Online lives after death

There was an article on Time last week about Facebook profiles and what happens to them when you die. Apparently, Facebook will memorialise your profile if requested by family, and will disable any new information from being applied to the account, while leaving your Wall open for friends to leave their words.

It got me thinking; how much of our lives is invested in our digital selves, and how transient and fleeting that digital self really is.

In the name of security, I have passwords on everything I have online. If I was to suddenly die, I would vanish from the screens of a great many people who would have no idea what had happened to me. My WoW guildmates would have no idea. I'm not in contact with them in any way except on WoW. I doubt any of my immediate family would think to figure out a way to log on there and tell them. I have several forum accounts I use that I have quite a strong presence on, I would vanish from their screens. These people I connect with digitally aren't close to me like my family are, but they are still important, and it seems like its the kind of thing that we should all start thinking about as more and more of our lives becomes entrenched and based online.

There may even be a market for a company that you can supply all your relevant details to, for all the online communities you are a part of, who will then, upon your death, access your online self and notify people of events that have transpired.

Something to think about.

Facebook games and why they aren't just wastes of time

CNN Tech had an interesting article up cross-linked from Time, regarding Facebook games such as Mafia Wars or FarmVille.

From the article.

Here's how it works. You join FarmVille, a game on Facebook in which you can create a virtual farm by growing crops and livestock and tilling the earth. Through your toil, you earn virtual money, but to farm more efficiently or quickly, you can also invest real cash (through PayPal or a credit card) to buy virtual goods, such as seed or a tractor. Should you not have any real cash to spare on things that after all do not actually exist, you can instead accept an offer from one of the advertisers on the game site and get virtual cash in return.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1935698,00.html?CNN=yes#ixzz0W6XzWmMN

So, a game that seems most well-suited to children is having microtransaction elements within it, for people who can least afford to pay. Surely that seems crazy? Well, maybe not. Children don't have credit cards...but they do often have mobile phones, paid for by parents. And the latest scam seems to be to allow you to take something like a bogus Facebook quiz, which requires you to then supply your mobile phone number to get the results. Once you've done that, the virtual cash for the game is provided, but you are also then signed up to the company on your mobile phone, for a subscription plan you did not want and did not ask for.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculous misuse of the online Facebook game technology. But, on the other hand, who is really doing the worst here? The designers of the games, who create such strong incentives for younger players to be attracted to such scams? The creators of the scams themselves? Or, the parents, who allow their child to have a mobile phone plan at a young age without proper supervision?

What do you think?

Introduction

Hi, my name's Dhalphir.

Currently, I play several games, predominantly among these being World of Warcraft. I like this game a lot, I think it is probably the highest quality MMO on the market. Not necessarily the best, as that's a matter of opinion, but the highest quality. Thus, a lot of my opinions and posts will be coloured by the fact that I am approaching it from that angle.

However, I am more than just a gamer. I'm a real person and I have real thoughts and sometimes I'm going to post about these too. Feel free to skim over any posts that you feel are not relevant to your interests, but I'm going to post them anyway.

Enjoy.

Sliding scales

I was having a discussion with a few guild members today about differing standards that different MMORPG players have, that they hold themselves to.

These standards can be to do with anything. Most commonly, its to do with raiding. Person X gems, enchants, and gears according to research he does on his character. Person Y doesn't have the time to do exhaustive research, so he looks at what his experience tells him is good, and does that. If he is wrong, well, he might change, or he might be comfortable where he is. Another standard might be applied to PvP in WoW. Player X is a raider at heart, so he just does 10 arena games a week for some points to see what he can do. Player Y likes PvP a lot more, so he takes it very seriously, researches tactics, plans his gear, and eagerly awaits new arena seasons.

The key thing is...neither of these two people in these two examples are playing the game wrong. They are just holding themselves to different standards.

This is fine. However, problems tend to arise when these two players want to play together, to do the same activity. Inevitably, the one who is, in his mind, playing the game better (which is usually both of them) develops a certain amount of negative feeling towards the other. Either the person putting in more effort gets annoyed with the other, or the other gets annoyed at being expected to devote so much time to a videogame.

You can see this in the age-old Casual Raiders vs Hardcore Raiders argument. Hardcore raiders research specs, fights, gear choices, profession choices. If something proves to be better to their character they will go to any length to obtain it. That's one end of an extreme spectrum. Casual raiders don't do any of these things, they just show up to have fun, and don't care if they wipe or not. That's the other end of the spectrum. The key thing to remember here is that very few people exist at an extreme end of this sliding scale. Most of us fall somewhere in between these two positions.

However, the prevailing attitude currently is that there are casuals, and there are hardcores, and there is no compatibility there. This is one that I myself held until I recently came to this revelation; we are all on the same sliding scale. We all love to do that one specific thing, in this example, raiding. There needs to be understanding coming from both sides. Someone with a more casual attitude will not fit well into a guild whose predominant focus is to be hardcore. The casual player needs to refrain from being contemptuous of the hardcore players for this; they are on the same sliding scale as he is, just further along towards the hardcore side of things. He should realise that if he wants to play on a hardcore level, he must adopt a more hardcore mentality. And the hardcore players need to not look down too much on the more casual players for their lower focus on the activity; they simply have different priorities in their game and that does not make them worse players.

We are all on the same sliding scale.