Steve’s Tech Journal

I mostly gave up playing computer games years ago. Some of them were interesting divertments, but, the real world and the challenge of running a business, raising a family, making time for the people in your life, and trying to do my own small part of making the world a better place all squeezed any time that might go into gaming, and also exposed the ultimate social emptiness of spending large number of hours playing a game with a computer as your only companion.

So, I checked out on the gaming scene, but during the intervening years have listened with increasing interest to people talk about their XBox Live, their LAN parties, and lately their MMORPGs. Gaming (well, computer gaming to be more precise) was making a gradual move from a solitary activity to a social activity. I spent some time with Joi Ito a few months back, and he hooked me when he showed me a video of a group of people getting ready for a difficult quest in World of Warcraft, a Dungeons and Dragons type world. It looked just like a meeting, they discussed their plan, they argued a bit, then they went into action (and, as it turned out got wiped out, and discussed what they did wrong). This was real social interaction. I started reading Joi’s Blog, and posts like this one got my attention.

Now, from a human perspective people get together for many reasons, often just to have fun. Isn’t it just as legitmate to get together with friends and/or strangers online for the purpose of having fun, as it is to get together in person?

I think my answer to this question is that it depends on the richness of the interaction. If the interaction is mainly mechanical, with your group near each other but busy gathering things, or shooting stuff, or whatever — this to me doesn’t seem adequately rich. But, if you can communicate, solve problems together, and take time to just hang out, then this starts to approach a real-world get together. And there are tradeoffs both pro and con to a real-world get together. You can’t share food, or a nice glass of wine. You can explore fantastical worlds, beautiful places that will never exist in reality.

So, I bit the bullet over the holiday, configed up a spare laptop I had lying around (i.e. installed Windows - nose held here), and bought World of Warcraft. I’ve spent a couple nights running around, and am just amazed by the richness of the art / design of the world and game. What makes it so special, though, is the number of other players you see. Somehow the fact that they are there is comforting. It’s similar to why I sometimes like listening to the radio in spite of having a large music collection and playback dvices everywhere — you have a sense of community, that other people are listening to the same thing you are and are participating in the experience.

Some players in WoW are intent on completing quests and gaining levels and experience (I’ve mostly been in this category). Others seem to relax more and just hang out. I know that I started to make a transition when someone yelled “Dance Party” in the chat channel in Goldshire last night. So I walked over and there were like 20 characters dancing. I swear it looked just like an outdoor concert scene. So a quick perusal of commands I figured out how to dance, and I joined in. Now, the efficient practitioners of this could make themselves dance with a specific partner, whisper private messages, move around, change their dance step, etc. I mostly stood there dancing and watched. But, this was pure social interaction that had nothing to do with quests, or getting items, or gaining skills. It was, dare I say, … fun.

People remember each others names, they look for each other.

Now, what I am finding though, is that it takes a fair agility to manipulate your character and to chat at the same time. There are command codes you have to learn, e.g. you type /dance to make your character dance.

I’m not the first to observe this, but voice will be the killer app for these worlds. Imagine if you could hear other people talking. When you walk closer, their voices get louder. When you walk away their voice gets softer. All this takes is a conference bridge linked to a VoIP client, either built-in to the game executable or linked via the APIs.

And, with 5 million subscribers to WoW, I think there’s a bit of a market.

It turns out friends at Vivox are working on exactly this, along with other IP communication initiatives. I think they are onto something, and it will be fascinating seeing how things unfold. I’ll be writing more about this.

I think virtual worlds such as WoW and Second Life are at a tipping point — we are at the point where the science fiction of virtual reality is starting to become reality.

Oh, and if you want to say hello online in WoW, I am a Human Priest named Jurace on the Hyjal realm — currently staying at the inn in Goldshire. Drop me a line and I’ll meet you there for a pint of ale and a chat!