What could I say ?

Last night the head of one of my guilds announced that she was going to quit pretty soon. The reason was not that she is bored or found another world but that her parents have told her that she has to quit. Their reasoning, apparently, is that participating in virtual worlds is a complete waste of time and money and that a teen should pursuing other interests.

The guild feels upset and powerless and, I am sure, over the next few days similar feelings of loss, frustration and anger will ripple through the world. There is nothing we can do.

But I could not help wondering: what if did have a chance to chat with the guild leader’s parents ? Say we were caught in an elevator or I bumped into them as they made their way back from church – how could I sum up the virtues of virtual world and a teen’s participation in it in a way that would speak to a middle class middle American averagely religious family ?

Ren

Comments

[Michael Chui]

1.

I'd begin with, "Did you know the Army's using these things called Virtual Worlds to train their soldiers?" and proceed from there, explaining how and why they're doing what they're doing, with a slow expansion into several topics in the Daedalus Project.

This assumes, of course, that they're pro-military. =)

I can't think of anything better at the moment, and I felt this was pretty thin as is.

[dyvvu]

2.

I find it intriguing that a grown man would join a guild lead by a teenager.

[ren]

3.

Dyvvu > I find it intriguing that a grown man would join a guild lead by a teenager.

Why ?

When I joined I had no idea of the age or any other details of the leader, other than the fact that it was a good guild and they were well respected about the place.

One of the massive benefits of MMOs that I find is that one does not take people at face i.e. visual, value. It’s somewhat utopian but still to some degree true that in-world age, race, sex and class don’t matter that much. And virtual worlds are places where people who might not otherwise do can hold positions of respect and power. Where these factors do come into play are in situations like this i.e. access to technology and preconceptions about the individual and what their relationship with it _should_ be.

Ren

[Tessa Lowe]

4.

I feel like I've spent so many years learning how to justify the time I've spent in virtual worlds. But it hasn't been hard to justify.

At university in 1990, playing MIST and participating in bulletin boards, I learned the skills of being diplomatic and persuasive through text, and how to construct arguments that couldn't be dismissed with a single-line retort. I learned the consequences of reacting in the midst of a red haze of anger. I learned how to type really really fast.

My longing to create my own virtual worlds directly led to my fascination with programming that turned into a successful career. And to think my parents once confiscated my computer because I spent too much time 'playing' on it.

Playing Nexon's "Dark Ages" I learned how to participate in a community-run political system. I learned how to pull in like-minded supporters and avoid attracting the attention of opponents. I learned how tricky it was to legislate without leaving loopholes or causing riots, and I experienced the balancing act needed to run a mailing list used by everyone in the in game government to discuss potential laws.

I learned how quickly compassion can turn into fascism, and have experienced the full cycle of community dynamics dozens of times more than I could ever have done in the same timescales in so-called 'real life', where watching TV with the family is considered being sociable.

The list goes on and on through many other games and many other learnings and experiences, but the bottom line is that it's hard to find a better sociology, philosophy, politics, economics, psychology and computing teacher than a virtual world. Heck, most of my social and environmental conscience and spiritual growth can be directly traced back to their beginnings in virtual worlds, as I struggled to find ways of relating to other people that brought me happiness and contentment.

So often being in a VR world is like living an entire lifetime in just a few months.

- Tess

[Factory]

5.

Actually I'd agree with the parents. MMOGs are a big waste of time, although the money bit maybe a bit harsh, assuming you would have a net connection anyways, MMOGs do not cost that much money. (free if you play in a MUD)
But OTOH so is just about any entertainment activity, television, movies, running around in a circle, painting, etc. Look back on most of them after a couple of years, and they are just memories, perhaps some skills have been gained, that's about the best you are going to get out of all of them.

[Torill]

6.

You can tell them that multi player games teach social interaction and teamwork, that the role of guild leader is intensive leadership- and administration training, that MMORPGs give multi-cultural experiences which she can not have elsewhere unless her parents are wealthy and can afford to send her to international camps and boarding schools, just for starters.

But if she is playing games instead of doing her homework, meeting friends face to face and getting exercize - well, then perhaps her parents are right and she needs to take a break for a while? Sometimes teen-agers become so obsessed with their responsibilities in games (and outside games: in sports, charity, music) that these responsibilities make them both stressed and unhappy, and the parents need to stop them, for their own sake. From your little post I guess you never heard from the parents in this case, only the (unhappy) teenager.

And I have more than once taken the role of evil strict mother, when my children have made too many appointments or taken on too much responsibility and they can't tell their friends that no, it just doesn't work. Blaming mom and dad is a lot easier than telling their friends that they rather want to rehearse with the choir than attend the political seminar, for instance.

And if that's the case, no good reasonable arguments work, because all I will see is a stressed, unhappy child who needs to be protected from her own interests before she burns out.

[Tessa Lowe]

7.

Torill>"And if that's the case, no good reasonable arguments work, because all I will see is a stressed, unhappy child who needs to be protected from her own interests before she burns out."

And that's the other thing you learn from VR Worlds. When to quit. ;)

[J.]

8.

>You can tell them that multi player games teach social interaction and teamwork, that the role of guild leader is intensive leadership- and administration training, that MMORPGs give multi-cultural experiences which she can not have elsewhere unless her parents are wealthy and can afford to send her to international camps and boarding schools, just for starters.

Yeah, you could tell them that, and you could expect them to tell you that you can learn all those things from interacting with real people in the real world. Because that's what my parents tell me every time I talk about MMOs.

They're parents. They're supposed to be square, and controlling. And sometimes, they might actually know something about their own child that doesn't come across well over the Internet, even to a tightly-knit player guild.

That's the other, other thing you learn from VR Worlds. When someone goes, you let them go.

[Bart]

9.

My biggest items would be:

• Problem solving - I'm not very knowledgable with SWG, but in other games the World presents problems that can be tackled in a variety of ways. Your job is to figure out the most efficient and effective way to solve those problems for yourself (and for others in some instances).
  
• Organization skills - When you're running a decent sized guild in any of these games, you need to be able to organize your members so you can go conduct raids, battles, hunts, quests, etc.
  
• Teamwork - This, obviously, is a biggie. Whenever you are in a guild, some members will have differing opinions than others. Some may want to indulge in PvP while others don't, some may want to go on dungeon crawls while others would rather throw a party in someone's home. Finding the balance is critical to success, and leadership also plays a big role in this for a guild leader.

  >>I find it intriguing that a grown man would join a guild lead by a teenager.

  Just as an aside, when playing UO, the biggest, baddest guild on the Chessy shard in the early day was a guild called KoC. This guild was full of 'power gamers' and during a certain period on the server (about a year) this guild was unstopable. Guess who ran this guild? An 18 year old woman. Not many people knew this until she was about to quit. No one really cared either, b/c she led that guild to the top of the shard when she was playing.

[dyvvu]

10.

Ren> Why?

I imagine there aren't a lot of topics that are of interest to both you and someone who has to quarrel with her parents over this sort of thing.
This would imply that there is little opportunity for discussion meaningful to both of you which in my eyes would eliminate the reason for social bonding.

Of course, I'm assuming that the reason to join a guild is the more intimate level of social interaction rather than some direct in-game benefit for your character (in which case it probably doesn't matter how old the person running the guild is as long as s/he does it well).

[Lee Delarm]

11.

Factory>Currently there are no MMOGs out that are SUPPOSED to improve your skills. Much like watching a movie or playing any other game it's all for entertainment purposes, not meant to somehow enhance skills you have, those just come naturally.

When I look back on the time I spent playing MMOGs over the years I don't see it as wasted time, I see it as well spent time for my own personal enjoyment, perhaps you don't see it this way and may want to reconsider ever playing one again if you expect to get something out of it other than the enjoyment of the moment.

As for Ren's actual case, I don't think anyone here could really make a good case since we don't know all the details or this person or person's parents in real life, since there may be a lot of circumstances that we can't possibly know about. Heck, the kid could even be quiting by themself but came up the "parents made me do it" excuse that I used to use on occasion if I didn't want the "blame" to settle on me ;)

[Brask Mumei]

12.

"This would imply that there is little opportunity for discussion meaningful to both of you which in my eyes would eliminate the reason for social bonding."

You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of virtual worlds.

This is based on the assumption that any intimate conversation must relate to the Real World. In fact, these virtual worlds contain more than enough gossip, events, etc, to allow any two players to find a common ground. Thus, traditional demographic boundaries (age, location, sex) are less important than in-game boundaries (pro-pvp, class, roleplaying).

One can have, IMO, intimate social bonding in a virtual world without ever bringing the real world into it. (Mind you, even if you do bring the real world into it, that is no reason to assume one can't have meaningful discussions with those whose parents still can cut their phone line. This is a good thing, as most of those 20-something PKers can't provide meaningful discussions :>)

Now, as for the topic at hand? I'd tell the worried parents that these things tend to burn out in a couple of years, and their daughter will come out of it stronger and wiser.

- Brask Mumei

[dyvvu]

13.

Brask Mumei> You have greatly misunderstood the purpose of virtual worlds. [...]

I guess I'm a special case then... I certainly enjoy discussing in-game matters but it usually does get old rather quickly. Then again, I'm one of the 20-something PKers =).

[Dave Rickey]

14.

Michael Chui> I find it intriguing that a grown man would join a guild lead by a teenager.

Unexpected people turning out to have undiscovered and exceptional talents is actually pretty common in these games. Guys who work at factory jobs turn out to have the reflexes and situational awareness of fighter jocks, middle-aged housewives become brilliant tacticians, teenaged loners turns out to be inspiring and remarkably effective leaders.

There was a cartoon in the New Yorker, back around 1990 or so: Two dogs sitting at a PC, and one says to the other: On the Internet, no-one knows you're a dog. We've become so inured to the banality of most of what happens on the net, we forget what a trancendental environment it can be. In these worlds, you can become whatever your capabilities allow, without being limited by what others expect your limitations to be.

At a social level, that's one of their most significant effects. In "Real Life", people make assumptions about us, based on things like our height, gender, physical attractiveness, accent, and so on. The fact that these judgements often aren't possible online has quickly become passe, mere background noise, something we don't think about. But it is a very real thing, and potentially tremendously important.

--Dave

[Ian McGee]

15.

As a parent I consider MMOG's considerably safer than similar "real-life" activity, especially during my preferred evening hours *after* homework/chores and *instead* of TV.

If she's in a leadership position, she's likely learning tons about people and group dynamics. That's a "game experience" above and beyond what comes from the actual game content. Writing, inter-personal skills, leadership, organization, problem resolution, and time management are just a few of the skills needed.

It's interesting to think about how someone becomes a leader in a virtual world. Unlike the real-world with its attendant baggage of social position, wealth, and personal appearance, the VW provides no special advantages to the beginning avatar. On a level playing field, leaders arise because of their actions.

My suggestion is for your friend to write a letter to her parents outlining what she feels she gains from her VW activity and how she can better fit it into her life. (I'm giving her parents the benefit of the doubt...) I think it would be worthwhile to include a kind of recent history section outlining what she did over the last month or so -- not in terms of item collection, but in terms of personal relationships and her leadership role. Specific examples that share some context with the real-world experiences of her parents will help get a real discussion started.

Although she may not have access to complete information, I think it worthwhile to mention the RL age/sex/job of a few key people in her guild. It may (and should) open her parent's eyes to realize it's not just 14 year-old boys and slavering 40 year-old pedophiles that play these games. A teenage girl leading a guild that includes a Iowa lawyer in his 30's and a Florida housewife in her 40's and a Iceland mathemetician in his 50's is pretty impressive!

The last thing I would say, is that she needs to not sound desperate, as that will lead to thoughts of "addiction". Learning balance is a big part of being a teenager and something her parents should help with. If she can be calm & thoughtful, and involve herself in outside activities while this is playing out, she can likely return someday.

[John Viele]

16.

Educational benefits and issues aside. Does it distress you in any way that you are considering the benefits of confronting these parents? Can you imagine the type of distress such an elevator chat could cause on these people? I have developed a general interest in gaming but have hesitated based on concerns that the anonymity of games provides futile ground for people I would not want to meet. Don't get me wrong, I want to type faster and become all that I can be but when I read comments that begin to suggest a blurring or breaking down of the barriers of what is real and what isn’t I get concerned – Are my concerns shared?

[J.]

17.

Guilds run by teen-agers are actually quite normal. Given the amount of time it takes to run a guild of any size or prominence, leaders are usually 1) in a job that allows lots of free time or online time spent on the clock, 2) unemployed or 3) a kid without need of a job.

Usually the most useful trait of a guild leader is just -being there-. If it was that easy to lead a guild, it wouldn't create such unrest in a guild populated by adult players -- it might not be so easy to pick up the slack, otherwise there wouldn't be this hand-wringing about "confronting" parents.

[Tom Hunter]

18.

I would not tell them much beyond the fact that you play the game and you knew they had asked thier daughter to stop.

If I was really concerned I would say something along the lines of " I heard her side of the story and as a parent I thought it would be good to hear yours as well."

Of course if your not a parent you can change the statement some but I think you get the idea.

[Doccus]

19.

How about ...

"Sure, mom and dad. You're right! I should go out more with my friends, experience more in life! Of course, that involves riding in cars driven by other inexperienced juveniles, to arrive at parties hosted by said juveniles with raging hormones and possible access to illicit drugs, but that's ok. It's less of a waste of time!"

I'm sorry, I grew up somewhat a nerd. If my kid happens to grow up the same way, I'll gladly pat him on the head and tell him to follow his bliss :)

Hell, the kid'll spend less in a MMOG virtual world in a month than going out to one movie with friends (some of them are $11 or more now per ticket), and probably have a more enjoyable time doing it. I find interaction, even by proxy (keyboard or voice) more fun than vapidly ingesting the fruit of someone else's imagination.

D

[magicback]

20.

I would go with Tom and try to understand their particular situation before promoting the benefits of online interaction.

Regarding summing up the virtues of virtual worlds to an average American family, many already have pointed them out. However, Doccus does point at the negative side of Real Life.

In the teen's particular case, I would show her parents how important she is to the group and how much the guild misses her. The parents will emphatize with the humanistic aspects than any knowledge/skill gains.

Frank

[Brask Mumei]

21.

"but when I read comments that begin to suggest a blurring or breaking down of the barriers of what is real and what isn’t I get concerned – Are my concerns shared?"

Not by me. Human interaction in a VW is every bit as real as human interaction in RL. Bandwidth aside, there is no difference in kind between interacting through vibrations of air and reflections of photons than interacting through bits over ethernet.

My best example would be that of a meeting. Say I promise to meet someone at a specific time and place in a virtual world. Say I promise to meet someone at a specific time and place in the real world. Which of these two promises should hold greater weight? The correct answer, IMNSHO, is that they are both identical promises. Standing someone up in a VW is equivalent to doing so in RL.

It's also sort of like the "Natural vs. Artificial" distinction. A beaver dam is natural, yet the Hoover dam is artificial? Seeing the boundary blur should be no surprise when the boundary was poorly defined in the first place.

- Brask Mumei

[Greg Lastowka]

22.

I agree with Torill. Her parents are probably right -- at the very least they are more qualified to make this judgment about her time and welfare than anyone else.

Ren-- I noticed the words "church" and "averagely religious" in your first post -- care to explain how that relates to the price of tea in China? Just curious...

[ren]

23.

Greg > I noticed the words "church" and "averagely religious" in your first post -- care to explain how that relates to the price of tea in China? Just curious...

Just to push myself out on thinner ice…

Mmm no one else seemed to pick up on this. So, to separate facts from question, some of the people that I group with are Christians and it is a significant part of their life.

So what I started to wonder was whether from a religious perspective there were reasons to hang out in virtual worlds. I think I was reflecting on a passage in The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, where a character explains why the Jesuits are so keen to visit a newly discovered planet with sentient life – it’s a natural extension of the missionary idea. If this is so, many creeds may be motivated to spend time in virtual worlds as part of the religious practice.

Ren

[Greg Lastowka]

24.

You know, I've heard about virtual world missionaries before from a few people. I imagine that practice has been around since the outset -- e.g., there was that "church" in Habitat that Farmer and Morningstar talked about in the "Lessons" paper.

I could do a Google search to dredge up some data, but does anyone know offhand if there are any well-known cross-world missionary guilds out there? Any knowledge of anything other than Evangelical Christians?

[anon]

25.

Of course, when I look back on my gaming experiences over the years, most of my time in high school was spent trying to simply find a place to do so free to interference and open all the hours I was moving. Virtual worlds provide that which I did not have. And since I didn't have any options other than the real world, I went off and learned other useful skills like improvised explosives use in suburban environments, and advanced reckless driving through bad weather conditions, plus the ever popular high drinking tolerance and underage purchase of liquor through deception and social engineering.

Perhaps you could relay these life stories - or simply just have one of the fine academics on this board hire her as a "researcher" for VW issues. Then its like an extracirricular activity for college prep.

[T.L.]

26.

Both WorldsAway (now VZones) and Active Worlds have had religious services that I know of. I wouldn't be surprised if the same went for The Palace and all the others out there. The people I knew who ran a Bible study in WA saw it as both an opportunity for like-minded people to get together and a chance to "spread the word" (so to speak). Bible trivia nights (in which in-world items were given away as prizes) was a pretty regular event and in both WA and AW it wasn't unheard of to see avatars engaged in worship services. No surprise really I guess. People seem to use really use their avs and embody in these worlds in all kinds of ways. We've seen a fair number of Christian computer games... wonder if we'll get an MMOG one.

[ren]

27.

[pull up a chair, this goes on a bit ]

It’s very interesting that my initial post seems to have been taken in broadly two ways (1) what could I actually do in this circumstance and the attendant issues of acting, and (2) the broad benefits of MMOs.

To be clear, my intention in writing the post was the latter. I meant to abstract from my personal situation and reflect on the positive aspects of MMOs – I just did not generalise very well in what I actually wrote.

The thing is that I read so much complex academic stuff on virtual worlds, longitudinal studies, pro-social this network that – and its all good stuff, but I thought, can this be reduced to simple language and arguments that an ordinary person would understand and find persuasive. It might be that this is not possible, that there are a so many prejudices against the worth the ‘virtual’ or ‘mediated’ stuff that there is no sound bite answer, though I have found some of the comments very persuasive.

The other, to me unintended track of argument, I have found both fascinating and uncomfortable. I included the biographical information really as background to my motivation to the thoughts I was having. TN is after all a blog.

Just to touch on this again:
J >a grown man would join a guild lead by a teenager

As I noted before and has also been noted by others, at a guild level I pretty much don’t care who is the head just so long as they are good at it. Also a ‘grown man’ if I were to go looking for guilds run by people older than myself then I’d be looking long, hard, and I think pointlessly. Many teenagers have way more MMO experience than I have and many people are way better at the social side of guild life. So I’m really not sure why, if knew a leaders demographic, being a teen generally or a female teen would be good reason not to join.

dyvvu >I imagine there aren't a lot of topics that are of interest to both you and someone who has to quarrel with her parents over this sort of thing.

Actually there are lots of topics of common interest. One of the things I love about MMOs is that in non-game chat I get to hear perspective on thing first hand that I would never encounter. When in life would I hear what a mid-American teen thought about George Bush or here the views of a father of several in Florida, or a single guy in Canada, or a mother in France. The very fact that all we have in common is an interest in the game and at least some mutual respect for each other but we are so diverse is amazing.

So one argument I would have (and indeed to have) for MMOs is: sure I just stayed at home last night and did not go out to the pub or do anything ‘real’, but I also happened to talk with 10+ people from 3 continents about a whole range of subjects and had a fun blasting MOBs at the same time.

Lastly, there is the part I find most difficult and just confusing. What in an actual case would you do? But I’d still like to generalise as I don’t want to be more specific about these circumstances. So cases such as this, there are all the usual issues of whether it is ones own desires that one is selfishly foregrounding and indeed the nature of the parent-child relationship and that anyone else should say about how someone should bring up their own kids. I started to wonder what the situation would be if we were say in the same bowling club or something. Then two things started to strike me, the very oddness i.e. extreme range of people, of my online social groups and what my relationship with these people actually is – which touches on some of the points Brask just made.

I suppose things like the age difference in the some of the online relationships one forms in MMOs causes a dissonance, on one had I think I identify with the avatar (actually don’t most avatars look like they are in their late 20s, why are there not older or younger ones ?) and on the other hand there may be a teen or senior behind the keyboard – if I was face to face with them I probably would not relate in the same way, in a sense this a good but the legitimacy of a claim of friendship or some kind of kinship just cannot be the same so its difficult to negotiate both ones own feelings and the externalities of what is going on. Well at least it is for me.

So if we take Brask’s example of a promise to meet, does the promise really hold the same in a virtual world ? If we make the promise in-world / in-game then you can argue that its not quite the same as promising in the physical world. The difference is that the mediated nature of the relationship that we have in VWs might mean that we do have less of a moral claim on each other. The promise I make, at least in current worlds, is perhaps with a mix of a character and a person, the character may be an X level fighter that is generally true to their word, the person may be a young teen, but the masks between the two of us hide things like the level of autonomy that we have. Sure this is always the case, we deal with the outward appearances of each other, but I wonder if the virtual world adds a level of context that does alter how we should think about the nature of obligation and indeed relationships in general.

Ren
www.renreynolds.com

[magicback]

28.

ren> So one argument I would have (and indeed to have) for MMOs is: sure I just stayed at home last night and did not go out to the pub or do anything ‘real’, but I also happened to talk with 10+ people from 3 continents about a whole range of subjects and had a fun blasting MOBs at the same time.

Ren, your experience is what I think is the key selling point of MMOs.

We no longer born, live, and die in the same town. The necessities of the real world require us to to have global experiences. We go away for college, backpack across the world, and experience new things.

Moreover, moving away from the Industrial Century to the Knowledge century, our access to specialize knowlege via our social network is increasingly more important.

Look, where in the real world can a teen have a big opportunity to lead a group of diverse people?

Ok, Ok, I'm done.

Frank

[Hellinar]

29.

Ren> the broad benefits of MMOs.

That sounds a little one sided. To balance online and offline life, I think you need to look at the comparative benefits of both. In the case in question, what kind of offline alternatives are the parents offering? Do they want her to trade in being the leader of community for being singer number 23 in the local choir, and "obviously" too young for any serious responsibility? Or are they concerned she get out the chair and do some healthy exercise? Without knowing the offline balance, its kind of hard to argue the case.

I'm often struck with "concerned parent" posts that they take the benefits of offline life to be inherently superior. A parent will complain about their child spending 30 hrs a week in EQ leveling up to get a new breastplate. While they themselves are spending 50 hrs a week at the office leveling up to get a new SUV. Teenagers are often quite adept at detecting that kind of hypocracy, which is one reason it might be worth even grown men talking to them.

[Ren]

30.

Hellinar wrote:
>Ren> the broad benefits of MMOs.
>That sounds a little one sided.

Totally.
There is so much coverage about how the Net / Video Games etc make you, your kids etc fat, mad and bad - I was wondering if we could pause and see the upside.
Indeed when making an actual life decision one needs to weigh up factors, but to do this there need to be two sides.

ren
www.renreynolds.com

[Ren]

31.

Just to swing back to the religions beat. There is in fact a fairly new report on youth and religion that does talk about the use of the Net as a religious space. I need to have a look through it properly to see if it deals with VWs specifically, but here is the link anyway: www.youthandreligion.org

ren