Ludlow is Everywhere

Edward Castronova

The Alphaville Herald saga continues to crawl upwards in memespace. Peter Ludlow, a Zenger for our time, may apear on this US comedy news program tonight. He's also been on CNN, and has this interesting interview up today with someone who knows much about the early design of Sims and Sims Online. Finally, Professor Ludlow has been writing about virtual worlds for the London Times, a purportedly non-comedy newspaper in England. Full text of that below...

Excerpt from from the London Times (you'll have to go subscribe to get full text):

January 31, 2004

PC World

There goes the neighbourhood
by Peter Ludlow

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Since The Alphaville Herald began reporting on events in this virtual city, many morals have been drawn from the sad state of affairs. Some commentators have suggested that this is what happens when people are given freedom to be whatever they want to be. I think a different conclusion is in order. The lesson of Alphaville is the way in which communities evolve in response to troublesome elements, and the creative, resourceful and sometimes heavy-handed strategies they use to defeat and freeze out griefers.

The lesson is also that the ability to cope with griefers is limited by the cohesiveness of community, and is never entirely successful. It is a mistake to think of Alphaville as a kind of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is rather a city very much like terrestrial cities, struggling to cope with the behavioural problems of a relatively small number of citizens. Indeed, the more closely Alphaville is studied, the more it looks like a reflection of the world the players thought they had temporarily left behind.

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