The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. ABC News (USA) – DreamWorks Rolls out “Kung Fu Panda” Virtual World. “After 2-1/2 years of work and an investment of about $10 million, DreamWorks Animation has started rolling out its first online virtual world — a browser-based Web theme park tied to its “Kung Fu Panda” movie franchise. The marketing push for “Kung Fu Panda World,” which comes at a subscription cost of $5.95 per month, but can also be sampled after watching an online ad, kicks off Monday after a soft launch at the end of March.”

2. Wired (USA) – Virtual Worlds, Real Money: Can Social Games Solve Music’s Woes? “Music fans of tomorrow are kids of today, and the way they pay for digital content is through virtual worlds like Farmville and Penguin Town, which turn the acquisition of virtual goods — and digital music is nothing if not a virtual good — into a game. Conduit Labs’ Music Pets app for Facebook may look cute, but it could have tangible ramifications for how music is discovered and sold in the future. The goal of Music Pets is to entertain a virtual pet by training it to like the music you like, then using points to send the pet out to find more music to add to your collection. It sounds silly, but this cartoon-ish virtual world includes every element of the real-world music experience: getting recommendations, deciding whether you like songs, collecting music, and going over to your friends’ “houses” to play songs from your collection, which, as with just about everything else, requires that you expend points.”

3. BBC News (UK) – South Korean children face gaming curfew. “The South Korean government is introducing policies aimed at curbing the amount of time children spend playing online games. The first involves barring online gaming access to young people of school age between 12am (midnight) and 8am. The other policy suggests slowing down people’s internet connections after they have been logged on to certain games for a long period of time. The Culture Ministry is calling on games providers to implement the plans.”

4. National Defense Magazine (USA) – Airmen to Live Out Their Careers In Cyberspace. “Air Force officials anticipate a world in which every recruit receives an avatar upon joining the service. These avatars would follow airmen through their entire careers, earning promotions and educational credits and even moving with them to new offices and bases. This would take place in simulated worlds that mirror the service’s actual facilities. “Everyone who comes into the Air Force will be given an avatar, and that avatar travels with them, grows with them, changes appearance with them,” said Larry Clemons, of the Air Education and Training Command. “It will provide them a history of where they’ve been and a notion of where they’re going.”

5. CNET (USA) – Haptic hug vest makes emoticons so last century. “Sure, it’s great when that hot avatar gives you a hug in Second Life, but wouldn’t it be even better if you could actually feel the embrace? Researchers from Japan are demonstrating a motorized haptic device that lets you experience real-time virtual hugs by physically reproducing the pressure felt on the chest and back when someone gives you a squeeze. Getting a hug that moves beyond the basic emoticon requires donning a kind of harness adorned with soft fabric hands that envelop the wearer in a warm faux embrace. But the HaptiHug is only one of the affective garments included in the I_FeelIM (“I feel therefore I am”) system, which uses software to extract emotional meaning from written text and pass it on to one of a number of haptic devices that react accordingly.”

6. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Avatar Reality Taking Blue Mars To The Clouds. “In 2007 when Avatar Reality first began showing off its virtual world, Blue Mars, much of the talk was high fidelity environments built on CryEngine 2. The early screen shots were certainly something to see compared to most virtual worlds. But that beauty came with high system requirements. Now, however, Avatar Reality has announced that it will be using the AMD Fusion Cloud Server developed by AMD, Super Micro, and OTOY to stream Blue Mars from the cloud to virtually any computer’s Web browser. Specifically, Avatar Reality mentions handhelds, Macs, and legacy hardware–not the gaming PCs that usually run CryEngine 2.”

7. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Avatar II: The Hospital. “The nurses have been told there’s a crisis. But they’re hardly prepared for the chaos that awaits. Hospitals, medical schools and health foundations are staking out space in the online community Second Life, in order to train medical and nursing students in clinical skills and to improve hospital efficency and response to emergencies. Dozens of patients, stricken with a debilitating flu, crowd the emergency room. Some slump mutely in chairs. Others wander, moaning or calling out for blankets. Just as the nurses begin triage, part of the hospital goes dark: a blackout. This chaotic scene isn’t real—it’s part of an online simulation designed to help nurses make quick, sure decisions in emergencies. Dozens of hospitals, medical schools and health foundations have staked out space in the online community Second Life, where participants can build their own virtual clinics and stage just about any training drill they can imagine. Interest is so high, both Stanford University and the University of Michigan last month held workshops on medical training and education in the virtual world.”

8. Reason Magazine (USA) – I Am, I Am, I Am Superman/And I Know What’s Happening. “Peter Ludlow has a pair of guest posts at Henry Jenkins’ site about some battles that broke out in Second Life, a well-known virtual world. The short version: Pranksters and vandals, known in gaming circles as griefers, make trouble for other players; a vigilante group forms to battle the griefers; paranoia sets in, and the vigilantes start to see griefers everywhere. Eventually the conflict spills out into the outside world.”

9. Kotaku (USA) – Blizzard Is Selling World Of Warcraft Mounts Because Players Demanded Them. “While naysayers may think corporate greed is the answer, Blizzard tells Kotaku the real reason World of Warcraft mounts have shown up for sale in the company’s online store is because that’s exactly what the players wanted. The overwhelming response to yesterday’s addition of the Celestial Steed in-game mount for World of Warcraft to the Blizzard store backs up comments we received today from Blizzard PR man Ryan Arbogast. Purchase queues began forming soon after the virtual item went on sale, with players in the forums reporting upwards of 12,000 folks waiting at the virtual cash register at one time for a chance to purchase the translucent flying mount. Wow.com reported yesterday that at one point the number topped 140,000.”

10. GamesRadar (USA) – Hands on with The Old Republic. “Strange to say it, but when you first start playing The Old Republic you forget it’s going to be built like an MMO. Missions, such as the one we played recently, are doled out in such dramatic and wordy ways that you’re temporarily blinded to the fact that the bomb-pursuit you’re on is essentially a World of Warcraft quest in space boots. Secure a ZR-57 bomb that’s deep within a Separatist fortress on the planet of Ord Mantell, having taken down a force field at another point somewhere within said fortress? Well, that’s a little bit of a “fight your way into a zombie castle and bring back some fairy dust” retrieval quest isn’t it?”