f13.net

So I'm being all viral and shit here.  This here (http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/) is Chris Sherman's new gig.  Sherman is the guy who set up AGC, and given the value I've gotten out of that, I thought I'd mention this for anyone who is interested.  Won't have the cash to do this myself, and it really doesn't sound like my cup of tea, but who knows.  Here's a bit of blurb from the web site:


Sounds like it's aimed at marketing geeks, but, unlike some, I think marketing geeks are people too.

God Damn it, even PBS is playing the Bears fight song.  Damn thing is stalking me.  But I digress.

1. New York.
2. Museum of Jewish Heritage.
3. $595
4. New York.

This is going to suck balls. Forget it.

Yeah, I don't think this is aimed at us, I think this is more a Virtual Laguna Beach/MTV thing for Madison Avenue types.

Pompous assholes?

Pompous assholes with serious cash.  Whereas we are mainly flat broke pompous assholes.  Less booth babes, more escorts.

Though one thing I noticed at AGC was that IBM had people in the serious tech tracks asking a lot of questions.  Coupled with stuff like this (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16545338/) suggests to me that non-gaming interests are looking at online 3-D pretty seriously.  There are a lot of potential positives for games in there (listening to the IBM guy at the server roundtable, it was pretty clear he thought he could do better, and better server performance is one thing that wouldn't suck), although I don't think they are as interested in gaming as they are in using the 3-D chat room as a collbrative platform for business processes.  Sort of the next step in Webinars.

Anyway, I think that the non-gaming interests that Raph has been talking about are moving in pretty fast.  Where they will go, I'm not sure.

Honestly, until someone throws 200M and 5 years of development at a team, the only place they'll be going is the bathroom during lunch break to rub one out over the latest design document which comprehensively describes how to transmit streaming music videos with product placement into the middle of your virtual world's town square.

You mean like The Lounge (http://www.pcdmusiclounge.com/)?

NASA, Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics, L3 Communications, Martin Marietta, MITRE, just to name a few.

If there's a new way to hold meetings, we're probably going to be on board.  Whee!

There was some sort of IBM discussion meeting thing about online game spaces, but as usual I missed out on it.  Makes plenty of sense.  As online gaming grows into a real industry, IBM will be there to sell them shit.

the problem the IBM and other middleware providers were trying to get across was in essence,
"1) you guys are reinventing the wheel -- a lot of these problems of scale and availability have already been solved in other, non-gaming industres.  So go try those solutions.  What a lot of you do now sucks -- so don't try to be experts in networking.  Stick to drawing elves;
2) you guys are fooling yourselves -- you will get beaten by providers who can offer best uptime and service, so take this seriously.  Having a great game and great hype isn't sufficient if your customers can't get through a  regpath;
 and
3) you're a bunch of pompous assholes, with your heads in the sand."


I'll go with what you guys are saying about NY and this event.


FWIW, maybe you should consider hosting your own summit.  A player run, amateur based conference might be interesting.  Worked for PAX and others.  Could invite uberguilds :)

And I bet you'd get pro sponsors.

A F13 conference would be interesting, to say the least.  There would be lots of shouting and finger-pointing.  Schild could tell people off, I could tell them how their server farm sucks balls, Zepp could get out the Torque pamphlets, and the rest could get boozed up and cheer us on.

If you did an F13 conference in conjunction with PAX there might be more than a few folks around.  :-D

Would rather have it at the Bunny Ranch.

Hooray for fully functional booth babes.

I had to sign up for the M16, so seriously, this is probably only 20% as bad, the upside is that I'll get to tell IGN how badly they suck in person......

No need, I've let them know a number of times.

sweet any technique or pointers?

Until they start saying things like "well for $1,000 each you could get..." seriously I was drunk but not that drunk, damn prostitutes.