pushing memes
I’ve tried to spark some interest on opensource mmorgp’s on the gamecode mailing list. (GameCODE is a reseach group at Concordia that studies the sociology of video games. I was an RA there last year.)
Nothing back for a while - and then today I got an amazing response from Sal Humphrey who is a games researcher in Australia. This is a paper she’s published on the topic:
Abstract
This paper examines the ways in which intellectual property law and contract law discursively erase processes of collaborative production found within an MMOG like EverQuest . Players’ affective and material labour and resulting productivity is increasingly structured into the business models of games and other interactive media, but the use of Intellectual Property law, bolstered by contract law manages to either minimise or erase entirely the role of this productivity when it comes to matters of ownership and control.
The paper focuses on the importance of community and social aspects of game-play to both players and publishers. It examines how property law and contract law (with their inherent reliance on ownership) are used to legitimate governance of the game’s community. It suggests that the current lack of accountability structures for publishers in their behaviour towards their players needs to be addressed and their relatively unfettered power to dictate the terms of the player/publisher contract needs to be mitigated.
She also sent me a copy of a paper that’s being published in December. She is talking about the *exact* same problems and she’s arguing for possible government regulatory oversight as well as new direction in copyright law to deal with the collaboratively-created content that forms these worlds. She’s really on the ball - even arguing how Creative Commons current licenses are ill-suited for MMORPG’s.
She’s not a techie, so she would never think of actually a “code is law” way of dealing with this problem. I personally think it’s our best chance.
And speaking of academics and “code is law” - I was just asked to submit an article based on the soccer field post to the Journal of Community Informatics
update: I take that part back where I said “she would never think of . . “. It’s more that she thinks both sides need to be worked on - regulation as well as influencing the companies technology.
October 24th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
> I was just asked to submit an article based on the soccer field post to the Journal of Community Informatics
Cool !
You’re on fire these days, you’re writing faster than I can read
By the way, the topics you treat are very interesting and challenging. I’m not 100% convinced about the use of 3D world but I start understand what it could mean.
(and thanks for the pubcrawl :)
October 24th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
my pleasure (although I can’t take very much credit for the pubcrawl).
i’m glad there’s another person at ISF who likes looking at the bigger picture. There’s a few people like that, but most of them don’t have the time to explore it.
October 24th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Thanks and I’ll try to find the time, just a question of… time :)
(And I’m glad to know what mtl3p means, thanks to Boris)
Oh, and it looks like your CSS have difficulties with the delicious comment list (when a long word or an URL is printed, the archive DIV falls at the bottom of the page)
You could specify an overflow: scroll (or hidden) in your module-content to avoid this
October 24th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
I have *no* idea how to do what you just suggested.
October 24th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
re: community informatics
it would be cool if you could tease out some aspects of how the CI approach/principles apply to what ISF is/has been doing.
i’ve been thinking about it a lot since the summer (Mike Gurstein was at UT giving an Informatics course) and know that there is some dialogue over at CuWIN about this…
there are ‘obvious’ things like the general idea of sussing out what the ‘best practices’ for community uses of new technology should be, and what key considerations need to be made when a community organization tackles issues of increased access and tech literacy.
*but* the stumbling block for me is that you guys at ISF have this more ‘art and activism’ approach to community technology… and the ‘geek/hacker’ thin seems to be much more important draw/impetus than any traditional understanding of community and community access…
anyway, i’d love to see you put that soccer field thing into a good article, even if it is primarily to highlight the variance on community wireless networking that exists. (yay canada. :P )