Dev Diary: Tabula Rasa’s Ethical Parables – Kotaku

Kotaku shared the “essay” a Tabula Rasa dev wrote about the ethical decisions in the upcoming MMOG.  I sure hope they do it well.  Richard Garriot has a big name to live up to.  I wonder if there is some sort of reputation system with monetary or loot rewards for ethical choices or if it is completely left to players to value intangibles.  Let’s say an unethical choice gives you the best loot.  How does someone instill a sense of value for the intangibles that make up for lesser loot?  I suppose some sort of marker or flag or reputation system without tangible rewards might be enough…  the community of players would need to be rich or big enough or whatever to support that sort of rep system.

See also previous posts on games and ethics and what MMOGs need.

Pop Cosmopolitanism and the Terra Nova post

First off, Constance and her folk at the U of Wisc-Madison started a blog about learning in virtual worlds.  Obviously, lots of cross-over with some of the stuff I’m trying to do.  I wonder how they collect and analyze data and whether I should try to collaborate/share my data with them…

We also have in recent games news the announcement of Metaplace (via an email from Joey Lee and a post at Terra Nova), Raph Koster’s new big work.  As far as I can tell, kind of like Second Life except that it is even more open and flexible for user generated content and that the tools for making content is specifically geared toward making games (so one would assume rules and goals factor in there somehow unlike with Second Life).  Alice, as usual, has a nice write-up about Metaplace.

Lee Wilson posted his article about the Myths About Video Games In School.

And Richard Carey has a nice post about Games and Web 2.0.