There are two major pursuits that lead people to plant their butts in front of computer screens and pound on keyboards for hours without pay. One group of people loves social media in all forms, shapes, and sizes: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, blogging, etc. The other group loves to play around in massively multiplayer fantasy worlds based in magic and technology. These two groups are more alike than unlike, with one key difference. The second group usually realizes that they are playing a game; the first group usually doesn’t.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are a popular pastime where people immerse themselves in fantasy worlds. Players spend many hours in games like World of Warcraft (WoW), amassing gold, experience, and property while making an uber-powerful character. Other online games like Everquest, Entropia Universe, and EVE Online project the same allure as WoW, while simpler brethren like Kingdom of Loathing, Gothador, and Adventure Quest have their own loyal players. This isn’t a new phenomenon either: MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), earlier forms of online games with a heavy reliance on text have been around since the late 1970’s.

It’s pretty clear that you’re in a different world when you’re playing a MMORPG. You can explore that world on your own, but it’s often profitable to partner with other players to help beat down your foes and become stronger. Sometimes your foes are just products of the game. In other cases you battle other players like yourself in order earn wealth, fame, and bragging rights.

Do you see some parallels with social media?

Social media sites are normally grounded in reality (The Sims and Second Life straddle both pursuits), but everyone’s playing a character when they join these communities. Most of the time people try to be themselves, but they may use an alias or avatar to represent themselves. Goal attainment can be a big part of social media as it is part of MMORPGs. Socialization and communities flourish, in different forms, in games and social media.

Let’s compare these two pursuits:

Friends/Contacts vs. Allies – some social media users have army-size followings. A number of social media users have attracted thousands of followers, particularly on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed. Similarly, MMORPG players try to build alliances with some of their fellow players. The more famous players may gain followings similar in size to Twitter followings. They’re fan clubs by other names. The likelihood of direct interaction with someone with that many followers: minute, unless you already have some kind of connection to them.

Stats and Skills/Experience – MMORPG players want to make their characters stronger, smarter, tougher, and faster, so they play often to gain skills, while using equipment and performance enhancing stuff to make themselves even stronger. The social media user works on increasing comparable stats. If they are a blogger, they want to increase page views, subscribers, comments, and inbound links. They want to get recommendations and endorsements, get added to blogrolls, or otherwise gain social proof. Followers in social networking is another statistic that seems to show one’s strength.

Quests/Deeds vs. Accomplishments - games often require characters to complete a series of tasks in order to win some prize, e.g. go kill fifty goblins to get a pouch of gold, a potion, and a new sword. Similarly, social media users may participate in contests to win social credibility by doing things like:

* Hitting the front page of social news and bookmarking sites

* Winning awards from peers or authority figures

* Compete against other social media users for recognition

Property/Territory vs. Publications – some people like to personalize their stomping grounds in MMORPGs to show ownership. They buy land, put dwellings up, and add distinctive furnishings. Similarly, websites, books, eBooks, articles, online courses, consulting gigs, and more are the ways that social media users can make a more lasting mark on the Web.

Entrepreneurism - both MMORPG players and social media experts can sell their skills to help other users with their goals. They often bend the rules while doing this, but there’s as much a market for getting uber-skilled characters and MMORPG wealth as there is to getting Digg front pages and high exposure in other social news and bookmarking sites. Gamers sometimes sell their characters and equipment at a profit while some people sell blogs, websites, and applications to make money.

You might think that these are superficial comparisons that cast both pursuits in negative lights. That’s quite understandable, because I’ve focused on the selfish and materialistic aspects of these games. Both MMORPGs and social media sites do have a number of positive characteristics that they share.

Both pursuits have a social component. They allow people from different cities, countries, ethnic backgrounds, and other demographic categories to interact. You learn a lot by interacting with people, even if it’s over the Web. Good friendships have been made through both pursuits, sometimes culminating in real-life friendships and romantic relationships whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, or a Ning group – the same can happen in games. Both games and social media sites also allow us to maintain existing relationships when friends move away. Social media sites have a professional networking and career building component. I can’t say for certain that MMORPGs have the same, but who knows? You can also use both types of applications to explore worlds, real or imagined, as a way to satisfy creative, recreational, and social needs.

The bottom line is that MMORPGs and social media site are far more alike than unalike. They can both be used for serious pursuits, but they have a huge recreational component. When taken to competitive extremes, the pursuit of social media goals and MMORPG character power can have damaging effects on the user’s personal life. Moderation is a key survival skill. In both pursuits, if things get too intense or obsessive, it’s best to remember that they are mostly recreational pursuits.

In other words, don’t forget that they are just games.

Mark Dykeman is a former Everquest, Entropia Universe, Kingdom of Loathing, and Gothador player who (mostly) switched his addictions to social media. You can find him building up his social media character at Broadcasting Brain, on Twitter, and at FriendFeed.

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Blizzard has finally disproved the old adage that videogames rot your brains. In fact, they impart essential survival training on players. Earlier this month, 12-year-old Jørgen Olsen survived a moose attack in Norway by playing dead — a skill his World of Warcraft character had recently learned. And then the game taught a 17-year-old in Bejing how to deal with schoolyard bullies. After losing a fight, he took a cue from the game’s Fire Mage and set a match to his real-world opponent, after dousing him in gasoline.

Ever wonder why people spend 20, 40 or 80 hours a week playing massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft? It’s to meet hot chicks. That’s why a band of intrepid entrepreneurs has developed a cleverly-named social network to “facilitate the building of relationships between World of Warcraft enthusiasts.” The wondrous World of Datecraft has currently attracted 300 lonely WoW fanatics (judging from forum registrations). We suspect the appeal of World of Warcraft players is understated. Sure, there’s the deathly pallor. But what girl doesn’t swoon over a guy capable of back-handing his enemies across the Swamp of Sorrows with an Infinity Blade? That’s all part of the attraction: You know he’s capable of obsessively focusing on a single goal. All you have to do is switch his attentions over to you.

Oracle’s earnings have beaten Wall Street’s expectations, suggesting that the turmoil in credit markets has not had an impact on tech bellwethers. Score one for VC blogger Paul Kedrosky, who has cast tech stocks as a safe haven in today’s market. [Associated Press]

Source:Valleywag

And a child will lead them — down the garden path. PlaySpan is garnering buzz because its cofounder, 12-year-old Arjun Mehta, hauled in $6.5 million in venture capital (although it’s suspected that his father and CEO Karl Mehta is using Arjun as a mere promotional tool). Talk about a startup in need of adult supervision. Arjun makes teenage entrepreneurs like Jessica Mah and Comcate founder Ben Casnocha look like pikers. The founder’s age, however, is distracting reporters from the real question: Why did this company snag so much cash?

PlaySpan’s executives say it’s a “publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network.” Whatever that means. In-game item sales are the hot new trend in massively multiplayer online games. Since these virtual items — say a shiny coat of dragon-scale armor — can be made at virtually no cost to the publisher, they’re extraordinarily high in margin. Some developers are, in fact, now offering their games for free, making ends meet by shilling fashion accessories. Since open-market trading of these items on, say, eBay is often deemed “illegal” by the developers, it makes sense to create a sanctioned forum for sales — similar to Sparter, LiveGamer and a bunch of other external marketplaces.

PlaySpan isn’t forthcoming about how its commerce network will actually work, but the very idea is plagued by problems. For one, replicating PlaySpan’s software tools isn’t exactly difficult when looked at in the wider context of game development. Also, PlaySpan encourages users to chat on third-party servers about a wide variety of games — hardly a boost to the developers’ goal of winning players’ exclusive loyalties. It’s like a company that comes in and offers to set up kiosks in a mall’s parking lot, diverting shoppers before they even set foot inside. All the big multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft, have their own proprietary commerce systems. In-game traffic is too valuable to hand over to a third party.

Why get into gory details, though, when you have a story about a cute kid who’s got a startup while he’s still in elementary school? PlaySpan has made garnering publicity look like child’s play.

Source:Valleywag

Kids! Uncle Nick is gonna teach you about sex, the Internet, and the interplay of the dehumanizing modern simulacrum versus the physical expression of that most animal of human urges! Also, acrostics!

Sex position or World of Warcraft spell? (answers at bottom of page)
1. Cat Form
2. Stargazing
3. Earth Shock
4. Backstab
5. Bull Horn
6. Rainbow Arch
7. Charge
8. Aimed Shot
9. Crushing Spices
10. Clinging Creeper
11. Battle Stance
12. Double-edged Knife

Five LOLcat ways to say no to sex!
1. Abstinent cat is abstinent
2. Iz that time of monf
3. I made you a Viagra, but I eated it.
4. Sumbuddy stole mah fukket
5. DO NOT WANT

Match the Internet people to the sex toy:
1. Star Wars Kid
2. Thriller Prisoners
3. Ask a Ninja
4. Leeroy Jenkins

A. The Python Extra-Large Double Dong
B. Trojan Extended Pleasure with Climax Control
C. Vibrating Silver Bullet
D. Fuzzy nunchucks

(Answer: None. The above people all need the touch of a real woman)

Computer dangers that you could also get from sex
Did you know that some people somewhere are using the Internet instead of having sex? Here’s why!

• Chances of back ache, carpal tunnel are just the same
• Google doesn’t laugh at questions
• Lower-risk poking
• Less shame after “404 Not Found”
• Finally an activity that lasts longer than two minutes

Positions: 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12
Spells: 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11

Artwork from Your Lost. Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag, Too Much Nick, and Look Shiny. Actually, he’s having sex right now.

“That’s Jeff Gaspin, the president of the NBC Universal Television Group. So his number-one priority is piracy. Not making high-quality shows. Not forging a sponsorship or advertising model that is less annoying and distracting to viewers, such that they (the viewers) would be less likely to want to fast-forward the advertising messages. No, piracy, that’s his top priority.” — Blogger John Gruber, reacting to Gaspin’s statement that “priacy was and is our no. 1 priority.” [Daring Fireball]

Source:Valleywag
SCO, who purported to own Unix and all Linux derivatives, is, unsurprisingly, one step closer to its deathbed as NASDAQ sends a notice that they will be delisted from the exchange. Refusing to admit the fight is over, SCO will appeal the delisting. But with their cases against IBM and Novell in tatters, a bankruptcy filing, and dwindling cash reserves, the persistent litigator is unlikely to reverse NASDAQ’s decision after earlier warnings.

Source:Valleywag

Reuters is pimping a study conducted by advertising firm JWT concluded that one out of every five people sacrifices sex to spend more time online. More than a quarter of the surveyed say they interact less with friends and acquaintances in face-to-face situations. JWT concluded that we’ve turned into a bunch of “digitivity denizens,” people who opt for Wi-Fi over television and have intertwined their online and offline lives to the point where a fifth of the populace can’t go without the Internet for more than a couple of days. Fifteen percent can’t last unplugged for more than a day. Of course, JWT only polled 1,011 people — most likely interrupting a really rocking World of Warcraft guild meeting. (Photo by Lucas)