|
 , assistant product manager for
Seriosity, develops enterprise software based on
principles of interactive game design.
Cheng's accomplishments include leading a
200-plus-member guild in the online game World of
Warcraft, building applications within and for
virtual worlds, and contributing to Wired
magazine. When she isn't writing, designing
or powergaming she also works as a project
director for the Accelerating Studies Foundation,
and she helped plan the Metaverse Roadmap Summit.
She previously worked at Electronic Arts and MTV
Networks.
What is your greatest fear for the
future of networked technologies?
I'm afraid of the tendency for people to get
too involved in games and online worlds. I've
seen a lot of people who will displace their
normal lifestyle in order to participate in
something that's happening in the game. There
are reasons pro and con. It's up to people to
be more responsible for their real-life
commitments. But if someone could harness the
power of what's so compelling in these games
and actually use them for something productive or
in order to solve a problem, and if people had
that same fervor and wanted to achieve social
goals in the same way they now want to achieve
dungeon raiding, then I think that would be
incredible.
What is your most fervent hope for the
future of networked technologies? My
answer is based off what I'm seeing now,
which is virtual worlds and online games. My
background comes a lot from gaming and massively
multiplayer online games. The things that I have
seen in these games that are exciting to me are
the emotional connections that people make with
one another to somebody who lives on the other
side of the world who they've never met but
whom they've shared days and weeks and months
of in-game experiences with. That really is very
powerful to me. It's the game that first
draws you in, but it's the people who make
you stay and want to keep playing.
What technology will have the greatest
impact on our everyday lives the next 10
years? You could talk to somebody you
don't know from somewhere in the world and
make friends with them and learn about them and
their background and share experiences with them
and even work together toward a common goal and
have fun doing it. That's possible now, and I
think that we'll continue to think of great
ways to do that in the future.
Looking out more
than 10 years, what development will have the
greatest impact on society? When I look
at the landscape for the next 10 years, it's
kind of easy to predict where the hardware will
go. You see the iPod and handhelds and X-Boxes
that are now your personal home entertainment
center, and I think that the direction that
that's going to go is fairly obvious. What I
think is really cool about virtual worlds is
there's so much possibility there, but right
now our tools for interfacing with those virtual
worlds are still sort of primitive. We're
still using mice to maneuver around, we're
still looking at screens and using keyboards, and
I think the next revolution that will really
change this environment is going to be a new form
of input from the human user to the 3D world, so
we're more ingrained in it, so you're
using a glove or whatever, a peripheral headpiece
or whatnot to more easily be able to turn your
head and navigate and see something on the
horizon or just be able to grab things and pick
them up. I'm really excited to see that start
happening.
What do you think policymakers should do
to ensure a positive future for networked
technologies? A lot of consideration has
to be given to control and privacy issues. Those
would be the things that I would be most
concerned about. When you have an avatar or some
kind of existence or representation in a virtual
environment, usually that character has assets
that – more or less – that person
worked for. If we do move toward a metaverse as a
goal, (there should be) some way for that person
to be able to keep their assets that they have
earned and possibly transfer them if appropriate.
Laws that can help users maintain the things they
have earned that are rightfully theirs.
|
