The screenshots taken above are not photographs.  They are screenshots of proprietary material, each and every one.  If I were to put these forth as an example of artistic effort, I would be laughed out of any art institution open today.  What these are...are souvenirs of different mmo worlds.  Again, the artwork does not belong to me.  Unlike taking photos in public places in RL, these mmo worlds are not public.  They all require some fee to access their content.

Somewhere in the process of mmo creation, Second Life has put forth the idea that people who take screenshots are artists.  I suppose it can be possible.  But for that to be true, they should be the creators of anything contained in the screenshot plus the screenshot itself.  Otherwise taking an mmo screenshot is the equivalent of taking a screenshot of a film.  No matter how much you crop it, edit it and put fancy effects on it via photoshop, the screenshot will never belong to you.

I too once thought that Second Life was different.  But it isn't.  It merely pushes forth it's underlying ethos of creative commons, info wants to be free meme.  Which means it subtly denudes creators of their copyright rights.  Recently, as I wrote before, Second Life has changed their TOS to decree practically all of SL to be a public zone.  Which means everyone has the "right" to go around and take screenshots. It cuts off creators from the right to control whether or not they want screenshots to be taken.  Its also worse since some landscape designers use creations from others and can not give permission for the items they only use not create.

What LL is attempting to do is blur the lines, to use it's customers as proxies to scrape data (much in the way CC zealots like to push forth music downloads), to take value from the creators.  In the process transferring the value from the creator to the screenshot taker.  Why is it so hard to understand the difference between say Renderosity (that sells material with some commercial rights attached), to the totally proprietary material in Second Life?  All the screenshots above are the same.  I don't own them.

Many SL users have had this smoke blown up their asses for so long, that they feel they have rights to sell their screenshots or claim artistic titles.  NO, no, no, no.  These are not photographs.  These are not the same as going into the RL street and taking photos with a theme in mind, with technique or inspiration.  This is more like RPing a photographer.  Which is why this article from New World Notes is so wrong headed.

If you have any talent or interest in photography, go out and take photos.  Those photos will be yours.  Those photos will have room to grow and open up to artistic efforts.  Screenshots are a dead end.  They are merely just a past time.  If computer art is your thing, then learn to create computer images that you own totally.

Just don't be a party to the big data scrape that ethics free Silicon Valley loves to support and make easy money on.

Wizard 101

I used to follow the Epic Dolls podcast while I was still playing World of Warcraft.  Not long before I put the game on hiatus, the connected Epic Dolls guild disbanded.  It turned out that the podcaster and guild leader was stepping back a bit from Wow and had taken up with other games.  Leala Turkey's (former Epic Dolls leader) webpage mentioned that she played "Wizard 101".  It seemed interesting and looked a bit like Harry Potter.

So when I purchased the Crossover software, I decided to try Wizard 101.

Wizard 101 is marketed for elementary school age children.  It is a extremely sweet tempered mmorpg that gives the young set a taste of multiplayer gaming.  Recently its surge of popularity is due to it attracting hardcore gaming teens and adults.  The game does a good job catering to all ages.

The combat system is based on card games.  The player can pick and choose who and what they want to fight.  The game always provides safe areas so that players will not be jumped by the NPC enemies wandering around.  These safe areas are little parks and sidewalks.  But when the players is ready to fight, they only have to run up to an enemy to engage it.  The characters will then automatically run to a combat ring which lights up for the fight.  Up to 4 players can join any fight in progress.  They only have to enter the combat ring.  Once the fight starts, the player's screen will show a card hand from their shuffled deck of spells.  Those are the spells that the player will work with for the fight.  It will be reshuffled depending how long the fight lasts.  The player can also pick wild cards, called Treasure spell cards, in lieu of their regular hand.  The spells are powered by points which the player will gain or lose depending on the strength of the magic card they use.  This is not a game that depends on hot keys, the player will be able to pick with their mouse.  And each round the player will be given a timed count down to pick their move.  The combat system is ingeniously structured so that the player can play as simple or as intricate as they want.  Each spell has its own amusing and whimsical animation that I love to watch.  The game also has options for PvP play which takes place in a special arena.

The quests are like quests in every game...go deliver this letter, kill so many of these enemies, collect these items.  But they aren't designed to be painfully long.  Collection quests don't turn into painful grinds.  The areas are all well designed with wonderful art design.  The characters in the game are inspired by various children's books which I love.

The game is free to play.  However players will hit a wall very early, if they do not purchase access to another area.  So look at the free to play option as the same any other game does to gather new players.   This game will give you a taste with a few levels then you must subscribe or pay $1 to $5 dollars for each area.  Most players will know whether or not they want to continue playing this game by level 5 and access to other areas becomes an issue.

Another area in the game that is well integrated is the character store.  You can buy game money through the website which are called crowns.  Then in game, you can go to stores to buy items such as houses, gear, furniture, pets, mounts, wings or potions.  The housing option is very nice.  The player will be given his/her own instanced home island.  On that private island, they will be able to furnish and relax in their own Wizard 101 haven.

This game is very well designed and enjoyable to play.  And it can be a fun time for the whole family.  However, I don't think it is any safer for young ones to wander around in anymore than I would let them wander alone in World of Warcraft etc.  The game designers have done their best to add in parental controls but that is in no way a substitute for parental guidance.  The players your young ones will be interacting with will not be all their exact age.  And not everyone your child will play with will have their game enjoyment in mind.  They may even take advantage of them for game items or just behave nastily because they can.  So please do not let them roam around alone.  The game does allow the parent to control who contacts their child by turning off friend requests (from other players) and chat.  However I've seen young players get around this by offering friendship to anyone they meet.  Then, I suppose, they will be able to chat.  Please understand that kids are impressionable and eager to create new friendships but the game worlds have legions of people who just like to bully.  Don't let them make your child one of their victims.  So play with them or have an older child guide them while in world.

This game is highly enjoyable and family oriented.  I would recommend it to everyone looking for a few hours of casual gaming enjoyment.

Crossover Games

I own an Imac so that means my gaming choices are limited.  Since Apple has switched to Intel chips, it is possible for most games to be ported via a wrapper program that mimics a Windows environment.  Yes, of course if gaming is that important to a computer user they could use the Bootcamp program and then load in Windows.  And I've thought about doing that, and I may still become a bootcamper.  However right now, I don't want to drop upwards of $200 for the Windows system.

On Massively, a commentator mentioned that he/she played Lord of the Rings Online via a wrapper program called Crossover Games.  That idea intrigued me so I looked into the software.  The Crossover suite of programs are offered by CodeWeavers.  These programs mimic Windows using a wrapper based on the open source Wine project.

Crossover games is the "official" version of the Wine opensource project.  It is affordable at $39.95 (the fee supports the Wine opensource programmers) and the installation is simple.  What isn't simple is getting the subsequent windows games to work properly.  Since this option is rather arcane no matter how easy Codeweavers has made it, you will probably need to know a little something about programming to get anything working.

To use Crossover Games, the user must create a mini-windows shell called a bottle.  You can pick which flavor of windows you want this bottle to mimic (vista, winxp, 98, 2000).  A bottle must be created for each game you want to play.  Then you can load the games into the bottle via disc or downloads.  Theoretically, it should be easy.

However I could get nothing to work with it.  The LOTR instructions were easy however the program doesn't recognize the official game install file.  I tried to download the free to play Uru Online.  The installation progress was successful.  However the site registration is no longer available so I can't log in to the program.  As a lark I also tried to install Blue Mars.  However there was an error that had something to do with the install aware program.  I was at wit's end and wondered if I could use the software for anything.  Finally I managed to see the program in action with the game Wizard 101(review later). And I can say that Crossover works very well for what it is.

This solution is very ad hoc and is in no way a substitute for Mac Bootcamp.  But if you can't afford to spring for the Windows software at the moment, this program will do for the time being.  I recommend it.