loved their own characters even more than the canonical creations that beckoned them to this world.
I’ve always found this sort of devotion to games (or books or movies) a little odd (and endlessly fascinating), but using your one phone call to discuss what’s going to happen to your online faction? Wow.
Midgar Is Burning [The Escapist via Sexy Videogameland]
Not that I don’t have enough to do setting up in a new city, but I’ve been cheerfully clicking away at the various Grow Games over at Eyemaze all morning – the games are ridiculously cute, but not in an irritating way, and wonderfully simple and frustratingly complex at the same time. You are given a handful of panels, and you have to select which order to click them in – they will grow or change in relation to/with each other, and the point is to grow each panel to its max. The games are reminiscent of a lot of the game design theory of Danc over at Lost Garden, though they lack the feedback he so frequently discusses. Still, a great waste of half an hour… or an hour… or a few hours… [via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
In case you’ve tired of your virtual self in Second Life, VastPark is coming (for some people, at least – the first new users will be given access soon): it promises “a virtual content platform featuring free tools, revolutionary distributed content syndication and enables you to deploy your own virtual world or online game within seconds royalty free”. Metaversed explains:
It’s free to use and purchasing a “Pro Creator account” allowing 1GB of storage and bandwidth will be $US 19 for 2 years. One can still publish using a free “Basic Creator account” allowing you to try it out, and they were giving away three year Pro accounts if you were among the first 250 people to publish content.
Once you’ve created your world, you can open portals to worlds other users have created. Content creation tools include basic 3D building functions and texture mappers, as well as scripting tools. There’s also a built-in syndication system where content developpers can allow some things to be used in other people’s worlds and easily update that content system-wide from one place.
Sounds interesting in theory, we’ll see if it pans out. Perhaps the media can find a new darling and the New York Times can start writing out-of-touch articles about VastPark instead?
Vastpark [Wonderland]
The TGS trailers are already rolling in and the event has barely even started. This clip for Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the DS looks great and actually has me interested in checking out the game. It shows off a lot of the fighting moves that you will be controlling with the stylus. I’m really pleased to see that publishers are finding more ways to take advantage of the stylus control other than just point and tap. It also looks like you’ll be holding your DS sideways for this one, which is always fun for a little change.
There have been a number of new stories about US schools using Dance Dance Revolution as a way to get kids who aren’t into competitive sports or their required PE classes moving – now the Brits are getting in on the act. Despite the fact that the BBC couldn’t be bothered to fact-check the name of the game title, they have a short piece on the use of DDR in Bedfordshire schools – they’ve just done trials, targeting its use towards girls who aren’t interested in traditional sports:
Mellone Cutts is the head of PE at Lea Manor High School which took part in the trials.
“There is a number of students who we don’t reach with competitive sports,” she said.
“With more and more children becoming obese, one way we can help is by increasing participation in sport and this does that.”
And who says video games have no redeeming value?
Computer dance gets pupils active [BBC News, thanks Daniel!]
Some things just never go out of style. Hidden tracks on Ubisoft’s Jam Sessions, previously only available through purchase of the game at Best Buy, are actually unlockable on any version using a truncated version of the good old Konami code. Pushing Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, and Right during Free mode will net you three new songs:
• Brad Paisley – “I’m Gonna Miss Her”
• Jimi Hendrix – “Wild Thing”
• Tom Petty – “Needles and Pins”
For those of you set up with left-handed controls you can use X, X, B, B, Y, A, Y, and A on the letter pads instead. I have tested this out myself and it worked just fine, so go and enjoy yourself with two great new songs and one rather questionable one. (I’ll let you decide which one that is for yourself.)
Konami codes and secret messages in Jam Sessions [DS Fanboy]
