Web Links and Articles

If you find articles about the basic building structure of pmog/TNN or other relevant data (such as the growth and direction of online gaming in educational settings), and you think it would be helpful for people on our team to read them-- please post them here.

Human Data as a Playfield: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/03/human-data-as-a.html

*nods and thanks to dav13*

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FNfzZBSptD8J:passivelymultiplayer.com/%3Fcat%3Dyhgrzvxc%26paged%3D9+zousware+PMOG&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I occasionally run into things like this. It seems GameLayers dummied up a draft of their newsletter her then uploaded it with the right background images to news.tnn ...

http://cabal.zousware.com/tags/pmog/

Zous made a bank to exchange dps for pings, the exchange rate determined by auction or supply/demand.

He also made a Casino.

There is a whole lot to read on the site, but whether there is any point to it, I doubt.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TQXiwwd8uZQJ:thenethernet.com/forums/social-tools/topics/a-new-thought-for-a-game+zousware+PMOG+zousware+PMOG&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

http://thenethernet.com/users/kreativf is a programmer.
Altho the idea was already implemented, it seems, he would be one to try to contact for volunteer tweaking?
Delta Kreativf
Germany
Began playing over 2 years ago
Web site: http://gamer-pros.de (site is in German. Didn't bother to ask google to translate it to see if it is him/her or not.)
kreativf invited test9952's to play TheNethernet about 1 month ago
= seems to be around.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133123 Let me know if it is worth chasing these people down. Obviously they are interested parties and at the time active.


RescueTime isn't worth the time to look it up:


8aWeek is the same, the author was missing the boat http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/02/15/track-and-manage-your-time-online-with-8aweek/

Sample ad for a programmer.
http://jobs.metafilter.com/319/playful-web-project-seeks-web-developer "Ruby/Rails developers ... with experience of REST, Ajax, gaming and web browsing!" Suttree, Duncan Gough, is one of the original PMOG programmers.

Justin Hall's Thesis
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:udz1uHuTY8IJ:passivelymultiplayer.com/20070214-PMOGPaper.pdf+Duncan+gough+Suttree+PMOG&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESimT4G8ILtvER8f2sJhqv7FKasxt8JJHbn1Q0SQl0sy9itZx3Zy-Q4lSDeLypv2qa4XdCf4bZ_6X4t7yPENQKA_yceIrX3V2upo5iu_oDPjNRAg6JyeCrxAG989HxVakdpRoTy7&sig=AHIEtbTNunEdtLQazC1-SdEhuzaNfmIwIw

for MMage, a tinyurl....

http://beepdf.com/doc/5466/passively_multiplayer_online_games.html
There are a bunch of articles, generic, about MMOGs, and, no, I haven't even begun to read them. This link points, first of all, to Justin's thesis. See previous post.

The hinted at process of making money at PMOG
http://www.3pointd.com/20060619/passively-multiplayer/
"Besides being fun, it’s also an interesting way to drive traffic to a site, and could create a micro-economy more of less based on novelty: since there’s really no limit to the kinds of game objects you can offer people, sites will attract visitors by having the most interesting objects rather than the most valuable." We are probably talking Badges here.

This is an Arizona State English Dept. presentation. Link below. Thankfully quotes below. I had to reread it to get it. Some people are grasping at straws trying to understand the new medium of disjointed texts - not like a novel or newspaper that flow and have a beginning, middle, and end all in one place. Underlining mine.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c1xPObF73bAJ:www.slideshare.net/alist/literacy-videogames-writing-composition-technology-english-computers+Merci+PMOG+chat&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=flock

1. Merci on PMOG “I feel like you actually feel like the Digital literacy ethos-- web is web is a place, not like it’s a series decentered but also a present of separate places. But that you are space in this one sphere of activity with all of these people at the same time. Meaningful co-presence And this is just surfing of course, not like being on an AIM or whatever-- This is a new way of being, a new then you’re just obviously with model of conversation that’s not just people online. But this is allowing about text other players to influence what your Literacies, meanings, practices are experience is like, and influencing all reciprocal and reflexive the surfing experiences of other players as well.” All players are designers of meaningful experiencesSunday, March 16, 2008 15
   

1. My research shows that game designers... Are writers for a context. Writing is design here because it involves art for a purpose. Communicate semiotically: signs, symbols, genres, puzzles, problems, practices, identities, win-states, code languages. Teach players how to play the game and succeed with finishing, winning, understanding, learning. Expect players to engage in meta-critical analysis of how the game is designed. Write collaboratively, share authorship, incorporate both professional and personal discourses. Purposely create games that are meant to be interpreted and learned socially.Sunday, March 16, 2008 16
   
2. Questions for Teachers Working with New Media How can you think about the problem or project of designing and developing curriculum as a set of design constraints? Instead of thinking of writing as skill, can we think of it in terms of experience or sets of practices within particular contexts? How therefore do we craft opportunities for meaning making practices with new media? What does that afford a student that other forms of composing, reading, and interpreting texts do not? If we think about writing as literacy--that is, tied closely to reading--what does that mean for working with new media?Sunday, March 16, 2008 17
   

Let's upload the article for ease of reading for those with blocked internets








Read it in the original

N.B. GameLayers changed the way dps (datapoints) are gotten from this model - hiting a unique top-level-domain (tld) (the part including but before the .com or .org, etc.) to garnering dps from Missions and Portals. (This may have been to stave off an abuse of StumbleUpon, a putative funder.)

Thanks for all of that, dav2.

I really don't like the idea of "mining data" from our players. I understand that is why TNN was started, and now the whole "must have cookies enabled" thing makes much more sense. It also makes sense that TNN is no longer being serviced, as there are much easier and more accurate ways to mine data traffic. It's hard to collect usable data when your guinea pigs are refreshing youtube's home page 100 times, or visiting sites they hate just to mine them into crash status.

It seems to me that the "potential" of pmog frequently comes in conflict with "profitably" aspects, which is a pitfall we hope to avoid by taking this non-profit from the beginning. Where some previous versions of pmog have hoped to "influence" or glean from their players, we are hoping our version would simply be an unbiased educational tool.

It also appears to me that some of what they considered negatives (like the sidebar vs. a topbar) may be pluses for us. The less intrusive our game feels the more likely schools and teachers will want to use it. Also, keeping with the less intrusive vein allows all players to direct their own game (not just students).

Because we are billing this to kids as young as middle school, we will need to have some way to separate out adult content, and I like the use of Top Level Domains (TLDs) within a 24 hour period for an events stream... but beyond those two aspects I do not want to monitor, direct, or glean what content players use. This gives the feel of it being a "safe" program for players, while reducing the load on the servers.

http://briancroxall.pbworks.com/w/page/8178813/PMOG
Parkaboy

http://www.findmysoft.com/news/Firefox-Add-on-to-Turn-the-Web-into-Your-Personal-Playground/
The only thing good about this is the recycled cartoon which you may not have seen.

My comment added:
to: George Norman - Software News Editor
for article : Added on 04 Mar 2009(712 Views)

Please correct the typos: It is the thenethernet, not Ethernet. Starts to occur in your second paragraph and continues thru the tags.

GameLayers (the original) PMOG the thenethernet went down Fall of 2009 and came back New Years Eve 2009 (12/31/2009). I am still mystified by it. In the past month (Nov. & Dec. 2010) there have been strange outages. The have also somewhat change the way of garnering points - dps - different from the way stated in your article.
Due to the way tnn ceased operation in the Fall of 2009, there has been developing a replacement, Nova_Initia.

http://marcada.ms/
Another marc link. I haven't gone to the links within, yet.

http://about.me/marcadams#people

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/justinreach/
Another Justin link.

The original passive-ist way of doing tnn was to collect 10 dps, iirc, for each tld website you went to, daily. The sent people to SU for points.

Links spawn other links and I haven't plumbed the depths yet.

http://www.gearsandwidgets.com/2009/04/04/10-firefox-extensions-i-cant-live-without/

PMOG gets honorable mention at the bottom.

http://antikewl.com/daily/category/social/

"Legends of Zork sees the Zork franchise re-invigorated for the first
time since the release of the graphical point and click adventure
Return to Zork in 1998. No longer a text or point-and-click adventure,
Legends builds on the more casual social web games such as The Nethernet (formerly PMOG) and those that riddle Facebook."

May not merit a return visit until reboot is ready to market/advertise itself.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4272
Smallwood must have been writing tongue in cheek, buy one never knows. Smallwood is d4q1 ....

Baning Burdenday has his rag: http://burdenday.com/2009/06/embracing-problem-players/ among other postings.

As is true with Justin, these things become abandoned and live on in cyberspace.