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SAN FRANCISCO--Housework is a lot more fun with a battle axe and a couple of dwarves.

Chore Wars, a game shown off by noted game developer Jane McGonigal at the Web 2.0 Summit recently, gives users "experience" points for various household chores. Collecting those points then lets you advance your profile in the online game.

Jane McGonigal speaks at the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco this past May.

(Credit: James Martin, CNET News.com)

Swiffer the floor twice a week and get 20 points for charm, that sort of thing. You can also play for virtual gold doubloons. These can be exchanged for rewards, inside your own circle of friends. Earn 200 doubloons and you can receive a get-out of-cleaning-the garage card. Or if you are the low scorer for a month, you can be dubbed a scapegoat and put up for adoption.

Naturally, most players concentrate on people you know. Who cares if some guy in Texas slew 200 yards of PVC pipe in putting together his new sprinkler system and got 1,000 doubloons. The bean bags in your guest room still need to be stacked. Still, you can get a sense of the value that other people put on certain tasks to get a sense of the value of your own.

There are different roles you can play--apprentice, dungeon master (DMs have full administrative power and get to wield the unstoppable cleansing power of Comet) and adventurer.

The idea behind all of this is to make real life more appealing. Virtual worlds are actually more appealing than reality to a growing segment of the population. The rules are easier to understand and the rewards are clean-cut. "Some people care more about their avatars than their real lives," McGonigal said. "We're seeing it a bit in the U.S. In Asia it is a really strong phenomenon."

There does seem to be an inherent danger of turning people into household pets. You're getting people to clean up for the equivalent of a milk bone. But, in the right context, you could see this making housework more fun.

World of Warcraft

(Credit: World of Warcraft)

As I was struggling with my slow Internet connection today (it's fixed, thank goodness), I came across one of the best stories I have ever read. According to Techdirt, researchers were trying to find a way to simulate the death toll of another plague. And, luckily for everyone involved, they thought World of Warcraft would be a great place to start.

Yes, you read that correctly--your WoW character may soon be the recipient of some pretty serious bleeding of the organs, vomiting fleas that release bacteria and a whole bunch of other plague goodness.

Personally, I think this is great. How many times have we heard of people hiring others to get them up to level 70 or cheating their way to the top of the WoW social hierarchy? I'm sick and tired of it. If you play WoW, learn how to play it and earn your level 70 the right way--spending 16 hours per day for the next six months in a dark basement running through the world and picking up attractive "female" avatars. Now that is living.

If you ask me, the Bubonic Plague should be unleashed on these cheaters. Let's round them all up and keep them in a secluded area in the world. From there, let's see what a little bleeding will do to that god-like level 70 now. In a matter of minutes, the characters would start to know what it's like to be a level 15 trying to fight with the big boys. Then and only then would those bullies have some appreciation for the game.

Then, if we're really lucky, scientists will start releasing the bird flu and maybe even a scientifically engineered plague that rivals the great mouse plague of a few years ago. I like the sound of that!

OK, so you heard my hopes for the plague. What kind of plagues would you like to see in WoW?

With its own Blizzcon convention coming up in just a month, we weren't surprised that Blizzard didn't make any big announcements at E3. We did learn a little, though.

The new 10-man Zul'aman dungeon, coming soon to World of Warcraft.

(Credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

For you World of Warcraft fans, you can look forward to built-in voice chat, guild banks, and the new 10-man Zul'aman instance dungeon. Expect voice chat and guild banks first, and it sounded like Blizzard was set to provide more details of those features at its own show. It did tell us that the voice chat will automatically lower the game volume when someone starts talking, and that it will also indicate the current speaker in your group with an icon over his or her character's head.

Zul'aman looks like a semicasual departure for raiding WoWers. Blizzard hopes to make the new instance doable in one night or a few hours, rather than Karazhan, the current high-level 10 man dungeon that can require a more significant time investment. Zul'aman will be an outdoor instance (like Zul'gurub), with six bosses in total. It will have quests attached to it, but it won't require any prerequisite quests to get in, nor will it involve boosting your character's reputation with one of the game's many factions. Accessibility is the key.

Finally, in keeping with our interest in forthcoming games, DirectX 10, and Games for Windows Live, we found out that Starcraft 2 does not currently have any DirectX 10 content. Those longer shaders and optimized pathways could find themselves added to content as development continues, but citing timeliness and, again, accessibility, Blizzard's development team isn't too focused on pushing Starcraft 2's graphics into the so-called "next-gen. Also, as you'd imagine, it will be sticking with Blizzard's own Battle.net player matching software, so don't expect a major push toward Games for Windows Live on this title, either.

Editor's Note: This blog originally implied that Wowhead trafficked in the secondary market for World of Warcraft gold. But the company says it does not.

There's a lot of buzz in the World of Warcraft fan site universe this morning, with reports and rumors flying about fan sites being sold, about $1 million sale prices and even scuttlebutt about the uber company in the business of selling WoW gold, IGE, having been sold.

According to a report from the blog, TechSoapBox, the WoW site Wowhead has been sold for $1 million.

Another blog, meanwhile, claims that, in fact, Wowhead was purchased by IGE's ex-parent Affinity Media.

Getting away for a second from the complexities of what it all means in the WoW, that's a pretty impressive number if it's true.

Whether or not Wowhead is involved in the WoW gold business--the company says it's not--it's huge business, and it's changing with the sale of IGE, and other recent developments. I don't know any exact numbers--nor does anyone else since the buying and selling of WoW virtual assets, and those of most online games, is prohibited by the games' publishers. But by some estimates, the so-called secondary market for these virtual assets (of all online games) is approaching $1 billion a year.

And if Wowhead doesn't traffic in gold as it claims, then $1 million for a fan site is a lot of money.

More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that IGE has been sold.

When I was at the Virtual Goods Summit at Stanford yesterday, I had a talk with Brock Pierce, IGE's founder, and he didn't say anything about it. It's true, he was wearing a badge from "Affinity Media," and admittedly, I am not entirely up to speed on the latest news in this industry, but rather than suggesting IGE had been sold and Affinity was getting out of the secondary market business, he hinted he wanted to get out.

This is all very interesting, and confusing. And as I hear more, dear readers, so will you.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Brock Pierce, the CEO of Affinity Media, which used to own IGE, one of the world's largest marketer of the virtual goods and currencies of games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest and others, is looking tired.

Earlier this year, Affinity sold IGE, but it still has a hand deep in the market for virtual weapons, currencies and the like.

For years, Brock's companies, which in many ways have created--or at least perfected--the booming secondary market for the virtual worlds of those games, have been seen as all-powerful entities that almost laugh in the face of publishers like Blizzard Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment and others who decry the notion that anyone would trade their games' virtual assets for real money.

But now, Pierce told CNET News.com at the Virtual Goods Summit here, Affinity is finding it harder and harder to make the big profits it used to. And that's because, he said, virtual assets are increasingly a commodity and, therefore, the margins on sales of WoW gold and other virtual goods are rapidly shrinking.

In fact, he said, as Chinese competitors get more and more sophisticated, they are also willing to accept less and less profit margin. And that means, "they're perfectly happy to accept $20,000 in profit on $2 million of revenue."

That, for all you out there without a calculator, is a 1 percent profit margin. Hardly what would make it easy for an American company bent on giving its executives a comfortable lifestyle to be happy.

And that may be why, after all these years at the helm of IGE and now Affinity, Pierce said he's looking to find someone to take over for him as CEO. But he also said he's having a devil of a time locating the right candidate. No one else, it seems, has the right skills to take Affinity and transition it to the next stage of its development, one in which the Chinese gold farming operations stay in the rear view mirror.

To be sure, the execs at Blizzard and Sony Online are not feeling too sympathetic for Pierce and his fellow secondary market traffickers. But there is a mutual interest for them as they both look at the Chinese competition becoming more and more powerful.

What will it all mean? No one knows. But for Pierce, as he bounces around the world at a fierce pace, cutting deals, overseeing Affinity's operations in many countries and still trying to get home once in a while, it's a very exhausting time. And it seems like he wants out.

World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment has filed suit in U.S. federal court against a popular gold-selling operation for spamming players with ads for virtual gold, according to the Warcry Network and other sources.

In its post, Warcry's Razorwire blog quoted a Blizzard employee as saying, "We felt that it was important to share with the community just how serious we are in our efforts to combat (in-game gold spamming). Blizzard has filed a federal lawsuit against the operators of Peons4hire, a popular gold-selling organization."

Blizzard spokesperson Shon Damron, in an e-mail, confirmed the lawsuit.

It's interesting that the company is going after a small outfit like Peons4hire. After all, huge outfits like IGE are making enormous profits buying and selling WoW gold, as well as virtual assets from other online games.

As Warcry put it, "Don't worry, Blizzard and the rest of the (online game) companies still don't have the (guts) to sue (outfits like IGE) for actually selling gold."

(Credit: World of Warcraft)

The notion of "frequent gamer rewards" has been tossed around by trend specialists and pundits (like MAKE Magazine's Philip Torrone) for some time now as online gaming becomes more and more profitable and increasingly entrenched in mainstream culture. Now, it's a reality with the World of Warcraft Visa credit card.

You can apply for it now. With your first purchase on the card, according to the World of Warcraft site, you'll earn a free month of game time.

But you won't be able to buy yourself new weapons by using this card. The WoW Visa does not earn you virtual currency--rather, you accrue game time toward your subscription. It's unclear what the thinking was behind this decision, but it's true that there has been some controversy about bridging the gap between virtual and real-world currency, most notably the eBay ban on virtual goods earlier this year.

You can't brand the World of Warcraft credit card with your avatar (yet), but you can choose from 13 total designs. Whether or not you want to use this card when you pick up the tab on a first date, however, is up to you.

(Link via Boing Boing)