I'm happy to announce that my company Phantom Compass has partnered with IT GlobalSecure to offer security features integrated from the ground up into our digital and cross-media games. Phantom Compass is in the business of "productive play," and with IT GlobalSecure, we're going to be able to offer our clients and end-users expertly-crafted safeguards against hacking and exploitation. What's the good of a "serious" game if it hasn't accounted for security? From the press release:

Social gaming is growing rapidly and faces increasing security challenges: educational games include high scores that can be hacked, advergames and social games collect sensitive personal and demographic information, and many games need secure payment processing. The partnership between Phantom Compass and IT GlobalSecure brings the best in innovative game design and security to our clients and their customers.

Thanks to IT GlobalSecure's Steven Davis (author of the fantastic Play No Evil blog) for his support. With IT Global Secure, my company can offer a level of secure game data and systems design that other boutique developers aren't even thinking about, let alone capable of offering.

• Cheaper Games better than DRM - Could bringing prices down secure PC Gaming? [PlayNoEvil]
  "Look at all the debit cards available at supermarkets - impulse purchasing is powerful. If games cost what a paperback does, how many more would be sold?" Some interesting ideas from Steven Davis about price structuring and piracy, etc.
  (tags: games business commerce security piracy itunes)
• Royal Television Society - ‘Going Round In Circles’ [Extenuating Circumstances]
  Dan Hon's rough transcript of the RTS event 'Going Round In Circles' ('Why Is 360 Commissioning The Future of Television?').
  (tags: 360 crossmedia tv business)
• Depressing Numbers Revealed for Facebook Platform [The Unofficial Facebook Blog]
  "...opportunity is found in new locations. We are seeing consolidation in the space and real build out from larger networks of applications including Zynga, Social Gaming Network, RockYou, Slide and similar companies."
  (tags: analysis facebook platform software development technology web)
• Apophysis.org
  Freeware fractal flame editor for Windows. That's all I know. Oh, and the links to user-created tutorials are 404.
  (tags: software mathematics abstract art design download tools visualization)
• 2600 Hacker Quarterly - Facebook Applications Revealed (exploits)
  Flickr pic of Facebook exploit article. Lesson: We can't trust Facebook developers to build with our security in mind.
  (tags: security technology software development facebook hacking exploit)

• Hands-On With ‘Echochrome,’ The Pros And Cons Of Sony’s Bold PS3 Game
  Escher-inspired puzzle game Echochrome (PS3) to get level-editor and sharable levels this year, says Sony.
  (tags: ugc sony ps3 game gaming tools)
• DSvision: Official download service for Nintendo DS revealed
  Download Nintendo content (and games) via your PC to SD Micro card which fits into DSvision slot 1 card. I'm already using a passthrough card to play music, movies, and homebrew apps on my DS: why would I want DSvision?
  (tags: gaming nds nintendo media distribution publishing hardware handheld console technology)
• Games that Don't Work Online - Word Games & Math Games
  Steven Davis discusses cheating methods and tools for web-based word and math games--trivia games also noted. In short, it's easy to cheat. Designers should expect cheating, and players at best can hope for honorable opponents.
  (tags: gaming cheating tools commentary casestudy web online internet design)
• Halo celeb victim of repeated account hacks, Xbox Live "customer support"
  Joystiq reports that a celebrity-status Halo 3 player was conned out of his Xbox Live account by attackers using simple social engineering. Boo, Microsoft.
  (tags: microsoft xboxlive xbox game gaming celebrity status reputation identity hacking griefing)

Linden Lab has warned users of Second Life that QuickTime-based video streams may be used to "crash or exploit" Second Life's client software. The Mercury News paints a more sinister picture, alerting us that "security researchers have found a flaw in Second Life virtual world [sic] that allows them to strip a user’s character of all of its in-world money."

Since Second Life currency is easily converted to American dollars, there's a real risk here: Users of the virtual world may have dozens to hundreds to thousands of "Linden Dollars" on hand at any time. In the past 24 hours, the equivalent of about $1.5M USD has flowed through the system. So how to avoid getting robbed? Linden Lab's advice is for users to turn off video streaming, despite the company's ability to turn off streaming for all users across the virtual world until Apple fixes QuickTime. This strategy is reactive in my view, as Linden Lab plans only to act if it discovers a malicious stream. Affected users will receive "appropriate assistance," whatever that means.

Microsoft announced via its Gamerscore blog today that as of December 4, 2007, adult members of the Xbox Live gaming service will have their friends lists exposed to the rest of the community. Previously, friends lists were private. Members will automatically be opted in to the new system, and will have to manually opt out if they'd like to keep their friends list protected.

According to Microsoft, Xbox Live members can opt out of the loosened privacy system by visiting an administration page and setting either "Friends Only" access or "Blocked" access. By default, the friends lists of all members aged 18 and up will be set to "Everyone" access. Minors will be disallowed from making their lists open to all, and are automatically given "Blocked" status.

Continue reading: ‘Xbox Live’ Friends To Be Publicized:  Opt Out If You Like Privacy

"Security screeners at airports might do a better job spotting weapons if they spent their downtime playing video games - specifically, wasting aliens in lurid first-person shooters like Halo 3," The Boston Globe's Christopher Shea wrote yesterday. The 3-page online article resonates quite well with my quickly-written 2006 proposal "Airport Screening Is A Badly-Designed Game."

Specifically, Shea finds, as I mentioned last year, that even trained security professionals have trouble distinguishing harmful from safe objects; the human people have trouble finding exceptional objects (like guns) amid a sea of common objects (like toiletries). Additional information Shea gleaned from scientific sources shows that moving objects are easier to spot--yet X-ray scanners show stationary objects; first-person shooter gamers erred less in threat-identification tests than non-gamers. A number of interesting solutions are summarized in the article, none of which seem to involve making airport into an MMO (that was my semi-serious proposal), but some of which suggest that gaming might not be as unrelated to crucial security tasks as we might have thought. Sweet, sweet validation.

Also see my proposal for turning prison surveillance into an MMO and Dave Edery's article "Using Games to Tap Collective Intelligence."

• Viewing inDuality: IBM-backed startup debuts fully-functional Web-based Second Life viewer
  James Au reports that inDuality is a "universal metaverse plug-in" transmitting about "95% of the SL experience from the world to the web." I'm curious about the size of said plug-in, and what the missing 5% might comprise.
  (tags: synthetic.worlds web technology software business metaverse secondlife)
• The 10th Annual Independent Games Festival
  173 entries for the 2008 Indie Games Fest. So little time. I'll play anything I don't have to download, but I'm waiting for someone to tell me the top 10 or 20 to check out.
  (tags: games gaming indie competition list)
• Why Card Copying May Not Ruin Eye of Judgment
  I figured the ability to easily spoof Eye of Judgment cards would ruin the game completely, but hadn't considered that if every player has every card, the game becomes more skill-based and less chance-based.
  (tags: game games gaming design security technology ccg ps3)
• Ben Cerveny's talk at PicNic 2007: "Gaming the system"
  Takeaway: "Game design defines a vocabulary of moves that are internalized by players and this type of 'literacy' is going to allow people to utilize complex applications."
  (tags: games design work play systems psychology society presentation notes)
• Canada Post Brings The Great White North to SL
  I hope my tax money didn't go towards paying for this useless venture. Based on reported comments from Canada Post's Direct Marketing SVP, I'm not confident the dude has any idea what Second Life actually is or does.
  (tags: synthetic.worlds mixed.reality places canada culture business marketing bullshit)
• Managing the 100-Person Friend List
  The Xbox Live monkeysphere is limited to 100 monkeys. Here's one workaround a Microsofty recommends: track your friends in an external Excel spreadsheet, and move them between spaces manually. Or, just emtpy the sea with a sieve.
  (tags: xboxlive xbox hci groups networks software data identity administration logistics)

Sparked by a moral panic earlier this year, two German firms have launched a contest for the creation of software intended to block minors from accessing adult content in Second Life.

Child protection in Second Life isn't a problem software can solve effectively. Second Life, like booze and porn, is meant for adults, not kids. Prior experience tells us kids can't be prevented from getting their hands on booze and porn. All parents can do is raise their children "virtual-street smart," establish and enforce sensible rules, keep their Second Life passwords to themselves, and hope for the best. And, like any purveyor of adult material, Linden Lab has little choice but to make Second Life more difficult for minors to access, even if it makes access by adults more cumbersome.

• 17 Sims Crashed in Swastika Pattern.
  Clever coordinated attack on 'Second Life' simulators last week forms continent-spanning swastika of downed regions. Clearly Linden Lab is powerless to prevent this sort of thing, which is akin to a "denial of service" attack on a web site.
  (tags: secondlife sl griefing technology security)
• Synthetic Worlds as Petri Dishes
  Edward Castronova discusses using synthetic worlds in "interesting [social] quasi-experiments," cites example experiment carried out in 'EverQuest,' and repeated in 'World of Warcraft.'
  (tags: synthetic.worlds research WorldofWarcraft games science social systems)

Reporting from the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, Gamasutra brings word that Sony's microworld Home will eventually be opened to user-generated content. Beyond avatar and residence customization, Home users "will be able to share other content that they have created -- photos and videos of themselves, and user-generated content tools such as their own t-shirt designs," project director Peter Edward reportedly said, adding "We'll also be giving out tools to allow scripting, java minigames and so on." Sounds like Sony's willing to get its hands dirty with managing user creativity--opening the doors to user-generated content has major benefits in terms of customer retention, but raises a swath of critical administrative, legal, social and security issues. [Update: such as Flying Cigarettes, Talking Condoms and Virtual Homelessness]

On a related note, I was flipping through this month's issue of Game Developer Magazine and noted that Epic's Mark Rein says that the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 for the Sony PS3 console will facilitate user-created game levels ("mods") created on a PC. This should extend the shelf-life of the game for quite some time. I'm not entirely clear as to whether the mods will be able to be distributed through the PlayStation Network, but that would be ideal.