The local news came by our humble little studio a few weeks ago to show the rest of San Diego what kind of scary, bizarre things go on at this place where insane people make these things called “MMOs” day in and day out…
Video: http://www.kusi.com/home/10989121.html
I give those guys credit. As far as mainstream news pieces go, this one wasn’t winceworthy in the least and actually showed a few cool things from around here.
Good on ‘em.
Update of the day:
Still safe here. Haven’t been evacuated and betting that we’re not going to be. The Witch Creek fire’s about 5 miles north of here, but blowing west toward the water, not south.
Work remains shut down, since we’re all conserving power and keeping people off the streets.
We’ve got some folks doing remote work, but the events here are playing merry hell with our beta update schedule (entirely on hold) and the remaining dev time for the expansion. The added stress definitely doesn’t help.
As for the fire, it’s hard to track what we see from here with the reality of what’s going on. If you were over here without watching the news, you’d think that Sunday was the worst day and that it’s been getting better since. Exactly the opposite of what’s been happening.
Sunday, we had the smoke blowing this way and the coat of ash-snow on everything. If you’ve never seen it, picture standing about 30 feet downwind from a campfire. Same exact smell and effect. Two days later with the fires expanded, thanks to the wind shift it’s been reasonably calm.
I’ll take that luck. Here’s hoping it stays that way.
As Craig, Tami, Alan and Raph mentioned, we’ve got some wildfires down here today. There are about 100k acres already gone so far, and everyone’s been asked to stay off the roads and cell phones. A pretty huge swath of neighborhoods have already been evacuated.
At work, SOE games will only be having limited services available until this clears up. To Smed’s credit, he’s never been the kind of guy to fuck around when it comes to the occasional local emergency, always trying to get the word out as early as possible that people should stay home and take care of their families.
As for me, everything’s perfectly all right down this direction. To those who’ve checked in already, thanks for asking. 
Some smoke and ash, and a whole lot of wind, but the fires are still far enough north to where there’s no immediate problem.
Have a few friends and pets over, and we’re making the best of it while being glued to the TV.
Any other friends who got booted from their place and need somewhere to hang out a while, you know how to find me.
Be safe, all.
I’ve been sitting on this draft for a couple weeks, but seeing this article come up in Google Alerts pushed me into sending it out. I tend to not post unless I have a completely formed thought to communicate. This time, no such luck.
It’s no secret that people use software for all kinds of things other than what they’re originally intended to accomplish. Any coder who’s written a system for someone else’s use can tell you at least one tale of a horrific stretch of functionality that pushed a system far outside what it was ever meant to accomplish. Sometimes those attempts result in fantastic things, and other times they explode in new and exciting ways.
MMOs are great in that we get to see and hear firsthand what happens when people use our software for purposes that never occurred to us. It’s even better when that use is amazingly cool, useful in a very practical sense, and something we can help foster.
The third page of the article talks about how researchers at Northwestern University (namely, an enterprising grad student named Yolanda Rankin) began experimenting with using EverQuest II as a way to teach english as a second language. She’s been through one study with some interesting results you can read at the link, and is currently starting on a larger scale study also using our game.
When we were first discussing implementing character voices in the game, people using it this way wasn’t something that was on the radar. I’d call this one of the better unintended uses I’ve heard of, and hopefully it does turn into something fantastic for them.
What’s the amazing revelation here? There really isn’t one, other than to say that it’s exceptionally satisfying to be able to point out some of the more positive and socially redeeming aspects of gaming.
Why stop with ESL? If you ask me, education at all levels would be a lot better off if there were more compelling ways such as this to get people excited about, and keep people interested in, learning. Talk about an industry overdue for a revolution. I can only speak from my own experience with schools from kindergarten to college, but suffice it to say that I walked away feeling that the approved, traditional methods were something short of the most compelling way to spend sixteen years.
Here’s to hoping that this is one envelope that continues to get pushed in all the right directions.
From the Previous Post:
I expect that my batting average will last precisely two weeks. Possibly longer if Coach Joe and Coach Ed can be talked into not playing me at all for the rest of the season. Hmm…
Mission accomplished!
MMO Producer and Evangelist. Community enthusiast. Developer. Gamer.