“RealID” is what the name suggests: it displays your real life name to friends once you have accepted their request to be a RealID friend. well, i have no issues with that. people that are my real life friends naturally know my real name and vice versa. however, there is a little twist to RealID: a little feature called “friends of friends” quite similar to Facebook with the most notable difference that Facebook offers several layers of privacy options (ok that is up for debate but still) and you can always just use a nickname or fake name on Facebook. RealID uses naturally the name of the WoW account which usually is the name on your credit card and hence you cannot really change it or billing will be messed up.

as mentioned i have no problem with real life mates knowing my name in a virtual world but i am worried by the fact that my real name is visible to friends of my friends who i may not know at all. the most popular argument in this debate is “oh come on, it’s just your name and not your address or any other personal details”. well, it might be just my name but a simple google search using my real name does come up with things about me (professional things mind you) that i do not want people i play a game with to know. i strongly believe in keeping the professional life and the personal life separated and RealID threatens to break down that separation.

one great aspect of the virtual world is that you can be whoever you want to be, you can create a virtual self that can have as much or little in common with your real self as you want it to. mind you, virtual worlds like WoW are a fantasy after all. it’s not like i have something to hide from my virtual friends but it kinda defies the purpose of a virtual life as outlined by Sherry Turkle in her book “Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet“: virtual worlds offer us the chance to have multiple identities and experiment with them as we form in true postmodern tradition something that can be called “patchwork identity”. i am a female tauren deathknight in WoW and a media scientist in real life and i want to keep it that way.

i strongly hope that Blizzard will add some privacy options to RealID in the future that either offer you to display a nickname or deactivates the “friends of friends” feature. i like RealID but as it is right now it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.

nevertheless, this new kind of addiction is on the rise and its potential consequences cannot be estimated at this time. however, we can ask why online gamers “keep pushing that button”, that is seemingly voluntarily keep doing the same things over and over again in online games also known as mmorpgs. a rise in level, loads of ingame money, rare armour pieces or weapons can be listed as valid reasons. all mmorpgs are designed to be addictive in nature: there is always something to achieve ingame. let me try to illustrate this with an example:

popular mmorpgs like World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online all have armour sets players can collect. each set consists of six to eight pieces and not easy to obtain. typically you need anything between 12 to 25 other players to defeat the bosses that drop pieces of armour sets. so this simple game design ensures that the player that wants to own the entire set will keep participating in events to kill those bosses in order to get the set complete. this can take depending on loot distribution rules and luck months or even years. a simple reason to keep pushing that button.

one valid argument is that nobody forces players to collect the entire armour set. but like in real life (RL) mmorpgs are about achievements and accomplishments and you want to be successful in the virtual world. part of being successful is showing off your items, parading your character around in heavy populated areas just for the sake of being seen and being recognized as successful player.

to sum things up, yes, internet addiction should be included in the upcoming DSM-V and health care professionals should be aware that excessive gaming is a disorder and needs to be addressed with appropriate therapeutic measure and – even more important – prevention.

IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized.

here’s the link to the entire article. 

so people are leaving WoW and are looking for greener pastures for various reasons. summertime may be a valid explanation but i think that WoW is really on a downward spiral. i was a pretty “hardcore” player raiding 5 to 6 days per week and still the eternal grind became too much to be enjoyable.

in short, “Numa Numa” is about a slightly overweight guy named Gary Brolsma lip-synching the song “Dragostea din tei” by “O-Zone“. apparently, that home-made 97 seconds video has caused quite a buzz on the internet. there is a impressive amount of “inspired by numa numa” videos out there on YouTube.

yes, i know thats so last year, but i was kind of amazed by this example of the phenomenon that is called “bricolage” in cultural studies.

here are a few interesting links i came across in the various (social bookmark) feeds today: