ratboy writes good

Tony Walsh (aka Ratboy, Zero Grace and the evil genius behind ClickableCulture) has a great new article on Mindjack. Multiplayer Gaming’s Quiet Revolution details the evolution of the expression of emotions in online environments, from text-based emoticons to user-created 3D graphic emotions for MMORPGs like Second Life. 
 
I had the pleasure of editing the article, which was very timely as I’m re-reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In 1992, Snow Crash predicted many of the developments that are currently happening in online worlds and that Tony talks about, namely the importance of displaying emotions by a user’s avatar
 
Anyone who is interested in online worlds that go beyond the Everquest model of swords and sorcery should check out Tony’s Mindjack article and his Second Life Journal.