À travers une série d’entretiens avec une quarantaine de joueurs intensifs de jeux en ligne massivement multijoueurs , nous analysons pourquoi World of Warcraft est si attractif. On peut formuler l’hypothèse que cela tient à la structure même du jeu, à la fascination et au plaisir que celui-ci procure et aux importants intérêts commerciaux qu’en retirent les entreprises exploitantes.Through a series of interviews with about forty game players devoting more than fifteen hours a week to MMO , we (...) analyse the reasons for the attraction exerted by World of Warcraft. We put forward the hypothesis that the attraction stems from the structure of the game itself, the fascination and pleasure derived from it and the substantial commercial benefits for the companies operating the game. (shrink)

New branches of social science primarily engaging the “internet revolution” are appearing alongside mainstream research and journals such as Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking are providing social scientists with an outlet of peer-reviewed research. HPS scholars will find new methodologies and the relation of technology to social science of particularly interest. Social scientists are becoming increasingly interested in virtual realities (see Milburn (Spontaneous Generations 2008, 63)) and are declaring time spent “in-game” ethnographic research. William Sims Bainbridge boasts 2300+ hours (approximately (...) 96 days) of ethnographic research into a virtual world he calls “The Warcraft Civilization.” Blizzard Entertainment reported in a December 2008 press release that World of Warcraft (WoW), its extraordinarily successful 2004 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) comprised 11.5 million subscribers worldwide . In order to accommodate player demand, Blizzard uses hundreds of servers, artfully called realms, each running an instance of WoW for subscribers to play on. There are four types of realms: normal or player-versus-environment (PvE) realms, player-versus-player (PvP) realms, role-playing (RP) realms, and role-playing player-versus-player (RP-PvP) realms. The most popular realms are PvE and PvP; players on RP and RP-PvP realms are meant to “live” in WoW and therefore must adhere to role-playing policies such as remaining “in-character” of the avatar they have selected. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

Although World of Warcraft utilizes ethnic and gender stereotypes in the construction of its playable characters, the structure of the gaming environment provides a modest utopian vision that is structurally just, maximizing both liberty and equality among participants in a way consistent with John Rawls's Theory of Justice. As a result, class, race, and gender are much more a matter of human (humanoid) variety, rather than a tool for hierarchically differentiation. Nevertheless, in players' engagement with the game, class, (...) race, and gender differences take on meaning well beyond the strucuture of the Warcraft universe demonstrating how real world values infect our imagination. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications that the construction and use of avatars in games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft have for our understanding of personal identity. It asks whether the avatar can meaningfully be experienced as a separate person, existing in parallel to the flesh and blood player. A rehearsal of Cartesian and Lockean accounts of personal identity constructs an understanding of the self that is challenged by the experience of online play. It will be (...) argued that playful engagement in virtual worlds invites the participant to reflect upon the human being as embodied and social; qualities of which are marginalised by Descartes and Locke. The strangeness of this experience of virtual worlds confronts the player with a challenge to construct a coherent narrative of online life, of which treating the avatar as a separate person is a coherent option. This opens up the virtual world as an important space within which personal identity is explored, but one with complex implicati... (shrink)

Adi Da argues that no solutions currently proposed are sufficient to righten the present unsustainable trajectory of life on Earth, because there is no integrated approach to the ordering of society and use of the planet. The presumption of separateness—manifesting collectively as separate “tribes” vying for control—characterizes human affairs, rather than the prior (“a priori”) unity of existence. The struggle for dominance is the “stave in the wheels” of the Earth-system's inherent capacity to self-correct. A new institution, “the Global Cooperative (...) Forum,” is proposed—invoked by “everybody-all-at-once” (a global populace awakened as a single force, capable of cooperatively effecting global change). (shrink)

Consider the multi-user virtual worlds of online games such as EVE and World of Warcraft, or the multi-user virtual world of Second Life. Suppose a player performs an action in one of these worlds, via his or her virtual character, which would be wrong, if the virtual world were real. What is the moral status of this virtual action? In this paper I consider arguments for and against the Asymmetry Thesis: the thesis that such virtual actions (...) are never wrong. I also explain how the truth of the Asymmetry Thesis is closely aligned with the possibility of what Edward Castronova has called closed synthetic worlds. With some qualifications, the ultimate conclusion is that the Asymmetry Thesis is false and that these closed worlds are impossible. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

In the wake of the Corrupted Blood incident, which afflicted the massively multiplayer online computer role-playing game World of Warcraft in 2005, it has been suggested that both, the incident itself and massively multiplayer online computer role-playing games in general, can be utilised to inform and assist real-world epidemic and public health research. In this paper, I engage critically with these claims.

The new art of videogames -- What are videogames anyway? -- On definition -- Theories of gaming -- A definition of videogames -- Videogames and fiction -- From tennis for two to worlds of warcraft -- Imaginary worlds and works of fiction -- Fictional or virtual? -- Interactive fiction -- Stepping into fictional worlds -- Welcome to rapture -- Meet niko bellic -- Experiencing game worlds -- Acting in game worlds -- Games through fiction -- The nature of gaming (...) -- What are the rules of this game? -- Playing, cheating, fragging, and griefing -- Videogames and narrative -- The stories games tell -- Would you kindly put down that wrench? -- Reconciling games and narratives -- Emotion in videogaming -- How can we be moved by the fate of Niko Bellic? -- My fear of mutants -- The role of the emotions in gaming -- The morality of videogames -- The problem with crime simulators -- Are games bad for you? -- On being offensive -- Sticking up for videogames -- Videogames as art -- Are videogames art? -- A cluster theory of art -- The art in videogames -- New art from old bottles. (shrink)

This is the second volume in what will be a translation with full scholarly apparatus of the entire correspondence of St. Hildegard of Bingen. The translation follows Van Acker's definitive new edition of the Latin text, which is being published serially in Belgium by Brepols. As in that edition, the letters are organized according to the rank of the addressees. The first volume included ninety letters to and from the highest ranking prelates in Hildegard's world: popes, archbishops, and bishops. (...) Volume II comprises letters 91-217, in which Hildegard addresses lower-ranking spiritual leaders offering advice and consolation, and is particularly noteworthy for the correspondence with Guilbert of Gembloux, who provides a wealth of information about the saint and her spiritual gift. (shrink)

This is the second volume in what will be a translation with full scholarly apparatus of the entire correspondence of St. Hildegard of Bingen. The translation follows Van Acker's definitive new edition of the Latin text, which is being published serially in Belgium by Brepols. As in that edition, the letters are organized according to the rank of the addressees. The first volume included ninety letters to and from the highest ranking prelates in Hildegard's world: popes, archbishops, and bishops. (...) Volume II comprises letters 91-217, in which Hildegard addresses lower-ranking spiritual leaders offering advice and consolation, and is particularly noteworthy for the correspondence with Guilbert of Gembloux, who provides a wealth of information about the saint and her spiritual gift. (shrink)

The work of the French Lithuanian Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, describes a perceptive rethinking of the possibility of concrete acts of goodness in the world, a rethinking never more necessary than now, in the wake of the cruel realities of the twentieth century—ten million dead in the First World War, forty million dead in the Second World War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Soviet gulags, the grand slaughter of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” the pointless and gory Vietnam War, the (...) Cambodian self-genocide and many an attempted extermination from the face of the earth of entire nations of indigenous peoples. The list of horrors goes on and on—daily holocausts that do not distinguish between the civilian and the soldier, the guilty and the innocent, those deserving of life and those less deserving. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: From Tennis for Two to Worlds of Warcraft Imaginary Worlds and Works of Fiction Fictional or Virtual? Interactive Fiction.

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2009. 320pp. pbk. $19.95 ISBN-13: 978-0816666119. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter expand an earlier study of “the video game industry as an aspect of an emerging postindustrial, post-Fordist capitalism” (xxix) to argue that videogames are “exemplary media of Empire” (xxix). Their notion of “Empire” is based on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000), which (...) characterizes the contemporary world order as a decentralized system of global economic, political, and economic power that transcends national boundaries. In the view of the authors, Hardt and Negri’s account sets itself apart from other analyses of international politics by offering a “comprehensive account of conditions of work, forms of subjectivity, and types of struggle in contemporary capital” (xx). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter thus divide Games of Empire into three sections to reflect each of these aspects of Empire ’s argument, seeing their work as the first account to explore “virtual games within a system of global ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle” (xxix). Books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Electronic Mediations series “explore the humanistic and social implications” of new technologies that spark “significant changes in society and culture, politics and economics, thinking and being.” That’s an abstract goal, and one that Games of Empire surely meets. Yet at times it can be difficult to understand exactly which specific intervention this book seeks to make. It is unclear whether the authors of Games of Empire see their work as an indictment of game scholars’ lack of attention to political economy, or whether it’s a work of political theory hoping to show that other disciplines should be paying more attention to the production and play of videogames. Because Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter don’t directly criticize previous political critiques of gaming—such as Edward Castronova’s exploration of the “porous membrane” allowing two-way traffic between virtual economies and those of the real world, or Alexander Galloway’s unraveling of control protocols in algorithmic design, or Ian Bogost’s idea of political procedural rhetoric—they sometimes leave the reader wondering how to situate the book in the broader discourse on games and politics, either separately or together. Thus, Games of Empire might best be seen as an introduction to the writings of Hardt and Negri for game players and designers, rather than as a text for communicating the basic concepts of game studies and design. It is neither a truly new theory of games or digital media, nor is it a new theory of Empire—and that’s not a criticism. It is instead an introduction to Empire through popular culture, as Zizek does for Lacan in Looking Awry . If one were teaching an introductory course on contemporary political theory, this book would offer obvious inroads into Negri and Hardt’s thinking for a number of reasons. Despite its radical ideological bent, the book isn’t off-putting to readers who don’t necessarily share the authors’ politics. It synthesizes complex ideas from difficult thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Guattari while integrating modifications and critiques of Empire theory itself. And although the book is dense, sometimes feeling longer than it actually is (just over 200 pages), Games of Empire maintains a breezy readability by tightly coupling core concepts of Empire theory to well-known games and widely-publicized conflicts within the videogame industry. The first section of the book focuses on immaterial labor, the accumulation of “cognitive capital,” and the global process of manufacturing videogame consoles. It is significant for the authors that videogames began as hacker experiments within research institutes of the military industrial complex, programmed on stolen time, before becoming a commodity (7). This is the first in a string of examples showing how creative dissidence and conflict fuel the continuing evolution of Empire’s control. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter explain that the videogame industry now constitutes an international production apparatus dominating both creative work in developed nations and manual labor in developing ones. Because game industries in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are predominately non-unionized, they serve as an exemplary system for analyzing how global capital exploits contemporary intellectual work—including an excellent analysis of the “EA Spouse” scandal of 2004. On the side of the consumer, the authors argue that rabid “console races” that drive the industry forward from a technological perspective serve to structure gamer identity and combat piracy; later in the book, these machines offer a window into the worlds of Congolese coltan mining and electronic waste (222-224). In the second section, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter move on to deep case studies of individual games to show how the most popular game genres embed imperial assumptions about conflict, exchange, and urban life. First they argue that military training games such as Full Spectrum Warrior —co-developed by university researchers, industry developers, and military contractors—contribute to the “banalization” of war, a subjective state wherein perpetual preparedness for war is accepted as a part of everyday life (100). Chapter five covers Michel Foucalt’s notion of “biopower,” the extension of capital accumulation to life itself. The authors argue that virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft , which take market capitalism as a given and force players into essentialist roles and racial antagonisms, are organized to maximize control and profit (often on the backs of virtual currency “farmers” in China and southeast Asia). Finally, they criticize the naïve assumption that humor and cynicism in the popular sandbox game franchise Grand Theft Auto offer any remedy to its racialized, violent content. Instead, such games indulge and normalize the fantasy of getting rich at any cost by keeping the realities of contemporary urban life and corporate greed at a safe distance (181). Part three of Games of Empire focuses on “games of multitude,” a preliminary attempt to escape from Empire’s order through alternate modes of videogame development and play. Multitude is defined dialectically, as “the engine and the enemy” of Empire (187). This is the most important, yet also most contradictory section of the text. It lays bare the process by which Empire and its media feed our creative and intellectual development to overabundance. At a certain point, the force of the multitude reaches such a level that it threatens the stability of Empire; however, instead of following Hardt and Negri’s utopian assumptions about the radical potential of the multitude, the authors here follow Paolo Virno’s warning that Empire is “very good at adopting apparently iconoclastic practices and utopian ideas as management techniques and revenue sources” (188). At every turn, advances in player configurative power provide new sources of revenue and advertising angles for the game industry. A disappointing shortcoming of these latter pages is the lack of truly new examples for radical resistance within game development. Instead, it turns out that the radical left seems satisfied with the same mild successes that the left-of-center also has celebrated: artist’s mods, virtual world activism, and critical counterplay within strategy- and wargames. Having been frequently cited by many authors before Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, this idea of subversion or resistance through play feels tired and unpersuasive. It is unclear if the authors believe it is possible to embrace game design itself as a way of pursuing what they call “exodus” from Empire, or if an all-too-fashionable subversion is the only workable strategy. While the book does explore how the earliest independent game studios were eventually subverted and incorporated into the game industry proper, it doesn’t affirm or critique more recent non-commercial, DIY game development projects such as Klik-of-the-Month Club and Ludum Dare. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s analysis of so-called “tactical games,” including the editorial works of La Molleindustria, leads to an even more ambivalent take on the contemporary design ecology. At the conclusion of his essay on “Countergaming,” Galloway asserts that avant-garde videogame artists “should create new grammars of action […] should create alternative algorithms” (Galloway 125). Yet Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter characterize works such as McDonald’s Video Game and Oiligarchy as didactic, suggesting that the role of radical political games might be “limited to that of agitprop” (199). They are concerned that games like those of Molleindustria rigidly structure the activities of their players in order to prove a point. Yet, despite their repeated assertion that the equation of greater interactivity with democratic digital liberation is flawed, the authors see potential in policy simulators that “allow players to edit or tweak” (202) their parameters in response to what Bogost has called simulation fever , the simultaneous drive toward and fear of simulation (Bogost 108). The possibility of practicing radical design is bucked, and early attempts at critical game development like those of Molleindustria’s seem to be relegated to the status of exceptions that prove the rule for player-centered exodus. Overall, there is one glaring question Games of Empire leaves unanswered: how exactly are videogames the “exemplary media” of Empire, and what are the implications of videogames being exemplary in this way? Presumably Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter want to avoid essentialist claims, so they’re not keen on following Wark’s desire to mark “the game’s difference from [legacy media] as something that speaks to changes in the overall structure of social and technical relations” (Wark 225). It is also unclear how the production apparatuses, labor standards, and subjectivizing processes involved in the creation and use of other any other kind of digital media would fail to justify their equally exemplary status. Even the book’s concluding paragraph holds that virtual games “are one molecular component of this undecidable collective mutation” (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 229) of intellect, labor, and daily life. In the end, the authors seem to back away from their focus on games as exemplary to bring their work in line with broader theories of the gradual digitization of the everyday, in line with Galloway and Manovich. Despite these flaws, there is an undeniable elegance to Games of Empire ’s contrasting of gaming’s overwhelmingly imperial content with its multitudinous form . And its ambivalence about the potential of independent or political game development might be seen by scholars of Empire as a strength rather than a weakness, an acceptance that every new expression of multitude offers another opportunity for the expansion of Empire. The book also functions as a strong, all-encompassing call to greater responsibility on the part of mainstream game developers to be more conscious of the ideologies they embed in their work, of the way their intellectual property is used and manipulated by those who employ them, and of the material impact their industry has on the world at large. For players it offers a toolbox of concepts for radical examinations of their own play activities, asking them to be more cognizant of the consequences of their consumption of digital media and the ways in which their virtual lives interface with the real. REFERENCES Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Castranova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games . Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. (shrink)

Introduction : growing up gamer -- Leveling up in life : how meritocracy works in society -- A toxic culture : studying gaming's jerks -- Coding meritocracy: norms of game design and narrative -- Judging skill, from World of warcraft to Kim Kardashian : Hollywood -- Learning from others -- Conclusion : an obligation to do better.

Over the past 25 years, no religious institution in America has done more to explore the link between the environment and spirituality than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Now, for the first time, a selection of the finest of the Cathedral's ecological sermons appears in a single volume.

This is the first English translation for forty years of a medieval classic, offering vivid and unique insight into the life of a great monastery in late twelfth-century England. The translation brilliantly communicates the interest and immediacy of Jocelin's narrative, and the annotation is particularly clear and helpful. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the (...) most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias -the leading ancient commentator on Aristotle -the Quaestiones exemplify the process through which Aristotle's thought was organized and came to be interpreted as "Aristotelianism." This volume of R.W. Sharples's translation, together with his earlier translation of Quaestiones 1.1-2.15, makes the Quaestiones available in its entirety for the first time in a modern language. The Quaestiones are concerned with problems of physics and metaphysics, psychology and divine providence. Readers interested in Aristotle's psychological views will find the (...) second half of the Quaestiones particularly valuable. Ten of the problems discussed involve issues raised in Aristotle's On the Soul, including the unity of apperception and the transition from first to second actuality in the act of contemplation. An additional twelve problems relate to aspects of physical theory such as infinity, necessity, and potentiality. Quaestio 2.21 concerns divine providence and helps supplement our knowledge of Alexander's position. A study of the Quaestiones also suggests how interpretations of Aristotle were influenced by doctrines of Hellenistic philosophy. Translated first into Arabic and then into Latin, excerpts from the Quaestiones played a significant role in the transmission of ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval world. (shrink)

Uncoupling proteins (UCPs) regulate mitochondrial function, and thus cellular metabolism. Angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) is the central component of endocrine and local tissue renin–angiotensin systems (RAS), which also regulate diverse aspects of whole‐body metabolism and mitochondrial function (partly through altering mitochondrial UCP expression). We show that ACE expression also appears to be regulated by mitochondrial UCPs. In genetic analysis of two unrelated populations (healthy young UK men and Scandinavian diabetic patients) serum ACE (sACE) activity was significantly higher amongst UCP3‐55C (rather than (...) T) and UCP2 I (rather than D) allele carriers. RNA interference against UCP2 in human umbilical vein endothelial cells reduced UCP2 mRNA sixfold (P < 0·01) whilst increasing ACE expression within a physiological range (<1·8‐fold at 48 h; P < 0·01). Our findings suggest novel hypotheses. Firstly, cellular feedback regulation may occur between UCPs and ACE. Secondly, cellular UCP regulation of sACE suggests a novel means of crosstalk between (and mutual regulation of) cellular and endocrine metabolism. This might partly explain the reduced risk of developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome with RAS antagonists and offer insight into the origins of cardiovascular disease in which UCPs and ACE both play a role. (shrink)

What makes Book Lambda the most important book of Metaphysics is to mention the fundamental substance of being. Therefore, Book Lambda is a book that has been regarded as valuable and has been studied extensively. Arabic translations of this book were in high demand in the Islamic world. We have also considered Arabic metaphysical translations, especially the translation of Book Lambda. The translation you will read is a commentary of the ninth chapter of Book Lambda by Themistius. The Greek (...) original commentary of Lambda was lost, and after the Arabic translation, it was transferred to Latin and Hebrew. However, later parts of the Arabic text were also lost. In this chapter, Themistius comments on the part in which Aristotle discusses the difficulties on the nature of divine intellect and tries to prove that the object of reason, the act of thinking and the object of thinking are the same things. (shrink)

This article explores the identity of youth in relation to the information sources they choose in the constellation of information of video games, using the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft as an example. From this study, several identities are recognized that are combinations of the participants skill and level in the game, as well as their play style and the information practices they use in relation to school success.

This article investigates the use and effect of optimizing strategies in the online game World of Warcraft. Specifically, it looks at the phenomenon known as “theorycrafting,” wherein expert players reverse engineer the game and use its underlying algorithms to calculate maximized play strategies. Play from a theorycrafting perspective is about the correct input and output of numbers, challenging the narrative of play as something free and frivolous. Seeking to understand how play and knowledge relate to each other, the (...) article discusses how theorycrafting’s seemingly abstract, objective, and neutral information about the game is also embedded with values, ideas, and norms. Based on a 1-year ethnographic study, the article uses Jasanoff’s idiom of coproduction to discuss how abstract calculations are rendered meaningful and valuable by players, and the consequences of this in stabilizing particular ways of playing World of Warcraft. (shrink)

Massively multiplayer online games are not merely electronic communication systems based on computational databases, but also include artificial intelligence that possesses complex, dynamic structure. Each visible action taken by a component of the multi-agent system appears simple, but is supported by vastly more sophisticated invisible processes. A rough outline of the typical hierarchy has four levels: interaction between two individuals, each either human or artificial, conflict between teams of agents who cooperate with fellow team members, enduring social-cultural groups that seek (...) to accomplish shared goals, and large-scale cultural traditions, often separated into virtual geographic regions. In many MMOs, both magic and religion are represented, in ways that harmonize with a social-scientific theory that defines them in terms of specific versus general psychological compensators. This article draws empirical examples from five diverse MMOs: Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeons and Dragons Online, World of Warcraft, A Tale in the Desert and Gods and Heroes. (shrink)

1891. The recovered manuscript of Aristotle's Constitutional History of Athens, now for the first time given to the world from the unique text in the British...

(1994). Annex: The survey questionnaires. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 161-164.