Do virtual worlds liberate us?

I’m wondering what TN reader’s view is of the trajectory of the intersection of virtual worlds and what some term the political economy is. In short do we think that the practices associated virtual worlds are tending towards liberating us or are acting as just another way for dominant ideologies to be re-enforced?

It seems to me that in many ways virtual worlds are the ultimate expression of consumerism. Game worlds construct new needs which the use-value of virtual artefacts meet and new forms of labour are constructed to enable us to gain them.

Both game worlds and social worlds, in their different ways, can also act as a pure mechanism for symbolic-value exchange through the mechanism of virtual goods. For example: a virtual Gucci bag may have no use-value what so ever in a virtual world but it carries with it much of the symbolic value of the brand.

In general virtual worlds seem often to replicate structures of labour and production – they even support a class hierarchies based on geography, contextual knowledge, time in the given community etc.

At the same time virtual worlds offer the promise of liberating us. Not quite in the old utopian ideal of freeing us fully from pre-existing notions of self but at least opening up new opportunities for self-exploration. What’s more should you have access to a virtual world the barrier between roles of consumption and production seems to have been lowered such that both within the context of a virtual space e.g. as a crafter or builder in second life; or outside it, say as a fan fic creator, many can participate in a mixed traditional, amateur and / or gift economy.

We might also note that widespread fact of things like gift economies within virtual worlds stand as a challenge to the rigidity of exchange-values and all they stand for in respect of social relations.

A we can see how individuals have the power to subvert ideologies through playing with brands and taking stabs at ideologies – such as Dead in Iraq and others that work on the art / politics threshold.

Plus virtual worlds do give us pause for thought. They motivate discussions about the contingency of many things we see in the physical world around us – for example the nature of property and money. However I wonder if those that really engage in those discussions are largely an intellectual elite who would be talking about them anyway.

Lastly when we look at something like Second Life and There what we seem to see are endlessly reproduced norms of body type etc that look like the products of an internalisation and then self production of dominant types. While there are many ‘fake’ versions of brands, they are still versions of brands so still operate in the same world of assumed values. What’s more we can no longer gamble in Second Life the reason being because of US laws – hence many virtual worlds seem simply to act as a way of expanding US cultural and legal norms, even if the virtual world is not in-fact based in the US as it will probably have a tendency to norm towards its values. As virtual worlds come out of China I expect that we will see a spreading of its cultural assumptions too.

So I contend that virtual worlds hold the potential to liberate and the potential to reinforce and indeed spread the dominant ideologies of the time. What I’m interested in are people views of where things are now and where they seem to be headed.

I’m currently erring towards the pessimistic view of things – give me hope :)

Comments

[blackrazor]

As far as consumerism and "low barriers to entry", yes I agree that virtual worlds are like a new frontier, with lots of space for people who might feel marginalized in the real world to try a new start at establishing a positive presence in a virtual one. Also plenty of room for established and upstart successes in the real world to move in, as well.

But true long-term growth only comes with political and intellectual freedom, in my opinion. In that regard, virtual worlds are still very much in the dark ages, with the dev. and/or management team as sovereign. Their rule is absolute; there are no courts, parliaments, constitutions, elections, etc. None of the wonderful innovations that we often take for granted here in the real world.

I'm not implying that this is a trivial thing to solve; I'm just putting it out there as a potential impediment to the long-term success of such virtual places.

[Grendel]

I think you're right to be pessimistic. I think that freedom we currently enjoy is largely due to the lack of understanding of the technology by the conservative establishment. The social flexibility enjoyed in these worlds is due to them being populated with pioneers and individuals who are more open to new experience.

As the herds occupy the online worlds, we will grow closer and closer to "MSNWorlds", which will essentially be 3D, avatar driven versions of the web portal experience. A mixture of dominant culture influence and common denominator marketing will drive this process.

This is all of course, in reference to worlds like Second Life.

[Darniaq]

Blackrazor wrote:

As far as consumerism and "low barriers to entry", yes I agree that virtual worlds are like a new frontier, with lots of space for people who might feel marginalized in the real world to try a new start at establishing a positive presence in a virtual one.

I agree with this except feel it needs to be extended. People can feel just as marginalized in virtual worlds as they do in the real one. This is due to the same reasons: class-ism, inability to compete against those who dominate specific rules, and insular clique-behavior. Basically, the rules for success (the "skill") in virtual worlds exist just as real world rules do. They just take on a different form. For awhile, success was driven by Time and a willingness to focus more on virtual goals than real world ones. But now we're seeing an influx of money which is capable of buying that Time from the folks willing to invest it. Sorta like microtrans and RMTing. Why do the work yourself when you can get it done by incentifying someone else who already has the skill?

I do agree though that the barrier for trying something is less, as is the perception of that barrier. "Time" is less measurable than cash. People who mess up in real world business stand to lose a lot more than someone who fails at making a virtual startup, unless they invested their own or someone else's cash into it (and I specifically avoid talking about peope with established virtual world businesses for that reason).

[Ren Reynolds]

@blackrazor
“virtual worlds are still very much in the dark ages, with the dev. and/or management team as sovereign. Their rule is absolute; there are no courts, parliaments, constitutions, elections, etc.”

I agree and I think that in some instances this is important. But it depends on the world. Like Prof Bartle I think that when we talk about games - designers are artists thus the kind of freedom that I talk about should also be extended to them and their ability to create spaces that are bound by all kinds of interesting structures and rules. It is when those rules start to impact things that are not relevant to the game and / or the spaces starts to take on a civic role that we really need to be concerned.

But wider than this basic top down notion of control I am wondering more about the general context in which virtual worlds are sited and the way that the uses of them seem to endlessly replicate certain structures of consumption and production.

[Ren Reynolds]

@Grendel
"As the herds occupy the online worlds, we will grow closer and closer to "MSNWorlds""

Just wait for Sony's "Home". I've hear more about control of that space than just about any other feature.

[Tripp]

In some senses, VWs are/will be no different from meatspace: those with power seek to keep it; markets forces will exert pressures; some will act selfishly, some generously, etc., etc. But in other ways I think VWs could (and have) shown more room for equity and freedom.

Given that I start with a somewhat cynical perspective, I'm actually more optimistic than pessimistic. One of the reasons I'm hopeful is the old "information wants to be free" notion. I think the experience so far seems to bear out the idea that the net and the ease of digital reproduction diffuse power. Information is power, and the digital revolution spreads information out. I mean "information" in a broad sense, from bits to knowledge to news. Digital Rights Management is failing; despite the Chinese (and other) government's attempts to clamp down on information spreading (and Yahoo's complicity...), it goes on.

So yeah, I'm clearly not seeing a utopia on the horizon, but I'm also not seeing a cyberpunk future from where I stand.

[Susan]

Count me as a pessimist.

1. The rejection of democracy is troubling.

There's a synergy of several anti-democratic trends:
- The Swords and Sorcery genre: let's all pretend we're in a Feudal society
- VW designers acting out a fantasy of being God: absolute power with no accountabilty. (Just look at the metaphors VW designers use!)
- VW operators have the technical ability to monitor and control their users to an astonishing extent. (e.g. they can block messages containing forbidden words, like "democracy").
- The ongoing discussion on whether rights such as free speech apply in a privately-owned environment, like most VW's

2.

Many of the current VW's are about doing mindless, repetetive work in order to earn money to buy useless stuff. (Except Second Life, much of which seems to be about working as a prostitute in order to buy useless stuff).

3. Body image. Most of us can't be as conventionally beautiful as the people in the images advertising and TV continually sends us .... so VW's encourage us to forget our real bodies and substitute a (bought, manipulated) image.

[Wojciech]

I think it ultimately depends on what "liberation" means to you. Sure, dominant ideologies are being reinforced when players buy Gucci bags or modify their bodies to be "beautiful" as defined by the media and status quo. But in a sense, is this not liberating? Ultimately, these ideas of "beauty" are still ingrained within people's minds, and if they now have the power to fit those ideals, then I can see that as a sort of personal liberation.

As I write this, I can't help but think of the (small number) of examples I've heard of where such worlds are used to allow people to overcome their physical disabilities…

Also, it's important to note that the worlds where people have the freedom and ability to drive cultural production are still fairly new and appeal to a fairly small audience. Virtual worlds are foreign, new, and not well understood by most people, and a good way to adjust to them (as in any foreign setting in real life) is to incorporate your own culture and values into them… Think of culture shock when you're traveling – if you're in Asia or Africa and still adjusting to local foods and tastes, chances are you're craving a burger, pizza, or fries. Maybe it's the same in these worlds?

I'll take a more idealistic view and say that this the trend we're seeing now is temporary… Over time, as people become more comfortable with virtual worlds and they enter the mainstream (ignoring MMORPGs, which are too limited for original cultural creation, in my view), I believe we'll start to see cultural developments that reach beyond dominant societal themes and ideals.

---

I'd like to also point out how the virtual worlds mentioned seem to propagate Western values and ideals… Has anyone here been able to participate in worlds targeting other markets, such as South Korea, for example? Do the citizens of those worlds (or MMORPGs) incorporate their cultural norms into the game, or also adopt a more North American-centric culture? Considering that "Americanization" of culture has been such a big deal in the real world, it would be interesting to see how this plays out in virtual worlds… And in this case, is it not liberating if you can adopt a Western culture in a virtual world, if doing so in real life is impossible?

[Dave Rickey]

I think they are inherently liberating environments. Even being *in* them is a matter of choice. If people choose hyper-branded consumerist worlds, that tells us something about people, not about the worlds.

Beyond that, the first thing that happens with any new technology or medium is that we use it to do the old things in new ways. Our understanding of what we are doing is still at an early stage, we have a handful of formulae, reached by trial and error, that work, and we don't really know why. We don't know what these worlds will be like when they grow up.

Right now in virtual worlds, people want access to things that in RL are held up as prized and are out of their reach (Gucci bags). But the day will come when they are not trying to acquire legitimacy by incorporating RL brands, but are spinning off brands of their own.

And the day will come when what "game" you play is not just an explanation of what you do with your free time, but an *identity*.

--Dave

[Jeff Cole]

Influence, much more than information, is power. There's no real revelation in the notion that virtual worlds conduct influence. I am not sure that the worlds themselves necessarily influence beyond conducting certain influences more or less efficiently.

If I read Ren correctly, he is asking, "Is the velocity of influence in capital-V-and-W Virtual Worlds more liberating than conforming?"

[thoreau]

blackrazor said, "But true long-term growth only comes with political and intellectual freedom, in my opinion."

Can you define 'long-term' (5 years? 100 years?) and give examples of freedoms? Because China seems to be flying in the face of that statement.

That being said, I see virtual worlds less like 'worlds' and more like company stores. The company owns the land, makes the laws, and sets the wages and prices. We just live their and work there. Sure, we can go on strike once in a while to make a little noise, but at the end of the day we work for the company. No democracy. No freedom. Just a job.

[Amarilla]

"Do virtual worlds liberate us?
Ren Reynolds "

Yes : from the perception of reality.

[blackrazor]

@thoreau

I was actually going to use examples of China, "Orwellian" fiction, and company towns, but I had wanted to keep my post short and sweet.

What those three examples have in common, is that they are very efficient at producing goods, but not so efficient at liberating our human spirit.

The human spirit thrives on freedom, on the ability to ask tough questions and to interpret things anew, far more than the ability to be a desired shape, or "own" a desired object / pixels.

Of course, this is only my opinion.

As for China, if you're in the "in crowd" (virtual analogy would be on the "good" side of the game's GMs or rules) then your four year old son gets to swim in a gorgeous pool with a Beluga whale for the world to admire.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=488166&in_page_id=1811

If you're on the wrong side in China, for example a Falun Gong member (virtual analogy: you have dissed a GM, broken a rule, good luck to your avatar now!) you get thrown in prison, and your organs might be harvested to foreigners for the profit of your oppressors.

http://organharvestinvestigation.net/media/Canadians%20probe%20Chinese%20organ%20harvesting%20claims.htm

I mean no offense by these claims, and have cited sources. I believe this picture paints a generally pessimistic view of our potential future, both in virtual worlds and in the real world, as we are taught to confuse the economic freedom of consumer choices and economic efficiency, with the personal freedom to question things around us, free from the reprisals of authority.

[dmx]

Personally I found (And I've loudly agitated against) Second Life to be the absolute crystalisation of everything I feared about VRs failing to live up to the potential.

First off, I'm going to note that this doesn't apply to game games. Ie your sword and sorcery types. Reading too much into the politics therof ('races' ugh) kind of misses that they are dungeon and dragon fantasies for adult children (like me!). I used to love reading about Megacity #1 in the Judge Dread comics. Sure as hell I didn't want to live there. But it'd be fun to roleplay.

What my problem with Second Life is, is the wholesale import of multiple RL elements distinctly ill suited to the digital age, and that really hamper the creativity of the place. Namely the RMT and Digital Restrictions Management framework.

We know from the Open source movement that freeing coders from the shackles intelectual property laws encourages creativity. The growth in popularity of Creative Commons amongst the Arts along with Post Modern Arts movements like Hip Hop, Sampling Electro, Collage, Culture Jamming, and so on, indicate that removing (or in the case of Culture Jamming purposefully ignoring) creativity constraints imposed by licensing can be a stimulus to innovation.

The Patent and copyright laws may of held worth in the days of non infinite mechanical reproduction , but in the digital age, they just stop making sense, other than perhaps protecting some of the 'boring' labor intensive stuff of hosting, network infrastructure, and so on.

Well may it be we can't do a whole lot about it in the real world, but who on earth thought it was a good idea to import this distopic (I don't mean distopia as a troll. See RMS's right to read) bullshit into our play spaces? Who thought it would be a good idea to invite the "boss" to our nightclubs to hang out? I don't invite the boss to the Rosemount Hotel for friday night piss with the 'boys'. And I don't want him tagging around trying to sell me shit in Second life.

I'd rather be a bird and fly. Bird don't need no money.

The Academic community always seems like it feels obliged to run in and defend this sort of nonsense, despite the fact that Second Lifes Dismal success in the wider market to actually capture real people into it compared to almost any other genre of VR world, OUGHT raise alarms. Sure its interesting to study artificial economys, but is it fun?

Now let me add some knobs to that argument. I have no problem with 'play' economies in things like WoW or EVE or whatever. These games are competitive, and economys make for competition. But its *play* competition. Escapeism.

The minute ones rent cheque becomes dependant on it , it stops being escapism and starts becomeing "First Life". And that, I propose is bad for humans.

Lets say the singularity does hit. That we can break free of the physical for real and 'download' into the matrix.

Wouldn't it be nice to build heaven? One where we can frolick forever without limits? Wouldn't it suck to be in servitude to just-another-boss because we are stuck in some shitty mortgage for new wings? Would those who dissent be marked as Cain?

The Nords had Valhala. (Wow!)
The Budhists had eternal Peace (ATITD?)
The Christians Jews and Muslims had limitless freedom and Joy (I dunno.)
I can't think of any religion that would posit Nirvana being "Super wallstreet 3000".

Eh. Scuse the Hyperbole. But I'm a bit passionate on this one. We just need to keep asking "Wheres the freedom?" in this. And when we do so, remind ourself that American Capitalism theorists have never been particularly deep in answering that one.

[dmx]

I maek rant

[dmx]

One more thing.

Read Greg Egans "Diaspora". *THAT* is a vision of a "second life" I could root for.

[Andy Havens]

Ren: liberate... from what? All the things we need in RL, we still need when we play VWs. Neither do we reap therein, nor do we sow. Some folks make some money, sure. But that's not what we're talking about, is it?

Am I free, for example, from racism in a VW? To the extent that I can hide my race or mimic another one with an avatar... perhaps. But it's not really an escape, then, is it? It's a veneer. Not that I'm saying that's bad; I like to pretend to be things I'm not. But pretending isn't freedom.

You contrast "reinforcement" (of bad, RL things I think) with "freedom." Well... the opposite of freedom isn't reinforcement; it's lack of choice. And whether or not VWs reinforce RL attitudes, behaviors, etc., they provide another choice. Another "place" where we can either bring our RL baggage or not.

Having a choice is itself freeing; you are freed from the alternatives. Very few choices, though, provide freedom in and of themselves. I don't see VW's as being inherently freeing or stifling. They just reflect us.

To paraphrase Pogo, "We have met the avatar, and they is us."

[Lavant]

Is the death of an avatar, leaving one vw for another, suicide in the ether?

[Peter Clay]

Just to complicate matters, I'll add that more choice can equal less freedom (there's literature on this, but I can't remember who by - Amartya Sen?)

[Ren Reynolds]

@Andy Havens
“I don't see VW's as being inherently freeing or stifling.”

Neither do I. I think that the kind of technological determinism rhetoric that would underpin such an argument is flawed in its understanding of the way that technological use emerges – here I think we have a lot to learn from the Actor Network Theory take on the role of technology in society.

Hence I was not asking an intrinsic question but one about current practice and our feelings about the trajectory of those practices.

“liberate... from what?”

Well the literature that I know in this area I think is rooted in either an extension of or a reaction to Marxist ideas of society and progress. I guess I should probably be less normative in the way I frame things, when I say liberation what I mean is the option to do things other than we do now. Classically this is framed in terms of production and consumption, which can be taken further into things like an analysis of the construction of need and the mediation of social relations through goods and services that are related to common abstract economic values.

One interesting thing about games is that, to take Malaby’s framing and a bit of my spin on it, games ‘contrive contingency’ what they also do – and I’m not sure if this is a bi-product or a pre-cursor to Malaby’s take, is they generate meaning and value. Getting a ball in net, getting to level 70 are things that pop into existence as objectives that are valued. Generating value generates need and what flows from this is it seems is a replication of the structures of capitalist economy – but here I think we can talk about liberation or at least options, I wonder if we could do other things with this values, whether they could generate different needs or different structures for fulfilling them and thus different relationships based around them.

There are so many potential settings and structures for things as complex as MMOs that we might find options. ATITD was mentioned above, it seems to me that this does attempt to configure relations around contrived ludic-needs some what differently at least from other MMOs.

A feature of Second Life that has always interested me is that while the internal currency has some hard ties into the structure of the artefact (it certainly used to be the case that forming groups, uploading textures etc cost $L), the economic structure that we see is not necessitated by the artefact in the same way that it is in many MMOs. That is, all objects could be created with copy permissions enabled.

From those that do think that VW’s are liberating I wonder what they mean by it. What specific things would VW’s enable or even foster and what would they liberate us from.

I can certainly think of examples where we might see VWs enabling a change to or at least a reaction to certain social relations. One is in the relations that disabled have – VWs seem to offer some choice (as was noted above with race, though I think that that is a different argument) over self presentation and a level, if narrow, playing field of interaction.

Then again as Ricky alludes to above, maybe liberation comes at the level of information. Certainly having a different kind of relationship with people from other countries on a regular basis, as those in international virtual worlds from There to EvE do, might change assumptions about other cultures which may have an impact should this become wider. Here we might look to what Club Penguin does to kids’ assumptions about other nations when they may regularly interact with people from around the world this may be a liberation from what their local media choose to tell them about ‘the other’ whoever the media decide that is.

[Tripp]

Quick thought after glancing through all of the above...The fact that anyone can post here and, if his/her ideas are valuable, they tend to be valued, is cause for hope, to me. I see VWs, like the web, as having the potential to be "meritocracy creating".

MMO guild leaders need to earn their status (and keep earning it); that's a good thing.

Someone with a brilliant idea and no access to credentials can be respected for the idea; that's a good thing.

And so on.

[Timothy Burke]

I've never seen a question where I've more fervently felt, "None of the above" was the right answer.

Liberate from what? is only part of the problem with the question. For a brief moment, the choice makes me feel like I'm hallucinating and I've accidentally dropped into my other specialized world, African Studies, where almost everything gets evaluated through the lens of oppression and liberation from the legacies of colonialism and slavery. My reply in that case is that this compresses African history into a single dimensionality (oppressive or not oppressive) and that there is a good deal going on in the last century that to which colonialism is relatively peripheral, that shouldn't be described upon that axis.

But at least there's a specific historical context against which that compression takes place. With virtual worlds, I think this is kind of like asking, "Do post-Gutenberg books liberate us?" There I ask not just "liberate from what?" but "liberate what exactly?" The answer with books is very different if I'm talking about Western Europe in the middle of the Reformation or if I'm talking about global modernity as a whole, etc. Same with virtual worlds.

[ron meiners]

It is an interesting question... and one that will no doubt develop in many ways.

My main sense (and hope) is that the exploration of the various "mini cultures", or through the culture jamming that happens (did you see our panel at AGDC Ren? I fergit if you were there) tend to, if nothing else, reinforce the sense of choice with respect to social identity. Ie., we're consistently learning that our cultural identity is just as crafted as any online identity we take up, and, further, that the cultural terms that used to separate us are now more clearly relative, subject to choice, and even somewhat arbitrary. I hope... we're learning to locate ourselves in our cultural contexts with a much deeper awareness of how relative this is, how malleable, and how much a given of the human condition.

[Mingo]

Try and give up the sociological pseudo-intelligence and you might just start to think.

[Dave Rickey]

Here's my "great revelation" I arrived at about "Virtual Worlds":

If it isn't survival, the 3 F's (Food, Fighting, and....), it's all equally virtual. Our entire socio/political/legal/economic realm is all equally a mental construct. Eventually, these worlds will just be part of *the* world.

Imagine you had a friend you had been speaking regularly to on the phone for years. If you were telling someone else about this friend, would it seem important to qualify the relationship by saying you had never met them face to face, only spoken to them on the phone?

These worlds are inherently liberating precisely because they are seperated from the "real". They are not bound by physical limits. What is liberation, if not freedom from the tyrrany of the 3 F's?

--Dave

[Ren Reynolds]

@Dave Rickey
“If it isn't survival, the 3 F's (Food, Fighting, and....), it's all equally virtual.”

That’s exactly were I started to, then I found that there was a pre-existing vocabulary for this and specifically Pierre Bourdieu’s term ‘symbolic capital’. Though I think the ideas of use-value and exchange-value are very handy too.

“What is liberation, if not freedom from the tyrrany of the 3 F's?”

Well, I think that people like Jean Baudrillard would say that it has to be liberation from the things that replace the 3F’s. The idea being that when do get beyond them, as industrialized societies have, then they are replaced with another set of needs but that these needs are not ‘natural’ in any sense so the use-value of things is just as manufactured as the exchange-value or wrapping it together the ‘symbolic capital’. And when I say manufactured of course I’m alluding to the idea that our needs and the fact that we mediate social relations, in part, with the things that we acquire to meet these needs is something controlled by

So the tyranny of the 3F’s can be replaced with the tyranny of consumerism that can be used to stop us gaining the advantages of the very freedom you talk about.

Question is whether currently VW’s are supporting that process or not.

Or as Tim has rightly challenged above, whether this whole analysis is redundant.

[Ren Reynolds]

@Timothy Burke:
“I've never seen a question where I've more fervently felt, "None of the above" was the right answer.”

My flippant answer was spoken by Marlon Brando in The Wild One:

Mildred: What're you rebelling against, Johnny?
Johnny: Whaddya got?

The fuller answer is that it’s not just the Marxists and post-Marxist commentators on consumerism that are of interest here. I think that both academics and the technology industry in general have a tendency to employ a rhetoric of utopianism and often liberation when they talk about tech.

Looking back we see: the washing machine liberates the housewife from the daily drudge, the computer liberates us from paper, the mobile phone and now the blackberry liberate us from the office. Indeed in the UK now we have an ad for a bit of mobile tech which shows and aspiration lifestyle of some guy in an exotic location with the ideal woman a tan etc etc and his tech that means he no longer needs to be tied to the office.

But of course much mobile tech means that we are always tied to the office, the division between home and work is broken down, the private sphere gets invaded, the power that we might have had to shelter part of our life from work has now drained away with the new obligation to have the mobile devise and have it on etc.

I think that such rhetorics and counter arguments have a valid place today, I also think that virtual worlds can be framed that way, if only in a post Turkle view of the idea of liberation from a certain sense of identity and how this may not be as possible as more Utopian writers supposed.

[Ren Reynolds]

@everyone

I wondered if this was a good way to look at the liberation argument.

If we look at the history of sport, or at least the history of English sport, we often see that that the social structures of the time, particularly the class structures and a lot of the assumptions that go into that, are mirrored in the way that the sport is structured, understood and practiced.

Simplistic examples here would be the Gentlemen and Players division in cricket. One might also look at the way that the rules of boxing gradually got codified and, as I understand it from sports historians, how early rules very much focused on making betting on the sport ‘safe’ so those with money knew that they would be risking it on a ‘fair’ contest – hence the rules worried little about the welfare of the boxers and other matters that we might think would be the natural focus of rules for this type of game.

We must also see the role that sport players in wider society and how being a spectator draws people into the assumed structures of the game and what wider meaning these have in their lives. Again to mention cricket – the phrase ‘it’s just not cricket’ still has resonance in the UK and this I think tells us something about the relationship between the construction of games and the construction of national and self identity.

So if we buy this idea – that games can both reflect and re-enforce certain ideologies of identity, and we start to think about the source of the forces that go to shape what the game the way that the game sits in a wider social context – then games can be seen to either re-enforce, react to or sit outside these types of forces.

And so back to virtual worlds – I wonder if we can as the very same historical questions about practices in virtual worlds. That is, is it the case that over the almost 30 years that virtual worlds have been around have the practices within those games (and yes there is some relationship with the structure of the game and the affordances provide by the tech that we need to be mindful of) mirrored the social structures around them. Or have the affordances and one might say contingencies that virtual worlds provide lead participants to do otherwise.

The refinement to this is to ask – even if those involved did otherwise, did they do so because they were a self selecting group that just has this disposition and would have done so anyway or is there something about virtual worlds that, in the current cultural context, leads to a tendency to act in this way.

[Susan]

If it isn't survival, the 3 F's (Food, Fighting, and....), it's all equally virtual.

Well, there isn't much food in the currently-popular VW's, but most of the content is either simulated violence or simulated sex.

One of the revelations of virtual worlds was that sex in RL was also largely virtual. (And that projection - whereby you see your partner as you would wish them to be, rather than as they "really" well - happens in face-to-face interactions as well as text).

[Richard Bartle]

One of the driving forces behind creating MUD, from my point of view at least, was the fact that we were offering players freedom. By being someone else, they were able to be and become themselves. Right from the beginning, virtual worlds have always been about freedom.

They're still about freedom, but there's a gradual decline. There's too much leakage of reality into them, too little understanding on the part of most designers as to what it is they're designing, too many worlds for children that will remove their sense of wonder, too few players who realise quite what's on offer here... At times, I feel as if virtual worlds are a tropical island being battered by waves that are eventually going to overwhelm them and drag them beneath the ocean's surface.

Virtual worlds offer freedom! Actual, personal freedom! You can finally go somewhere and be YOURSELF. What an amazing, glorious prize! We should be celebrating them, urging everyone to join us in this wondrous new future; yet instead, all the big arguments concern people who want to drag reality into them, rather than keep it out. We're in real danger of losing the one chance we've ever had throughout all of history for people to have freedom that means freedom.

It's not "freedom from", it's "freedom to". Turn it into reality, and it's gone.

Richard

[Susan]

Slavoj Zizek on "The Matrix" (in "Enjoy Your Symptom!")

"This series goes back to Plato's Republic ... The important difference, of course, is that when some individuals escape their cave predicament and step out onto the surface of the Earth, what they find there is no longer the bright surface illuminated by the rays of the sun, the supreme good, but the desolate 'desert of the real'."

And this, I feel, is the liberation that virtual worlds have given us.

[Ren Reynolds]

@Richard Bartle

I love the idea of virtual worlds as 'freedom to'. But I look at the ones we have today and people seem to use this freedom (if that is what they have) to be a self that seems so limited and confined by an internalization of the ideology they sit in - as you say there are many ways in which the non-virtual is invading.

What I wonder - and I alluded to this above, is whether we have seen a change.

So, in the early days of MUD can you tell us what people did with this freedom, as I'd love to know what we have lost - and I'd like others to know so we might have a change of re-capturing it and then protecting it.

[Andy Havens]

Nicely put, Richard. I very much like, "not freedom from, but freedom to." That's an important difference in many spheres.

I would only add that in VWs/MMs (many other games), that you can go somewhere and be "yourselves" (plural). The freedom *to* explore many self-types is an important part of gaming, at least to me.

In sports, for example, I can really only be one me; the one, e.g., that sucks at golf. I can't decide to try my hand at being a great golfer, because, well... I ain't. Now, I could be a bad golfer who dresses in different ways, or is kind vs. nasty, or who golfs more despite my suckiness, etc. But those are really all still me doing my stuff.

The freedom, in many games, to make choices about what/who/how I will proceed through the system is one of the most important differences between a role-playing game and any other type of gaming experience. Again... I can't generally choose what/who/how to play Risk, Clue, Monopoly, etc.

That's one of the reasons I am so pro-RP in these spaces; it's a major part of the value, I believe. It's also why I'm anti RMT (there goes the comment stream...) in games where it's not explicitly allowed, because it removes (or at least greatly reduces) the element of "choice context" from the game, overlaying one of "economic context."

So... yes. Freedom to. Indeed. Freedom to choose.

[Harry]

I think the anonymity available in these games gives a person freedom to explore their identity in ways that they never would in real life. Anonymity is a critical component of freedom (and Democracy for that matter!).

[Tripp]

Ren said:
"I love the idea of virtual worlds as 'freedom to'. But I look at the ones we have today and people seem to use this freedom (if that is what they have) to be a self that seems so limited and confined by an internalization of the ideology they sit in - as you say there are many ways in which the non-virtual is invading."

Well, true. But is that about people or about VWs? I think it's about people. VWs offer an affordance for some free, creative action, but yes, as Ren said, most people just reproduce their internalized ideas. I don't blame VWs for causing that or limiting people in these instances.

[Susan]

But is that about people or about VWs? I think it's about people.

I'd be catious about drawing universal conclusions about human beings from the current virtual worlds. I think the nature of the current worlds does say something about contemporary society -- particularly Western society -- but people from a different background might act differently (Asian MMOs should be a good test of this).

It's also an interaction between people and the technology. I suspect that some activities are not popular in (e.g.) Second Life because the platform makes it hard to implement them, not because there isn't interest. For example: car racing games and first person shooters aren't very common in SL, and yet we know that these classes of games sell well. The facilities provided by the platform may be significantly affecting people's behavior.

[Susan]

Also, for what it's worth: Gambing in Second Life - before the gambling ban took hold - often seemed to be a form of charity or sharing of resources. People contribute according to their ability, and the pot is shared out randomly. Not what you expect to see in a capitalist economy.

[Scott]

I have never been in a virtual world, nor do I plan to. However, the issues raised here are pertinent and insightful to both worlds. First, I hope I'm not dismissed by this admission as a novice whose opinion is meaningless. This would merely cement the concept that virtual worlds are destined to fall prey to the same basics of human behavior that define any world we live in.

Ultimately, any world we create will not be in and of itself an environment for change. The change only occurs within the hearts and minds of the masses populating such worlds. Without a significant and widespread change in human desire and subsequent behavior, any world will simply relegate itself to being another plane upon which we imprint the same modus operandi under which we have existed before. For instance, if we continue to have an overarching world view of money and power being the ultimate goal and standard of personal and interpersonal success then the minority with money and power will continue to be the rule makers of our world, or worlds, anywhere this interactive continuum is applied.

The only reason virtual worlds appear to enjoy any freedom of non-mainstream expression is because at this time they are marketable and pose no immediate or long-term threat to the accepted world view and system of centralized wealth and power. Should this change so will the levels of freedom experienced in virtual worlds just as it happens in the physical world. All things, all worlds are simply the results of our own perceptions. Creating new worlds, even virtual worlds will not change these perceptions. Only our perceptions can change our worlds.

[blackrazor]

I've consumed popular culture for the last 30 to 35 years, and I've noticed a very discernable "darkening" of the message.

Compare the original "Star Trek" with its more recent incarnations. Do the same for "Star Wars" with the first three movies made (now commonly called episodes 4,5,6) ... but especially the first one (episode 4) with what has been produced later.

Also compare 70's concepts of Batman and Superman with their more modern counterparts.

The science / fantasy fiction of the 70's was more simple, brightly coloured, optimistically philosophical about the human condition. Perhaps those were happier, easier, more prosperous times for western civilization.

Our more modern stuff is complex (big overwhelming scenes, seeking to explain every nook and cranny of the fiction with mind boggling pseudo-speak), dark, angst-filled, and very pessimistic about our future.

Where am I going with all this? I would imagine that the creation of, and play within, virtual worlds is much like our art / play in other spheres ... it is a reflection of where we are in our culture of today.

Games are a way to analyze our very real cultural and social issues from a different perspective. Play has great survival value; it's tied up in learning, experimentation, personal growth, but often with a reflection to what is relevant around us in the here and now.

So the game can take the real-human to the fantasy setting, but it can't take the real-human out of the equation.

Why is liberty such an issue in today's themes? Because we are starting to realize how eroded it has become, if it wasn't an illusion to begin with.

With all the information we have today, it is harder for the truth to hide. We have a wired world, with camera phones and security cameras everywhere. Our authority figures can't hide; what they do is captured for us to see, and we often don't like what we are seeing. It is very painful to see the dark side of human nature, reflected and real, constantly piped from our computer screens and internet searches into our waiting eyeballs and consciousness.

That is why our present is so dark, and why this darkness seeps into our entertainment and virtual worlds. We have crucial questions that engage us, and there is no freedom to run from it to anywhere, it seems.

I believe that there are evolutionary constraints that define the pattern for authority, submission, and competition, and these will play out in virtual worlds, much as in the real world. (Biological or cultural evolution, or both, take your pick.)

Short of rewriting the genetic code (nature portion of the equation), or rewriting the "authority / submission / competition" patterns (nurture portion of the equation) in these virtual worlds, so they don't resemble what we have in the real world, I think we are stuck with the present trends, as well.

[epredator]

I am not sure it is just virtual worlds, but I feel that the connected nature of the world is liberating people to gather and stand against things that they regard as incorrect. This may be a utopian ideal, but if things are not working for a group of people they will choose to bypass those things in the way.
This seems to apply whether we are talking open source software, people gathering to build the tools they need, or for political pressure groups like they work for you
Now people may have chosen to gather in the street and protest, or make a stand for their rights, but now the barrier to entry is a lot less and the degree of initial involvement can be more comfortable.
Virtual worlds and metaverses add a more human connection and allows the less technically profecient to engage with one another, as have blogs and IM. They are easier to access than our tech havens of IRC and newsgroups.
So this liberation of attititude and mass market acceptance that sharing is worth while must lead to some change.
It feels part of a cyclic process of control and freedom. I am not sure how far freedom will get before control is re-established, but if we take the sort of movement in business and corporate circles of innovating management culture away from command control we see that there are lots of interesting social changes occuring.
See Gary Hamel Future of Management on amazon as an example (with video)
So culturally we are demanding change as we move out of the information age to a more human way of working and living, a need to connect with people.
So I have hope, that we will have a degree of change, VW's may well help liberate the thinking patterns aswell as be part of the vehicle for change.
I look forward to the near future :-)

[Alec Coquin]

Many of the mechanisms by which 'dominant ideologies' reproduce are already embedded in language. As such, if you understand dominant ideologies as constructs of a given 'political economy', then to a certain extent, it is inevitable that virtual worlds will somehow be tainted. On the other hand, positing virtual worlds as "just another way for dominant ideologies to be re-enforced" seems to overstate the problem.
Virtual communities have the unique ability to insulate themselves from undesirable 'outsiders'. As such, in a evolutionary game-theoretic sense, it is not unreasonable to expect new ideologies and norms/values to develop if the community is sufficiently insulated from the "dominant ideologies".
So, yes, virtual PUBLIC worlds will invariably reflect the ideologies of the dominant political economy, while the semi-private communities that populate these worlds, if sufficiently insulated, will thrive.
It is not unreasonable to expect that ideologies will eventually develop in these communities that are robust enough to challenge those of the "dominant political economy". I understand communities just like this one to be at the heart of that change.

[Ren Reynolds]

@Alec Coquin
Ahh, I like the public / private distinction. My worry is that private might also mean corporately owned and controlled - I guess that access to virtual worlds so that smaller groups or individuals can run them may change the path of the future. And this is something that we do see with the rise of world tools like Multiverse and the open source future of the SL grid.

[Susan]

@blackrazor

Yes - SF has always had a dystopian side, but it came to the fore. Somehow, SF lost faith in the future.

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is pretty dystopian: the U.S. government reduced to irrelevance; the official currency hyperinflated; the territories of the former United States divided between the Mafia and Columbian drug gangs (and Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong); religious extremists with stolen nuclear weapons; humans and computers threatened by deadly diseases etc.

Second Life is closely modelled on the Metaverse from Snow Crash - so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that it isn't a socialist Utopia.

[Amarilla]

"...I feel that the connected nature of the world is liberating people to gather and stand against things that they regard as incorrect."

1- " things " are not incorrect, incorrect are the guys doing those things.

2-so, you gonna gather and stand against....where ?! The place where you wanna do that, is owned and controlled and ruled by the bad guy, your opponent.

"..Virtual communities have the unique ability to insulate themselves from undesirable 'outsiders'."

You mean, the owners/operators does not report to the CIA ?! Dude, all the electronic-mediated communications are monitorised and controlled , what sort of liberty or inovation do you expect to occur in a such environment ?

[Amarilla]

Tripp says:

"Quick thought after glancing through all of the above...The fact that anyone can post here and, if his/her ideas are valuable, they tend to be valued, is cause for hope, to me. I see VWs, like the web, as having the potential to be "meritocracy creating". "

@ Tripp : you forgot Prokofy Neva ; as far as i can remember, she was baned here not because of her ideas, but because Dan Hunter asked her to show titts and she objected. Sure, my memory can be distorsed , but i don't remember any other reason provided to us by Dan Hunter.

Ren Reynolds says:

" @Alec Coquin
Ahh, I like the public / private distinction. "

@ Ren, what's the distinction between Blackwater and the USA govt ? What is State , what is Corporate and what is Private when the Federal Reserve is owned by " a group of private anonymous Bank-owners " ? Tell me who is ruling your real world so i can tell who is rolling your Virtual World. That much for liberty and freedom and anonimity and democracy .

[Lavant]

@Richard- "It's not "freedom from", it's "freedom to"". The idea brings warm feelings, and then a lump of sad realization. If only virtual worlds were quite so magic- truly the DREAM of DREAMS. A vision of a better future. But it seems these apparitions are missing a component of lucidity. Can a virtual world owned and maintained by corporations claiming to be dieties truely offer the freedom TO be YOURSELF? Perhaps to the extent law requires it (which perhaps it already does). Virtually real identities are dictated by code and EULAS, TOS and external calls upon the courts in attempts to codify "legitimate" play. I would like to "drag" reality into virtual worlds where they are lacking freedoms readily available in earthland societies. It is where virtual world developers abrogate basic liberties (such as freedom of speech, assembly, and property) that law provides hope against hope. If virtual world community members can claim ownership to their time as RMT arguments tend to forget (remember Blacksnow?) then perhaps these individuals could define their own such identity. Granted this example only gives one type of identity, but one that if properly harnassed could have minimal effect on others and surpass the whole externality debate. How do we do this: community specific servers and giving the communities direct control over the rules of their communities. An act of configuration that happens at the moment of engagement. Lest we forget the desire and ambition that beg the "freedom to" lives in the hearts and minds of community members, not the devloppers. In what ways do virtual worlds FACILITATE play rather than dictate it and in what way do they FACILITATE the freedom to transcend authoritarian claims of dogmatic proprotions? I believe virtual worlds offer freedom to the extent they are allowed to by developers, human just as everybody else.

[Richard Bartle]

Ren>I love the idea of virtual worlds as 'freedom to'. But I look at the ones we have today and people seem to use this freedom (if that is what they have) to be a self that seems so limited and confined by an internalization of the ideology they sit in

Yes, many of them do. They don't even know what it is they're undermining any more. Researchers talk of virtual worlds in terms of property and contract law and social capital and government, all the while missing what's on offer. Players think of the future only in terms of WoW or SL or FFO or LoTRO or whatever else their current world of choice is; they refuse to contemplate the possibility that there may be other ways of doing things.

In the drive to make virtual worlds mass-market, they've been gradually losing what it is that makes them special. It's very frustrating to watch.

>What I wonder - and I alluded to this above, is whether we have seen a change.

Well I certainly have.

>So, in the early days of MUD can you tell us what people did with this freedom, as I'd love to know what we have lost - and I'd like others to know so we might have a change of re-capturing it and then protecting it.

In the very, very early days, they didn't have the freedom because they didn't realise it was available. They played as themselves, with no role-playing, much as they might play Monopoly or tennis. It was only when I showed them by example (see "Polly's Tale" in my book) that most of them got what was possible.

From then, they had the freedom to do and be whatever they wanted. They took it, too. Their ability to interact with other players was immense: you could attack and kill (permadeath) other players; you could steal things from them; you could lock them in rooms from which they couldn't escape. There were many ways to be absolutely awful to them. However, there were many more ways to be nice to them. Being awful was rapidly learned to be a losing strategy. People built up trust, friendships, expertise, knowledge; in so doing, the game world asked them questions that they answered through deeds and learned more about themselves as a result.

This potentially unfettered interaction, which is no worse than is possible in real life, is nevertheless no longer possible in virtual worlds. You can't do anything much to other player characters. This makes the world more palatable at one level, if those things you might want to do were grief-related, but it makes it less embracing at another, in that sometimes you wanted to be able to help others in ways that are no longer possible.

Over time, players have become accustomed to being wrapped in cotton wool. They've grown used to having decisions made for them. You want to be a mage, so you select class mage - it's just too confusing and unclear if you have to, you know, act like a mage. More and more constraints are being added to protect players from the twin demons of other players and of having to think, that eventually we're going to end up with a useless mush that's only suitable for 10-year-olds.

I do see some light, though. Some players and designers do sense the possibilities. If production costs were to come down, they could experiment with new designs, in new directions, recapturing some of what was lost and, hopefully, striking out to bring us more than we ever had before. This is why I'm keen on projects like Multiverse and Metaplace. If we can exceed with graphics the creativity we saw with text, then the future of virtual worlds is assured.

If we end up in a situation where virtual worlds are so bland that people think they're just another Facebook, we're in trouble. Unfortunately, we're actually getting close to that...

Richard

[Anon]

Lol u live in a idealist state anything touched by humanity will be tained / doomed
sex drugs n rock n roll baby
WHY cus every mofo wants to he HIGH

EvIl Is Man
Blessed is the Machine

[Richard Bartle]

Anon>WHY cus every mofo wants to he HIGH

Well you certainly seem to have achieved that state, Anon.

Richard

[Ace Albion]

"They've grown used to having decisions made for them. You want to be a mage, so you select class mage - it's just too confusing and unclear if you have to, you know, act like a mage."

How does a mage act, Richard?

I'm just thinking, but there's nothing in the Second Life code to define how a vampire, or gorean, or cyberpunk acts, but people seem to do it anyway, according to the weight of expectation and assumption of the role. Is this the same expectation and assumptions that would determine how a mage would be role played?

That's still a constraint.

I'd also guess that early MUDers were mostly comprised of computer science students and D&D players, with a strong overlap. The difference now, is that, even though artists and academics see it as terribly prosaic and dull, there are hundreds of thousands of people playing at Slightly Better Than Myself. They may be doing boring things like replicating some idealized Malibu lifestyle, but it's a start. These are people who 10 years ago maybe wouldn't even have bothered with computers, much less anything as "childish" as an online computer game- a stigma that even the mighty World of Warcraft cannot overcome.

So these people live their shallow, sub-soap opera Second Lives, but you know a lot of them make their alts and put on a rubber suit to play BDSM under the anomymity. Just like those EVE alt pirates I guess. While it may cause eyes to roll, and shoulders to sag to see people choosing to explore aspects of themselves that others see as seedy, sad, tacky, you know, it's a start. You have people all dressed up in leather and vampire faces who would probably laughed at some bespectacled guy with a Monstrous Compendium under his arm. So maybe they're learning something about themselves too.

It's baby steps. I can only speak from experience, but the people I know who got into that kind of roleplay eventually did more with their virtual selves. In time, maybe something even better will grow out of it. I don't think you achieve that by hard coding every possible action, and neither by shouting at people "No! No! You're doing it all wrong! You're supposed to be ACTING LIKE THIS!"

Both are limitations and restrictions. So long as the only real limitation that you see is the apparent lack of imagination of the people, then there is always hope.

One step at a time, though, and don't worry about SL- the very day that something appears that allows as much freedom, and works a bit better appears, everyone will dump it. It probably doesn't even have to allow as much freedom- just enough. And people will waste that freedom by being slightly buffer or prettier ideas of themselves, but they'll experiment too, so long as they're able to. So long as they don't get hamstrung by things like full identity disclosure, or webcam species, race and gender verification, of social pressure to "be themselves".