Discussion: Online worlds

I have been playing online for many years now through Microsoft’s service for the Xbox called Xbox-live - now days I own an Xbox 360 and various games in different genres. I suppose that all games played online in a way lets you have an so called avatar since you always have you Xbox alias, but in this discussion I will be talking about a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called Phantasy Star Universe (PSU).

Like any MMORPG you create an avatar in the beginning of the game, letting you personalize your character quite a lot. There are just like in World of Warcraft (WoW) different types of characters – all with different abilities. The four races in PSU: humans, beasts, CASTs (a form of android) and Newman. Humans are the middle-way so to speak, the do not posses any special attribute both has a balanced profile. Beasts on the other hand are strong and when they reach level 20 they can transform into their beast form. There are four type of beast form to choose from all with their different attribute. CASTs are like androids, one part human and one part machine, with their specialty in guns. When reaching level 20 they can buy special weapons called SUV-weapons. Newman is best described as a type that has magical powers. They can therefore use wands and rods.

As I said when you first start playing you get to choose your character type and then start changing its appearance – which can take a long time since there are a lot of options if you want to. I did not go that deep into it. I should say that I only played the demo and not the full game but all the basic components are the same since I know people who have the full game. Anyhow, once you choose your character – in my case a beast – and get in to the game you start out in your room. Not much here but some places to store things and a wardrobe where you can change your clothes. There is one important thing in your room if you want it to be. There is your robot which you also can store things in, put most importantly you can – explained in a really easy way – feed him and make him grow and once he reach a certain level you can take him with you on the battlefield. The robot also has different attributes when transforming depending on what kind of things you feed it with.

My first thought when walking out of the room was that it was only me in the whole world, but after looking around I found a cube where you could change universe and I picked the first one and suddenly there was a lot of people everywhere. Your starting place once out of the room is a space station and it is here you find the easiest mission. So I started out by doing it, either you can do it yourself or joining a group. I played alone just the get acquainted with the controls and the fighting system. It is a real-time based fighting system which means that you get into a room with many enemies and try to strike all of them, in other words it is not round-based. In the beginning these enemies are hard since you only have level 1. The leveling system is exponential so you level up pretty fast in the beginning. When I had been playing a while I started to understand the messaging system. It looked like cartoonish bubbles and you could also make your face appear both in the main screen for everyone to see or only in the party you where in. The whole style is extremely Japanese, which is not strange since it is a Japanese game made by Sega. I could go on about everything you can do and all the different planets you come to but it just does not feel that relevant. You can read most about the game here and here.

What I found most interesting is that my three hours went so fast. I could easily see myself sitting here for a lot longer trying to reach a higher level, leveling up my weapons and increasing them in strength by upgrading them, as well as feeding my robot and taking it with me in battle. Most of all it is the community-feel that gets my attention, that is: talking to people with bubbles, selling things to each other and hoping that you will not get scammed (which happened once and I am still pissed, but out of courtesy I will not post his/her name).

I have tried WoW and it is easy to see that there are similarities in the two games with the exception that WoW is a lot bigger and has more depth. Still as a light version it works well. The fact that you pay for the game – both PSU and WoW – makes it even worth since you feel more obliged to play it. It is addiction and you put an economical value on it as well. It is a brilliant and also scary combination. That is one of the reasons why I have not been playing WoW more; since I know that my amusement with games and gaming culture will lead to the problem with me sitting in front of the TV or computer a lot. It is the same reason why I do not fileshare – since I know I would download a lot of music and movies.

I also thought that it was funny that once you got into a group of people that you like you almost always only played with that group and if someone new joined there was a sort of getting into the group-feeling – that you needed to pass this test to be able to continue playing with that specific group. Otherwise you simply got kicked from the group. Overall my experience online was just positive – as it almost is every time I go online. Of course there were some idiots in this game too, who for example wrote the same message all over the screen so you could not see anything. But then again idiots can be found anywhere. Maybe not the best way to end, but it is a valuable lesson.

Science Fiction seminars

I might be a bit late with this one, which has a lot to do with the fact that Google really hasn’t been nice to me for the past weeks and so I haven’t been able to upload anything to the blog. Now everything seems to be fine, since you are reading this. I found the seminars with Michael Godhe to be really interesting. I especially liked the idea of science fiction as a prophecy – that in science fiction you often find things which years later becomes reality. The examples are many, but of course we have Jules Verne’s submarine. When it comes to Jules Verne Godhe points out that since he wrote about so many inventions he was bound to right about something. Other examples of inventions that where discussed was cellphones and nuclear warfare. I personally believe that science fiction is not meant to be used in a too serious agenda. In the seminars we discussed a group called Sigma – which is a team a science fiction writes whom comes up with new ideas on for example terrorist attacks. They are being paid to do so by the American government. This is from my point of view to take it a bit too serious – I must say that it’s a funny idea, but not a very practical one. Again Godhe’s words on Jules Verne make a really good example – they’re bound to be right at some point. The question is of course how you judge something that is made up being more likely to happen then something else?

We also discussed what science fiction is and one of the students made a brilliant definition, but unfortunately I don’t remember it. Anyhow Godhe claims that the first science fiction novel was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Since then it has evolved but the basis is the same – it is about taking a problem from the present time and put it into a different context and environment – such as the future or the past. This got me thinking. Since I am a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki I asked myself if that is science fiction or not? I know that his most famous work Spirited Away can not be claimed to be science fiction, but many of his other work has a lot of those inputs. Take for example Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind which has it story around a world where most of the earth was destroyed during a period called Seven Days of Fire and where most of the ecosystem has been polluted and is toxic. Where the human settlements are scattered and divided by a toxic sea. Remember that this film was released in 1984 and even if global warming might have been known I still think that the film skillfully proves its point. If it hadn’t been for the science fiction seminar I probably wouldn’t have thought about it like that. I had of course reflected on it, but still. If you haven’t seen that movie – or any other Miyazaki movie for that matter – I would really recommend it. Godhe did say that the line between fantasy and science fiction is getting thin and he claims that the only thing that differs them is rationality – which you have in science fiction.

As a final point I recommend you to read – yet again – one of my friends take on the same seminar since it has a deeper meaning then my input.

Good band

I don't know if anyone has seen the commercial for Sterling airlines on television lately - but the song in that video is brilliant and the group behind it is equally brilliant - with a terrible name. The commercial is here by the way. The group is called Bang gang, their from iceland and make really good pop music. I have been listening to them for the past couple of days. Their Myspace is here, where they have four songs that you can stream. I really recommend downloading there latest album.

Discussion: communitys

First of all I would like to start by saying that I will discuss online-communitys in this post and that I have been trying to get this post posted for a while now but I was not able to log in. My own experience in online-communitys is not that good, which has to do with the fact that I do not really like communitys where you have to register to see the material – which leads to the question about the difference between gated and open communitys. As I see it almost all communitys are in some way gated, since there is always some sort of registration. I do not see a big difference in appearance when it comes to gated and open communitys, but there is a difference in the attitude from the user. A user of an open community might be as serious as one in a gated community, but as I see it there is a greater responsibility in a gated community. If for example anyone can write what they want in a forum, then you will have the problem with people spamming and arguing in a sense which is not good for a community. This has a lot to do with how long the user has been in a certain community. Here I see a problem. I have many times felt that I do not want to join a community solely because there is no acceptance for new users. It could for example be so called “Stupid questions” – but as I see you have to have the right to ask these questions before you learn the system. When it comes to quality of course there most likely is a higher quality in gated communitys, but it has more to do with the users than the community itself or even the subject which it surrounds.

When it comes to communitys where you pay to gain access to certain material or to get higher ranking I do feel that these communitys in a one way is better, but there is also a feeling that sometimes people just pay for something which could have been for free. That the users that want to be part of the community have to pay, since this is what the community is all about. For myself I can of course relate to Xbox-live – which is Microsoft’s online platform for games on their gaming system. Thing is that there you have an automatic silver membership, but if you want to gain access to online gaming and download demos and so on you have to pay for a gold membership. As I see it, there really isn’t any reason having a silver or gold membership, since if you want to get the online experience, you need the gold one. Basically if you’re not interested in playing online, then you wouldn’t plug in the broadband cable. Paying for a membership does give the user more motivation, but again it is about the commitment you have for the community that is going to make the difference – whether your commitment is money or anything else.

Now for the quality versus quantity question – it is a bit like asking the question about the meaning of life, there is easy answers and there is extremely deep one’s which would take years to come up with. It all comes down to how you define quality and quantity. It also depend on what you focus is. Is it the interface, is it the people or perhaps the overall experience? For me it is about the overall experience – I can for example not like all the users or even hate some if the experience is right. That is actually the case with Xbox-live. I play with the friends on my friendslist, but apart from that I just don’t care.

When it comes to quantity I personally prefer smaller communitys simply because it is easier to keep track of everyone, but then again it depends on why you are there. Myspace is a good example of a community that is far too big. From the beginning it was more or less an underground community for underground artists. Today it has grown to become a huge community with millions of users. I used to like Myspace, I was there everyday listening to new music and sharing my own. Now days I visit it maybe once a week, just because I feel that I have too. Myspace is dying – not because of its users but by spammers, old profiles and most of all the lack of ability to reborn itself. You still need a Myspace if you’re in the music industry, since it has replaced the demo, but at the same time this is mainly because there isn’t any alternative. I don’t go to Myspace for new music anymore, since there really isn’t easy to browse among the massive amount of profiles. If I may use a cliché: it is like finding a needle in a haystack. It feels like Myspace is a graveyard for old profiles as well as bands that think that just because they’re on Myspace they are destined to make it in the music industry. Now days I found music somewhere else and perhaps go to Myspace to see if there are more songs from a specific artist.

To be able to control a community you have to have rules – it is essential. After that I just feel that any form of reprimand that is necessary to control the community should be used. I do agree with my friend on this one – a combination is probably the most effective.

Online relationships are a tricky question, since they in many ways will lead to relationships which may also be part of your everyday life. I don’t draw a line between online and IRL-relationships – in theory. Since you can always be connected nowadays, online relationships are in a way more real in the sense that many of these relationships can be reached through computers or mobile/cell phones. I suppose that it is also the reason why people feel attractive to them, since you just as easily can disappear by going offline. It is easy to see the person on the other side as just a fictional idea and not a real person. In real life relationships there is a higher form of commitment – you can’t just walk away and even if you can it would hurt more. I ask myself where I cross the line from being in an online relationship to where I consider the relationship to be real. I am not talking about relationships as in a “boy meets girl situation” – I am talking in general terms. My conclusion is that when people I meet online make it from their forum and into my private sphere – such as mobile/cell phones or messaging services – I consider them real, which is kind of ironic since these tools are digital too. I suppose that this is how the future will look, that the higher our connectivity gets the more will the blurry line between real and digital relations become more… blurry.

When it comes to media in these new forums, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life – I do feel that the potential in these markets are great if you figure out how to use them in a clever way. That is from a marketing perspective. I am afraid that it will become like Myspace – that you put too much energy in just being there then on using it right. Say that a company would use World of Warcraft in a commercial way – I think that they would just take advantage of being there first then to use it as a marketing tool and when people understand that it is someone using it use media to further increase the focus. I also think it inevitable that old media has to fuse with new media – since people is not going to abandon new media. Again in the end it is about connectivity.

I have already looked upon Facebook and its rules and regulations. I would like to look on two more communities that I am part of. The first one I have mention – that is Xbox-live. The document clearly states – like any other document of that kind – that it is I as a user that will oblige to any changes in the service and that it is for non-commercial use. Also that it is the user that has the responsibility for the account. This pretty much is what is expected. When it comes to how you leave the service you have to call Microsoft’s support. I have much to say about their support, but I think that’ll be a later post. Let’s just say that all my language knowledge from Xbox-live – especially swearwords – comes in handy when calling there sometimes.

The next segment is even more fun since it involves what you can and can not do while using the service – that is: playing online. Basically it says that you can’t harass anyone online – and my question is: has anyone who wrote this text actually played online? Sure for most parts my online experience has been nothing but good – but that doesn’t mean that there has been harassment and inappropriate language. It happens every time I go online. Most of the time I have also been playing a game which clearly states that you need to be 18 years of age to play – and what do I hear on the other end of my headset? Correct – I hear a swearing, for most part, annoying 7-12 year old that tries to prove something with his gaming by telling everyone how good he is and that the rest of us are idiots. Basically everyone in that particular room should have been banned.

Now to the next community – problem is that its rules have already been discussed in a similar post. Which is really not a problem, but it feels like it would be unnecessary to discuss something that someone else already has written. I am talking about Myspace. Now you can find its rules here. What I found most interesting about Myspace is not the rules itself – but the fact that people do there best to brake them. As I said earlier in this post there are a lot of old and fake profiles, the later controlled with bots. This brings me to a crucial opinion: people are ready brake the rules in order to get seen on a platform that is overfilled with spam and the owners do not do much about it. I think this is sad since Myspace has the potential to grow as a community.

So these are my view on communitys. I will most likely come back to more discussions on Myspace in later posts.

Am I a monkey with a typewriter?

So, why am I asking myself if I am a monkey with a typewriter? Merely because the book I have just read says so. I have just read a book called The cult of the amateur – why today’s internet is killing our culture by Andrew Keen. To summarize the book, Keen argues that our moral values is getting devoured and that the usage of blogs, social online networks and the collective intelligence in search engines and online stores in the end will lead to the end of medias like newspapers, TV as well as institutions like record companies and physical record- and bookstores that will have to close if they can’t obey the large masses.

My first thought after finishing that book is why I blog? And after a while: where in this mess of yet thousands and thousands of self written musicians, journalists and video creators do I place myself? I will soon have a bachelor's degree in music production – does this make me an expert? Do I feel more of an expert because of it?

Before I will give you an answer to those questions I would like to address the attention towards the society of which Keen is really harsh against – that is this society: the blogosphere. First of all I do think it is funny that a book that talks about web 2.0 as a big threat to our culture still has its own blog-like website. It is called The great seduction where Keen discusses media culture and technology. Just a thought. Even more funny is that he has linked to Wikipedia – one of the sites which he really seems to hate. Above that he also has about two blogentries every month.

I took the liberty to search for blogs that are talking about Andrew Keen and his manifesto. What I found was a massive criticism against the author himself as well as the book. What I found were also some really interesting points in the debate.

The first point was made in this blog where the author claims that perhaps web 2.0 is deteriorating our society, but at the same time says that isn’t it fair the claim that the institutions that Keen say should be the ones giving us for example news also need to evaluate their work. I personally think that it is a fair assumption – because just as I am careful with the so called real facts that you sometimes find in blogs, shouldn’t I be an equally suspicious reader while opening the newspaper. It is about knowing that all sources are not reliable sources – and it really doesn’t have to do with the source. Sure I probably feel more secure reading a newspaper than I do reading a blog. It is in that statement that the problem lies. I really don’t see a reason putting these institutions on a pedestal just because people working there are educated and have experience with news – in this case. What I am trying to say is that it is not about trusting one or the other source of information – it is about knowing where to find different kinds of information, collect all different views on a subject, and then have your own opinion about it. The truth is that all facts in some ways have been altered and they are bound to be subjective. Perhaps this is the most obvious problem with a blog – people in general like to have an opinion, but many times it is only based on one source - one fact - and most of the time it is the source that makes the information the most interesting from that persons point of view.

Another blog has a good point of view regarding the statement above. He says that people have always tried to express themselves through music, arts, writing and such – but it is with web 2.0 that they have the ability to put it online. But just because a person is for example writing – does this mean that everyone is reading it? Of course not. Just as the example of people showing their work to close friends and relatives you will most likely have the same progress – with the only difference that it is online. It is there for the world to see, but most of the world will not care about it anyway. Perhaps Keen is right when he says that bloggers have too much power – but we are really not talking about all of the blogs, but instead a small number of blogs. As I see it the gatekeepers have moved from magazines and newspapers into cyberspace.

I do feel that some blogs has gotten the wrong idea about Keen himself. As he is saying in an interview on a show called The Agenda he is neither against technology nor entrepreneurialism online. This is a crucial point, since many people have felt the need to really go down on the author himself in their blog instead of the book itself, and as he says in that same interview he is against user generated content. These two blogs for example: here and here. The first one is about Keen being a douchebag – first of all any person who actually tags their blog with that word and then tries to have a discussion about it is just not worth listening to from my point of view. Sure he might truly believe that Keen is an idiot, but it is not fair to the author nor the people reading the book or blog to use that kind of language – especially not if your goal is to be authentic. It is also from my point of view not right to say that someone else has good thoughts in the subject and then just have one link. The other blog is calling Keen ”The Most Pathetic Human Being in Existence” – again why use this phrasing if you try to have a decent discussion about the subject. I do understand why the blogging community is upset – as this blog says: “Again, how do you argue with a man who’s calling you an ignorant, egotistic, boorish monkey?”. He then argues that: “…we need to find some common ground on which to argue”. Clearly it is such statements that should be heard – not people placing themselves on the opposite side having the same extreme and ignorant beliefs. In fact it is extremely smart of Keen to write the book the way he has – since the reaction it got from the blogosphere was expected and with that the publicity that he wanted.

From my standpoint I must ask myself: why is it always a discussion about either or? It is the same problem with the discussion about illegal music downloading. It is like you have to take one side – when the truth is clearly somewhere in the middle. It is the same with Andrew Keen’s book. He has some really good points – for example his discussion about knowing where a source is really from. I totally agree when he claims that the web makes it far too easy for people to hide behind it as a way to manipulate other people – to be totally anonymous. Youtube has that problem as well as Wikipedia. I also believe that it is right that some universities have banned Wikipedia as a source of information for essays and papers. In the interview on The Agenda and in his book Keen is right concerning the fact that Wikipedia really does not have a righteous system for its material – there is no scale. Sure some posts has been locked from editing, but that is just a way for Wikipedia to not take their responsibility.

When he starts to attack services like Amazon I do feel that he has stepped over the line. He claims for example that the algorithms that suggest that if you like this you might like that, can never compare to the knowledge of a real person in a physical music- or bookstore. I agree that a real person has a broader knowledge – but why is there a need to get upset getting a tip of something that you might actually enjoy? Take for example the service last.fm – which indeed is one of those communitys that Keen probably would hate. It is a brilliant example of when collective knowledge is as good as it gets. I personally got really good suggestions to new artists and bands. I have also spoken to many people within the music industry that feel that this is one possible way to go.

Now back to my original questions. First of all: am I a monkey with a typewriter? Well, no I don’t consider myself as a monkey with a typewriter – nor do I feel that anyone blogging is one. I still do think that it is a good point which leads to the second question: why do I blog? I could make it easy and say that it is part of a course, but even if that is true I would probably blog even if I hadn’t been on the course. I don’t see myself as an expert. Yes, I am educated, but I am far from an expert. For example I don’t have the working experience needed – but if anyone out there would want to give me the opportunity to progress within the music industry feel free contact me. Still, people blogging should really ask each other the same question.

So to answer that question: I think I blog since it is an opportunity to express a thought, but mostly I do to have discussions. I don’t have an urge to scream “Look at me” under the oath of: I blog and therefore I am. Sure I want people to read my blog, but it is to get a discussion going. Because let's face it: you will not automatically be seen because of a blog – just as you probably will not get a record deal for having a myspace-page.