Segnaliamo il reportage "Essere un avatar" in onda su Current giovedì 15 aprile alle 21.10 

I began doing research in There.com in 2004 with a study of refugees from the defunct game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, chronicled in my 2009 book, Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (MIT). I've also conduced a number of other research projects in There.com, one of which was in progress at its closing.

There.com is often compared to Second Life, its better-publicized competitor, but There.com attracted a different audience, and hence, a unique community emerged over its seven-year lifespan. There.com aimed to appeal to the "everyday person," a broad, relatively low-tech audience, in contrast to the early adopter geek who often dominates massively multiplayer games and virtual worlds.

While Second Life has enjoyed widespread appeal, it is very much born of the Burning Man culture, both in terms of its aesthetics and the cultural cache of technical prowess. But There.com was designed with a different audience in mind that also spanned older adults, women and ‘tweens, as well as the twenty-somethings who are the standard staple of the genre.

What It Did Right

I often hold There.com up as an example to both my clients and my students for having done three things exceptionally well, perhaps better than any virtual world or MMOG I've seen. First, it had the most expressive and well-crafted avatar design and animation, and the most appealing to women, of any virtual world to-date.

Second, it did a remarkable, if imperfect, job of facilitating bonds between people, the most important ingredient to success. And third, rather than simply giving creative tools to the tech-savvy, There.com opened up creative channels for people who often had no idea they even were creative. It empowered new voices and expression, often in a highly entertaining and unexpected way.

Virtual world and MMOG designers greatly underestimate the importance of a good "fit" between player and avatar, as evidenced by what T.L. Taylor calls designers' often "impoverished" ideas about gender. The appeal of avatar design is a strong factor in a game's initial appeal, including who chooses to play the game in the first place.

Over time, once they "don" one that fits, players can develop strong attachments to their avatars, which is one of the reasons players are often so devastated when worlds close. For many, the avatar is a second body, a social prosthetic, an expression of the self through play that allows people to explore aspects of their personalities that may not have release in other contexts.

Many people use virtual worlds as an escape, but just as often (and sometimes simultaneously), players find themselves inadvertently learning new things about themselves through structured social play. There.com's abstracted, cartoony style, with its lip-synch voice system and its gracefully choreographed set of gestures, movements and emotes, was a "good fit" for over a million and a half people.

Death Of An Avatar

When virtual worlds close, one of the points of trauma my research subjects have cited is the "death" of their character, particularly if they have invested many years in creating it. This is particularly tragic for those of us who use this "second body" to overcome physical, social or geographical limitations.

The people I encountered in my research included a disabled woman who became the leader of a 300-strong group of game refugees, and provided in-world classes for other players with disabilities; a young man whose experience in virtual worlds helped cure his agonizing fear of people; a woman who used the speech affordance of There.com to rehabilitate herself after an auto accident; and two self-described "bubble ladies" (homebound by pervasive environmental allergies), both in their 50s, who became top designers in There.com, as well as best friends.

For people without these constraints, the avatar becomes a vehicle for creative expression and social experimentation. And while the people live on, the avatars through which these personas emerged are gone, leaving players with a profound sense of loss.

But the individual avatar is not the only thing that is lost when a world closes. When my virtual world clients ask me what is the most important aspect to the success of a virtual world, my answer is one word: friendship. The more obvious answer would be "community," but community is built upon a foundation of friendship.

Social Bonding

The long-term sustainability of a community rests largely on the social bonds between its members. One of the most important findings of my MMOG research has been that players come for the game, but stay for the people. If the environment does not provide a substrate for social bonding, through its environment, its activities, its social tools and above all its people, it will ultimately wither on the vine.

The success of virtual worlds is comparable to that of the real-world "Third Place," such as a cafe or bar. They need to attract the right mix, then create an appealing environment to which people want to return as "regulars." Similarly, virtual worlds rely heavily on repeat visits. Many of the people I spoke with in There.com's waning days had been "in-world" since the very beginning, including a handful from the pre-release beta test. This is a major accomplishment in a business where the average lifespan of a subscription is around 18 months.

A common problem of games and virtual worlds is attracting the wrong mix of people. There.com managed to attract a highly diverse audience in terms of culture, class and gender (more than 50 percent female) who formed a community that was greater than the sum of its parts.

User-Created Content

Finally, There.com did something exceptional vis a vis user-created content: it gave creative voice to numerous people who had no previous experience as artists. Unlike Second Life's uncensored open content policy, There.com had a "gated" approach to user-created content. All player designs had to be submitted for review (for a fee) to be made available in-world.

This was both to protect the company from potential intellectual property violations and also to maintain the wholesome "all-ages" ethos that attracted and sustained a large portion of its population. Players went so far as to found their own in-world university where they taught each other everything from hoverboating (a mode of transport in There) to Photoshop and 3D modeling, to creative writing, and even Native American culture.

People who had no previous history of creative output suddenly found themselves successful designers. Others were motivated to learn computer skills in order to share their creativity with the community. The most successful of these used the revenue from sales of virtual items to support their design habit, or in some cases, as a source of real-world income. Some players used the skills they learned in There.com to effect a career change, such as a woman who was promoted from receptionist to graphic artist after her employer learned she knew Photoshop, a skill she learned and later taught in There.com.

For those who have not experienced life as an avatar firsthand, it is difficult to understand how the closure of a "game" could have such a strong emotional impact. But There.com is not just a "game," and not just a "virtual world." It's also a culture and a community, and massive creative effort that was built up over a period of years by a group of very dedicated players who transformed it from a cartoony "club med" comprised primarily of company-created assets, into a vibrant, creative culture comparable to any culture that exists in the real world.

Conclusion

As an ethnographer who has devoted six years of her life to serving as a kind of emissary and folklorist for the people of There.com, I feel both a sense of loss and a special sense of responsibility. The book I published on the Uru culture in There.com was meant to describe a living, breathing culture. But, as real-world anthropologists know, when a culture is eradicated, anthropology can tragically become history.

My greatest fear is that in the black-and-white, boom-and-bust world of techno capitalism, the demise of There.com will be viewed as an absolute failure rather than a learning experience. Based on the statement of its owner, Makena, There.com's demise seems to be a casualty of the recession. The loss of a few key sponsors, as well as declining developer and real estate fees, tipped the company over the line.

This is not a new phenomenon: virtual worlds have been closing since the earliest text-based and graphical worlds of the early 1980s. What's different is that they are no longer a niche form of entertainment but a pervasive part of the Web 2.0 social landscape. Many of today's numerous virtual worlds rival small and large countries in terms of population, culture and even economics. The largest of these, Finnish-based kids' world Habbo, for instance, has more than 140 million registered users, but there are numerous small and mid-scale worlds as well.

By attaching them to real-world economies, as many have done, they can even impact people's real-world livelihoods. But the bottom line is that virtual worlds, despite the fact that they are growing increasingly mainstream as a cultural phenomenon, are businesses.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of There.com is not that its creators got it wrong, but that they got it right-right enough to create a sustainable community that flowered more than seven years, but not quite right enough to weather the recession. Although it's no longer possible to experience There.com, creators of virtual worlds would do well to study both its successes and its failures. Because increasingly, if companies cannot continue to build the most successful formulas to create sustainable environments, they can and will break hearts."

[Celia Pearce is Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology.]

Con la chiusura della mostra nel bellissimo museo di  Saltara, e nell'attesa di poter annunciare presto una nuova apertura di "Avatar" in qualche altro museo italiano, questo blog tornerà ad occuparsi di new media e tecnologie tridimensionali nel mondo della comunicazione culturale.

Per iniziare embeddiamo, su segnalazione dell'amica Eleonora Fiori,  il video di un'interessante opera di Agnes Hegedüs che, artista ungherese che lavora sul 3d in tempo reale e sull'interaction design fin dai primi anni '90.

 

Prove tecniche prima dell'apertura: il teletrasporto.

Le postazioni vengono accese...

...una dopo l'altra.

La presentazione dei contenuti della mostra...

... e del mezzo videoludico che utilizza.

Primi ingressi.

 Visita guidata personalizzata.

Primo turno di explainer.

Avatar rimarrà aperta al Museo del Balì fino al 15 marzo 2010

Il gruppo che guiderà Avatar al Balì. 

Le postazioni 

Layout nella prima sala

Entrano gli avatar

In funzione: la prima sala

Foto di gruppo

Ecco alcune foto del sopralluogo nella splendida villa sede del museo, altre ne caricheremo a breve nella gallery del sito.

Educate to Innovate si costituisce di una serie di eventi, annunci e altre attività che coinvolgeranno personalmente anche il presidente Obama. Tra gli eventi sono previsti anche due contest che coinvolgono i videogiochi. In uno dei due i partecipanti devono misurare la propria creatività con LittleBigPlanet, nel tentativo di creare i livelli di gioco più originali. Sony per questo contest ha messo a disposizione mille console della famiglia PlayStation 3 e diverse copie di LittleBigPlanet.

Nell'altro contest occorre proporre delle idee innovative per la creazione di un videogioco basato sul web browser. Questa competizione è divisa in tre fasce di età: 4-8 anni, 8-12 anni e 12-16 anni. I vincitori delle due competizioni riceveranno un premio di 300 mila dollari. I dettagli ufficiali sui contest saranno comunicati nella prima parte del 2010, mentre i vincitori verranno premiati ufficialmente in occasione dell'E3 che si svolgerà a Los Angeles dal 15 al 17 giugno.

L'obiettivo principale di Educate to Innovate è di coinvolgere gli studenti nei temi di attualità dei settori presi in esame, oltre che fornire un'idea di quali possano essere le opportunità lavorative in questi settori. Non è la prima volta che il presidente Obama entra in contatto con il mondo dei videogiochi, visto che durante la campagna elettorale ha investito 44.500 dollari in pubblicità in-game.

Fonte.

"Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2" batte anche il record di prodotto di intrattenimanto più venduto di sempre: nelle prime 24 ore di commercializzazione - secondo stime di Activision - sono state vendute 4,7 milioni di copie del gioco.

Il record viene strappato a "GTA IV", un altro videogioco, che lo deteneva con 3,6 milioni di copie vendute a 24 ore dal lancio.

La serie "Call of Duty" era già stata segnalata, in una delle sue versioni precedenti, da un interessantissimo articolo di Ivan Fulco il quale valutava la strana forza "morale" che cominciano a percepire i videogiocatori a seguito di trame e svolgimenti sempre più raffinati e complessi così come di sviluppi tecnici che raggiungono una verosomiglianza sempre più perfezionata.

Lo stesso Fulco analizza "Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2" in un dettagliato e lucidissimo articolo che consigliamo senza indugio di leggere. 

Dunque, il walkthrough del livello incriminato:

  

Il software può essere scaricato da questo indirizzo, contiene diversi asset di Unreal Tournament III che possono essere usati come base di partenza e ha una dimensione di 563 MB.

Speriamo che al più presto partano progetti educativi che sfruttino la possibilità di disporre di un motore grafico di tale qualità per produrre serious games innovativi.

 Fonte.

Il progetto - a cura del centro di prevenzione ELPIDA e del collettivo artistico Personal Cinema - intende coinvolgere ragazzi fra i 13 e i 18 anni in un'esperienza ludica che possa sfociare in discussione organizzata tramite il gioco online ed il blog del sito.

Le tematiche affrontate sono quelle della dipendenza dalle droghe, e il mondo di gioco è derivato dalla versione offline di "Resist" che vide la luce nel 2007 su supporto cd-rom già premiato a Varsavia nel 2008 dal Consiglio d'Europa e Gruppo Pompidou.