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Incoming Support Request

You haven’t fixed the BING search page on Cafe World. It comes up when I click on an oven, when I click on a mission and then everything is ruined.

FRONTERVILLE:

I haven’t been able to play Fronterville for FOUR days. I can send gifts, but don’t know if anyone receives them but they must because I get gifts.

But I have a spouse and it is stuck. It won’t custom or random or play or anything and it freezes the whole page so I can’t do a thing and there is a white avatar that says spouse? I am sick and tired of trying to clear land and lo and behold a bear appears or a fox or a snake immediately. That is disgusting. I had FIVE bears in 30 minutes.

I even had BING search page when I clicked on Farmville and it is all white and nothing and I have to reload and it takes time.

Thank you, [name removed]

Somebody Somewhere Is Starting The Gamer’s Rights Movement

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 […] » about 300 words

Game Law Redux

Matt says my attempts to analogize online roleplaying games to more familiar contests like chess or automobile racing are “just silly.” But his response appears to reinforce my point rather than refute it. It is the responsibility of the gamers and gaming organizations to create and enforce rules. People violating those rules are subject to […] » about 300 words

Wide World of Video Games

Matt started talking up the weird issues developing around multiplayer online games a few weeks ago. Then soon after he blogged it, a story appeared in On the Media (listen, transcript)

Short story: online gaming is huge — one developer claims four million paying customers. More significantly, the interplay between real and virtual worlds might create new challenges for this real world legal system. “Theft” of in-game money and equipment among players in the online world is possible, but it’s lead to the real-world arrest of at least one person and the murder of another when authorities refused to act.

One argument is that these games occupy players time and cost money, so in-game theft results in real-life loss. Baloney. Chess and Monopoly occupy great deals of time, but try telling the cops I rooked your knight. Money? A huge number of Americans invest time and money on building and racing cars on the approximately 1800 racetracks around the country. Real time and and hard-earned money are lost when cars crash, but the track has its own rules “rubin’s racin, Cole” — and none of us would excuse a driver for off-track violence against a competitor.