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Links for August 14th 2008
Interesting links for August 13th 2008 through August 14th 2008:
- Fallout 3 ban lifted in Australia [Digital Life – The Age] – “A revised version of Fallout 3, one of the most highly anticipated games of the year and winner of the “Best in Show” award at E3 2008, has been cleared for release in Australia. Bethesda’s role playing game, which is set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC, was refused classification last month because it featured “material promoting or encouraging proscribed drug use” and “drug use… related to incentives and rewards”. Bethesda and Australian distributor Red Ant have declined to reveal what edits have been made to the game to obtain an MA15+ rating for the upcoming PC and Xbox 360 release.”
- Facebook overtakes MySpace as social network king [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “Industry figures available today show Facebook has dethroned MySpace to become the world’s most popular social networking website. Slightly more than 132 million people visited Facebook in June as compared to the approximately 117.5 million that went to MySpace that month, according to industry tracker comScore.”
- The “IP” Court Supports Enforceability of CC Licenses [Creative Commons] – “The United States Court of Appeals held that “Open Source” or public license licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the leading IP court in the United States, has upheld a free copyright license, while explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others.” (More in the NYTimes and at Lessig’s blog).
- Heroes Embrace, Cast Comic Book Fans [io9] – “It’s taken them three seasons, but Heroes is finally embracing its heritage with the announcement that Seth Green and Breckin Meyer are to join the cast of NBC’s superhuman drama, playing two massive comic book nerds. Does this mean that we’re going to see more of 9th Wonders, the show’s deus ex comic book plot device? According to Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello, the two fanboys are going to “cross paths with (and perhaps serve as advisors to) one of the Heroes.””
World of Workcraft
What if World of Warcraft was real? What would people play to relax and escape? World of Workcraft is the answer …
Links for August 6th 2008
Interesting links for August 5th 2008 through August 6th 2008:
- Thailand bans Grand Theft Auto IV [BBC] – “Copies of Grand Theft Auto IV have been pulled in Thailand after a teenager confessed to murdering a taxi driver. The 18-year-old high school student is accused of stabbing the cab driver to death by trying to copy a scene from the game. The biggest video game publisher in the south-east Asian country, New Era Interactive Media, has told retailers to stop selling GTA IV. “
- Trees die as first iPhone bills released [SMH] – Australian “Environmentalists have railed against mobile carriers for sending iPhone bills to customers that, depending on the plan, could contain more than 100 pages of non-recycled paper. The high page count stems from Optus and Telstra unnecessarily itemising each individual piece of web data downloaded using the phone, instead of having a single usage figure for each day.”
- When Google Owns You [chrisbrogan.com] – A cautionary tale about Google, power and losing your life in the cloud: “Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message: Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?] That’s it. ” (After much drama, Nick’s account was eventually restored after he managed to accurately complete this insane form.)
- Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on “Gold Farming”: Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games [ Development Informatics Working Paper No. 32 ] – Abstract: “…a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of “gold farming”: the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows. It is the first example of a likely future development trend in online employment. It is also one of a few emerging examples in developing countries of “liminal ICT work”; jobs associated with digital technologies that are around or just below the threshold of what is deemed socially-acceptable and/or formally-legal. This paper reviews what we know so far about gold farming, seeking to provide the first systematic analysis of the sub-sector. …”
Links for July 23rd 2008
Interesting links for July 23rd 2008:
- WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars [Wired Magazine 16.08] – To celebrate it’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Wired has a good overview of the place of WarGames in videogame and geek history.
- What’s In It For Doogie Howser? [Jeffrey McManus] – McManus takes an educated stab at the economics of Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible web experiment. (Joss himself notes that these figures aren’t that far off.)
- Xbox 360 users to build and sell own games [The Age] – It’ll be interesting to see how well the coming “Xbox Live Community Games” take off and, most importantly, what terms and conditions Microsoft force game creators to accept in order to sell their work to other Xboxers.
Fallout 3 … won’t be coming to Australia. It’s banned.
Continuing their tradition of banning videogames, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) have decided that Fallout 3 isn’t going to get a classification in Australia (and thus can’t be sold legally). However, the OFLC reasoning seems inconsistent even with their own past censorship efforts, and has reignited the debate over Australia’s lack of an R18+ gaming classification. As Asher Moses reports:
The Classification Board effectively banned the role playing shooter game by refusing to issue it an age rating, citing the simulated drug use in the game. In Fallout 3, players can use drugs to augment their characters’ abilities such as stamina, health and intelligence. The ban stems from the lack of an R18+ classification for games in Australia, which means any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard – such as those with excessive violence, drug use or sexual content – are simply banned from sale.
Gamers were outraged by the board’s decision because other games featuring a similar or higher level of drug use have passed through the censors unscathed. Game review site Gameplayer.com.au, which has begun a petition to “Save Fallout 3”, has compiled a list of 12 games with stronger drug use. They include Battlefield Bad Company, BioShock, Haze and Grand Theft Auto IV.
As the uneven hand of the OFLC becomes more obvious, surely the time is at hand to admit the practice of banning games which have less offensive content than many films needs to be curtailed and Australia finally needs an R18+ category for videogames.
Update (14 August 2008): After unspecified edits and changes were made to the game, the ban was lifted in August 2008, with the game gaining an MA15+ rating.
Links for July 3rd 2008
Interesting links for July 3rd 2008:
- Virtual Worlds Research: Past, Present and Future (Vol 1, No 1) [Journal of Virtual Worlds Research] – The inaugural issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is out, showcasing some excellent research and situating virtual worlds in an ongoing and dynamic research context. It’s also an exemplar of open publishing: all content is online and under Creative Commons licenses.
- Uni cheats outsource to India [The Age] – “Computer Science students are farming out their coursework to cheap programmers in countries like India and university staff admit they are powerless to detect and prevent it….Various well-established sites already sell students essays and other written work.”
- Is YouTube Killing Video Originality? [NewTeeVee] – “…more people are creating …video than ever before… The issue becomes when people start creating for the playcounts. What?s the fastest way to rack up a million plays on YouTube, land an agent and get on Oprah? It?s not by making something new!”
- VioletBlue VioletBlue – An archive of all of the posts that Boing Boing deleted in relation to sex blogger Violet Blue. Looking through this archive, it’s hard to see how these deletions haven’t damaged Boing Boing’s historical presence.
- Firefox download record official [BBC NEWS | Technology] – Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries.
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