At least for one particular Chinese MMO called King of the World, operated by Shanda. From the WTF department today, they decreed that only actual females can play female characters. All those who wish to play a female character must provide a webcam pic of a girl…

Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has frozen game accounts of male players who chose to play female in-game characters in its in-house developed MMORPG King of the World, reports 17173. Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report.

It’s unclear whether females can play male characters or not, my guess is yes. This comes after skeletons being “covered up” in WoW. I understand there’s cultural differences. Afterall, I am Chinese. But if China wants the respect they want so bad from the western worlds, these kinds of things are exactly the opposite of what they need. Not to mention this is totally moronic and can be worked around so easily (”hey mom, can ya come sit here for a sec”).

Oh, and they recently outlawed reincarnation too.

From the virtual worlds rumors department, Google Operating System, an unofficial Google news blog, reported that Google’s testing something new at ASU:

Arizona State University’s students have the opportunity to test a new product “that will be publicly launched later this year”. The invitation page mentions that the product is developed by “a major Internet company” and there are hints that the application is related to social networking, 3D modeling and video games.

Read the post itself for speculations from the site operator. Personally, I don’t think Google’s trying to creating another Second Life type virtual world. If anything, my guess is it will be a 3D MySpace or Facebook. Google’s business is information. What’s better than to get everyone on Earth to contribute information about themselves, and present them as they are in Google Earth? Then again, no one’s obligated to “show themselves” on Google Earth. Philosophically, this can turn into an additional dimension to the world as we know it.

Areae, headed by Raph Koster, finally released details about the secret virtual world project that they have been working on for a year now. It’s called Metaplace and it reeks of boundless potential. I am extremely excited about it, and at the same time, concerned.

Metaplace is a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play. And the client could be anywhere on the Web.

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I have had a bit of revelation moment today. I have been thinking and evaluating about my experience with Scrum. For a long time now, I am been in the role of ScrumMaster, and filling in for Product Owner due to accessibility issue. I have come to the conclusion that, it’s really a recipe for failed Scrum implementation.

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Virtual Worlds News posted a great article with the BarbieGirls.com developer, Studiocom. I especially liked the way they broke down contents. Viewing content creation tools as toys is an interesting angle to encourage accessibility.

Studiocom breaks content down into four categories. There’s explicit creation like text or images that provides a very direct, open-ended form of communication, and also life-caching, a constant stream of self-reporting with cameras or audio. But more important for Studiocom’s work are the last two: mediated development and relationships.

“In mediated content, you work with existing tools,” said Santos. “You make music through your mixer or you decorate your room. A room is an incredible piece of content. In Coke Studios, we created 17 environments but then users created over 2 million rooms of their own. And the fourth type is content created through relationships. If you think about Facebook, people have profiles, but more important are the connections of who knows who. You filter that by adding friends or groups, but it’s a piece of content that the user never has or creates, but the system has it.”