The problem isn't in somehow making better quests given out by vending-machines shaped like people; it's in changing the underlying gameplay so that such devices either aren't necessary or at most take a back seat to more emotionally engaging interaction models. There's nothing wrong with tasks, jobs, missions, etc., but "quests" as the mainstay of gameplay become drained of significance and emotion when they become repetitive, mechanistic, dim shadows of the heroic undertakings to which they refer (Perseus being sent by Polydectes to slay the Medusa isn't quite the same as being told by a blank-faced NPC to bring back ten rat tails).

One obvious solution to this is that the quests that players undertake should be for the benefit of other players. So e.g., players of race or class X need to get from Point A to Point B, but can't because mob/obstacle C blocks the bridge in the middle and race/class X doesn't have the means to clear the mob/obstacle. So the quest of players of race/class Y is to remove the obstacle threatening race/class X. X does a similar service for Y. Z might help X and Y. The threat is real; the gratitude ought to be real. There must be an obvious reason, though, that we don't see that quest structure occur in most MMOG. To difficult to coordinate? Prone to some kind of abuse? To difficult to script?

Fairfield thinks the case that everyone is waiting for "is the one about whether or not these things are real property. This (suit) is more like airline mistake cases, where people snap up cheap tickets and try to keep the tickets." In the end, Fairfield said, Bragg's case is "about the terms of service," and according to Fairfield, U.S. courts tend to strictly enforce such agreements. Accurate assessment or Jedi mind trick? Comments open. Okay, time for a change of topic. Let's talk about MMOs and virtual worlds. Some people say that virtual worlds can provide a place to explore identity. They seem safe, and pseudonymous. Over the last few years, I enjoyed my virtual life as a virtual businesswoman, hard-nosed and avaricious. Oh, and my other life as an inept womanizer. I was a not-so-teenage virtual transient, spending a few months in one pseudonymous identity or another.

EFF attempting to get involved on behalf on the side of the end users. Hearings on motion to dismiss at the end of the month. Points out that EFF is defending the right to use and to modify the games that people have purchased, not to allow rampant copying. Unfortunately, these modifications can run into anticirumvention components of DMCA. Points out that culture has always relied on borrowing from other sources. Silly that TM applies within digital worlds. Not what trademark is designed to do. Trade secret issues appear in reverse engineering. Should be a lawful way of gaining access, not a misappropriation. Competitors should be free to use these methods against commercial products. Not OK to steal source or use illegal means. Some concerns about whether fan interest can cross the lines. Patents can creep in, with software patents.

The problem with this portrayal, as Michael Hartman pointed out, is that: Such a person is *NOT* an explorer then. That is an achiever. This understandably fills most players with anxiety as the vast majority of MMOG combat in WoW or any other game involves trying to "pull" or disaggregate groups of enemies and handle them in easily defeated clumps. But beyond that immediate concern (will I be punished for normal practice?) you can sense there is a deeper philosophical contest of wills here. Who determines how a game is to be played? What separates clever insights by players about the nature of the game's underlying programming from an "exploit"? Against what are we playing: a boss monster, the underlying programming of the game, or the developers themselves? Blizzard representatives, especially in the thread by Joowanna, also offer a practical justification.

Everyone seems to know what an explorer is. The problem is that they don't agree with each other. Here's what I know from data from online surveys of MMORPG players. But here too there is an interesting philosophical question, and it's one where I think the players by and large have it right. The entire design of WoW, like almost all persistent-world games, fundamentally mandates that players be driven by accumulative activities. Asking players not to act that way--and punishing them for doing so--is rather like the God of Genesis giving Adam and Eve insatiable curiosity, putting an apple in view, and telling them not to eat it under penalty of expulsion from Eden. My Terra Nova colleagues will doubtless observe that these are deeply familiar, well-trodden discussions, and so they are, all the more so for those of us who've been at it since the prebiotic soup days of MUDding.

Responses to the following two statements are not strongly correlated. In other words, they are different kinds of people altogether. At this point, the book finally introduces interactive storytelling as a distant cousin of games, books and movies. He goes to great lengths to explain why interactive storytelling won't (can't) evolve from any of these other art forms, focusing in on the tensions between plot and interactivity. In particular, he correctly points out that many apparently interactive forms don't actually allow the player any choices and that true interactive storytelling needs to allow the player many closely balanced decisions. His next sections attempt to explain why interactive storytelling attempts have failed, focusing first on the fact that programmers are lousy storytellers and most storytellers are lousy programmers.

I found this section especially interesting since many of these approaches are also responsible for skyrocketing game development costs. He then discussed several strategies that might work, including data and language driven models. Again, these discussions apply equally well to any game design and are quite informative. Like the rest of his book, he does an excellent job of providing citations and resources so that the reader is able to explore these concepts more fully. His focus on visual languages, and the inverse parsing he uses to make an effective user interface, is extremely thought provoking. Finally, his personality model section is an excellent introduction to building a personality UI. Great breakdown and discussions. The last third of the book details his experiences and techniques in building the Erasmatron, his interactive storytelling engine.

While technically interesting, I found these portions to be less useful. Where I disagree with Chris is the overall approach to building interactive storytelling. Given experiences with simulation and user creation, it seems to me that you might be more able to create "interactive storytelling" by expanding something like Grand Theft Auto to allow a wider array of choices. Alternately, users could be recruited (a la The Diamond Age) to create a truly interactive experience without having to build believable AIs. I also think that place and display is an important component and that a truly interactive story would be better in a 3D environment that as text. However, I hope that Chris continues to push the boundaries of interactive storytelling. Much like the relationship between MUDs and modern online games, text-based interactive stories can explore design spaces and conduct experiments that aren't happening in mainstream games, which is very good for all games!

So the "game mechanics" question above correlates highly (r = .46) with the aggregate of these statements: In other words, people who enjoy learning about the game mechanics are largely also your typical Achievers. So the real question seems to be whether Explorers are really a sort of Achievers. Then the question is whether current MMORPGs have driven away all the real Explorers, or whether game designs always embed exploration within the context of achievement and make it difficult to tease these two motivations apart. Or is it the case that all Achievers are inherently Explorers. After all, no one else is as interested in whether dual-wielding outperforms two-handed weapons. And isn't that what it means to understand the underlying rules, and moving from the specifics to the general? But if Achievers are usually "Analyst"-style Explorers (the min-maxers), then ... who are the real Explorers? Does it make sense to have a separate Explorer type if it overlaps so much with Achievers?