Earlier this year it was announced that "the biggest heist/coup/assassination in Eve(-Online) history" had took placeThe story has been percolating in cyberspace for a whileIt is now featured in the September 2005 PCGamer ("Murder Incorporated")..I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the timeThey looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at usIt was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations. 

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well

But overall, I like to think that the attendance demonstrates that developers are interested in what academics might be able to tell them (again I will point out: no fruit was thrown)And all week, I talked with developers who were interested in what was going on with research, from the smallest to the largest companiesMaybe the issue is the "larger" communityIt's always easy to abstract and oversimplify at that levelBut I know that on an individual level, there are real conversations and collaborations going onI don't want this to turn into some rosy "it's better than we think" or "can't we all just get along" thing, but I do think that perhaps the situation is not as dire as it's hyped to beBut then again, I haven't gotte my evals back yet.We have mass available stock of Star Wars Galaxies Creditson most of the servers, so that we can do a really instant way of Warhammer Online GolddeliveryWe know what our buyers need so we offer an instant way of FFXI Gildelivery.An optimistic disposition -- a faith, even -- in technology and code-based problem solving runs deep in the technology and software development community (see, for example, Gary Lee Downey's ethnography of CAD/CAM engineering, The Machine in Me), and it hampers developers' ability to recognize the range of content and community creation (very broadly defined) by users as well as the fruits of the well-established but different methodologies and concepts of researchers

I don't flirt, or try to produce any sexual vibes..I *do* tend to refer to myself using feminine terms (ie: "I'm your girl" instead of "I'm your boy" when agreeing to help someone)."

We are fairly confident that, in fact, Bob Moore is the brains behind the operation (Bob, if you're reading this, give me a call)But since we were uncertain about who was responsible for all the good work, we decided to grab as many of them as we couldEspecially those who, like Eric, are big fans of Jane Austen, have spent years living in Southeast Asia, and who hold the conviction that every American 13 year old should be packed off to live with a Third World family for a yearEric is particularly interested in quantititative methodologies of research in MMOGs.

Such has been suggested a good example of "emergent social behavior" in MMORPGs; it has been said that it "doesn't get much better than this."

Alternatively, this event can be viewed more sensationally: "Oh, sh*t! You mean $16,500 USD!?" (assuming in-game currency {ISK} losses converted to USD using IGE market rates)...

I wonder though if the truth lies somewhere else and is less flattering to MMORPGs in generalBeyond any moral judgements about such acts in game worlds, is it possible or even likely that the complexity of this plot speaks less to the sophistication of the in-character world and game networks than to the RL collaboration required to hijack such places? Or as Neal Stewart commented here.