So, Liz threw up our stuff about the MS/Social Software/IT/Computing thing we have been exploring here lately. Good for her. I've been involved with that as well, albeit from the games education side - I'm the lead on our MS in Game Design & Development proposal, which is currently a little further along. There is (we feel) some substantial overlap between these degrees because even though games are specialized, games are on the bleeding edge of multi-user communication software. You only have to look at X-Box live and wonder at the potential of thousands of users with real time voice and graphics display. Then have a nice long session in Netmeeting and wonder why the rest of us can't have tech like that... (yes, i know, game worlds are specialized and so they succeed based on their narrowness, its currently less feasible to build a game world in which one can do 'anything').

In part this is related to blogging itself. I yearn for the day that blogs are incorporated into virtual worlds (and thinking of building some stuff). I don't just want a 'blog site' I want a 'personal world'. I could hang out there and leave messages for other travellers. I could trackback through other peoples worlds and signs, artifacts they have left there. The dream of personal ownership of a piece of cyberspace that is *mine*, whose purpose is not predestined along the design of some set of game rules (although already players are subverting the very goals of game worlds to their own, creating a status structure and society based not only on norms that the designers envisioned, but several others as well). I am reminded, in this early day of technological advancement in virtual worlds technology, of Delaney's Dhalgren. The fragmentation of the world, the surreal, yet broken communication, the dream-like aspect of moving through a world that seems at once known and unknown, where anything can in truth be anything else.

On a purely technical level, there are relationships between what multi-user games are doing now, and what super-scale multi-user software of the future might look like. Already the miliary is making use of this technology, and I am working on a grant that uses similar technology in HS Science Education. I've seen projects using older Quake engines for presentation on a variety of academic topics.

What could be more interesting still is looking at games from a CSCW point of view. I am amazed every night when I log on, that we can organize eighty people to operate in an operation of orchestrated combat timed down to the fraction of a second. Really. And then I try to teleconference with faculty at other universities, and it takes a team of techs and generally comes off no better than 'ok'. What this says to me is that there is an entire medium of communication that exists within massively multi-user games that is not being exploited by the larger community.

I don't mean 'hey look I can chat with people'. The script kiddies that play these games take the programmable interface (and more and more are XML based) and write their own tools and extensions to the game. They crack open the packet structure and understand how it works. I've seen folks embed their own tools into the games, linking out to Winamp and AIM, and skin the world into basically whatever look & feel they want. Customizability is king. This, to me, is fascinating, and bears certain parallels to the Open Source community. Already you can download skins for EQ the same way you can for GNOME or Enlightenment, complete not only with glitzy graphics but also custom buttons and added functionality. I am waiting for the first drag-n-drop EQ Customization Kit (it has to be right around the corner).

The final piece, and the reason that I think there is overlap with games and less structured 'social software'is the study of status and meaning in virtual communities. Game communities form very tight knit circles. I know players who quit playing in a given world years ago that still frequent guild message boards and occasionally log on just to preserve their friendships and status in-world. During its first year of launch there were couples who chose to celebrate their wedding in the game. The impact with which these communities resonate with their members is remarkable, and has not been achieved in almost any other space. Part of it is focus, but part of it is the combinatorial effect of tools, desire, and strength of numbers.

The blogging community is doing this to some degree, as is the Open Source community, but none with the fervor of the communities forming around various virtual game worlds. I think we need to all take another at what is going on with the game communities (and people are starting to, like they are at Michigan, CMU, GaTech, RIT, and many other places). Can the almost fanatical devotion to game communities be harnessed into other kinds of collaborative software? Can we distill the compelling elements from MMORPG's into rules for other kinds of software design? What are the things that draw community together in massively multi-player games (did Amy Jo Kim get them all, either in or out of her book?), since it does not appear that they are only game related ? Is the fundamental element of collaborative software social instead of technical ? These are some questions of our age - the study of play may tell us a great many things around ourselves, and how to build tools to communicate in cyberspace.

UPDATE: My colleague Steve Jacobs has posted an interesting follow up here. Steve is my partner in crime on the MS in Game Design & Development, and hosts an interesting blog at Memeweaver.