Last Thursday, Sony launched the open beta for Home - a 3-D virtual world that anyone who owns a PlayStation 3 can visit for free. It is at once a grand, fascinating experiment in virtual community and social gaming ... as well as a theater of the absurd.

It is a place where people get together and connect over the games they love … and it's also a testosterone-fueled meat market where the men massively outnumber the women. It is absorbing, cool and frequently hilarious. But it also feels, at times, like a world where the madhouse inmates have been set free to run amok.

Lively is a mash up of instant message, chat room, virtual world, and Web page. Think: Second Life in a web browser. Rooms, like the avatars that represent the users within, can be customized and individually linked to. "If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website," Google's Niniane Wang said in the announcement post, "you can immediately get a sense of the room creator's interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose."

Lively is a 20% project, still in Beta, and it shows. Even on a powerful machine the performance is clunky and, for the moment, it's Windows only. (Mac and Linux clients are on their way.)

As we walked into Maxis' offices in Emeryville, there were giant posters up all over the walls that iterated the designers' mission statement. They might have been placed there for the benefit of visiting journalists, but I got the feeling they were a semi-permanent installation, meant to remind team members every time they walked by that they want players to be able to get all the way to the "space" portion of the game without feeling frustrated.

This was reflected in other design choices. Rather than force the player to start at the "cell" level, you can instead select between any of the five different parts of the game right from the start. While this is certainly sure to be a controversial decision -- it takes a lot away from the sense of growth and expansion that I believed the game would have if it forced you to start from the beginning -- it'll let anybody jump in wherever they feel most comfortable.

As we walked into Maxis' offices in Emeryville, there were giant posters up all over the walls that iterated the designers' mission statement. They might have been placed there for the benefit of visiting journalists, but I got the feeling they were a semi-permanent installation, meant to remind team members every time they walked by that they want players to be able to get all the way to the "space" portion of the game without feeling frustrated.

This was reflected in other design choices. Rather than force the player to start at the "cell" level, you can instead select between any of the five different parts of the game right from the start. While this is certainly sure to be a controversial decision -- it takes a lot away from the sense of growth and expansion that I believed the game would have if it forced you to start from the beginning -- it'll let anybody jump in wherever they feel most comfortable.

"Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity," it says.

The document calls for a game engine that includes "powerful physics capabilities" that can "support accurate in-game experimentation and research".

"A Nasa-based MMO could provide opportunities for students to investigate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career paths while participating in engaging game-play."

Other organisations such as the US armed forces already use online gaming as a recruitment tool.

America's Army for example introduces players to the "seven Army Core Values" and now claims to be one of "the most popular computer games in the world".

1. How a NASA-based educational MMO should be designed.
2. How a NASA-based educational MMO should support both formal and informal education efforts.
3. How a NASA-based educational MMO should connect to current and future NASA missions.
4. How NASA career opportunities exploration and significant STEM learning experiences would be incorporated into the design a NASA-based educational MMO.
5. How a NASA-based educational MMO game play would be engaging for all participants.

Virtual New York City is all decked out for the holidays. A festive window display in a downtown department store stunned early morning shoppers when they saw a trail of broken snowflakes leading to a beautiful blonde angel drowned in a life-sized snowglobe.

The virtual CSIs have been called in to investigate, and they need your help. Visit the crime scene and gather evidence. Then analyze it and track down the angel's killer!

HBO said on Tuesday it has acquired the rights to a short-form documentary shot entirely within Second Life, as entertainment companies increasingly turn to virtual worlds as a source for new content.

"My Second Life: The video diaries of Molotov Alta" purports to tell the story of a man who "disappeared from his California home" and began issuing video dispatches from Second Life. The popular virtual world, which has its own currency and a growing economy, has drawn millions of users who create alter egos called avatars and interact with people from around the world.

HBO, the premium channel owned by Time Warner Inc, paid a six-figure sum for the rights, Douglas Gayeton, who made the film, said in an interview. Gayeton, who uses the avatar Molotov Alta in Second Life, said the documentary is scheduled for release in 2008.

Second Life has hosted dozens of real world companies in the past year, usually as a means of promoting products like cars or movies. However, Hollywood has been increasingly interested in using worlds like Second Life as virtual movie sets, a process known as machinima.

The virtual world for kids 6-14 launched in Canada in 2005 and claims 700,000-plus paying members; subscriptions run about $6 or $58 a year. The site also makes money from virtual goods and other online merchandise sold through the site.

Founders Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe will join Disney and remain the senior execs responsible directly for Club Penguin. Former Disneyland employee Merriefield, now the CEO, will be an EVP of the Walt Disney Internet Group reporting to WDIG president Steve Wadsworth. The founders are the only shareholders; each stands to make $115 million.

The combination of Disney and Club Penguin made sense all along but Disney seemed to be more inclined toward growing its own communities-Toontown (2003), Disney Fairies (launched in 2007 with a game coming in 2008), the upcoming Pirates-in house. Iger said the company is still committed to that strategy and thinks it will be successful but sees in Club Penguin a successful standalone business. With the exception of changing the name to include Disney and supporting the company, Iger promised: "Club Penguin is going to continue to exist as is... The experience will not change at all. It will continue to evolve." Iger added: "We really don't intend to get in the way of that or do anything by virtue of the way we own it."

The MetaCard works in the same way as a normal first life credit card works. Applicants are provided with a credit limit and present the card when purchasing goods at merchants who accept the card.

MetaCard comes in two flavors: Basic and Gold. The Basic card is subject to a avatar check and provides a credit limit of L$5000 ($18.60) per month. A Gold MetaCard offers a credit limit of L$10,000 ($37.20) per month and can only be obtained by providing real world credentials and a real life credit card for automatic payments. Interest is charged at between 0.13% and 0.15% per day, which would we roughly 54% per annum, but compounding. Payments are 2% of the total amount used plus fees outstanding at the end of the month, and users have 21 days to make their monthly payment. MetaCard holders must also spend L$500 ($1.86) per month or face a monthly maintenance fee of L$300 ($1.12).

FirstMeta also offers MetaCard holders a savings account under the MetaSavings brand, offering interest rates of between 0.06%-0.09% daily.

Accrue World of Warcraft gametime at the rate of 1% of every dollar in qualifying purchases. The World of Warcraft Rewards Visa is the only card that pays you to play.

Games such as World of Warcraft and worlds like Habbo Hotel are fast becoming "significant platforms" in the converged media world, the report said.

"There's a whole ream of different genres and spaces emerging," said the report author Piers Harding-Rolls.

Revenues from subscriptions to MMOGs will hit $1.5bn by 2011, he said.

But the growth in MMOGs remains limited compared to developing markets such as video on demand, which is expected to be worth $11.4bn from revenues in four years' time.

The range of MMOGs has started to diversify in recent years with new genres and types of games. There has also been an expansion in the different ways the games generate revenue.

The seeming-MMO even includes casual games such as pool, bowling and arcade machines embedded into the world, but at any time you can invite a fellow resident to join in on any PlayStation Network-capable game. As for user-generated content, PS Home allows you to hang your own pictures on your apartment walls and share videos with friends. You can of course dress up your avatar in assorted virtual clothings -- for a price -- all while enjoying "dynamic advertising" of some sort. A large scale beta goes live in April, with the full product to be launched this fall. Make sure to hit up the read link for a gallery of the beautiful scenery and idiotic conversations you too can be enjoying in a few months.

What I've heard is that the game could be sort of like Second Life but, you know, a game. The idea, I believe, is that you will be able to construct your own in-game content using the fun and familiar mechanic of building with real world Legos.

I suspect part of the reason NetDevil was selected is because of their amazing work with destructible environments, though I'm sure their enthusiasm for game development also played a large role in the decision.

We'll be meeting with the NetDevil guys, fellow Coloradoans, later this week and I'll make sure to ask all of the right questions. Like, does Lego have the go ahead to build Star Wars, Batman or their other IP into this game? SO HOT!

CBBC, the channel for 7-12 year olds, said it would allow digitally literate children the access to characters and resources they had come to expect.

Users would be able to build an online presence, known as an avatar, then create and share content.

Bosses said CBBC World would not have the financial aspects of other online worlds such as Second Life.

A spokesman said: "This kind of cross-platform broadcasting is becoming the norm for people who have been born into the digital world.

I actually know all about it, because I'm lucky enough to be on Areae's advisory board. I can't say any more than what's above, but I can note that Raph has hit on a really smart idea that combines fun, community, and user-creativity to make an entirely new kind of online world experience.

"Areae sits at the intersection between Web 2.0 and MMOGs. If you think about it, the Web 2.0 and the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming communities have largely been pretty siloed - gamer developers go to game industry conferences and Web 2.0 folks go to Web 2.0 conferences, and there has not been enough intermingling between the two communities."

Virtual world Second Life just surpassed two million registered users, exactly two months after it hit one million residents. Yes, the churn rate is high and only 829,537 have logged on in the last two months, but that is still phenomenal growth.

The question is, Can Second Life get enough people to come back a second time or more? If $850,000 is truly changing hands every 24 hours and that money can be taken out of Second Life, then I think the answer will be yes.

Now the cable channel aims to push the boundaries of false reality one step further. This week, MTV will introduce Virtual Laguna Beach, an online service in which fans of the program can immerse themselves - or at least can immerse digitized, three-dimensional characters, called avatars, that they control - in virtual versions of the show’s familiar seaside hangouts.

"You can not only watch TV, but now you can actually live it," Van Toffler, the president of the MTV Networks Music, Film and Logo Group, said in an interview.

Wednesday's introduction of Virtual Laguna Beach is the first of three virtual worlds that MTV plans over the next year as part of an effort to steal a march on popular Web sites like MySpace and YouTube that have diverted the attention of the MTV audience. Virtual Laguna Beach will be making its debut two weeks after the abrupt dismissal of Tom Freston as chief executive of Viacom, MTV Networks' parent. One reason cited by Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, for replacing Mr. Freston was that the company had not been aggressive enough in its online expansion. Judy McGrath, the chief executive of MTV Networks, said the timing with the Web site was unrelated to Viacom’s corporate turmoil.

As Tessa, Chase, Cameron and the rest of the cast attend the Winter Formal in this week's episode (10 p.m. ET/PT Wednesday, Sept. 27), viewers can live the experience for themselves a day earlier in Virtual Laguna Beach (VLB), the new, immersive 3D social-networking experience from MTV Networks' Music Group. They can also catch the following night's episode a day before its on-air debut -- a move that marks the first time a television show premieres in its entirety in a virtual world.

Mr. Pasick's avatar, Adam Reuters, was modeled after the reporter, and sports a press pass so others know he buys his pixels by the barrel. He will set up shop in a virtual building made to look like a hybrid of Reuters' London and Times Square buildings.

While players who drop in (flying is one of only a few superhuman aspects of Second Life) can access Reuters news from the real world, the articles Mr. Pasick files will be strictly about - and addressed to - Second World players. One of his first examines Second Life's biggest lender, who charges 40 percent annual interest. His dispatches will be posted at secondlife.reuters.com.

"I've been playing in Second Life since it was a relatively small community," said Thomas H. Glocer, Reuters' chief executive. Mr. Glocer allowed that some might question the wisdom of parachuting the legendary 155-year-old news agency into such a geekfest.

"This is a very serious, old brand that stands for things and has principles, but that doesn't take itself so seriously that it wouldn't play in a gaming space," Mr. Glocer said. "This appeals to a younger demographic. Even for people who don’t go in and play in Second Life, it shows Reuters has a certain with-it-ness."

Congratulations to the whole SL community and all of us at Linden Lab on reaching 1 Million residents signed up!! Second Life is growing because together we are all building content, welcoming new people, expanding the community, and adding new capabilities to the system. It is amazing to be a part of such an experience - I can't possibly imagine any job I'd more love coming to every day. We’re trying hard to find a moment here at the office to celebrate...

Now, on the not-so-mushy side, our performance and experience right now for new users is not good! We’ve been able to handle 10,000 new residents or more every day (which is a mind-altering 10x increase since April of this year), but right now the media coverage we are getting is taking us to unreal levels of new users - we will probably sign up more than 50,000 new people today. The new user system is fairly scalable, but it will take us a few days at least to adapt to this level of load. As a result we’ve got slow website performance, way too many people on the orientation islands, and an overloaded set of new user landing points in the main grid.

More than 7 million avatars play "World of Warcraft", and approximately a half million players are within "Second Life" and the "Entropia Universe."

"A few of those people are going to die unfortunately," Jacobs said.

And sometimes those in the virtual community can be left in the dark about the real-life fate of a fellow gamer.

"If a gamer dies in the real world, no one in the virtual community has a way of knowing what happened to their online friend," said Spaight, vice president of game developer Rapid Reality. "Does it just blink out of existence? Gamers will eventually need to think about what should happen to their avatar if they die in real life."

"Well," Nancy Mandelbrot (RL info here) explains, "we were sitting in our offices one day and kind of goofing around, just geeking out about social technologies, gaming, that sort of thing, as we're wont to do. Someone made a joke about how great it would be if we brought an avatar of Governor Warner into Second Life.

"When we all quit laughing, we kind of looked around and said, 'Hey, that's not a bad idea.'

"One of Governor Warner's operating principles is to go where the voters are," she continues, "not make them come to you. We saw how rich an environment [SL] was. I mean, you can sit next to someone's avatar, strike up a conversation, and forget that you're not in the same room. We started to see that in Second Life, people can get together and talk politics with other folks without the obstacles of real life."

I ask her if she's concerned about skeptics who may wonder why Governor Warner would spend his time in something that seems like an online game.

Ms. Mandelbrot is undeterred. "The Governor likes to tell how when he decided to get into the cell phone business-- he co-founded the company that became Nextel-- his friends said he was crazy. 'No one's going to want a phone in their car!' So he doesn't have a lot of time for people who will write off new technology without trying it. There's nothing trivial about social technologies. They connect people together, we need more of that. Why waste time trying to second guess innovation? Let's try it out, see if it works... He's used to giving speeches, answering questions, in the physical space. This will be a new experience for him."

The NOAA's sim is called Meteroa, which is derived from the Greek adjective meteoras which means 'suspended in the air' (Full disclosure, I'm Greek). On this lovely island sim you can find fully interactive educational demonstrations about the ocean and weather. Examples include a sea life submarine ride created by The Magicians, and two different tsnuami demos by Aimee Weber Studios and Electric Sheep Company. Other fun stuff includes a demonstration of a real-time temperature map powered by Yahoo, narration by Exploratorium Chief Scientist Paul Doherty, an airplane ride into a hurricane, and a melting glacier demonstration.

If you already know a little something about the surname Linden, you should check out our shiny new blog just for you: Second Life Insider. If you haven't tried Second Life, you might want to check out the blog anyway, as it made me try the game. Here's a sampling of the posts so far:

Virtual ride sold for $2k USD

Wanted: Second Life Tour Guides

Suzanne Vega to Perform Live in Second Life

Slash Fiction Comes to Second Life

Habbo Hotel is a virtual five star Hotel. You can hang out with friends, meet hundreds of people, create your own room and decorate it however you like and yes, you can even bounce around on a bright red rubber ball!

It's completely free to 'check in' and once you've registered, you can chill with your friends, meet new ones or take part in a wide variety of activities and competitions. Habbo has been designed for 14 to 20 year olds in the UK, but everyone's welcome!

Sulake can stand to make significant money off porting Habbo to cell phones. The company plans to work with handset manufacturers, to preinstall the mobile community, carriers, to boost mobile portal traffic, and other entertainment brands to distribute content wirelessly. A Habbo-themed handset could even be in order–Habbo MVNO? It's such a good idea that combined with the success of the Internet site, a company exec said Sulake is planning an IPO at the end of next year.

One reason Habbo Hotel will likely be so successful on the mobile, is because its virtual-only animations and avatars, exclude some of the real-world problems associated with a MySpace-style social network. It's the same thing with Cyworld, Korea's mostly virtual world, which has also been successful on mobile.

The store, located on a private island in Second Life, is set to open as soon as this weekend. The news has SL residents considering what it means that the first real-world fashion brand has made an entrance to Second Life. Fashion is one of the virtual world's biggest industries, and the fashion business in SL is extremely competitive. So it's not a surprise that the first real-world retail brand to set up shop in SL is a fashion retailer.

The fashions themselves are patterned after American Apparel's real-world clothes, and were designed by several designers, including Aimee, though she wouldn't say who else was involved. The clothing will be priced "high-priced reasonable" compared to other SL fashions, Aimee says. No comment either on where the revenue from clothing sales will go — which leads me to believe it will go to the designers as part of their compensation

Schionning says that it's just an experiment and that the company is not trying to make money with the venture. A token sum will be charged for clothing, but the prices are not yet set. This is "not a profit-making venture," he says.

Its real-life retail outlets typically feature racy, disco-era photographs of scantily clad girls and have been at the center of controversy over the kitschy decor, which has used 1970s Penthouse magazine covers. The 6,000-square foot virtual store is modeled after the hipster brand’s bi-level Tokyo outlet.

The initial fashion selection will offer 20 styles of American Apparel’s signature logo-free casual wear: basic T-shirts, tank tops, undergarments and swimwear. Second Life residents may be privy to real-world promotions and discounts from American Apparel, and the marketing tactic may boost actual sales with a link to the online store, the company said.

A two decade veteran of the UK music and game industry, Laukosargas recently left work for family reasons, mostly. "The main reason I stopped is because I had a child," as she puts it, "but I was also getting very disapointed with the lack of inspired work in the games industy." As it happens, she worked for a time on Black & White, the classic "god game" from legendary British designer Peter Molyneux.

"It was an experience that gave me a real insight into how great games can be," she says. "It was a truly brilliant idea but it lacked play testing, I think." She's referring to the constant micromanagement required by the player, acting as a tribe's god, to provide a steady stream of resources to survive on. "It required TOO much attention." She nods to her island. "It's a balance I'm still working on here."

So while she raises a child at home, she takes creative respites to nuture a self-sustaining ecology in Second Life, adjusting variables here and there, working for the moment when she can stand back like Newton's clockmaking God and let her world unfold on its own. And, well, have her Sunday of rest.

Even this early into its creation, she's noticed some limited forms of emergence (the holy grail of artificial life developers) particularly in the development of her plant life.

70,000 residents

240,000 items created

$6.5 million internal economy

75 million IMs

Players spend 25% of their time creating virtual objects

In a revolutionary first, the Resident-made game that swept Second Life will be commercially licensed to sweep the world-beginning with the Game Developers Conference. It began as a simple, multiplayer board game with elements of Bingo and a fast-action jigsaw arcade game, created by Australian Resident Kermitt Quirk. Since its appearance in Second Life this year, however, the addictive gameplay of Tringo has dazzled Residents beyond all expectations. In recent weeks, for example, one in four Resident-run events were based around Tringo matches.

One Resident took particular interest in Tringo, but he wasn't just a fan. He also happened to be Sean Ryan, former CEO of Real Networks, now founder of Donnorwood Media. After some heavy in-world negotiations, Kermitt sold the worldwide licensing rights for Tringo to Donnorwood, and in the process, business history was made: a game originally created in an online world had been sold by its designer for commercial distribution outside it.

His new game "Spore," still under development at Electronic Arts, is built wholly around this phenomenon. Players will control a species at it evolves from single-cell organism all the way to interstellar space-traveling "Galactic God," creating the look and personality of the species and, later on, the tools, cities, and even planets they used and inhabited.

The game is created so that simple choices on the part of the consumer--mouth shape, leg placement and so on--will be amplified by the computer's physics and behavior models to create creatures worthy of a Pixar movie, he said.

But the real secret weapon for the game is that each player's creations will be uploaded to the company and then downloaded to other player's computers. Once a species reaches space, for example, it will visit other worlds inhabited entirely by cities full of beings created inside another player's game.

"Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas," Wright said.

Nimrod Yaffle, a resident of the virtual world Second Life, has revealed details of a bizarre and dark prison Second Life's maker Linden Lab is now using to lock up criminal avatars. Dubbed the "The Corn Field," the moonlit environment contains only rows of corn, two television sets, an aging tractor and a one-way teleport terminal allowing no escape. It exists as an alternative to standard disciplinary measures, which traditionally prevent access to Second Life completely.

After breaking Second Life's rules, Yaffle was informed via email by Linden Lab that he was being sent to The Corn Field. "I thought it was a joke," Yaffle told me in-world. "I never even knew it existed before I went there, and by the looks of it, a lot of other people didn't either." Rumour and speculation about the prison has been running amok in the Second Life community since word of The Corn Field spread, but until recently the prison simulator hadn't been officially confirmed.

"Sometimes when someone is suspended for a short time they are sent to the cornfield," Linden Lab's Senior VP of Community and Support wrote on the official Second Life discussion forums yesterday, adding that building the cornfield didn't require any significant development work and reassuring the community that "Once someone is permanently banned they are no longer welcome in Second Life, anywhere, including the cornfield."

Players that spend more than three hours online at a time will lose experience points and weapons in the cyber world.

Once a player has played for more than five consecutive hours, the system cuts the ability level of that player's character to the lowest level allowed by the game, often zero.

Players must take a two hour break before logging into the game again to avoid being penalized.

The new system will soon be adopted in all Chinese online games.

Rosedale said the company hopes a lot of new members will buy Linden Dollars, the online game's in-world currency, which ultimately ends up in the hands of members who create vehicles, buildings, clothing and other virtual goods. Some of that money, in turn, would then be spent on land, further bolstering Linden Lab's bottom line.

"Second Life" is a completely open-ended virtual world in which members can create nearly anything they can imagine and have the 3D modeling skills to build. Anything they create in-world can be sold, often for significant amounts of money.

The company said there are more than $18 million worth of virtual "Second Life" goods sold each year.

In Second Life and There, players or residents build the neighbourhoods and virtual structures within. They work in a similar way to the Sims games.

Both games are more like physical worlds which focus on social interaction over gameplay.

One Second Life resident called ReallyRick Metropolitan constructed the computer generated memorial for those who perished.

Within hours, virtual candles were constructed and placed around it, as well as other virtual tributes.

A clickable sign in the game takes residents to a Yahoo page where they can donate directly to the Red Cross.

A contribution system to turn Linden Dollars, Second Life's virtual currency which players use to trade in virtual goods, into to dollars is also being developed.

Falk Bergman, that is, winning the NWN Book Expo yesterday by a handful of votes, thus earning the right to publish the "official" Second Life edition of Cory Doctorow's new novel. All the entries were admirably ambitious in their own way, but in the end, Falk's more traditional prototype won out. Guess it's hard to escape the appeal of a solid book open in front of you.

We launched Second Life without out of world trade and after a few months we looked at it and thought, "We’re not doing this right, we’re doing this wrong." We started selling land free and clear, and we sold the title, and we made it extremely clear that we were not the owner of the virtual property.

USD$.4m a month is traded directly to world markets in Linden Bucks on Gaming Open Market. That's USD$.4m redeemed, or Linden Bucks turned into US dollars. In May 2005, the total amount traded in-world was USD$1.47 million. There were 1.3 million transactions between 19,500 unique users.

Starting with single-cell organisms, players work on designing life with ever more complexity. As the game progresses, players must figure out how to take creatures from individual animals to small tribes and then to cities, whole planets, solar systems and galaxies.

Wright and his team of about 30 claim to have broken new ground with Spore.

While it's a single-player game, everything players create, from huts to spaceships, can make its way into a giant database, which will be used to populate planets in the online Spore universe.

It's what they call a massively single-player game.

This study aims to identify if people from different cultural backgrounds choose to play in different ways within virtual worlds. Simple questions such as: Do players from certain places bond with some game races more than others? How do people feel about leading or being led within parties? Do players enjoy working with people who speak different languages? What weapons do people prefer? take on added significance in this light, as they may begin to show cultural variation.