Tom Waits (long-time hero of mine) on Tom Waits (also a long-time hero of mine):

Q: What’s wrong with the world?
A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made 12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.

Gary Gygax, father of the seminal Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, has reportedly died. Gygax's D&D is the reason I became a gamer 27 years ago, and why I work in the interactive and gaming industries today.

I started "Dungeon Mastering" a D&D campaign with some friends early this year, and it's a real pleasure to get back to the tabletop again after a quarter-century. Online gaming has its charms, but sometimes you just can't beat role-playing the way it was originally intended: Snacks, polyhedral dice, lead figurines; rulebooks and maps; Led Zeppelin on the tape-deck.

Mr. Gygax, thanks for the positive influence on my life. Your legacy lives on.

Earlier this week it emerged that Linden Lab and its fourth employee, Cory Ondrejka, have parted ways due to irreconcilable philosophical differences. Here's a roundup of some of the reportage and commentary related to the split:

• Was Cory Linden fired, or did he quit?
  Moo Money breaks the news: Linden CTO Cory Ondrejka leaves the Lab.
  (tags: lindenlab secondlife sl synthetic.worlds employment work technology culture)
• Philip Rosedale responds to Cory Ondrejka's departure
  Allegedly from the horse's mouth: "I can confirm that Cory Ondrejka, CTO, will be leaving Linden Lab at the end of this year, in order to pursue new professional challenges outside the company."
  (tags: lindenlab secondlife sl employment work people synthetic.worlds technology culture)
• Cory Ondrejka's departure in his own words
  'Massively' leaks an alleged internal Linden Lab email: "I continue to believe in both Second Life and Linden Lab, but Philip and my visions for the future of Linden Lab are divergent enough that he decided to lead in his own way."
  (tags: lindenlab secondlife sl employment work people synthetic.worlds technology culture)
• Cory Linden Leaves the Lab
  The irrepressible Prokofy Neva weighs in with more melancholy than I would have expected.
• Second Life's CTO Resigns
  Terrible AP story on Cory O's split from Linden Lab calls Second Life a "site," and goes on at length about Pastafarianism. Worth a read just for the shite reportage.
  (tags: reportage secondlife synthetic.worlds communication lindenlab wtf)

All the cool nerds are talking about it: Vivendi (publisher, World of Warcraft) and Activision (Pitfall!, Guitar Hero) spent a steamy weekend entwining their glistening tentacles together so elaborately that neither megacorporation could be distinguished from the other. The unholy spawn of this union is to be named Activision Blizzard, a rampaging humungo-megalith The Guardian says will be "the world's largest computer games company" with an annual income of $3.8 billion and an insatiable appetite for fresh babies.

I'm not sure how the merger will produce better games, lower retail prices, or more choice for gamers--but then, there's a lot about the games industry I can't even begin to understand. All I know is that if I was formerly an employee of Vivendi or Activision, I might be concerned for the safety of my job (or even my entire department) next year. Time to trim some excess tentacles.

"GameON: Finance," a just-announced Canadian event described by its organizers as an exploration of "financial models for independent games companies," has been scheduled during the same two days as the Toronto Independent Games Conference. The events will overlap on January 17 and 18, 2008.

GameOn:Finance is operated by industry group InteractiveOntario, and will be hosted at a swank downtown Toronto location. Registration starts at nearly $500 CAD. The Toronto Independent Games Conference is operated by a handful of dedicated indie gamers, and will likely be hosted at a local college. Registration starts at $50 for students.

Continue reading: ‘GameON: Finance’ Inhospitable to Small Indie Developers

A good friend of mine has had two Xbox 360s die in the classic "red ring of death" fashion. The second one was refurbished (not refurbished enough, apparently). Hope the third one's a charm.

Anecdotally, about half of my friends who own a 360 have gotten a dud. Even one of the colleges at which I teach got a red-ringed Xbox. Every time my own console grumbles during DVD playback a shiver crawls up my spine.

Certainly there are far more important things in life to complain about, but Holy Helen of the Hand Grenade, what a wobbly piece of crap the Xbox 360 hardware is. I swear the only reason I bought one was for professional reasons.

"Are virtual worlds ready for a CNN to call their own?" The Hollywood Reporter asks, pointing to mainstream media venture LivePlanet which intends to embed reporters in virtual worlds Second Life and World of Warcraft.

Yes, virtual worlds are ready for "a CNN" to call their own--in fact, there has been a thriving "native" media scene inside Second Life for years. Wagner James Au was the first embedded writer in Second Life, followed soon after by myself (less embedded than external) and dishy tabloid The Second Life Herald--we were the first wave of writers alluded to in a recent Columbia Journalism Review article on journalism in Second Life. Since then, a legion of in- and out-world publications and broadcasters have been covering Second Life. It also bears mentioning that nearly every attempt to broadcast regular video reports from Second Life has failed, including the corporate-backed Grid Review. Why LivePlanet thinks it has a chance of success here is beyond me.

Continue reading: ‘LivePlanet’ Bumbles Into ‘Second Life,’ ‘Warcraft’

• Keith Stuart: Just who is playing who in ARGs? | Technology | The Guardian
  Whuh? Google's rigging search results for one of their own commercial promotions? What's next, buying Wikipedia editors?
  (tags: wtf google advertising business marketing data exploit arg alternate.reality game)
• Buddha once made a list of games he would not play
  [Via Jesper Juul]: Fascinating list of games (and playful activities) Gautama Buddha reputedly said he would not engage in. According to Wikipedia, the list dates back to 5th or 6th century BC, "the earliest known list of games."
  (tags: games gaming history list article reference)
• How many Mii's look like Hannibal Lector?
  Bryan Alexander considers the moral panic bubbling around the intersection of violent games and the Wii control system--some people seem to think that a greater level of physical participation (waving controller around) makes pretend violence more real.
  (tags: crtiticism commentary psychology wii hci health reportage games gaming violence)
• The Importance of Learning Slowly | Gary Woodill
  A brief review of 'The Mind within the Net: models of learning, thinking, and acting' [Spitzer, Manfred (1999) ]. "Children need a rough and ready view of the world while adults want to increase their depth of understanding."
  (tags: education psychology neuroscience review commentary youth technology science)

I would rather have no justice at all in Second Life than to subscribe to the half-baked, self-appointed Metaverse Republic, a group trying to establish an independent virtual-world legal system "with real powers of enforcement originating in user-created tools, and a democratic parliament." Introduced to me by the Metaversed podcast, and made the subject of a round-table by Virtually Blind, the group's system relies on voluntary, widespread adoption to work properly.

There are a limited number of actions one avatar can take against another without permission in Second Life. The most effective of these, available only to virtual-land owners, is to ban an avatar from entering one's land. It's a good, old-fashioned shunning, and it's how Metaverse Republic plans to "enforce" its laws: Obey the Republic's rules, or face banishment. The good news is that the system only works with a high level of participation, but the bad news is that single avatars sometimes own vast acreage of virtual land. The Republic could be a serious annoyance to those it disagrees with, but it's highly unlikely compliance with its system will reach critical mass.

Continue reading: Obey ‘Second Life’ Republic Or Be Shunned

Neville Hobson reports that Dell, which has established a presence in Second Life, plans to offer customer service and tech support for 2 hours daily, 5 days a week, (10 hours weekly in total). Who's brilliant idea was this? First of all, service and support issues don't adhere to a schedule. Secondly, there's a decent chance your particular issue might preclude using your Dell computer to log into Second Life. How many Dell users log into Second Life anyway?

It's definitely a problem with many corporate presences in Second Life that there are rarely staff members actually on-hand in the virtual world. But I don't see how 2 hours, split into two 1-hour windows, is going to be sufficient face-time for the few people who are even aware of Dell's office hours--and who can actually log in--to make use of Dell's in-world service and support. Seems like a doomed proposition to me.