Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Not that World of Warcraft needs more attention, but the new US leader Obama just announced Kevin Werbach to be one of the transition team members in January 2009. Kevin Werbach AKA "Supernovan Jenkins" in the World of Warcraft game, is a level 70 "Shaman". He is also a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. A level 70 in the game WOW means Werbach has invested a huge amount of time and should be a pretty skilled and yet active player in the game.

In a blog post written by Werbach praised massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) for fostering a sense of community. Himself of course is a well known figure in the real world, but try to chat on "Supernovan Jenkins" in WOW! The following are some of his blog postings:

What (Warcraft) does is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production," he wrote.

Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.

One thing you can bet on is his WOW experience will help the new administration to reshape the virtual worlds.

Three years ago, Henry Jenkins introduced Anime Cosplay at the NMC summer conference in Hawaii. It was my first chapter into participatory culture...

Today, August 22nd 2008, UBC is hosting one of the largest Animation convention in Canada - Anime Evolution 2008. The crazy thing is I didn't even know about this until this morning. It's kinda like the beginning of Harry Potter, all of the sudden, "strangely dressed" people popping up out side of my office windows...

Anime Evolution is an annual 3 days event celebrating Japanese animation and Asian popular culture. Many of the participants spend days and weeks preparing complex costume in order to appear as one of the heroes from the animations during the convention. Click here for more "official definition" of cosplay. There are interactive panel discussions, cultural demonstrations, video shows, costume contests and video game competitions! The event used to take place at SFU but due to record breaking number of attendees, this year's event is moved to UBC!

I wish I could know this a little earlier since I am a big fan of Japanese animations. From Dragon Ball to Naruto, you name it! Seeing hundreds of cosplayers walking by my office really made my day. Here are some shots I took over lunch...

Based on the popularity of the Metaverse communities (Google Earth, Second Life) I can see being able to build 3D models using 3D applications will become a even more popular skill to have for the up-coming decade. Since Hollywood started to use 3D software to produce block busters like “Toy Story” in the 90's, more and more artistically creative individuals are getting into the field of 3D modeling. Today, 3D modelers are hot in the entertainment industry (Movies, Games, Pornography, Gambling...). It will be even hotter in the coming years thanks to the Metaverse community where thousands of users are going to communicate, study, interact, doing business using 3D environment. I am personally not sure about the other fields, but it's certainly changing the Education industry. I don't want write yet another article on how this is helping, but just to think about the possibility of illustrating knowledge in a 3 dimensional world rather than the 2-D images. What I find the most interesting and valuable is that creating 3D models can greatly help one to understand the substance in both Artistic and Scientific way. A good example is by teaching a kid to build a tree house in a 3D program will help him/her to understand the physical process. Not to mention the amount of creativity the kid can add to it. Did I mention, “it's safe and cheap too.”?

Just came across with this Taiwanese Coca Cola commercial on Google Video, combining the hottest teenage girl band in Taiwan today - SHE with the hottest game in the world - World of Warcraft. The result? A nice video piece and an effective marketing for Coca Cola!

Use this URL to view the Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1175367493081978705

A thirteen years old boy (Zhang) in Tianjin jumped off from the 24th floor and committed suicide after playing the game - World of Warcraft for 36 hours straight in a Chinese Cyber Cafe. His mother has decided to sue the local Blizzard game distributor for the cause of her son's death. She claims the boy took his own life after being exposed to the violence and being extremely addicted to the "virtual world" in the cyber space for over a year or longer.

According to the Chinese reporters (NetEase), Zhang left 4 pages long death will where he wrote how he worships the hero in the World of Warcraft and will miss his co-players from the game. His only wish is to give the "virtual equipment (weapons, books etc.)" to his classmates and hope his spirit will follow the legends in the game into the virtual world. However the game distributors claim that there are clear labels on the box indicating the game is not suitable for teenagers that are under 13. It's a fact that the cyber cafe owners in China totally ignore the notice and never care about what game the computer users play in the facilities. I remember my experiences in the Chinese cyber cafes: heavy cigarettes smokes over a crowded and dark space, isolated with poor ventilation system, filled with of teenagers between 12 to 16 playing first person shooting games or war games. This is very disturbing. I think the first thing should be done is to have some clearly written and strictly enforced regulations over these cyber space owners. Parents and educators should work together to help the teenagers from being overly addicted to the cyber space.

I share my sympothy to the poor mom in the incident and wish the tragedy does not repeat itself. Happy Mother's Day!

There is a video clip released on YouTube describing a new profession in China, the online game workshops. They gave the workers an interesting name: Chinese Gold Farmers.

The business idea is simple, you have hundreds of teenagers playing popular international online games (e.g. World Of Warcraft)days and nights (I mean 12+ hours a day), eating boxed food, sleeping on the floor (for a very short time), open up the curtains a couple of hours every week! From the intensive team plays, these players get high level characters, rare weapons and virtual gold. Then the company put these virtual merchandises onto eBay, get bought by the American and Japanese players.

This idea may sounds tedious, but the truth is there are hundreds of this types of "Game Workshops" opened in China and there are well organized "outsourcing" infrastructure behind these commercial "services". The profits are real and the business are expanding.

What I like about this is that soon people may find thousands of best WOW players in China. What I find sad about is the gamers are taking these
"virtual products" way too serious! The hours of online playing are destroying their life and health. But hey, like the kids in the video say, I am earning money while playing my favorite game, what else can one ask?!

The first set of 3D game based stamps were released today by Hang Zhou Post Office last week. The stamps are based on a popular Chinese 3D online game - The Legend of Tang Dynasty. There are total of 16 pieces in the collection and the stamps cover characters, monsters, architectures and weapons from the game. This is a very interesting way of seeing some traditional communication elements meet the new technology. I would love to get my hands on to this set!

According to a recent report (published by Guang Ming Daily) on 2005 Chinese Gaming Industry, there are over 10,000,000 registered students playing online games on a daily basis. There are total of 26.34 million online gamers in China and 38.9% of them are registered students.

The majority age group of the total online players is between 16 to 30. 33.3% of them (8.77 million) are between 19 to 22, 28.4% (7.48 million) of them are between 22 to 25.