Virtual Worlds

SAN FRANCISCO--This is not your big brother's Dungeons & Dragons.

On June 6, Wizards of the Coast will officially roll out the fourth edition of the D&D franchise, as well as a new suite of digital tools, and the world-famous game will never be the same.

And this time, it won't require the death of the game's inventor, Gary Gygax, to get D&D into the news.

I got a preview of what's new on Monday, and while I'm certainly no D&D expert, I'll try to spell out what … Read more

As I reported here a few weeks ago, professional video gaming leagues and organizations are hoping that, over time, their industry can be seen as a sport on par with soccer, baseball, football, and so on.

Now, one of those leagues, the Championship Gaming Series, has decided to up the ante by creating a training facility and a dedicated game playing arena in the booming Chinese city of Wuhan.

I talked to Andy Reif, commissioner of the CGS, the other day, and he explained that the idea behind building the training center is essentially that you can't build a … Read more

We've long known that publishers of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft don't like it when players mess with the purity of their games.

That's why they routinely issue stern warnings that anyone caught gold farming or buying accounts or using bots that automate various processes will be punished in some way, including being banned from the game.

But now, it seems, WoW publisher Blizzard Entertainment is taking its enmity toward this kind of behavior to the courts.

As reported by the BBC, Blizzard has sued the creator of a program, or "bot," … Read more

If you tamper with your Xbox Live Gamerscore, you might lose it and everything in it forever, administrators of Microsoft's online game service want you to know.

In a terse post Tuesday, administrator Major Nelson wrote, "Today we took action on some of the accounts we have identified as the most serious offenders who have violated the Xbox Live Terms of Use by tampering with their Gamerscore and achievements."

Specifically, Nelson was following up on an October post in which he warned that, "I strongly urge you not to tamper with your Gamerscore and achievements. If … Read more

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story about a company called Edoc Laundry and its line of clothing that featured a built-in alternate-reality game.

On Friday, I read about a new line of T-shirts available at Target that feature images from experimental games and which come with free CDs on which are the games themselves.

Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow wrote about the new shirts Friday, and it reminded me of the Edoc Laundry experiment, which, while innovative, never quite took off.

Apparently, the new T-shirt line comes comes from a company called EGPApparel, and each individual shirt … Read more

Over at Wired, David Thier has a story up about theories being propagated by terrorism and intelligence scholars that virtual worlds could provide counterterrorism agents with a view into the activities of real-world baddies.

The theorists posit that virtual terrorism and diseases spread in World of Warcraft might paint a picture of what terrorists like Osama bin Laden are thinking when they're hunkered down, planning their attacks on the U.S. or other countries.

"People got really smart about figuring out how to cause the most damage to the largest number of people," Wired quoted Robert Allen, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Game designers may be the professionals best suited to help humans find happiness in the future.

That was the thesis of world-famous alternate-reality game designer Jane McGonigal's Tuesday keynote address at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) here.

McGonigal began her talk by looking at the idea that happiness is something scientists and sociologists are increasingly studying and that embedded in the mechanics of games may be the very things that people need to be happy. And quality of life will likely be a key consideration of many interactive media projects.

"Because positive psychology will be a principal, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--To players of alternate reality games (ARGs) like I Love Bees, Tombstone Hold 'em, A World without Oil and others, Jane McGonigal is a household name.

If the people at the International Olympics Committee, McDonald's, and worldwide brand experience firm AKQA have anything to say about it, the list of people who know McGonigal and her work will soon expand geometrically.

That's because she's the lead designer on The Lost Ring, a new ARG that launched earlier this month that is tied to this summer's Beijing Olympics and which McDonald's, AKQA and the IOC … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--In a lively discussion that focused on youth and collective intelligence, noted researchers and authors Steven Johnson and Henry Jenkins officially opened South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) on Saturday in the conference's first keynote address.

Johnson, a well-known journalist and author whose books include Emergence and Everything Bad is Good for You, and Jenkins, an MIT professor who has written books like The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture and Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, talked at length about their ideas related to how youth culture is changing in the face of rapidly … Read more