A couple of summer loose ends are introduced here for these dog-days (Jeff Freeman's Love Story and "Turn-based Worlds")...

(1.) Jeff Freeman posted a fine read for the summer-time hive mindLove Story is fiction but well-crafted and suggestive of a number of Terra Nova themes (beyond the frequently discussed *spoiler* one)

(2.) I've long been musing upon a post about "Turn-based worlds." Never quite got around to squaring it all upBut Jeff's Love Story wiggles a bit from my hand.  A starter's glimpse now, more later..This is an attitude (deeper than that, it's a disposition) which I'd suggest is rooted in developer practice generally, and computer games developer practice specificallyThey 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

You can Buy SWG Credits, a professional, loyal and reliable Final Fantasy XI Gil exchange corporation work groupWe are fairly confident that, in fact, Bob Moore is the brains behind the operation (Bob, if you're reading this, give me a call)But since we were uncertain about who was responsible for all the good work, we decided to grab as many of them as we couldEspecially those who, like Eric, are big fans of Jane Austen, have spent years living in Southeast Asia, and who hold the conviction that every American 13 year old should be packed off to live with a Third World family for a yearEric is particularly interested in quantititative methodologies of research in MMOGs

So, welcome Eric! Glad to have you aboardAnd please, no fighting with Nic, ok?

Now you might think that this would be a Bad Idea, but apparently the players love itIt may have something to do with the academic cycle, but it seems that people are willing to play a virtual world that they know will only last 3 or 4 months before it resets entirely

Imagine it wasn't an academic textual world, though, but was a commercial graphical worldWould people still play it, or something like it?

I'm guessing they wouldIf there were new shards starting all the time, so newbies were never dumped in a "lame duck" instantiation, a fixed time limit could be attractive in several ways:

You only have to commit for a fixed period, not indefinitely

There's greater narrative scope for the designers

As most of the characters will be of the same "level" anyway, the concept of levels can be replaced by some less grindy means of measuring success

You're free to reinvent yourself periodically, instead of having to wear a character that might have been appropriate for you two years ago but who just isn't "you" any more

Content can be arranged so that players will want to be in similar geographic areas at similar timesYou won't need so many players per shard to get that "village" feel

Lots more...

The demise of the turn-based strategy game is a common lament in grognard computer game circlesThere are many, including myself (though not blindly), who consider the over-use of real-time simulation and strategy to be an unfortunate distractionOne of the biggest sins (IMO) of the "real-time" fashion is how when overused it can hide otherwise apparent shortcomings in AI and game design

By and large, the forum arguments in favor of turn-based games tends to be 'meta' in nature and fall into categories similar to those described by Trey Walker ("more strategic", "elegance"...)A subtle and powerful point however, is that turn-based design is not an absolute but is a choice on a continuum of possibilitesChess played with a timer -- taken to the limit-- can approach real-time simulation clock-tics, though it would become a very different game.