I could have waited one more week and made this post officially on the one-year anniversary since my last post, but I hope to be posting more often, not less.

It’s interesting to look back at your posts from a year or more ago that have been perfectly preserved by the Internet.  In this case it turns out that my thoughts on Facebook are being validated — and that MMOGs are indeed evolving fast.

Last year at this time, I was musing on whether Facebook might actually become the new technology platform for MMOGs.  As I noted at the time, Mob Wars was steaming along with up to 500,000 daily active users and an estimated $7-15M in annual revenue.  Clearly the market for these games has exploded: Today that number of DAU would place the game around #25 on the top Facebook games (#42 of all Facebook apps) (per appdata.com).

With Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, and others leading the way, “social games” (a category people take much more seriously this year than last) are fast surging toward being a true mass-market phenomenon.  We’ve seen growth that strains credulity (the top Facebook social game, Farmville, now has over 25 million DAU) built on moderate innovation in a few game forms with the release of a slew of “X-Wars” games, farming games, aquarium games, and restaurant games.

And while there continue to be a few virtual-world-ish games (YoVille, Pet Society, etc.) out there, we now have an actual MMOG made in Flash and available on Facebook in Ohai’s City of Eternals, as announced last week.

I believe this represents the first of the second-generation of games on Facebook and the evolution of the MMOG.  In some ways CoE looks like a throwback to Ultima Online or Diablo — games made roughly ten years ago — but it is also unabashedly built on Facebook as a social platform and sits squarely in the “free to play / buy virtual goods” revenue model.

In the coming months I expect see the current pace of design innovation in this area sustained and maybe even accelerate as we see more games that look like classic MMOGs on Facebook.  Even more interesting from a design perspective, we’ll begin to see games that stand on the shoulders of current MMOGs and current first-gen social games to create new kinds of highly social game environments.  These will combine the depth of experience that MMOG players have always enjoyed with the social availability of current Facebook games — but maybe without the requirement of donning your tights and going to a virtual Renaissance Faire — the sort of deep genre-fication that has limited the mass-market appeal for MMOGs thus far.

3-D virtual world applications for enterprise use will grow into an industry earning $8 billion to $10 billion in annual revenue by 2014, according to a new report from GigaOM Pro (subscription required). Today, virtual worlds are primarily associated with role-playing games and avatar-based chat, but analysts Kris Tuttle and Steve Waite say they will gain widespread corporate adoption as a platform for long-distance conferencing and training, job fairs, and other business uses in the years ahead.

Companies are likely to embrace virtual worlds for such applications first, the authors argue, because they offer a cost-effective, productivity-boosting (not to mention “green”) alternative to air travel. After reaching a critical mass in the next 12-24 months and doubling year over year, the industry will soon be earning billions of dollars in annual revenue. (Anticipating skeptics, the authors note that the existing market for online enterprise training and collaboration already earns that much just in direct costs alone.)

As for the major players in this burgeoning space? Tuttle and Waite name IBM (s ibm) and Cisco (s csco), two companies that have been developing virtual world/online collaboration solutions for years, with Adobe (s ADBE), Citrix (s CTXS), Oracle (s ORCL‎), and Dassault Systems (s DASTY) as other contenders to watch closely. They also note that the market’s growth will provoke fierce competition among the many enterprise virtual world solutions already out there — OLIVE, Second Life, OpenSimulator, Project Wonderland, to name just a few — leading to a shakeout in the industry. After this tumult, a few dominant behemoths and successful niche players will emerge, though it’s still unclear if the winners are already on the market, or still in development.

In any case, the report recommends that companies large and small should immediately start pilot programs based around virtual worlds. “Because the technology is delivering cost savings and improved operations,” they argue, “the time to begin is now.”

Tuttle and Waite’s full report, “Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market,” is now available on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Roughly 12 percent of Americans, or more than one in 10, have bought a virtual item at some point in the last 12 months, according to a new study by analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates and commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan. With the virtual goods and currency market estimated to reach $1.8 billion this year, the Magid study offers some insight into exactly who’s doing the buying, and where.
Demographically, for example, while 15 percent of males aged 12-24 reported purchasing virtual goods, 15 percent of women between ages 35-44 did so, too. As Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, put it to me, the boys are getting virtual swords for their MMORPGs, while the women are buying virtual flowers on Facebook. Vorhaus noted that categorization by ethnicity was also diverse, with Asian-Americans on the high end (16 percent), and the rest some 1-5 percent behind.

Segmenting that 12 percent according to consumers’ Internet activity and device ownership, social network gamers and iPhone owners are strongly represented (27 and 28 percent, respectively); PC and handheld console gamers were almost as likely to buy virtual items (between 19 and 22 percent.) However, active console gamers lag just a bit behind those segments.

Unsurprisingly, the most significant variable in purchase rate is virtual world usage: Nearly half of the respondents who report being active MMO participants are also virtual item consumers. (The key challenge for virtual world developers is figuring out how to monetize the other half, something I cover in my recent GigaOM Pro report, subscription required.)

Meanwhile, Eric Hartness, chief marketing officer at PlaySpan, told me he expects that by this time next year, that 12 percent figure will rise to 15-18 percent.

All charts and data courtesy Frank N. Magid Associates and PlaySpan.

Social games attract tens of millions of players on Facebook and other networks, but compared with traditional PC and console-based games, they make a lot less money, a challenge impeding the genre’s growth. While millions of “hardcore” gamers willingly pay $60 per title and $15 in monthly subscriptions for an MMO like World of Warcraft, the average monthly revenue per user for even the biggest social games is estimated to be $1 to $2. When it comes to getting consumers excited enough to pull out their wallets, old-school game makers still have the advantage. Which is why I was so intrigued by news that social gaming giant Zynga recently hired veteran game developer Brian Reynolds as the company’s chief designer. Reynolds, lead designer on classic best-sellers Rise of Nations, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, and an installment of Age of Empires (one of Om’s personal favorites), is widely admired by gamers for making challenging and complex strategy titles like those. It’s also quite a leap for him, going to Zynga’s casual gaming world of titles like Texas Hold ‘Em and Fashion Wars. Then again, for social games to generate more sustained enthusiasm from players (and consequently, earn more revenue) it will probably take someone of Reynolds’ caliber to lead the way.

However, don’t expect Reynolds to create social game versions of Alpha Centauri and other hardcore titles he’s known for. “Trying to take a traditional game and ‘port it’ to the social gaming space would be a big mistake,” as he put it to me via email from his summer vacation retreat on Canada’s Tar Island. His goal instead is to take Zynga’s current model, and incrementally make existing games more fun.

A common problem with current social games, Reynolds said, is that they don’t make players’ choices interesting over time, instead “burying the player in tedious repetitive clicking.” The challenge is improving the games’ progression curve, so players get steadily increasing rewards (points, virtual money and items) to encourage continued play. He believes simply refining this would instantly make social games more fun to play.

As for social games that already are fun, Reynolds cites Mafia Wars, which he admires for its depth and variety of interaction, and its ability to foster play among a broad range of acquaintances. (That was crystallized best when his much older aunt, also a Mafia Wars player, posted: “Hi Brian – Thanks for the energy packs, I love you!” on his Facebook wall.) Another favorite, Scramble, helped reconnect him with an old game industry friend — who subsequently helped get him his job at Zynga.

In any case, he notes it’s become increasingly difficult to make games like Alpha Centauri anywhere. “Working in the traditional industry has started to feel like each year the lake drops another foot, at least for someone like me,” he said. “Traditional games cost more and more money to make, and at the same time it’s harder to actually get the money.”

Unsurprisingly, other industry figures from publishers like Electronic Arts (s ERTS) and Blizzard Entertainment have also migrated to social gaming. “I have no doubt that traditional games will continue to be made and that some will do well,” Reynolds told me, “but there’s no doubt that there’s a lot more growth in the social network area (and related areas like casual gaming), and I think we’ll see that trend continue for quite a while.”

Photo courtesy Zynga.

Investors poured $237 million into virtual world-related startups and payment systems last quarter alone, according to a report released today by industry trade show producer Engage Digital, signaling venture capitalists’ continued enthusiasm in the market. (Nearly $600 million in funding went into this sector for all of last year.) And ask the average tech-savvy person to name a major virtual world, chances are they’ll mention World of Warcraft or Second Life. Both MMOs certainly get the lion’s share of media attention; according to Nielsen Games, they often generate the most total monthly player minutes among all PC-installed worlds. However, as the recent investment news suggests, WoW and Second Life are only part of the story; neither world is truly representative of the MMO sector, nor reflective of where the larger virtual world industry is growing.

Why? In the case of Warcraft, its continued, unprecedented growth in subscribers suggests it’s a category killer in its particular sub-genre of virtual world, the subscription-driven, 3-D fantasy MMORPG. Subsequent rivals in that space have fallen far short of WoW’s 12 million subscriber base; most of the major game publishers are now focusing their energies on non-fantasy MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, or experimenting with non-subscriber worlds, like Free Realms, largely leaving WoW alone in its own sub-genre. In the case of Second Life, while it’s earning tremendous revenue, its user base of some 750,000 monthly uniques makes it a midsized world at best, behind some dozen or so MMOs with regular users in the millions. Second Life’s particular sub-genre, a 3-D, dynamically user-created virtual world, has yet to attract any major competitor.

Meanwhile, numerous other virtual worlds are more popular than Second Life or even World of Warcraft, successfully operating on different platforms and revenue models, targeting various demographics. Consider, for example Zynga’s YoVille, an MMO that can be played only on MySpace or Facebook. Web-based and cartoonish, it’s not 3D and immersive like Second Life or WoW, but a virtual world all the same, offering users a simulated contiguous space with real-time interaction via avatars. It’s also tremendously popular: Just 14 months after its May 2008 launch, it now counts 8.5 million monthly active users on Facebook alone. But perhaps the most surprising thing isn’t its size; it’s that other MMOs, such as Maple Story and Habbo, are even larger. World of Warcraft and Second Life may be the most visible makes in the display window, but don’t forget the many other high-performance models on the show floor.

Wagner James Au is the author of The Making of Second Life (HarperCollins) and a member of the GigaOM Analyst Network. His complete discussion on trends and opportunities in the virtual world industry is now available on GigaOM Pro: “Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities” (subscription required).

Trademarks courtesy Linden Lab and Blizzard Entertainment.

Google’s (s GOOG) Chrome OS has added a very interesting wrinkle to the future of online gaming. As we reported back in May, Google reportedly plans to fully integrate O3D, the company’s rich 3D graphics plug-in, into the Chrome browser by the end of this year. That gives Google a platform for game development that’d be a seamless part of its OS when it’s released next year. A number of developers are already creating games for O3D; for instance, here’s a demo for Infinite Journey (a screenshot of which is on the left), a visually engaging, Mario-style title showcased at the recent Google I/O conference. If consumers embrace netbooks pre-installed with Google OS, I think we’re likely to see O3D become an increasingly popular platform for games — at the expense of Windows-based PC games and web-based games powered by Flash.

But what do game industry insiders make of Chrome OS? I just reached out via email to several leading CEOs; here’s a sampling of their takes:

Jim Greer, CEO of casual game portal Kongregate: “I think it will have an immediate effect on the booming netbook market, and a slower one on gaming. PC game developers always need to make sure that their games work on a very broad variety of machines, so they won’t be able to target the Google OS specifically. Having said that, the more netbooks there are out there, the more attractive web game development will be.”

Raph Koster, CEO of web-based virtual world Metaplace: “A 3D engine plug-in, perhaps, could have impact. But bear in mind, it’d have to be pre-installed or have a very compelling killer app. And even then, that only drives adoption on the Chrome OS, not necessarily in the larger browser world. And no, [the Chrome OS announcement] doesn’t change our strategy at all. Another platform, another device, yay. I would be very surprised if the Chrome OS doesn’t run Flash, which would mean we would run on it out of the box.”

Steve Hoffman, CEO of web-on-MMO startup RocketOn: “The Chrome OS seems like just another flavor of Linux to me. Even with the Chrome OS and O3D combined, I don’t see gamers gravitating towards Google’s new OS. Hardcore gamers and virtual world enthusiasts will always choose the very best system to play on, which for the time being is a Mac, Windows PC, or console, depending on the game. For the more casual crowd, I don’t think this will win them over. The primary obstacle is that Google has to get the carriers to subsidize netbooks so they are free with a long-term subscription.

“Also, Google isn’t a hardware company like Apple, so they’ll never pull off a beautifully integrated product like the iPhone. This was made clear by the lackluster Android launch. Google will also face stiff competition in this area from a variety of Linux and Windows netbooks, which will work just fine with Firefox or IE…Maybe, if Google sticks it out, it can gradually gain a dedicated following around Chrome OS in combination with Google’s apps and services, and some of those users may take advantage of gaming on this new platform, but this is way off in the future.”

Infinite Journey image courtesy Large Animal.

Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

PART I: SETTING THE VIRTUAL STAGE

Chapter 1: The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry, 3-31

1 Malinowskian tale of entry

7 book is ‘ethnographic portrait of the culture of Second Life’ from June 2004 to Jan 2007

8-16 everyday SL

16-24 terms of discussion: 17 book explores virtual worlds phenomenon

18 book aims at rehabilitating and refining keyword ‘virtual’; virtual worlds can be researched in own terms

21 gaming sociality

22 … vs residential sociality of SL: definitely not a game

23 we are overly interested in connections that cut across ‘real’ vs ‘virtual’ worlds

24 anthropology can help chart emergent forms of cybersociality

25 theoretical aim: what’s new and what isn’t about this virtual world? Thesis: virtual worldview as techne, with person that emerges not homo faber or homo ludens but rather homo cyber (55 techne = ’human action that engages with the world and thereby results in a different world…intentional action that constitutes a gap between the world as it was before the action, and the new world it calls into being’; techne extends natural processes, e.g. underwater breathing technology; it is about practice not knowledge (episteme)) .

28 posthuman is central to book, but a misleading term…

29 in fact, thesis: ‘it is in being virtual that we are human’

31 book’s obsolescence is fine, no worries; written in past tense

31 book outline

Next post

WoWPals is a new location-based service for World of Warcraft players who want to connect with other WoW fans, be they from halfway around the globe or right down the street. A spinoff of Israel-based company GamersFlux, the service extracts data from the World of Warcraft Armory web site, a searchable database of game content and players, and connects it to WoWPals users’ real-world location info. (It’s also integrated with Twitter, so WoWPals can keep each other updated via Tweets.) Moreover, it adds World of Warcraft to the growing list of services and applications with location-based functionality.

And it’s not only a nice community-building feature for WoW fanatics; joining up with fellow gamers in their geographic region can give die-hard players a low latency advantage. WoWPals co-founder Nadav Har Tzvi told me via email that the company plans to earn revenue from an upcoming premium account service; it’s also developing integration to display geo-targeted ads. With the recent introduction of TweetCraft, a Twitter client that runs within World of Warcraft, WoWPals is yet another service that connects the West’s largest MMORPG to the outside world. (Compatibility with the iPhone and other mobiles coming soon, Har Tzvi added.)

Image courtesy WoWPals.

The Social Gaming Summit kicked off in San Francisco today, bringing together developers, investors and bigwigs from social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Below are four of my favorite takeaways gleaned from the first few sessions:

Facebook Social Games Migrating Off Facebook
In the opening talk, Justin Smith, founder and editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games, pointed out that Facebook Connect was making social games increasingly playable outside of Facebook — on the web, via the iPhone, and most recently, via Xbox 360. This trend is so pronounced, Smith predicted that two years from now the majority of Facebook games will be playable outside of the social networking site.

Twitter Gains First Monetized Social Game
Much like Om did in a post earlier today, Smith also noted the emergence of social games played via Twitter messaging, especially quizzes (and the somewhat controversial SpyMaster). Helping solidify this trend, this morning Super Rewards announced it’s partnered with the Twitter-driven roleplaying game 140 Mafia, making it the first title on the microblogging network to be monetized. (Similar to OfferPal, Super Rewards offers virtual currency to social games and MMOs, which customers can purchase with cash, or get as a bonus by signing up with an advertising partner.)

MySpace Social Games’ ARPU Higher Than Facebook Games
Smith said that in speaking with numerous developers, he’s learned that notwithstanding Facebook’s greater popularity in the U.S., MySpace games still earn better average revenue per user (or ARPU) than Facebook games. Smith’s stats: A popular Facebook title earns 30-40 cents in ARPU a month, while popular MySpace games earn 50- 70 cents. (The genre’s very biggest titles earn $1-$2.)

Secrets to Social Gaming Success
But how do these games attract so many players? In a panel discussion, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus outlined the three elements he thinks are necessary in order for titles to become successful: 1) They make players feel like they’re playing with their real friends, 2) They offer ways for players to express their personality, and 3) They reward players for being part of a sustained experience. (Hence his games’ emphasis on collecting virtual items.)

Social games are also successful due to broader societal trends. By way of example, Playfish CEO Sebastien de Halleux noted how in one title, players seemed to spend more money on virtual Christmas trees than on real ones — because, according to the players, with their friends scattered around the world, far more of them would see a virtual tree than they would a real one. Pincus said game-based activity like this was an investment of what he called “social capital,” a means of maintaining contact with our growing network of friends and acquaintances. If the industry further emphasized this advantage in future games, Pincus argued with charming bullishness, social gaming could become as pervasive as social networks themselves.

Disclosure: GigaOM is a media partner of the Summit.

We’re playing more online games than ever before, but we’re paying less for them, interactive marketing firm Future Ads said today. Of the 8,000 online casual gamers surveyed by the company this spring, 61 percent reported gaming more than last year, while nearly 80 percent of those who also own a video game console said they’ve been making “significant” spending cuts in console-related purchases due to their cost. (Separately, NPD reported a drastic dip in May 2009 video game sales, down 23 percent from the same month last year.)

These results are bad news for game developers that still depend on traditional retail sales or monthly subscriptions (especially during this recession). At the same time, they offer further evidence that gamers are increasingly turning to interactive entertainment that’s cheap (as with bestselling iPhone games that usually sell for a few bucks) or free (as with incredibly popular social games like YoVille.) It may also be conveniently good news, it should be noted, for Future Ads, which owns ad-driven casual gaming site Gamevance and game hub PlaySushi. Then again, with online advertising revenue also down, ads are far from a reliable panacea for game developers anyway.

The survey’s macro trend, however, is undeniable, and one to which major game publishers are finally adjusting. After years of developing retail and subscription-based MMORPGs, for example, Sony Online Entertainment (s sne) last April put out Free Realms, a freemium, casual gamer-friendly title, and was duly rewarded with some 3 million registered users in less than two months. (Sony hasn’t disclosed how many of those converted into paying customers; an educated guess is about 10 percent, paying around $2.4 million monthly.) Other freemium online games from big publishers, like Electronic Arts’ Battlefield Heroes (s erts), are on the way; if they replicate Free Realms’ success, they’re likely to shape consumer spending patterns even after the recession. Since they’re produced on lower budgets, freemium games can’t offer all the flash of a game retailing for $60. But if the history of the Internet is any guide, great-but-expensive almost always gets beaten out by OK-but-cheap, or better yet, free.

Image courtesy FreeRealms.com.

When Google (s GOOG) launched its O3D browser plug-in for displaying rich 3D graphics last month, I was dubious that the virtual world industry would eagerly embrace it as a platform for future MMOs. Most of the larger casual virtual worlds, like Habbo and Gaia Online, run on Flash; Mozilla and the Khronos Group are already developing their own 3D graphics API for Firefox. There’s also a lot of insider buzz about Unity 3D’s web plug-in, which already has an install base of 10 million, a company representative recently told me, and is the chosen platform for several major MMOs in development. What’s more, the weak launch and hasty execution of Google’s own virtual world, Lively, suggested the company had given up on the space.

After this weekend, however, I think O3D deserves a closer look from MMO makers. Here’s why:

O3D To Be Fully Integrated Into Google Chrome This Year

Vangelis Kokkevis, O3D’s tech lead, spoke at the Metaverse U conference in Stanford, making his API’s case to the virtual world developers in attendance. While it’s still just a plug-in for IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Camino, Kokkevis said the “next goal” for the team is to fully integrate it into Google’s browser by the end of 2009. Since launching last September, Chrome has gained a slightly bigger slice of the browser market, and an aggressive marketing campaign could help it build momentum. If O3D is integrated on schedule, virtual world developers would gain a potential audience of Chrome users who can launch their products without having to pre-install a plug-in.

COLLADA Converter Makes O3D Compatible With Leading 3D Graphics Formats

At Metaverse U, Kokkevis emphasized O3D’s COLLADA converter, which translates graphic files made with industry-standard graphics software like Maya, Max, and Google’s own Sketchup. That makes O3D much more attractive to studios already working with these tools; by way of demonstration, he showed off a graphically rich platform video game built in Max and converted to O3D, he told us, within a couple weeks. COLLADA’s code is managed by the Khronos Group, which the O3D team is also participating in; Kokkevis even suggested that O3D’s efforts could be merged with Khronos. As he put it, “We want a 3D API for the web browser, whatever the flavor.”

Google Wave Plus O3D Plus Chrome = Virtual World Win?

Virtual worlds are hardly just about graphics, however; at least as important are communication channels between avatars and their groups, both asynchronously and in real time. After I got back from Metaverse U and read early reviews of Google Wave, the product suddenly struck me as a potential complement to a virtual world running O3D, especially within Chrome. Rather than implement a third-party chat/instant-messaging system or create one from scratch, MMO developers working with O3D could use Wave to perform those services (assuming they’re compatible, to be sure.)

After his presentation, a group of developers surrounded Kokkevis, peppering him with tech-heavy questions. He told me there weren’t any companies creating MMOs in O3D yet, but he raised the possibility that Google might port Sketchup and Google Earth into O3D, “once we become part of the browser.” (Both have been implemented for MMO-related projects.) Still, the debacle with Lively has left in its wake some distrust of Google’s commitment to virtual worlds; one Metaverse U attendee openly challenged Kokkevis on that point: “What makes you sustainable?”

“I really cannot tell you what the future can be,” Kokkevis replied. “We’re hoping it’s going to be successful.”

Second Life creator Linden Lab will announce on Wednesday that SL users have generated 15 billion voice minutes on their internal avatar-to-avatar VoIP service since the product was launched 18 months ago, and are now forecast to do 15 billion total voice minutes in 2009. By contrast, Skype handled 65 billion total voice minutes last year, according to parent company eBay (s ebay) (PDF).

Since Skype users aren’t usually communicating with each other in a virtual world, this might seem like an apples-to-oranges comparison. However, Linden has been emphasizing Second Life’s voice chat feature as a utility for educators and corporations with an SL presence who use it to conduct in-world conferences and other voice-driven applications. And tomorrow, the company will also announce a battery of voice services usable outside SL, including “AvaLine,” which enables mobile phone-to-avatar calling.

Linden VP Joe Miller told me the company believes this puts it in competition with Skype. Judging by SL’s high voice usage rates, it’s certainly a niche competitor. Then again, with Second Life’s roughly 750,000 monthly users compared to Skype’s 42 million-plus daily users, it’ll be a long time if ever that the VoIP giant feels the virtual pressure.

There’s a new entrant in the rapidly growing market for retail cards and virtual goods for online games today: the Zeevex Virtual Currency Exchange. The coin of the realm is Zeev Tokens, which can be purchased via retail cards sold at thousands of brick-and-mortar stores, redeemed and stored online, where it can be used to buy virtual goods from participating partners’ games.

There are several such card services out there already, but the fairly unique hook here is that gamers can exchange these tokens with each other, on the Zeevex web site and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This opens up the possibility of Zeev currency being used not just to purchase game content, but to barter for real-world items.

“The biggest traction is going to be collectible items” like comics and sports cards, predicted Zeevex Chief Marketing Officer Dean Gebert. The Atlanta/Palo Alto-based company has a seed-round valuation of seven figures, he added, and their retail distribution partner is InComm. Sounds like a great idea, if Zeevex can also partner with some popular games. Gebert tells me they plan to announce seven of those in coming weeks, so stay tuned.

SP0017

Human Health Technologies

By Juan Chamero, from Caece University at Buenos Aires, Argentine, May 4th 2009

Source: e-health UE Logo

Subject: Human Health Semantic Pills Series – e-Health, Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, Therapy Games, War Games, e-Training

 Info source 1: eHealth Initiative Lauds Inclusion of Health IT Provisions in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, from e-HealthInitiative.org.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -  FEBRUARY 17, 2009 - The independent, non-profit, multi-stakeholder eHealth Initiative congratulates both Congress and President Obama on the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which includes an estimated net investment of $19 billion for health information technology (IT). This figure is comprised of $2 billion in immediate, discretionary funding for the Office of the National Coordinator, an estimated $29 billion to be paid out through Medicare and Medicaid incentives, and estimated off-setting savings of $12 billion

Info source 2: Video game therapy for mental health, from Nathan Wilkinson, Institute of Health and Social Policy, McGill University, Canada; Rebecca P. Ang, Division of Psychology School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, rpang@ntu.edu.sg; Dion H. Goh, Division of Information Studies, Wee Kim Kee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

“Future research into online video game therapy for mental health concerns might focus on two broad types of game: simple society games, which are accessible and enjoyable to players of all ages, and online worlds, which offer a unique opportunity for narrative content and immersive remote interaction with therapists and fellow patients. Both genres might be used for assessment and training purposes, and provide an unlimited platform for social interaction. The mental health community can benefit from more collaborative efforts between therapists and engineers, making such innovations a reality.”

 Info source 3: BBC News, Games therapy for burns victims,

 Playing on a Wii demands a user act out all the physical movements involved in sports such as tennis, golf and boxing. Specialists say using the Wii brings back flexibility to damaged areas and that most importantly – patients actually enjoy their treatment.

“When recovering from an operation, such as a skin graft, patients may need recover normal use of their hands and arms,” said Maureen Adams, head of therapy at Queen Victoria NHS Foundation Trust in East Grinstead.

“Using the Wii is a way of significantly improving movement, while not seeing the activity as therapy, which helps motivate them. Wii can also be done at home, so patients are able to continue their own personal therapies.”

Info source 4: Playing a video game? No, it’s health therapy, by By John Gaudiosi, from REUTERS

“RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters Life!) – Video games are known to improve hand-eye coordination but can they help someone quit smoking or lose weight?

Hot on the heels of Nintendo’s smash success, “Wii Fit,” game makers are introducing new titles with a healthy focus, such as French game publisher Ubisoft’s “Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Smoking” that hits on Nintendo DS in November.

Over 10 million smokers worldwide have turned to Allen Carr’s Easyway books, clinics or DVD in order to stop smoking but now smokers wanting to quit can instead play 14 mini-games.

Info source 5: Iraq War Veterans Rehabilitation Therapy, from GamePolitics.com and Virtual Reality Training, from Encyclopedia.com.  

Comment: Of course we are to be open minded in order to procure for a better world. So each idea about our body-mind health and improving must be heard, seen and tested. I’m a Zen master and supposedly a body-mind expert trusting in our innate abilities to maintain healthy, long lasting and aware as much as possible in any circumstances. However I believe that is perfectly possible to tune our body with all forms of environment energies. Even in Zen we extensively use imagery to enhance our body mind power for example by tuning with nature: the breath of trees, the flow of rivers and creeks, the calm of lakes so it is perfectly possible to tune with imagery waves thru animated computing. For example in Zen we advise athletes to continue their High Intensity training when injured, “playing and making gym by imagery seen others doing it!.”

Info source 6: Does violence in video games contribute to real life violence?, by Melinda Clayton from Helium.com

YES: 47%, NO: 53%

It is then a controversial subject!.

 “As a psychotherapist, I have often had to explain my techniques to concerned foster parents. In our play therapy room we had toy guns, toy handcuffs, toy knives, and empty liquor bottles. The children with whom we worked had often been through horrendous abuse. They were drawn towards these items in an attempt to “explain” to me, through their play, what had happened to them and how they felt about it.

I had to explain to the concerned foster parents that children need to be able to work through their feelings and issues in a safe place. To responsibly allow them to do so would not create violence. The violence that came out in their play in the play therapy room was a direct result of the violence they had experienced at home, and allowing them to process it through play enabled them to move through it towards a healthy resolution.

Do violent video games create violence? No. But children who are drawn to these games may be crying out for help due to violence and trauma experienced in real life.”

Info source 7: Games is in a saddle point in between e-health AND e-learning: article I by Hartmut Gieselmann and and article II by Christian Swertz from Eludamos.org.

Hartmut Gieselmann wrote:

Whenever war and computer games are discussed in public, politicians and educators are mainly concerned about the gruesome brutality that domesticates violence into children’s heads. Killing small figures on the screen and fountains of red bloodpixels coming out of the victimized bits and bytes make them fear that teenagers will become more aggressive in real life. This discussion is one of the oldest when it comes to criticising new media. The same concerns were raised about Greek tragedy, Goethe’s Werther, television, comics, and Rap music. But when you take a closer look at war games, you will realize that the violent scenes that are shown there are not nearly as gruesome as in fictional games featuring monsters and vampires. The main reason behind this is that here violence will only be recognized as entertaining for the gamer (or any other audience in literature or film) when he (much more than 90 Percent of war gamers are male) can draw a strict line between the real world and the non real gaming world – otherwise he would be scared by what he sees and stop feeling comfortable.

Horror games as well as splatter movies are turning violence so much over the top that everybody realizes that what is shown on the screen cannot be real. War games on the other hand try to be as accurate as possible: They try to emulate real battles. Showing too much gruesome violence would distract the gamer and the game could no longer be recognized as an accurate simulation of real wars. By just pointing at the most violent games, critics overlook that war games have a much greater impact on gamers’ opinions and their world views because they do not show the actual violence. It is hidden behind complex simulations of real guns, tanks, jets, and squad tactics. This is why authorities are more concerned about a gangster game like Grand Theft Auto than a recruitment tool like America’s Army.

When you compare recent World War Shooters to the older Doom Game you will find several differences, despite they both are referred to as First Person Shooters. In Doom, the player fights on his own against masses of monsters. He has no buddies at his side that he has to take care of. He is a one man army. The Doom plot was often copied to real war scenarios. But this type of lonely hero is a discontinued soldier model. It was popular during the Reagan era when the Rambo-movies were shown at theatres. Rambo was the prototype of a dumb muscle machine that was trained by the military to kill everything that moves: Very effective for covered actions in the jungle of ‘Third World’ countries but not appropriate to represent the intelligent and well organized army of the 1990s.

President Clinton had a different military doctrine. He transformed the army (again) into a world police that should fight for freedom and justice all over the world. The army should no longer be thought of as a group of aggressive Rambos but as a high tech machinery that tries to prevent civil victims with their smart bombs. The soldier was no longer an animalistic macho but a cool thinking engineer who merely followed orders and functioned like a gearwheel in a clockwork. The former mentioned technical war simulations of the 1990s supported the new image of the army and were in sync with the Clinton doctrine.

George W. Bush changed that. After 9/11 he had to galvanize the US society with a common destiny. Osama Bin Laden played to his hands since Bush was able use the fear of terror to justify a higher military funding and the cut back of civil rights for his homeland security program. And here come the World War Two games that make the gamer believe that he can take part in an important battle that changes history. He also has a common destiny with his comrades. It is no longer the Rambo type of soldier that was promoted by games in the 1990s. It is the figure of the caring father who has to look after his company, his “brothers in arms”. To free the world of tyrants like Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, you have to fight for America like your grandpa did in World War Two against Hitler. You have to fight, as if you would defend your own family. That is the new picture in the games that support the Bush doctrine.

Christian Swertz wrote:

And now there are digital games and learning, acting as serious games. Serious games promise freedom and force at once, don’t they? Sounds like a vintage contradiction in the first place, a pretty good dilemma, or maybe just mucking around with the player, since selling hard work as fun and having people pay for it must be the robber baron’s dream. And then it’s a trap you don’t want anybody to stumble in, unless we are witnessing a dialectical miracle – the final synthesis of force and freedom.

A little step back to look behind the scene might shed some light on the issue here. The idea of combining games and learning is not exactly new. In the 18. century games were applied for educational purposes by Basedow (Parmentier 2004). He was picking up earlier ideas like the negative education by Rousseau (1972). Looking behind this concept shows that learning objectives were not explicitly taught but expressed in the rules of the games. The objectives are learned in the game by discovering the rules – and rules of games are forces, particularly if the toy is a computer, since computers can’t negotiate rules. But the player still experiences the game as play and thus the freedom in the game, even if it is forced, by rules. So playing games in general, and serious games in particular, is a kind of a dialectical miracle. But that’s the miracle that accomplishes all learning: On the one hand, the learner is forced to learn something, and thus forced by that something. On the other hand, learners are free to understand what and however they want to. The learner is free to play within and with the force of teachers rules (Litt 1952).

Comment: We in the Western culture used to sum ourselves to extremes keeping as much as possible off “middle ways” where however wisdom used to transit. Virtual words, games, virtual games, virtual reality, virtual body mind fitting are extreme options to enjoy, being healthier, and to be wiser as well almost without “effort”, privately and secure. On the other hand we have the “hard way” alleging that health, wisdom, and virtues are only obtained with sacrifice.      

Categories: people, health, people health, games, health – e-health,  education – e-learning, e-learning

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When it comes to MMOs, freemium worlds for kids are enormously popular and lucrative; for the most part, however, the major game publishers have done little to pursue this market. That changes this month with the launch of Free Realms, a colorful virtual world from Sony Online Entertainment (s sne). Since this new franchise is targeted at kids, including girls, Sony changed its approach from the ground up. The developer of the Everquest series and other MMORPGs aimed at the 18-34 gamer dude demographic threw out long-held assumptions about what made online worlds appealing, and used market research to learn what kids actually wanted. Turns out that instead of dramatic backstories and complex gameplay, kids want free-form fun and tools for telling their own stories.

Has Sony’s kid-friendly effort succeeded? Based on my first-hand look at the beta version of Free Realms, I’d say yes — at least enough to prove that the big game developers can play in the space. However, I’m not convinced that Free Realms can capture attention away from Habbo, Club Penguin, and other scrappy pioneers in this field just yet. Here’s my take.

The Good

Unlike most kids’ MMOs, which are web-based, Free Realms streams the world to a downloaded client. Still, it’s nicely integrated with the official web site, which gives each player a social network-style profile page; that’ll surely appeal to kids already used to such features on their virtual world or social network of choice. The web-to-world integration also happens in the other direction, most notably with a button that uploads gameplay video footage directly to your YouTube account — a great tool for sharing and telling stories.

Since Free Realms is billed as an open-ended world, I was surprised how easy it is to have a classic MMORPG experience. You can, if you choose, slay monsters, search for treasure, and so on — but it’s also made clear in the orientation stage that you can jump between entirely different experiences in the game, too. Be a chef who gains achievements by playing a series of cooking-themed mini-games, then go back to bashing monsters if you like (or not.) The result is an interesting and fairly unique mix of fantasy MMORPG gameplay and casual virtual world fun that could appeal to players of existing tween MMOs who want a more involving game experience, as well as to MMORPG gamers who want a lighter alternative to the typical “level grind” they’re used to.

The So-So

Despite its kid-friendly trimmings, Free Realms is a full 3-D game. This is another departure from the established market, because most virtual worlds popular with kids are 2.5D. And since Sony has expressed a desire to make Free Realms appealing to girls (who are embracing virtual worlds in droves), opting for full 3-D seems like a big mistake. In a Georgia Tech study of 13- and 14-year-olds gaming preferences, 70 percent of boys studied opted for a 3-D game, while 70 percent of girls in the study opted for 2-D.

Beyond that, there’s a premeditated quality to Free Realms that could hurt Sony’s chances to create a passionate fanbase; little room seems left for the unique quirks and personality evident in the look and feel of the biggest tween MMOs. Next to the retro videogame graphics of Habbo or the irreverent, anime-flavored Gaia Online, Free Realms seems sleek, generic, and aggressively eager to please.

With millions of users each, the Habbos and Gaias of the industry have a huge head start. If Sony hopes to catch up, it may need to lean a little bit less on its market research, and take more creative risks — giving kids not only what they ask for, but also what they weren’t expecting.

Image courtesy FreeRealms.com.