There are so many cool things in Fred Stutzman’s recent post, but this point rang the bell for me just as I was considering the differences between World of Warcraft and Second Life. More on those games in a moment, first let’s get Stutzman’s description of ego vs. object networks:
An ego-centric social network places the [...]

Posted November 7, 2007 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Technology. Tags: ego, fred stutzman, mmorpg, second life, social network, social networking, social software, world of warcraft, WOW. One Comment.

There it is in The Guardian:
Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games.
Yep, “do no evil” Google has filed a patent on the process of building psychological profiles of its users for sale to advertisers.
Details such as whether [...]

Posted May 22, 2007 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology. Tags: advertising, evil, google, online gaming, profiling, psychological profile, second life, world of warcraft. 7 Comments.

Annalee Newitz tells me that video game developers are looking for cheaters by installing spyware with their games. Blizzard, developer of World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo is among the biggest names doing this.
Greg Hoglund, quoted at Copyfight, notes:
I watched the [software] warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on [...]

Posted October 24, 2005 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Technology. Tags: annalee newitz, blizzard, cheaters, eula, game environment, game law, online games, sniff, snoop, snoops, software warden, spyware, video game developers, video games, warden, world of warcraft. One Comment.