In this rapidly developing story, the Herald has learned, via Damion Shubert's blog, that there was a conspiracy to subvert the judging process at the Ludium recently hosted by Ted Castronova at the University of Indiana. Such underhanded means were necessary to defeat the Sysland guild, led by Raph Koster, which was begining to dominate the proceedings so thoroughly that other guilds were forced to resort to edge gaming, and, dare I say it, cheating. Implicated in the most recent allegations are Julian Dibbell, who apparently has *become* Mr. Bungle, and his evil co-conspirator Dave Rickey. I can assure our readers that the Herald will stay on this story like white on rice.
October 03, 2005
Uri, you muckraker, you! Don't you realize it's ONLY A GAME????!!!11!??/?
Posted by: Walker Spaight | October 03, 2005 at 09:01 PM
I really don't think I "led" the group. After all, didn't we win the award for "Most Chaotic"?
Posted by: Raph | October 03, 2005 at 09:56 PM
Raph, you seem to think there is an inconsistency in the following two propositions!
i) Raph led the group.
ii) The group won the "most chaotic" award.
But ok, I take your point, the true leader was the spirit of chaos, and the group itself was a self-organizing distributed system from which emerged an intelligence of such depth and fecundity that the world may never be the same! Ever!
Posted by: urizenus | October 03, 2005 at 10:03 PM
Uri, you wouldn't have had to wait for Damian to break this story if you hadn't been yelling, and I quote, "There is no way that I'm going to drink this Moet crap!"
Posted by: CoryLinden | October 03, 2005 at 10:07 PM
Yah, well so what if I said that. I choked it down, didn't I? This despite the fact that it tastes like the juice in the bottom of the: sink the biz bucket
And I might add that it is so nice to get back to the Herald Lodge, where we have a proper cellar and always have some Cris on ice.
Posted by: urizenus | October 03, 2005 at 11:00 PM
Um...yay for the injokes of the FIA! (Fetted Insane Academians)
Posted by: Elle Pollack | October 04, 2005 at 12:55 AM
"...the Ludium recently hosted by Ted Castronova at the University of Indiana..."
So Peter, how things up there at Michigan University?
Posted by: Edward Castronova | October 04, 2005 at 10:07 AM
OH, I'm glad Elle got in here first so I don't have to be the one. I know when the full details emerge from this sordid frat-boy initiation rite that I'm going to want to use words like "pernicious". I know I'm still trying to think up a good term for the Ludensocracy, the elite academics studying Homo Ludens. Oh, maybe I did already.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 04, 2005 at 11:42 AM
Ted, just so you don't call it Michigan State I won't be offended.
Prok, you call this a "frat boy initiation", but I submit that the champions of "sink the biz" were Betsy "Pirate Grrrl" Book, Constance "Where to Begin" Steinkuehler, and Mia "Wallace" Consalvo.
Posted by: urizenus | October 04, 2005 at 12:27 PM
Uri, don't tell me the Evil Overlord of the SSG was involved in this??? Well, seemed like frat boys, I only saw one girl in the picture *shrugs*. I'm waiting for the alcoholic fumes to subside so we can hear more what it's actually *about* other than *itself*. Why only 5 topics? Why those topics, including some that sounded non-serious like a dating service?
Sounds like some people used some RP games to do a conference, something that's been going on for 25 years all over the world. Ho-hum. Oh, the difference now is, you put your avatar in an immersive world instead of playing the RP in the outworld or manipulating online communications tools. Ok. But did anybody stop to ask if putting the avatar in an immersive world is really *good* for the seriousness of an enterprise like disaster planning? Hell, having your avatar bounce around isn't even good for trying to just go into build-mode in SL, he gets in the way. Stuff like IMing and alts interferes with the seriousness of the enterprises.
I'm also not sure that the organism that evolves from alcohol-fueled group think is a smarter entity than an individual or a group writing snail mail to each other.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 04, 2005 at 01:21 PM
BTW, too bad nobody labels those pictures. There's one guy in there who looks like he was separated from you at birth, Uri, or like he's your edit-shift-mode clone lol. Who is he?
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 04, 2005 at 01:46 PM
That would be Ted Castronova.
Posted by: Urizenus | October 04, 2005 at 02:02 PM
You know, I've been thinking about this Mia "Wallace" Consalvo thing here. Are you saying that's *the* Mia Wallace, the Overlord? And...after googling her and finding she's a Ludensian and a professor and expert on cheating on games...are you saying that maybe the whole SSG thing and the shadowifying of all the major lots, etc. was an academic exercise tested on unwitting subjects? Fun! Were *all* the people in it professors and students or did they sign up some rubes within who thought it was an actual game thing? What *is* an actual game thing in a virtual world though lol? But I only see one paper, about the dark side of sex in TSO or something. Interesting. Hmm, is there a book in this?
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 05, 2005 at 01:12 PM
It's not *that* Mia Wallace. Sorry for the confusion.
Posted by: urizenus | October 05, 2005 at 04:43 PM