3pointD.com

The LA Times reports that Microsoft will be sponsoring the World Cyber Games [<-- annoying music] through 2008, making Windows and the Xbox360 the official platforms of what bills itself as the "world's largest computer and video game festival." This will no doubt help push the visibility of gaming as a pro sport, but I wonder what impact it will have on the Cyberathelete Professional League, which has been around at least as long. With Microsoft leveraging its weight to box out other consoles, it seems there’s still room for some PlayStation or other kind of competition elsewhere — although almost all pro gaming takes place on PC. In any case, this could be a coup on Microsoft’s part to put the XBox360 into ever more hands. Hopefully, it won’t water down events like this.

Oh, to be a hip games writer and grad student on the cutting edge of virtual worlds. Aleks Krotoski is headed to something called the Cast Iron Workshop, where she’ll be rendering Second Life social networks in metal, based on the results of her recent studies. How cool is that?

OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries), “an international collaborative effort by libraries of all types to provide Web-based programs and training for library users and library staff members,” is about to start operating in Second Life, according to this blog post from a Massachusetts library association.

Book discussions, training sessions, and other programs will be offered to current virtual residents. The goal of the project is to promote the real library and online library services to adults who might not otherwise use the library.

Jim Rossignol over at Gamasutra reports on Uni-Verse, a new “distributed interactive audi-visual virtual reality system.” I’ve yet to delve very deeply into it, but it sounds like a virtual world in which collaborative design is possible (one of the selling points of Second Life), but where, unlike in SL, you can work in any 3D design software you like. How does Uni-Verse accomplish this? By adding a network layer that acts as a communications protocol for 3D data. I’ve italicized that idea because if it works (and catches on), the implications could be significant, giving users the capability to port their virtual creations between worlds and perhaps tieing all these 3D environments together just as the Internet’s protocols tie Web pages and other aspects of the net into a common system. One possible drawback: Uni-Verse is open-source, but it seems that its licenses cover only “home, public and personal use” at the moment. That will have to expand to commercial uses eventually, if the system is ever to gain real adoption. In any case, I’m very interested to check this out, and to hear what kinds of experience others have had with Uni-Verse. [Via qDot at MMOrgy.com. <– NSFW]

Is the massively multiplayer game Project Entropia “evolving” into a non-game virtual world? That’s what GameZone reports, along with a change in name from Project Entropia to Entropia Universe.

The new name embodies the concept of Entropia Universe as more than just another MMORPG, but rather a complete virtual world with the unique identifier of allowing players to utilize a RCE (Real Cash Economy). The built-in RCE links the internal Entropia Universe economy to that of a real world through a fixed exchange rate of $1 USD for 10 PED (project entropia dollars).

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