Compartmentalization v. Immersion in Virtual Worlds

Over the weekend, I heard an interesting presentation by Helene Michel, a business school professor from France. She described the experience with Vacheland.com, a simulation where visitors can manage a virtual farm. The project was initiated by a public agency…

Copy of Marvel v. NCSoft Ruling

CE Petit has posted a copy of the court’s March 9 opinion in Marvel Enterprises v. NCSoft Corporation (CV 04-9253-RGK). The opinion is rather unremarkable—mostly it deals with motions to dismiss, so the standard for upholding the pleadings is pretty…

Ruling in Marvel v. NCSoft

NCSoft has won some favorable rulings in its lawsuit with Marvel. Marvel sued NCSoft because users could use NCSoft’s software in its City of Heroes MMORPG to generate characters that looked like Marvel characters. From the news/press reports, it appears…

More on Termination of Virtual World Accounts

Greg Lastowka of Terra Nova blogged on my previous post about termination of virtual worlds accounts. If you’re not familiar with Terra Nova, it is the leading blog on virtual world issues. Good comments over there too. Check out the…

Termination of Accounts in Virtual Worlds

I attended Santa Clara’s Rules & Borders conference on Friday, and the subject of virtual worlds came up extensively. One issue in particular is continuing to vex me. Some virtual world participants invest significant time and money in their online…