Avatar-Based Marketing Revisited: Market Truths methods

Three Part Interview with Market Truths’ Mary Ellen Gordon

In June 2006 Harvard Business Review Senior Editor Paul Hemp goosed the very curious business world with a think piece called “Avatar-Based Marketing.” His opening salvo: Companies spend large sums trying to segment, reach, and influence potential customers. They should think about targeting those customers’ online alter egos, as well.

Two years and many millions of virtual world user and VC dollars later, PGL revisits the subject with Mary Ellen Gordon Managing Director of the award-winning VW marketing research group Market Truths. Their Q1 (2007) survey on the VW Second Life made a big splash and help set precedent for researchers and marketers finding their way in this strange new land.

Quantitative and qualitative network analysis

Mary Ellen Gordon: We [MT] had come into this when Web analytics were developing and did not agree with how click throughs or even measuring time spent on a page were being valued. You can’t tell if someone is on a page for a long time because they are interest or because they can’t find the contact information they are looking for. I don’t mean to imply that traditional Web analytics have no value, but rather that I don’t think they’re sufficient on their own. They’re still useful for looking at trends, etc., but provide the most insight when combined with data collected directly from the user. So, to pick up on that example above, if you surveyed visitors to the page in question, you could find out whether those who stayed longest were more engaged or most confused or if time on the site had no correlation at all with engagement with the site, purchase intentions, etc.”

Also, what I am really thinking of is how Web surveys have evolved online. In the very early days, there were traditional research companies trying to do Web surveys without really understanding the technology (so not making use of the ability of the Web to generate dynamic content) and technology companies trying to do Web surveys without really understanding research (and so asking poorly worded questions, not providing any in depth analysis, etc.). Then a lot of DIY survey software came out either as off the shelf packages or as online applications, and that made the situation even worse because then everyone felt that they could do their own survey even if they didn’t really understand technology or research very well (enter surveys with spelling mistakes, messed up skip patterns, etc.). To facilitate that a bunch of online panel companies emerged (they send people through to do surveys in exchange for incentives). The upshot of all of that has been that people’s inboxes are flooded with poorly thought out surveys, and so response rates have gone down. The people on those online panels make up a huge proportion of online survey respondents even though they are only a small proportion of the population overall. There are obviously questions as to their representativeness of the population overall, and there is a lot of concern about cross-panel duplication (people being on multiple panels), professional respondents (people who take so many surveys they become atypical even if they were not in the first place), and people doing surveys just for the incentives without paying much attention to the actual questions or their responses (there are even automated programs for filling in surveys to facilitate this).

Our positioning has always been at the intersection of marketing, research, and technology and doing quality, in depth research. That made virtual worlds a logical target for us. By being first, we hoped we might be able to avoid the whole negative spiral that online surveys have experienced, as described above, as we could be part of shaping the environment and expectations about research. It was also a way for us to stand out more from the whole pack of companies offering online surveys.

Method and Process

PGL: What were the methods and procure of running this study? MT established a Second Life (SL) research panel comprised of SL residents.

G: The first stage it is self-selecting. We advertise in SL and associated media. You decide if you want to take part in panel. We want people who want to express themselves. We want the expression to be part of the motivation not just Linden dollars [panelists are compensated for their time in virtual world money]. They come to our office [in SL] and click on kiosk to be part of the panel. Just to expand on this, in addition to real life (RL) brands and customer reports geared toward RL businesses, we also do reports more aimed at SL only businesses and SL specific issues that we know SL residents often have strong opinions about.

PGL: What are the criteria for participation?

G: They need to be in SL for 30 days and have a verifiable account. The 30-day standard means that the participant is beyond the introductory stage of being in-world, and the verified account reduce chances of griefers [a player whose goal is only to harass others]. The participant clicks “yes” to be part of the panel, the fills out the preferences form, which is a multiple choice on Web questionnaire with a unique URL for each participant. By taking the questionnaire out of world we insure that the avatar and user are the same. The questionnaire looks like a Web survey. We ask the following:

RL age
Rl gender
Sl age––We capture this automatically from their universally unique identifier (UUID)
Sl gender
Frequency of us––The frequency question is about how often they want to be invited to participate in research.
What are the participant’s interests
What is participant’s RL country of residence
SL profession is not part of the profiling questionnaire, but it is something we have asked about as part of specific projects.
RL profession is not part of the profiling questionnaire, but it is something we have asked about as part of specific projects.

190 participants were part of the Q1 (2007) survey; 201 in Q3 (2007) survey.

The form of participation in the study was threefold:

1. Surveys
2. Focus groups in-world, text procedure 90% request
3. Interviews in-world, text procedure 90% request

Gordon says of her research experience in-world, “People are more open in SL focus groups because there is more anonymity.”

Jesper Juul’s Casual Games: a case study in juiciness

Game theorist Jesper Juul gave a talk in his new position at MIT Gambit, January 17. His organizing point was that casual games, as the game industry knows, are not casual in use. They are games that users spend a lot of time playing, which often translates into money or ads viewed. His research looks at how (design) and why (users) casual games can produce two kinds of anomalies in the last decade of very complex, non-newbie-centric immersive video game design.

1. The hardcore casual gamer
2. The person who “does not play video games” but plays casual games

As you might guess #1 reflects addictive design, which has been a principle sincec Tetris, with some interesting twists. A general difference between traditional arcade games and casual games (aside form the environment––one is an arcade the other is usually your office computer): causal games are designed for even greater levels of users satisfaction.

The three design traits of CG versus arcade play

a) the easy interruption of level play: this means when you restart the game you do not have to reboot it from level 1.
b) easy-into the game and easy-out to make it even more attractive….but you never want to leave you just want to level.
c) the other is “Juiciness”

Juiciness: the player is always rewarded for playing

Juiciness in video games is extra-play feedback. The game gives you all kinds of *love* for nearly everything you do. It is full-on-flavor feedback where each action is rewarded with positive feedback with many !!!!! This can be sound effects, colors, fireworks, rollovers, explosions, animations…all of the above.

In a sense, Juiciness fits into the design category ease-of-use, which is a trait that is modulated differently for each game genre and mechanics: the extensive feedback lets the user know she is playing the game right. That may be important when it is unclear what the game is. See Affordances of the Familiar (J.D.Norman). Or if may detract from game play is discovery the game is part of the fun.

Check out Peggle, the CG game Juul used as a case study in juiciness.

Check Juul’s postingson CG nouveau and classic, like solitaire.

Caution: making a game easy or without consequences may not be the way to create the most fun. Mistakes without loss, death without dying, and unlimited economy in a game can just make it boring. Juul’s mini-survey suggests (as others have) that games where players are responsible for their actions, i.e. there are consequences, engage players at a greater level than those without.

Interview with the Virtual Cannibal 3/3

Part three of three: Dolcett

Gy Harrop is the avatar of a white, male, French adult whose profession is writer, translator, and artist. PGL, your friendly author, met Gy through mutual friends. Gy has participated in a gynophagia (eating woman) sex-play group that simulates sexual engagement that includes rape, other forms of violent assault, asphyxiation, and ultimately the death and consumption of the victim.

Here is part three of the Excerpts from interview. You can link to part one and two.

1. Dolcett

[6:57] Gy Harrop: so
[6:58] Gy Harrop: you go with someone in a special brothel
[6:58] Gy Harrop: and there
[6:58] Gy Harrop: there is a room called Dolcett
[6:58] Gy Harrop: for example
[6:58] Gy Harrop: and there, after the staging of a relation thru chat
[6:58] Gy Harrop: you ask your partner to be cooked
[6:58] Gy Harrop: selecting this ball or that one
[6:58] Gy Harrop: and then
[6:59] Gy Harrop: the partner can select another ball to be the meal on the table
[6:59] Gy Harrop: the "master" selecting the one where he "eat" an avatar
[6:59] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:59] Gy Harrop: far from the abstract interest of it
[7:00] Gy Harrop: I was pretty amazed when I asked the meaning of "dolcett"
[7:00] Gy Harrop: and then
[7:00] Gy Harrop: I said to myself
[7:00] Gy Harrop: of course !
[7:01] Gy Harrop: cannibalism !
[7:01] Gy Harrop: as an evidence of
[7:01] Gy Harrop is typing...
[7:01] Gy Harrop: the cruelest thing when no more experience is possible

Dolcett originally referred to the signature on a series of Internet circulated pornographic drawings that depicted submissive women being hanged, cooked, and variously penetrated as part of a sexual act. Dolcett or gynophagia roleplay now extends to not only that set of illustrations but an entire subset of BDSM activity. One can find Dolcett fan fiction on the Internet with titles such as “First Bite” and “How to Cook Women’s Breasts.” There are also chat groups, Web sites, and, with the emergence of MMO forums avatar-based animation and tableau (still shots of avatars) enacting Dolcett play. One virtual world blogger described her adventures in Dolcett play in the following manner:

"It's kinda weird. I don't like pain. Being whipped, paddled, or tortured really just turns me off. And the idea of snuff play just seems so....final. But the thought of being prepped, stuffed, basted, roasted and eaten...that appeals to me. I guess it goes back to my objectification fetish. Being turned into food is just as good as any other type of object. So, one of the many groups I joined the Dolcett Girls group."

The blogger describes the trying the spit, saying, “The machine was very interesting, giving a play by play.” This meant the roasting pit would narrate to the user the progress of her being cooked. The blogger’s comment, “The flames then started and I slowly began to rotate. At this point I really was really getting more turned on then I expected.”

The Dolcett scenario is often medieval, borrowing from the fairytale structure of a young peasant girl scooped up by the prince to become the “queen for the day.” Her rule ends in her public execution that is constructed for greatest erotic charge for the crowd. Writer A. N. Roquelaure’s (Anne Rice) popular Sleeping Beauty soft BDSM series played out for her massive audience the basic stratagems of this role play. In the case of Rice’s Beauty, it is a role reversal, where the princess is forced to submit to machinations of this sexual dominance order.

2. The most common and easiest thing to do here is sex

Gy explains that after the Dolcett play, his next interesting on the SL platform was building furniture. He felt that designing things was at the core of the experience of a VW. He explained why it was not a disconnect to go from simulating cooking someone to working with geometric primitives to construct virtual furniture.

[7:02] Gy Harrop is typing...
[7:02] Gy Harrop: again, the most interesting here
[7:03] Gy Harrop: is that it's SL which invents that
[7:03] Gy Harrop: there's no identified will behind
[7:03] Gy Harrop: it's structural
[7:03] Gy Harrop: lol
[7:03] Hapi Sleeper: what about furniture? not as interesting ;-)
[7:03] Gy Harrop: yes it is !
[7:03] Gy Harrop: it comes when you mourned sex
[7:03] Gy Harrop: lol
[7:03] Gy Harrop: then there is furniture
[7:04] Hapi Sleeper: architecture, the actual structures build. same as the language-based play
[7:04] Gy Harrop: it's just like getting involved in the technical secrets of sl
[7:04] Hapi Sleeper: yes,that's right. the technical secrets
[7:04] Gy Harrop: much more serious and interesting than sex here
[7:05] Gy Harrop: there is a hard selection on that basis
[7:05] Gy Harrop: everybody CANT script or make buildings or whatever
[7:05] Gy Harrop: I tried scripting
[7:05] Gy Harrop: it's a hell
[7:05] Hapi Sleeper: yes. that's right, but that sex chat, on whatever level, is the thing people can all participate in
[7:05] Gy Harrop: the maddest people here are the ones who works in that matter [building].
[7:06] Gy Harrop: lol
[7:06] Gy Harrop: yeah
[7:06] Gy Harrop: the most common and easiest thing to do here is sex

Postscript

A short history of pornography as accelerated media vehicle

The biggest change between historical instantiations of fetish cults and variations of BDSM is that particularly on the Internet it is easily searchable. What used to be essentially secret societies, dungeons in sex clubs, and marginal activity folded into the edge zones of a city is now, like a giant Amsterdam Red Light district, findable for players and tourist alike. Because things and people and actions and places are more searchable (and with the meta-tags and RFID systems more findable) the idea of secure boundary between public versus private is pressed.

Pornography, as pornographers large or local, slick or homebrewed will tell you, helped to innovate rich media content on the Internet. In the same that that the video camera and VHS tape (home shoot & home viewing) changed the nature of the porn industry––early adoption of a new technology in the 1970s and the creation of home video markets…Porn as a genre was an Internet early adopter. Following fast upon the heels of university research papers, nudie pictures circulated across the Nets, just a trade in pornographic post cards (carte de visite) was an early popular use of photography during the Civil War.

This is neither apologia nor endorsement; the pornographic is simply part of the history and pattern of new media adoption. What is considered pornographic shifts right along side with the changing of technology. The Civil War black market pornographic post cards of yore are in general less salacious than Christina Aguilera naked and pregnant on the cover of a women’s magazine today (Marie Claire, January 2008). Nor is pornography, despite some of its more interactive features, the same thing as participating in a sex act––virtual of no.

Acts of violent submission, masochistic domination, and sexual torture are not foreign to our collective history. A cursory glance at the history of the Americas alone gives us genocide, slavery, child abuse and so on. In very recent times, we do not lack for horrible events and media effluvia that bring them to us. In the case of the Iraqi prisoners held in Abu Ghraib by American military, the images of their sexual humiliation were floated out on the Internet, ending with the court marshal of several and the fury of many internationally. One has witnessed a resurgence of systematic rape as a tool of war, domination, and terrorism in countries such as Rwanda and Kosovo. In light of the hyperviolence of the real world, the role-playing of extreme sexual violence and the representation of cannibalism may seem perverse, at the very least. Nonetheless, these acts narrated above are acts of simulation and, additionally but very importantly, are consensual.

Gy Harrop narrates VW sex play in an extreme form, cannibalism. It may be a symbolic cannibalism, but it stages something outside the boundaries of decent society. In the tradition of the Marquis de Sade, one of Western cultures most famous perverts––and a literary pervert at that––it is hard to imagine that part of the erotic attraction is not located beyond the particular sexual acts themselves and in the thrill of transgression itself.

Interview with the Virtual Cannibal 2/3

Part two of three: “WE DONT WANT NO BODIES !!!”

back story: Gy Harrop is the avatar of a white, male, French adult whose profession is writer, translator, and artist. PGL, your friendly author, met Gy through mutual friends. Gy has participated in a gynophagia (eating woman) sex-play group that simulates sexual engagement that includes rape, other forms of violent assault, asphyxiation, and ultimately the death and consumption of the victim.

Here is part two of the Excerpts from interview. Link to part one.

1. Make a picture through sexual intercourse

[6:44] Hapi Sleeper: there has been rt [real time] online sex for a long time before 3d spaces
[6:44] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:44] Gy Harrop: right
[6:44] Gy Harrop: but here
[6:44] Gy Harrop is typing...
[6:45] Gy Harrop: and sadistic sex
[6:45] Gy Harrop: it's Sadian
[6:45] Gy Harrop: which means
[6:45] Gy Harrop: (and [Roland] Barthes talked about that I think)
[6:45] Gy Harrop: which means
[6:45] Gy Harrop: mise en scène
[6:45] Gy Harrop: what's the word
[6:45] Gy Harrop: ..
[6:45] Gy Harrop: to make a picture through sexual intercourse
[6:45] Gy Harrop: you know?
[6:46] Hapi Sleeper: yes, that works, mise en scene

Sadian as in the Marquis de Sade; the term "sadism" is derived from his name.
Mise en scène: Stemming from the theater, the French term mise en scène literally means "putting on stage (Wikipedia).

[6:46] Hapi Sleeper: so what happened when you were invited for the snuff film? what do you do and how do you die?
[6:46] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:46] Gy Harrop: I didn’t die
[6:46] Gy Harrop: cos
[6:46] Gy Harrop: thx god
[6:47] Gy Harrop: these kind of projects are never realized here
[6:47] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:47] Gy Harrop: it's a sort of intent
[6:47] Gy Harrop: but just to meet people
[6:47] Gy Harrop: thru a shared interest
[6:47] Gy Harrop: I met plenty of submissive women
[6:47] Gy Harrop: sadistic boys
[6:47] Gy Harrop: and
[6:47] Gy Harrop: that's it
[6:47] Gy Harrop: the project was forgotten
[6:47] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:48] Hapi Sleeper: ...you 'talk' to each other?
[6:48] Gy Harrop: yeah

2.You can truly MEET someone here

[6:48] Hapi Sleeper: better than such talk in rl. or this does not happen 4 u in rl?
[6:48] Gy Harrop: well
[6:48] Gy Harrop: not better
[6:48] Gy Harrop: certainly not
[6:48] Gy Harrop: but
[6:49] Gy Harrop: as "important" as in rl
[6:49] Gy Harrop: i mean
[6:49] Gy Harrop: you can truly MEET someone here
[6:49] Gy Harrop: make the experiments of meeting someone
[6:49] Gy Harrop: which is mainly to understand a singularity
[6:49] Gy Harrop: :)
[6:49] Gy Harrop: I did that
[6:49] Gy Harrop: many times
[6:50] Hapi Sleeper: how do you mean 'understand a singularity'?
[6:50] Gy Harrop: considering there is no proper body [in SL]
[6:50] Gy Harrop: the only thing remaining
[6:50] Gy Harrop is typing...
[6:50] Gy Harrop: is language to share the experiences you did here or in rl
[6:50] Hapi Sleeper: oh, ok
[6:50] Gy Harrop: this sharing is what constitutes a singularity to me
[6:51] Gy Harrop: again
[6:51] Gy Harrop: that's the same RL
[6:51] Gy Harrop: except that RL you have the illusion of the importance of physical embodiment

3. WE DONT WANT NO BODIES !!!

[6:51] Hapi Sleeper: ah, but you still need to meet them in rl to validate the relationship, to authenticate somehow? it's hard to leave soma entirely behind
[6:52] Gy Harrop: no
[6:52] Hapi Sleeper: seems a mistake to. phantasm
[6:52] Gy Harrop: RL is gone
[6:52] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:52] Hapi Sleeper: lol.
[6:52] Gy Harrop: when you fall in love, I guess you can imagine meeting someone RL
[6:52] Gy Harrop: but that's not the point here
[6:52] Gy Harrop: it would be a mistake
[6:53] Gy Harrop: a misunderstanding of what SL is structurally
[6:53] Gy Harrop: :)
[6:53] Gy Harrop: WE DONT WANT NO BODIES !!!
[6:53] Hapi Sleeper: go ahead. Structurally…
[6:53] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:53] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:53] Gy Harrop: in this clean space
[6:53] Hapi Sleeper: just language
[6:53] Gy Harrop: where there's no hair, no odor, no sensations
[6:54] Gy Harrop: you have to thrill yourself as much as you can thru language only
[6:54] Gy Harrop: to make a simulacra of experience
[6:54] Gy Harrop: for example
[6:54] Gy Harrop: dolcett
[6:54] Gy Harrop: it's the last possible thing to mourn the sexual experience here
[6:55] Gy Harrop: and it's..
[6:55] Gy Harrop: cannibalism
[6:55] Gy Harrop: !!
[6:55] Gy Harrop: excellent !
[6:55] Gy Harrop: and that's not something invented in his room cos he was a perv
[6:55] Gy Harrop: it's SL that has invented that
[6:55] Hapi Sleeper: sorry, what's dolcett? cannibalism w/out bodies. Artaudian [as in Anotonin Artaud].
[6:55] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:56] Gy Harrop: it's just the staging (that's it)
[6:56] Gy Harrop: the staging of cannibalism
[6:56] Gy Harrop: as a sexual relation
[6:56] Gy Harrop: I master you, I have sex with you, you're my slave, I eat you
[6:56] Hapi Sleeper: please give me a scenerio. how does it play when there is nothing to eat. symbolic death? christian allegory?
[6:56] Gy Harrop: ..
[6:56] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:56] Gy Harrop: incredible
[6:56] Gy Harrop: well
[6:57] Gy Harrop: again "the strings"
[6:57] Gy Harrop: you just have to select appropriate balls [scripting balls that place an avatar in a particular position or run an animation]
[6:57] Gy Harrop: in appropriate places
[6:57] Gy Harrop: you go ..
[6:57] Gy Harrop: but maybe you could visit one once
[6:57] Gy Harrop: if you have time enough i could lead there

Simulacra: Modern French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal (Wikipedia).

Interview with the Virtual Cannibal

Gy Harrop is the avatar of a white, male, French adult whose profession is writer, translator, and artist. PGL, your friendly author, met Gy through mutual friends in Paris. Gy Harrop describes his interest in SL as ancillary. He ventured into the space sideways, by way of video gaming and a philosophical interest in language. It was an interest that very quickly translated into the pointedly erotic value of language in online spaces. “Good graphics” are important to him in video games, he explained, but it is primarily the chat as action, the language-based play in the VW platform that enticed him about SL. In the course of the interview, the tension between textual and graphic representation of virtual sex-acts is a subject discussed.
One of the aspects of the interview that seemed notable was the great appetite for experience in a new format that Gy expressed, with the absence of any shyness, embarrassment, or trepidation about the kind of extreme online sex play he had engaged in. His particularly intellectual tact, his knowingness and analysis of the situation did not seem to diminish his pleasure in it. Additionally, the pleasure he expressed was not circumscribed as sexual pleasure, but the titillation of the whole thing. He gleefully breaks the boundaries of RL decorum in his VW experimentation.
Gy has participated in a gynophagia (eating woman) sex-play group that simulates sexual engagement that includes rape, other forms of violent assault, asphyxiation, and ultimately the death and consumption of the victim. In short, it is cannibalism as extreme sex practice. This manner of sexual intercourse or “lifestyle” transgresses the boundaries of most modern cultures of what may actually be done to another person (legally), but also what may be represented as a desired activity. One is forbidden to eat human flesh.

Excerpts from interview

Location: Second Life, virtual world platform
Date: May 19, 2007
Gy Harrop, the interviewee, resolves as a small monkey that scampers about (avatar suit + animation).
Hapi Sleeper appears in Cute Robot avatar.
The meeting place is Elpida, a picturesque garden.
For the interview they move to a tea house in Sokri, a Japanese town.

1. You're the spectator of your life here

[6:27] Hapi Sleeper: what brought you into SL. and what did you find when you arrived?
[6:27] Gy Harrop: videogames, that's what brought me to SL
[6:27] Gy Harrop: I used to hate chats
[6:27] Hapi Sleeper: yeah, but this is boring as a video game
[6:27] Gy Harrop: you mean..
[6:27] Gy Harrop: SL?
[6:27] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:28] Gy Harrop: it's often boring
[6:28] Gy Harrop: but the way you can interact with subjects is pretty amazing
[6:28] Hapi Sleeper: video games narrate an experience with much more tempo. i agree, it is the interaction that sets this apart.
[6:28] Gy Harrop: completely
[6:29] Gy Harrop: to me, it's not a game in that sense there's nothing to play with
[6:30] Gy Harrop: the character you forge starts to have his own history
[6:30] Gy Harrop: just like in RL
[6:30] Gy Harrop: through the places he goes to
[6:30] Gy Harrop: the persons he meets
[6:30] Gy Harrop: and all that is based on chance
[6:30] Hapi Sleeper: 'he' not 'you' or 'i'
[6:30] Gy Harrop: but then
[6:30] Gy Harrop: that works like in rl for that part
[6:31] Gy Harrop: well
[6:31] Gy Harrop: schizophrens from all countries get united !
[6:31] Hapi Sleeper: yah
[6:31] Gy Harrop: that could be the special SL sentence
[6:31] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:31] Gy Harrop: you're the spectator of your life here
[6:31] Gy Harrop: :)

2. It really started when I met a girl

[6:32] Hapi Sleeper: would you tell me the story or the day or event here where you went from feeling like a tourist to someone who participates or knows people here?
[6:32] Gy Harrop: mh..
[6:32] Gy Harrop: blur border
[6:32] Gy Harrop: that's were lies the genius aspect of this invention
[6:32] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:33] Gy Harrop: first time
[6:33] Gy Harrop: was in a brothel
[6:33] Gy Harrop: such as the numerous that you can find here
[6:33] Gy Harrop: and
[6:33] Hapi Sleeper: no kidding
[6:33] Gy Harrop: funnily enough
[6:33] Gy Harrop: (yeah)
[6:33] Gy Harrop: (course)
[6:33] Gy Harrop: funnily enough
[6:33] Gy Harrop: it really started
[6:34] Gy Harrop: when I met a girl
[6:34] Gy Harrop: at the entry of one of these brothel
[6:34] Gy Harrop: and didn’t enter it
[6:34] Gy Harrop: and
[6:34] Gy Harrop: she proposed me to play in a sl snuff movie
[6:34] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:34] Hapi Sleeper: no!
[6:34] Gy Harrop: yeah!
[6:34] Gy Harrop: and that's quite natural when you think about it
[6:35] Hapi Sleeper: more death than life i guess
[6:35] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:35] Gy Harrop: but
[6:35] Gy Harrop: as I said many times
[6:35] Gy Harrop: in a 3D environment such as this one
[6:35] Gy Harrop: where you're completely free about what you wanna do
[6:36] Gy Harrop: where sex seems to be one of the main
[6:36] Gy Harrop: the main
[6:36] Gy Harrop: attraction
[6:36] Gy Harrop: her
[6:36] Gy Harrop: here
[6:36] Gy Harrop: (sorry)
[6:36] Gy Harrop: you have to invent new ways
[6:36] Gy Harrop: of making it an experience
[6:36] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:36] Gy Harrop: and of course
[6:36] Gy Harrop: it doesn’t work at all
[6:36] Gy Harrop: lol
[6:36] Gy Harrop: sex is the most boring thing here
[6:37] Gy Harrop: considering you only have the chat to interact
[6:37] Gy Harrop: most sexual relations are in BDSM

BDSM stands for bondage/discipline and sadism/masochism. The term covers an array of sexual practice or lifestyle preference that include domination and submission, punishment, role play, and other activities that include an erotic relation to cannibalism and snuff (killing the subject).

3. Sex is language

[6:37] Hapi Sleeper: i know. i still have hard time grasping the thrill of it
[6:37] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:37] Hapi Sleeper: BDSM?
[6:37] Gy Harrop: but that's where snuff comes..
[6:37] Gy Harrop: yeah
[6:37] Gy Harrop: bdsm
[6:38] Gy Harrop: cos that's the sexual relation where language is the most invested
[6:38] Gy Harrop: in a way
[6:38] Gy Harrop: you have to set a power relation
[6:38] Gy Harrop: thru language
[6:38] Gy Harrop: things to be said
[6:38] Hapi Sleeper: what's the 'bd'' if sm is sm?
[6:38] Gy Harrop: the BD is..
[6:38] Gy Harrop: well
[6:38] Gy Harrop: it's the commercial part of it
[6:39] Gy Harrop: where you have to buy many accessories
[6:39] Gy Harrop: that go with it
[6:39] Gy Harrop: with SM I mean
[6:39] Gy Harrop: Bondage is anecdotic
[6:39] Gy Harrop: the main interest is in power relations..
[6:39] Gy Harrop: as a game
[6:39] Gy Harrop: of course
[6:39] Hapi Sleeper: bondage is purely linguistic?
[6:39] Gy Harrop: yeah!
[6:39] Gy Harrop is typing...
[6:40] Gy Harrop: absolutely
[6:40] Hapi Sleeper: ok, following you
[6:40] Gy Harrop: and that's what I've found really fascinating here
[6:40] Gy Harrop: sex is language
[6:40] Gy Harrop: RL and.. SL
[6:40] Gy Harrop is typing...
[6:40] Gy Harrop: but everybody acts that way
[6:40] Gy Harrop: nobody talks about that here
[6:40] Gy Harrop: :)

Anxiety in A New Year

It is 2008 finally. In the coming new year, the fear of the growing age is natually justified. But in the internet era, age is just a relative concept. I am undergoing a different kind of anxiety: the concern that you will one day get lost in the cyberspace or be left behind by the even younger internet users.

I am faced with a surplus of choices between Msn, OICQ, skype and Google Talk; between Facebook, Msn space and blogcn (a huge blog website in China). I try hard not to be old-fashioned and to keep abreast of the times, but as I mentioned before, I become a bit technicophonic. And I find myself at a loss when hear some younger generation talking about their favorite gadgets online. Webpages and software are ever-updating and ever-refreshing, keeping you always in the state of anxiety.

I guess this new kind of anxiety comes from the feeling of getting "old" in the ever-young internet. Internet is young and continues to be young. What about these internet users? For example, in China, the first internet generation may start using internet in their teens, and now most of them are over 20 and may reach 30, which means they may have work and family and enter a new stage of life. Will they stay young like the internet itself? If not, will internet become a less charming place for them? Will they turn to some more mature venues? I still don't know the answer.

Halting state: ubiquitous computing as VW & ARG interface

In novel the Halting State the crime itself has taken place in a virtual world, a game world distributed across cell phones. Author Charles Stross enlists augmented reality––the blending between real world information and that of the virtual worlds¬¬––to unravel the detective story. His point is that this kind of mixed reality is not so very far-fetched or far off.

Inside the wide concourse, everything looks like, well, the kind of trade show that attracts the general public. There are booths and garish displays and sales staff looking professionally friendly, and there are tables with rows of gaming boxes on them…”Check what it looks like in Zone,” suggest Jack, so you tweak your glasses, and suddenly it’s a whole different scene.
The concourse is full of monsters and marvels. A sleeping dragon looms over a pirate hoard, scales as gaudy as a chameleon on a diffraction grating

Of course we all can see dragons when our x-ray specs are tilted right ;-) Yes, the magic and fun of being in the “Zone” presents a powerful antidote to the humdrum of every day (I think World of Warcraft has 10 million users now), but the larger point he makes in this story of near-future game worlds it that hyper mediation is already present in our lives and will only accelerate. We are acclimated to the information interface like cell phone and Web channel and in fact we clamor for more. More gear that connects us more of the time to our zones of interaction.

It’s a Digital version of U

Two days ago in RL at CES, Intel keynote included a real time virtual jam session (ejamming), motion capture, a VW environment and portable photo-image avatars. Big Stage, a new company focusing on universally embeddable “realistic” avatars did a more-or-less live capture and create of an avatar for Smash Mouth’s lead singer. Boring big guy on a bike stuff in terms of the content, but who cares. There point (with visions of $$$) is that you can make it whtevs u want.

Ubiquitous Computing: We’re not in Kansas anymore

In the novel, everyone is all geared up. The cops view the world through information ports that link them to “cop space,” the forensic auditor reads the world through a network of accounting figures, and the hacker sees the world as…code. One of the consequences of constant information interface (the always on of media communication and information exchange) is that the different worlds are more integrated…or infiltrated depending on your pov. Ubiquitous computing effects this kind of change. The best figure for this crashing of worlds in the book is the avatar criminals (a band of Orcs) ripping off a virtual bank with intense, international impacts in the real world, beginning with the game company loss of millions in stock value. The Wizard of OZ remake for HBO’s The O.Z. also based its story upon the porousness between RL (Kansas) and the O.Z.

You, as a user, never need to sign up for a role-playing game to enjoy the benefits of your locative media device helping you find whatever it is you are looking for in an urban haystack. It is the mapping level of the ARG, the VW persistence, the growth of interoperability, and the viability of one’s alter-ego avatars that have now scaled to actual size. It is Borges’ parable of the map that grows to be as large as the kingdom.

Here are Stross’ own RL Halting State moments: VR glasses to market; a "virtual investment bank" in Second Life; Korean military alert against spyware.

Most of us are not leading lives of international espionage cum gold mining. The most important point Stross makes in the book is not the pervasiveness of online gaming or the richness of virtual worlds, but rather the deep change that the Internet has rendered. Under the guise of twentieth-century cities (or medieval ones as is the case of Edinburgh where the novel takes place), IT engineers have laid down a substrata of informatics/data/computable spaces that allows one to interact with one’s environment on a physical, informational, and database level. Information technologists, artists, coders, interface designers, graphical and systems designers are the people who have created the contemporary architecture.

What are the ways your worlds are crashing up against each other?

Text message and Christmas

What are the main differences between the usage of mobile phone in US and that China? I think one answer should be text message. Text message has entered every corner of China. It has created two innovations in everyday life: text message channel and test message competition. In this post, I want to introduce the first one, text message channel to you. Nowadays, most big websites in China have built text message channels to collect text messages and provide text message online reading and mobile phone subscription. For example, Sina Mobile Channel has its special text message channel; Tom.dom has its text message channel. On these websites, what the customers need to do is to choose the text message they like and input their mobile phone number; then the system of the website will send the text message to their mobile phone for a certain fee. In the text message channel, text messages are divided into different categories, titled as family, love, joke, to husband, to wife and so on. These channels also provide text messages for many festivals and celebrations, including those from Chinese traditional culture and those introduced from western culture. From the contents of the text message channel, we can see that text message has been widely accepted as an entertainment and a way to send greetings on all festivals.

On Christmas, for example, Christmas cards have given their way to text message greetings. Most young people in China will not send Christmas cards to their friends. They visit text message channels, subscribe text message greetings and send them to their friends.

The Singularity is Near: Ray Kurzweil GDC keynote

This seems like an equally bugged out and prescient choice, which is kind of who Kurzweil, inventor & futurist is. He has had astoundingly good predictions in regard to technology innovation and adoption. It should be interesting to hear him talk about games.