Cory: Imposing costs and barriers on obvious property is considered rudeBut it's not considered rude when it is offshoreSay SL has problems with people who are doing studies and not disclosing this to SL users.

Yochai: Do we think collaborative production will be better or worse if we have password protection for certain subgroups? Perhaps not everyone should have the same rights over the space?

Questions from audience:

Peter Ludlow: You see a complaint that we can't see the scripts anymore, we just get eye candyPerhaps the scripting is being stifled by the IP policy?

On the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened

Other kinds of (creative) human activity vanish from its radar screen

This is an argument that forms part of a chapter I've written for a volume I'm co-editing  with Sandra Braman (Command Lines) that is currently under review, and there the specific example is Second Life and the challenges that the varieties of user content therein make to the multiple ideas about content held by the different teams within Linden LabBut GDC led me to see this claim as more applicable here as wellThey looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at usIt was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well

But overall, I like to think that the attendance demonstrates that developers are interested in what academics might be able to tell them (again I will point out: no fruit was thrown)And all week, I talked with developers who were interested in what was going on with research, from the smallest to the largest companiesMaybe the issue is the "larger" communityIt's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that levelBut I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going onI don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to beBut then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet

The best way to put the assertion (and this is all it is at this point; and again, please keep in mind that there are a number of familiar exceptions) is that the practice of game software development generates a way of seeing and defining problems (as essentially precise, logical, and algorithmic), and creating solutions (through linear, text-defined code) that makes other ways of accounting for what happens in VWs seem at worst nonsensical and at best irrelevant or quixotic.

David: Thinks that Yochai should build the world he wantsBut maybe Second Life should have a *Benklerville* where a separate set of rules apply?

Cory: You could do that.

Excluded middles are welcome to weigh in--but how do you know when you're at the right balance between the two?

This is obviously not just an academic or idle question with the release of Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft imminent, the former within two weeks, and with the Jump to Lightspeed expansion of Star Wars: Galaxies having come out yesterday