MMOs and Virtual worlds..

[Brian Russo]

Well, I figured I'd try this Blue Mars thing.. it seems like a cool idea. Terraform Mars. Turn it into another blue planet. Create a rich world. Perhaps someday it will work out but apparently that day is not today. Here's my reaction:

Anyway I posted a longer (and very candid) post on their feedback forums on why I think it's.. meh? I'll mostly leave it at that as I'm not trying to be rude, just honest.

Basically my impression is that it is the Crysis engine bolted onto an MMO backend with little value added. Actually that's not quite honest. I think they actually made the Crysis engine worse somehow. The water is amazing but that has nothing to do with Blue Mars - that's just the Crysis engine at work. I only saw 3-4 people online so I can't tell whether it actually lives up to the hype of being able to support large numbers of people in a small area. The only MMO I've ever played that handled that well is DAoC and AO to some extent. WoW never did a good job of that (though it is otherwise excellent).

Anyway, perhaps one day we will get to really see a killer application of a virtual world? I start to question whether it's something we really want as a society though. Don't get me wrong - I know people WANT it - games and MMOs are a billion dollar industry. But we all seem so eager to jump on the bandwagon and make money that I see few discussions of their harmful effects on society by us the tech people, the so-called designers and engineers of the future. I guess we're concerned we might be doing something wrong? I'm not sure.

While games and the Internet have empowered people, they also have a great capacity to destroy lives. These are hard issues to tackle and I'm not saying we should go back to the old days (not that we probably can anyway). But I think if we are going to promote these types of technologies we need to tackle and ask these questions.

Destroyed marriages, suicide, depression, alienation of people, cliques and connecting the prejudiced, etc. I do not feel it is fair to place the blame for such things wholly on any one person. No more than it is fair to place the blame for a gun death on the gun manufacturer, or to say that a car manufacturer is a killer for building cars. But in those industries we do have litigation and demand improvements if products are faulty or the manufacturer/seller is somehow negligent. I'm not an expert on culpability/liability for software; and I know most companies add disclaimers about "fitness for any particular purpose" and so forth. But on a more basic level - If you produce a product that you know is addictive and can result in a harmful experience for perhaps a small but still sizable portion of your customer base - well then you can make a compelling argument that there is little difference between such a product and cigarettes or alcohol.

And legal issues aside - Is it really a GOOD thing for someone to immerse themelves in a virtual world instead of a real one? Sure you can argue about our human existence, and sensory experience and so forth. Until I kick you in the leg to remind you that this is the real one.

Anyway, I don't pretend to have any answers on this, other than my own experience of wasting a lot of time on WoW and watching it negatively impact the lives of others. When you're sitting in someone's house and they're more interested in tending to their Farmville crops or can't attend a movie because they have to make a WoW raid. Well you could say that they're just choosing their form of entertainment - but I think they're missing out on richer experiences.

Ultimately when I'm old I'm going to remember that one time I went to D&Bs with a colleague.. or the morning I spent out at Laie bodysurfing with a friend. Those are the real memories and living record of our lives. I want to create living memories of real events, not virtual ones. Perhaps it is "greener" to sell virtual status symbols instead of real ones. But is it really better? I'm not so sure that's cleanly the case.. I'm not as likely to remember 'that one time we killed KT and got T6 chest tokens'. But hey what do I know...

[Brian Russo]

Viil, I think it's interesting you mention the use of SL in socialization for the mentally handicapped people, etc. I wasn't aware of that but I do have friends with severe physical handicaps that really love the Internet and use it to connect with people, including virtual worlds.

My hope is really that going forward we can push for these really to be positive tools and truly spawn/support new cultures, interactions, etc - and not merely ways to make money.

I really like the term 'augmented reality' in that sense, that I hope computing does become something that lets us live our lives better - and not something that REPLACES our lives. That's the kind of future I want to live in - One where we have really used technology to enhance very aspect of our lives - be it green energy/energy conservation, medicine, etc. I don't want a Wall-E future where we've destroyed our planet and are fat babies with blinders.

@Konstantin, as you know there is no money in Star Trek ;)

I agree RE: Irony + Ecology of our own planet.

[Viil Lid]

Hi Brian, I agree with you that we techies also should consider the ethical implications of our work. To me MMOs and virtual worlds (not picking on any particular ones) are double edged swords, and as any tool or technology there are ways to use and misuse them.

On the positive side MMOs like World of Warcraft have proven to provide learning platforms for team work and leadership skills due to the collaborative and self organizing nature of the activities it supports. Virtual worlds like Second Life have become learning platforms for a wide variety of subject areas from language to complicated technical, biological, and chemical simulations. SL has also successfully been used in training socialization and re-socialization skills for mentally handicapped patients and people recovering from stroke, etc. In addition to this the use of virtual worlds for business meetings and conferences is growing, providing an alternative to face-to-face events which involve a stronger sense of presence than most other distributed alternatives. MMOs and virtual worlds have also been pointed out as a relatively safe environment to experiment with possible selves to develop insight and learn more about who you want to be as a person, how you want to be perceived, what makes you happy, etc.

On the negative side there is as you mentioned addiction, time and attention taken away from loved ones and other important aspects of life. Its a serious issue, and I think it is something that should be discussed by people involved in developing technology.

I guess my stance is that I would love people behind MMOs and VWs to focus more on supporting learning, personal development, and distributed collaborations for real causes. It would also be great if owners and developer of MMOs and VWs would take an ethical stance and post warnings or offer help to their most addicted (frequent?) users.

[Konstantin A Lukin]

But we all seem so eager to jump on the bandwagon and make money that I see few discussions of their harmful effects on society by us the tech people, the so-called designers and engineers of the future.

I agree with this statement. There should be more discussions. In this case, I find it a bit ironic that we are consciously talking about transforming other planets while still having difficulties taking care of this one :)

While games and the Internet have empowered people, they also have a great capacity to destroy lives. These are hard issues to tackle and I'm not saying we should go back to the old days (not that we probably can anyway). But I think if we are going to promote these types of technologies we need to tackle and ask these questions.

I also agree with this statement. Some technologies, such as space exploration, are affecting everyone on this planet. The problem is that most of us are either too busy with 'other things', or just don't know enough to say anything on the subject..

A word about money. We live in a capitalist societal construct, meaning we've all agreed to have 'money' as the driving force behind 'progress' - hence the expression 'money talks' :) However, it is not necessarily the case that what worked really well hundred years ago is going to be just as effective tomorrow. We are evolving.. so in StarTrek terms, I do not recall Captain Kirk asking for a monetary compensation before going on another 'save the world' mission :)

Anyway, will we ever reach a point where science & technology become independent from monetary influence, possibly being guided by social and/or moral responsibilities? I hope so. Could this 'independence' possibly make an impact on science's focus and future direction as we know it today? Time will tell, but for now, it is likely that similar projects will thrive as long as there is enough excitement behind them to push it forward.

[Brian Russo]

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to knock on Blue Mars too much. I think there's a lot of potential but I was just being honest in that I was pretty underwhelmed by what's available now. Perhaps they just need to add better demos. It feels a lot more like a CTP than a beta to me. What's actually there is pretty underwhelming after seeing the recorded demos.

I always think of Wall-E and all the infantile blob people. It just doesn't seem too unlikely a scenario to me anymore, when I've really seen how people get totally sucked into MMOs. I just feel that we're missing out on a lot if we spend so much of our lives in a fantasy world.

[Daniel Leuck]

Hey Brian - You present some interesting questions regarding MMOs. I recall an old Star Trek episode where the Enterprise encounters a race of people suspended in pods who live their whole lives playing an MMO via a neural interface. :-)

re: Avatar
First a disclosure to keep it honest - They are a customer and I like them :-)

I think they are doing some interesting things with the CryEngine. For example, they have embedded the Flash engine, which allows them to embed everything from elegant UIs to YouTube videos on any surface in the game. They also have a very powerful scripting environment that allows you to, for example, create a fully functional golf game in less than 1,000 lines of code.

Blue Mars definitely isn't fully baked, but I think there is a lot of potential.