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All change in the metaverse: EVE embraces democracy as Reuters turns tail on Second Life

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EVE Online screenshotThe space opera science fiction MMO game EVE Online was recently rocked by an insider-trading scandal. Unlike World of Warcraft, the EVE universe is singular and persistent: you can’t move your character to another server, so anything that happens effects everybody. [screenshot by Pentadact]

As such, it’s imperative that EVE‘s makers CCP maintain a strong and transparent bond of trust with their paying players, the latest development of which is the Council of Stellar Management – a peer-elected group of players who act as advisers to CCP on matters regarding gameplay. [via BoingBoing] How long before this (or another similar) monitoring system becomes big enough to harbour its own layers of corruption?

Still, at least CCP are making the effort to keep their userbase on side, unlike Linden Lab. The media glow on Second Life has been spasmodic since the initial burst of enthusiasm last year, but today’s big metaverse headline is about news agency Reuters pulling out of Second Life, with former stringer Eric Krangel launching a zinger of a parting shot from his new post at Silicon Alley Insider [via The Guardian]:

Abandon the idea that Second Life is a business app. I wasn’t in Second Life to play, I was there on assignment for Reuters. The login server would crash. I’d try to reach sources, but Second Life’s IM window would hang on “waiting” all day when trying to figure out who was online. “Teleports” … would stop working and I’d get locked out of my own office. These weren’t one-offs, they were my daily, first-hand, happens-all-the-time experiences. For all its bugs, Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business. Re-focus on the core mission: Keeping the hobbyists happy and converting potential recruits into hardcore (read: fees-paying) users.

Unfortunately, Linden Lab can’t even seem to keep its paying customers happy, as protests over recent price hikes have demonstrated. I doubt this spells the end of the line for the metaverse – or even for Second Life itself – but the brave new world doesn’t seem quite so brave or new any more.

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In the year 2025… will US military dominance survive?

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The US National Intelligence Council has published their quadrennial Global Trends Review, from The Guardian:

While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America’s expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be “losing clout” by 2025. Internal bickering and a “democracy gap” separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU “a hobbled giant”, unable to translate its economic clout into global influence.

There’s some other interesting stuff in there. The Guardian points out that the tone is different from the last time the NIC report was published in 2004:

It was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 2020 when it projected “continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US”.

That confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies “in the ground” were “sufficient to meet global demand”.

It’s interesting how quickly perspectives can change – and reaffirms how difficult it is to create near future science fiction.

[from The Guardian][image from Army.mil on flickr]

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Investigative journalism to make an online come-back?

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Following on from Tom M’s mention of Spot.us, the New York Times has an article on the organisations that may well end up replacing it. Local news websites like VoiceOfSanDiego.org are looking to beat both the current newspaper and web news models by returning to solid original journalism on the matters that matter:

“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ “

The problem being that, currently, online advertising doesn’t provide enough income to run a proper newsroom, even with the lower overheads of the straight-to-web model. But will that always be the case? I’d be a lot more tolerant of internet advertising if I felt I was getting decent content as a result of it.

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