[iDC] RE: An Inconvenient Youth and Second Life

[Andreas Schiffler]

Ana wrote:
>  the US (where almost 100 procent of computer games and online
> worlds are created) 
Not really 100% ...
- Take the EGDF for example, a federation for European developers 
representing 500 studios and about 15K people (http://www.egdf.net/).
- Longest-running MMORPG is developed CCP in Iceland 
(http://www.eve-online.com/).
- Most popular MMORPG World of Warcraft is published by Vivendi in 
France with a large development team from Europe
- In sheer numbers, Japanese made titles for consoles probably outnumber 
PC games. In the Asian category of MMORPGs we have Final Fantasy XI 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XI) for example or Legend of 
Zelda for the Wii.


BTW, unrelated to this: I found the Bartle Test of player personality 
(http://www.guildcafe.com/bartle.php).  I am an Achiever 66.66%, 
Explorer 60.00%, Killer 33.33%, Socializer 40.00% - what a schizophrenic 
personality in a game I seem to be. I wonder what the statistics would 
say about the SL population as a whole - this would be an interesting 
experiment to conduct in SL.


On the Second Life front, here are some of my latest experiences:
- My character "magically" changed from a man to a woman. Since the the 
general outfit looked similar and once does not see oneself from the 
front, it took me a while to recognize that. Maybe a Linden-script-virus 
I ran into ... quite a surprising event.
- Starting from a search for "newbie", I ended up in a slow-loading 
store where one can get free L$'s from an "ATM" by giving away your 
personal information to advertising scammers or signing up to a dating 
service for L$123 a pop.
- I randomly teleported into an area that ended up having lots of poor 
quality nude images for sale. Quite a reflection of the Internet at large.
- I was force-quit the game when the client crashed suddenly after half 
an hour of play.