Recently I did a short interview for Spotlight Effect on Second Life. The interview is based on my De Nieuwe Reporter article on Second Life. The questions are:

- Why is SL such a hype?
- What about the ‘dark side’ of SL?
- What about the goverment investing in SL?
- What about the future of SL?

The events in Virginia did shock me quite a bit. I am a university lecturer and the stories that come out are terrifying. Hours after the shootings the blame game (no pun intended) started. Experts were called by 24 hour news outlets. Fox News and MSNBC decided to ask anti-game lobbyist / attorney Jack Thompson for an opinion on the shootings. He started a rant about the doom and dismay that is today’s popular culture.

There are three things fundamentally wrong with his appearance. 1) He is no expert on school shootings, 2) he claims to know ‘facts’ about the shootings while nobody knows anything yet (he came on air just hours after the incident) and 3) he lies. His lies are documented by Kotaku. In the Netherlands Iris from gamer.nl weighed in.

I did as well and wrote an opinion piece for De Nieuwe Reporter entitled “De schaamteloosheid voorbij – de schuldvraag bij een school shooting”.

Together with Ewoud de Ruiter, a tax consultant, I wrote an opinion piece for the government focused magazine/website Digitaal Bestuur. The piece deals with the question whether or not a paid job in Second Life could be considered as a ‘real’ job (according to tax laws). The short answer is: No. As long as you’re an amateur (and you are if you don’t make a lot of cash) i.e. if you’re a hobbyist, you don’t have to worry about paying taxes. The argument we make (rather implicitly) is that government professionals should and could pay more attention to virtual worlds and their implications for the physical world.

‘Salaris in Second Life‘. From the intro:

In de wereld van Second Life is een heuse arbeidsmarkt ontstaan. Randstad vraagt spelers een bank of een uitzendbureau te bemannen of als boer te werken en adverteert daarom met virtuele banen in Second Life. Er wordt geadverteerd voor banen die in Linden Dollars respectievelijk in euro’s worden betaald. Linden Dollars zijn direct inwisselbaar naar euro’s. De barkeeper –in Linden Dollars uitbetaald– verdient omgerekend 1 euro per uur, maar de (virtuele) hostess voor ABN Amro gaat minimaal 1750 euro per maand verdienen. Gaat het hier nog wel om virtuele banen?

Today an article I wrote on Habbo Hotel (a virtual community for kids/youngsters) is available as a direct download here, my piece is on page 14 (and a small lead-in on the frontpage). *Update* my article is online available as well.

I had quite some fun working on this piece. For months (or years) I wanted to write this piece. At a seminar at the Hypermedia Lab at the University of Tampere (Finland) I was introduced to Habbo Hotel by Finnish researchers who are affiliated with Sulake (the developer of Habbo Hotel). Although I didn’t talk about this in the article, I am curious about the different countries and socio-cultural differences among players. Do Chinese Habbo’s differ that much from Dutch Habbo’s? Would be a great research paper (or thesis :).

I also talked to Dutch PhD researcher Mijke Slot from Erasmus U (Rotterdam) and TNO. She got a groovy thing going on with her research, check out her ‘future user’ model for example. That’s a bookmark.

The editors of De Pers didn’t include my ‘kaders’, so after the break some additional ‘exclusive content’ (to be read alongside the Habbo piece).

Read the rest of this entry »

This saturday I will be a guest, among many others, at “Gaming in Real Life – a special Saturday edition of our monthly Brakke Zondag debating cycle, on and with gaming.” Together with Evert Hoogendoorn, head of the game design course at HKU (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) we will discuss all things gaming, web 2.0, Second Life et cetera. There will be all kinds of interesting people and projects, so check it out y’all!

So April 07 (saturday that is) 2007, 8.30 p.m. @ De Brakke Grond

For ‘us’ academics it may be a bit of a ‘been there, discussed that’ debate, virtual versus real (or physical) worlds and spaces. For the general public however it is and increasingly will be a debate worth having. So to discuss the recent outcry over child pornography, virtual crime and virtual money, I wrote a piece for Planet Multimedia called “Politie en fiscus loeren op virtuele wereld”. There is a poll attached to the article (I didn’t author the poll) asking “virtuele wereld als echt behandelen?”. I think Play Between Worlds – Exploring Online Game Culture’ is one of the best (academic) books giving real insight into this question.