social B.

Spawn, IN-deed-y

Until this week, I thought spawn was a word that probably went out of style in academic literature with the scholastics and certainly after Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation. In the last week however, I have read half a dozen articles that use the word. It may be bad science in real life, but the rules of the real world don't apply to videogames, and thus the semi-random spawning of characters.

I also came across the word indeedy yesterday. To the best of my knowledge, this is not a real word, though I don't think it is a typo either. The "Y" key is not near the "D" key or the "N" key (the last two keys pressed by either hand when typing the word "indeed"). But when repeated twice, placing emphasis on the first syllable and using my very best traveling apothecary voice, it is a delightful sounding word.

Simcountry

Check out Simcountry. This appears to be a graphic-lite virtual world that tauts its economic properties. The game model seems to encourage the industrious real-world rewards of successful game play and encourages in-world economic transactions as well as inter-world trade between the game's virtual world and the player's real world. The game both a nation state simulation and a corporate raiders simulation. This seems worth checking out further.

Visa in the MMOG

From Penny Arcade:

Open Source Business Models

John Koeing of IT Manager's Journal wrote an article discussing 7 open source business models:

1. The Optimization Strategy :: (see Clayton Christensen and his Innovator's Dilemma)
2. The Dual License Strategy :: (see the GNU GPL and Sleepycat's license)
3. The Consulting Strategy :: (see Clay Shirky's Open Source Interest Horizon)
4. The Subscription Strategy :: (see related Culpepper article)
5. The Patronage Strategy ::
6. The Hosted Strategy :: (See Scott McNealy's predictions)
7. The Embedded Strategy ::

Frank Heckler also wrote an older article about open source business models.

Ganesh Prasad muses over open source-onomics.

Blogertising

Words are morphing into blog forms right and left.  Today Harish told me he was going to a screening of a blogumentary tomorrow night. 

I want to create the first official blogertisement (blog + advertisement). 

Blog Ads already exist.  Blog ads are just an attempt to take 20th century advertising methods and apply them to blogs.  When you purchase a blog ad, you purchase the right to use a set amount of space on a blog.  This is no different than a print ad or a television spot. 

A blogertisement is a 21st century method of advertising.  A blogertisement is blog built from the beginning with an intended purpose of advertising an idea, product, cause, or organization.  In a blogertisement the readers and writers take ownership and organic control of the blogertisement.  Readers and writers go to the blogertisement because they are already interested whatever is being advertised.

Such 21st century advertising should eliminate the advertising "ambient noise" with which 20th century advertising methods bombard viewers.  Viewers control the 21st Century advertising medium.  Blogertisements provide a win-win situation viewers are empowered and advertising costs will decrease.

More on the social entrepreneurship tax disincentive

Usually the tax code encourages innovation and entrepreneurship with incentives and tax breaks specifically targeted at such ventures.  Social entrepreneurs can certainly take advantage of these incentives and decrease the amount of taxes they owe the government in relation to a plain, vanilla corporation.  But, even with all of these tax advantages, the social entrepreneur must still take a big hit by organizing as a for profit entity vs. a charitable non-profit.  This seems to be a tax disincentive built into the tax code.  No good at all.

A Marketplace of Games

A post by Gonzalo Frasca at Watercooler Games suggests:

We should make games about anything and everything, including the more unspeakable acts. Playing with fire is good, even if we get badly burned.

My comment (cross posted):

The marketplace of video games is a creative update to Mill's marketplace of ideas. I am intrigued.

I have my doubts about truth's ability to win in the end and about economic explanations of teleology. This for another time...

My doubts do not mean that certain subject matter should be inherently off limits for a game. Just as you can use words to discuss any subject in a meaningful way, you can use the gaming medium as well. I just think the game developer has a moral obligation to structure her game as carefully as the moral rhetorician must choose her words.

Taxed to Invest

Pierre M. Omidyar, fabled promoter of online auctions, made his billions and decided to invest.  But Omidyar's investment strategy is not taught in any business school.  Omidyar invests in groups that seek to empower individuals. 

Traditionally, the tax exempt charitable organization cartel held oligopolistic control over funds intended to empower people.  Omidyar's eBay took the for-profit route, and has empowered more consumers to control price than Ralph Nader ever did.  In March of 2004, the Omidyar Network made a bold decision: they would forgo millions in federal tax breaks so that they could invest in for-profit business that produces social change.  Omidyar is breaking the non-profit trust and invested in cutting edge social entrepreneurs driven by the intersection between social change and profit motive.  His investments including Global Social Venture Competition, Socialtext, Microfinance Securities, and my favorite, Linden Labs.

By forgoing tax-exempt status, a profitable organization immediately moves from paying 0% in taxes to 35% in taxes.  For those interested in social change and socially responsible investing, this means that a social business suffers a real opportunity cost by forgoing tax-exempt status, an opportunity cost in the neighborhood of 35% of profit.  To justify such an opportunity cost, the social return the business provides must be valued at higher than 35% of profit.  That's a huge social return!  With potential for such enormous social return comes high risk of failure; this is the mix of risk and reward that excite venture capitalists.

I hope to see a lot of social entrepreneurship and social venture capitalism over the next four year.

Blog ROI

There are tons of statistics on traditional forms of on-line advertising.  There are many models for converting these statistics into ROI values.  Can you perform comparable analysis to determine ROI for blogs?

lightbulbs

lightbulbs are those thoughts that cause the light-bulb over my head to turn on.  Usually the bulb is quite dim, the 25w frosted variety, but every now and then a 1000w Mercury Vapor orb of light glows. 

When I have a lightbulb moment, I am going to try to post about it.  Unless otherwise noted, assume that a lightbulb post is a token of the former type. 

The lightbulb posts will serve as my virtual notepad.  Maybe deeper thoughts will take shape.  More likely this blog will end up like the Griswold's house.