I was honored to stand outside the room where developer Raph Koster gave his talk at this year's Games Development Conference yesterday.  Here's my look at what he had to say about why we as gamers should care about our online worlds.

February 18^th, 2008, San Francisco CA.  Games Development Conference 2008

Worlds in Motion Panels – Raph Koster: Why Gamers Should Care about Virtual Worlds.

Yesterday started with a packed panel for speaker Raph Koster.  A long time developer and a theoretician in the worlds we all enjoy, Raph's new venture is Areae (people are having lots of fun here trying to figure out how to say that one!), a platform where gamers program their own worlds using anything from a WYSIWYG program, to actually coding it themselves.  He focused on why gamers should care about these online worlds we inhabit .  I'm sure it was a great panel.  I was stuck in line getting my pass to the conference and by the time I got there both doors to the room had lines at least 30 people deep.  So I took a few notes by jumping up and down and checking out the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied  his talk. 

Several times he mentioned the rights of players in this developing medium that changes so often.  While this has been bandied around for some time the implications include everything from privacy to virtual property rights.  It's a huge thing for players and developers to work out among themselves because quite soon, the courts will be hearing several cases which may set a legal precedent that works out to no one's benefit.  The courts can be trusted to understand the situation here as well as they understand the RIAA and their fight for an idiotic amount of control of music property rights.  Hence the importance this is taking on as more and more developers see that even one legal case that acts against them and players could damage our industry forever.

He discussed that not only are players actors within a world made by others, we are a self aware community!  What point he hoped to make with this was drowned out as he loudly proclaimed it was our responsibility to...do something.  Trust me we'll get an interview out to him to go over these points because they're an amazing part of the immediate future of our genre that must be understood and dealt with, rather than ignored!

That online worlds are media and games are just an example of what can be done with them was a point he touched on, and one that another panel will also discuss later in the week.  So we'll be sure to cover that one in more depth as the days go by.

The point for players?  Developers do listen to you!  You are not only their development target and financial support; you are the community that is at the heart of virtual worlds and games across this internet way of life we now live!