Software, Interrupted

Ogyen Trinley Dorje--the only senior Buddhist leader recognized by China, Tibet, and India--was recently interviewed during a visit to Delhi, India, where he gave his views on politics, hip-hop, and video games.

While certainly not your average 24-year-old, he's clearly in touch with how video games can make us all feel better. He's also apparently a Mac fan.

Well, I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we're Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.

So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I'm having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.

The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that's very skilful because when I do that I don't have to go and hit anyone over the head.

I wonder what games he plays? Maybe I should friend him on Facebook and setup a challenge?

Humanoid robots developed at the Beijing Institute of Technology can do more than perform T'ai Chi maneuvers and answer simple questions when interacting with humans. Duan Xingguang, the professor in charge of the efforts, believes we are heading into an era where robots will become part of our daily lives.

The bots were introduced in 2003 and have been updated with a new mechanical design and properties that allow for better interaction and fluidity of movement.

Professor Duan Xingguang said that they will continue to improve the robots' functionality and reliability while striving to lower production costs. He also compared the current state of robotics technology to that of personal computers three decades ago, and expects Moore's Law will lead to breakthroughs allowing humanoid robots to become meaningful partners to human beings in the future.

I look forward to the day robots can take care of my mundane tasks. Considering I already have them cooking ramen and making pancakes, that day can't be far behind. However, I'm not sure it's a great idea to teach them to fight or use knives.

(Via Engadget)

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

China has unveiled the first official rule on the use of virtual currency in the trade of real goods and services to limit possible impact on the real financial system. The Chinese government also spelled out the definition of "virtual currency" for the first time, which includes prepaid cards of cybergames, according to a joint announcement from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Commerce Friday. It said:

The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services.

The ban is primarily aimed at "gold farming," an Internet-age phenomenon in which players in less developed countries collect and sell virtual gold (common to games like World of Warcraft) to wealthier gamers in the developed world. This enables gamers who have the means to buy virtual gold to get ahead in the games without actually having to accomplish the grunt work.

The trading of virtual currency for real cash generates between $200 million and $1 billion annually, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester.

... Read more

Virtual goods are providing very high-margin sales for many internet companies. According to PaidContent.org, Chinese portal Tencent pulled in nearly $1 billion last year from the sale of virtual goods, while Facebook earns between $50 million and $100 million (your mileage may vary on these estimates). Recently Hi5 Networks made the move to include far more virtual goods as part of its social-networking site.

Obviously every site is a bit different, but there are two common threads of items that people seem ready to pay for:

1. Customization of the environment -- page decorations and other things that provide some kind of status in the game
2. Enhancements to games -- if you can't beat them, you can just pay for items

Of course, there are many other possibilities--virtual gifts play a big role in Facebooks' revenue and I believe there is a huge market for goods such as baseball cards and other tradeable real-world/virtual world crossovers.

Looking at three of the top virtual goods companies, Rory Maher outlined how they make money.

... Read more

Pearl Research reports in its latest Online Games Market in China study (PDF), that the Chinese online gaming market reached $2.8 billion in 2008, an increase of roughly 63 percent over the previous year. The study predicts that the Chinese market will reach $5.5 billion by 2012.

Tencent, Changyou, The9, Netease, Shanda, and Giant all surpassed the $200 million revenue mark in 2008 and continue to grow as the Internet and mobile phones become more widely available.

It's a bit hard to tell how this compares to US online games, but the best I could find from cursory research is that there are only a few online games (World of Warcraft most notably) that are beyond $100 million in unaudited revenue.

This not only exemplifies how far behind we are, but the enormity of the online gaming opportunity.

Roughly 70 percent of China's 298 million Internet users are under the age of 30, which Pearl believes will continue to drive the online gaming market.


Via Game Daily News

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom

I wrote previously about China's attempt to tax virtual goods and currency, and now the BBC reports that Sweden and South Korea have also moved to clarify the tax rules for virtual money.

In April 2008 Sweden's tax office published a clarification to its tax laws which said that in-game transactions are taxable--in theory. I am sure Ben Franklin was referring to Linden dollars when he wrote, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

The taxation subject seems to be more a case of what happens when virtual money turns into real money than it does a question about virtual transactions. Second Life markets itself as a place to make actual money, whereas World of Warcraft bans trades for real money.

I'm inclined to side with WoW that keeping real and virtual money separate is the right thing to do. And it's a bit hard to fathom that a digital asset does anything but diminish or have a relative value to that specific game.

Besides, what happens if the game company goes out of business? It's not like you get to take your special sword to the Sponge Bob game if WoW suddely disappears.

The transaction volume of digital "assets" reached 9.36 billion yuan ($1.37 billion) in 2007 and is expected to hit 11.12 billion yuan in 2008, according to 5173.com, one of China's major virtual-asset transaction platforms

While deflation hits the United States, inflation is hitting the world of digital assets in Chinese video games and virtual worlds.

Thanks to a new attempt at taxing virtual assets, in-game goods and currencies are experiencing the first signs of inflation.

The transaction volume of digital "assets" reached 9.36 billion yuan ($1.37 billion) in 2007 and is expected to hit 11.12 billion yuan in 2008, according to 5173.com, one of China's major virtual-asset transaction platforms. And now the Chinese government wants a piece of the action: 20 percent. Reports ShanghaiDaily.com:

After individuals gain income through virtual-currency transactions, they should go to the tax department to pay personal income tax within seven days of the day after the transactions. For those who can provide proof of the original value of the property, they will be charged 20 percent of their profits, and for those who cannot, they will be charged at 3 percent of the total value of the transaction.

You have to admire the tax authorities who think that this concept will work. Supporting the idea are game providers that want users to keep their purchases in-game.

"In principle, we don't encourage players to buy items offline," said Tao Junfeng of The9, the operator of World of Warcraft in China.

I have no idea how U.S. tax laws apply to virtual goods on sites like Facebook. Does Facebook have to pay taxes on the transactions? (If anyone knows, I would be interested.) But taxation gets complicated with point schemes, in which users buy credits instead of assets, and with resellers such as Chinese gold farmers.

"Emerging" economies like China and Russia are going through this strong badware period. Research by StopBadware.org theorizes that lack of economic incentives for Chinese hosting providers and site owners to inform their users of infected sites and/or to take action to clean or remove these sites.

Full report (PDF)

Badware sites per million Internet users:
China 689
Russia 307
United States 212
Germany 135
France 128
Republic of Korea 115
Great Britain 60

Via The Register