(This posting is about the urgent need to find financial sponsors for State of Play IV: Building the Global Metaverse. Feel free to skip the bulk of the message and cut to the chase.)
San Antonio is not the most cosmopolitan city in the world. We lack an Ethiopian restaurant, and have extremely limited options as far as good Chinese food is concerned. Though we have a handful of (very small) independent bookstores, we're forced to drive to Borders if we hope to find anything remotely out of the ordinary. We're not on the circuit for hipster college rock bands, and most of the good art house movies are found only in Austin. We don't even have an American Apparel or a Trader Joe's to call our own.
Some might reach for the word "provincial" to describe this city. Yet, because we have never been close to the epicenter of American power, our perspective is more humble than you might expect from Texans. We've always known that exciting and important things are happening outside our borders. To participate in important conversations about important topics, we know that we must get on the plane and fly to other places.
From San Antonio, there are very few direct flights. As my Mom (a Texas native) once noted, "Even if you go to hell, you've got to stop in Dallas first." Thus, we Texans, like Nebraskans and Coloradans and Latin Americans and Africans and British residents often find ourselves traveling through strange airports with long lay overs. We are used to it.
Ultimately, the transition to a fully globalized world may be more traumatic for those who live in such cosmopolitan cities as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. After all, when a community has spent more than a century with a reputation as "the place that others must visit," the perspective of its residents tends to become somewhat myopic. One could even use the word "provincial."
Whether or not we choose to admit it, the American Century is over.
The networked technologies that power our beloved virtual worlds have made it possible to dramatically decentralize physical manufacturing and symbolic labor. Entrepreneurial and creative energies are now as likely to flourish in Hanoi and Mumbai as in Hollywood and the Silicon Valley
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Everyone has a different answer. But few can deny that this is the nature of our global economy in this new millennium.
We are living through an unprecedented world-historical moment. The
rate of change is accelerating, with no sign of slowing down. This move
toward international culture and global civil society offers
extraordinary potential for collaboration and information sharing.
Even
now, when faced with distressing ecological and political developments,
the rise of global virtual worlds makes it possible for reasonable
individuals to cling to a small shred of hope that we can work together
to make things better.
With such powerful technologies before our very eyes, one might think that virtual world researchers would widely announce and celebrate these changes. One might expect us to be racing toward projects that use virtual worlds to promote transnational understanding. One might even predict that far-sighted projects such as Global Kids and the Center for Public Diplomacy's Project on Virtual Worlds would be part of a much larger cultural movement.
Sadly, we seem far more comfortable talking about changes unfolding in Azeroth than about those changes emerging beyond our borders. With the exception of a handful of intrepid game designers, scholars, and reporters who have set out to explore the "worlds beyond the West," our field has been remarkably quiet about the global dimensions of play.
In fact, the conversation about virtual worlds is dominated by Western voices. While there are trade shows for the video game industry in Asia, most discussions of virtual world research have been located exclusively in the West to the exclusion of meaningful international participation.
At the 2006 gathering of the International Communication Association in Berlin, the game studies division drew approximately 52 researchers. More than two-thirds were American, and only one scholar from Asia was listed on the conference program. Similarly, at the Digital Games Research Association’s convention in 2005, non- Western guests represented less than 3% of the 200+ speakers. (This is *not* the fault of the conference organizers. These figures simply reflect our current condition.)
It is also interesting to note how many Western scholars and business professionals are overwhelmed by the thought of braving an economy class trip to “the Far East” to meet their counterparts overseas.
International travel is expensive and it takes a long time. Jet lag is no fun, and the economy cabins seem to be shrinking every year. But what do you think our colleagues from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa have been dealing with for the past six decades?
In January of 2007 -- we hope -- the fourth annual State of Play conference will meet in Singapore. Entitled "Building the Global Metaverse," this groundbreaking event will convene designers, journalists, scholars, entrepreneurs, lawyers and gamers from around the world to discuss the increasingly global character of virtual worlds. In addition to the usual suspects, we plan to subsidize travel and hotel expenses for attendees from developing countries.
We are running a very tight ship. Economy class airfares. Scaled back meals. Barely any swag. No ice statues, fire jugglers, stilt walkers, or celebrity musicians. All of our organizers (especially our project manager) have volunteered their time to make this happen. Neal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow have waived their speaking fees because they understand the need to pinch pennies.
Despite our frugality, organizing a global conference is difficult undertaking. When Beth Noveck and I set out to plan this event, we overestimated the readiness of our Western colleagues to embrace this groundbreaking project. Five months down the road, we are still trying to raise enough money. We are rapidly approaching a “go or no-go” decision point.
We need your help.
Certain organizations rose to the sponsorship challenge as soon as they heard about State of Play IV, and they deserve to be recognized. Kenyon and Kenyon, Makena Technologies, The Escapist, Asia’s Business Software Alliance and Millions of Us have already made substantial commitments to the conference.
These are not large companies with extensive capital reserves. These visionary organizations have tight budgets, but they agreed to sponsor because they understand where our industry is heading.
Private sector patrons have been joined by academic institutions
including Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Nanyang Technical
University and Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. New York Law
School deserves special praise for sharing Beth's brain (which should
be classified a national treasure) even while she is on sabbatical. New
York Law School has also been willing to put its name and reputation on
the line at crucial junctures during the growth of this conference. Key
individuals at Linden Lab have been extraordinarily helpful, and have
initiated conversations with potential sponsors.
Singapore's Infocomm Development Alliance (IDA) has been a
significant sponsor, and other government agencies in Singapore have
also stepped in to support this non-profit gathering.
More
surprising than the commitment on the part of these
small-to-medium-sized entities has been the tepid response on the part
of the rest of the community. Everyone is waiting for someone else to
take responsibility for making this happen.
(Side note: To be fair, more than thirty sponsorship letters are under review, so other game companies may be on the brink of sponsoring. If so, please don’t hesitate to call me at 210/347-6888).
Two of the most important trends of this decade are (a) the explosive growth of transnational virtual worlds, and (b) the remarkable resurgence of Asia's economies during the past five years. These two trends will intersect in Singapore in January at the State of Play Conference: Building the Global Metaverse.
Neal Stephenson will be on hand to help us make sense of global developments, as will Dr. Jane McGonigal, Cory Doctorow, and Julian Dibbell. They will be joined by an extraordinary slate of speakers including Funmi Iyanda (Nigeria), Sue Yang (Shanghai),
Judge Unggi Yoon (Korea), Frank Yu (Beijing), Joey Alarilla (Philippines), and danah boyd (Berkeley). These are remarkable voices that deserve to be heard. We’ve put together a conference program that will make it possible for them to do this (http://www.nyls.edu/stateofplay).
State of Play IV: Building the Global Metaverse will also feature two workshops. The first is devoted to virtual tax law -- a topic that has captured the attention of legislators throughout the world. The second workshop, sponsored by The Escapist, explores global games journalism and virtual worlds reporting.
This will be an amazing conference. But we need your help to pay for it.
Our game industry is hardly in desperate financial straits. The annual revenue of the games industry in the United States alone outstrips Hollywood box office receipts. Last month, virtual worlds were featured prominently in more than 40 national and global media outlets including Reuters, The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN Money, Red Herring, The Street, Business Week, CNet, Forbes, International Herald Tribune, Harvard Business Review, and NPR.
Meanwhile, a miniature boom-economy has hit the social virtual worlds. Metaverse development companies such as Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, and Rivers Run Red are racing to keep up with the demand. Some seasoned observers compare the current activity to the spike in attention that preceded the boom in 1994.
My questions to Terra Nova’s writers and readers -- particularly those in North America -- are very simple: Are we ready for this type of global dialogue about the future of virtual worlds? Are we willing to take the symbolic (and immensely rewarding) step of visiting other countries for a change?
Are we truly ready to speak to the rest of the world as partners and equals?
If you're connected to an organization that has a budget for such things, we would welcome your sponsorship. If you know of someone else who might be able to help out, we would be grateful if you could pass this message on to them.
If you would like to speak further about sponsorship opportunities, please contact me at any time at +1 (210) 347-6888 or at aaron.delwiche@gmail.com.
We can make this conference happen. But we need your help.
Dr. Aaron Delwiche
Assistant Professor (Communication)
Chair, State of Play IV: Building the Global Metaverse
Trinity University
San Antonio, Texas
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