To Probe Further: The Gameframe Guild

Visit Taikodom's official site to see screen shots of the game and a photo gallery of spaceships, stations, and characters.

The game's official site also has videos. You can watch more videos, including actual in-game footage created by players, on YouTube.

For more on bitverse, Hoplon's software infrastructure for virtual worlds, go to https://www.bitverse.com. To learn more about IBM's System z, including the z10, the company's most powerful mainframe, visit https://www.ibm.com/systems/z/. For a good story on mainframes, see ”The Mainframe Is No Dodo Bird,” in InternetNews.com.

To learn more about the IBM/Hoplon gameframe's advantages and drawbacks, see discussions at GamingNexus, 3pointD, Ars Technica, and the Mainframe blog. And find out more about EVE Online's single-universe game server in ”The One-World Video-Game Challenge” in Technology Review.

For an introduction to online game design, see ”Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide” (New Riders Games, 2003) by Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky, available on Amazon. An interview with Mulligan and Richard Bartle offers an interesting overview of the current state of the game development industry.

Read an overview of Project Darkstar, Sun Microsystem's open-source software infrastructure for massive online games, as well as discussions about the project and links to the source code.

For market data on massively multiplayer online games, MMOGCharttracks numbers of subscribers and market share. Also visit DFC Intelligence for reports on market growth and size.

Read more about the Cell processor, its applications, and the challenges in parallel processing and multicore programming in these IEEE Spectrum articles:

”Multimedia Monster,””Expressway to Your Skull,””Solving the Oil Equation,” and ”Cure for the Multicore Blues.”

For more on virtual worlds and the future of the three-dimensional Web, visit the Metaverse Roadmap Web site. Also read ”Make Your Very Own Virtual World With OLIVE,”in Spectrum (January 2008), about Forterra Systems' OLIVE virtual-world platform.

Additional Spectrum game coverage includes ”Machinima's Movie Moguls” (July 2008), ”Playing Dirty” (December 2007), and words”Engineering Everquest.” (July 2005).