I thought it's worth noting a few developments on the academic publishing front. The seminal Lastowka/Hunter piece on The Laws of the Virtual Worlds just appeared in California Law Review, and a paper I wrote on avatar attributes was accepted this week by the economics journal Kyklos. While both journals are known for being open-minded, they are nonetheless well within the academic mainstream. Meanwhile, Taylor now has several pieces placed in refereed journals, and insiders tell us that Yee's work is on its way to refereed placements (but don't hold your breath, these things take awhile). And while these are certainly not the first academic publications on avatars and virtual worlds, they do cover new disciplinary ground: law, economics, sociology, and psychology. The irony of this recent acknowledgment of the field is surely not lost on those with more experience in this area; many of the ideas that the academics are now sending off to journals were common wisdom within developer circles many years ago. Still, it's worth pausing now in January 2004 and thinking about how much the landscape has changed just within a year or two. The ideas are gradually percolating upward. We have heard, but are unable to confirm, that the publication of the Lastowka/Hunter piece brought some, ah, very influential people to this site. It's only a rumor, so don't quote us. But I guess it's a good thing that Greg's been cleaning the place up a bit.
Don’t get me wrong I’m all for the academy waking up to the importance of virtual worlds, but what I think what were are seeing here is evolution of the academic treatment of the virtual not a revolution.
If you dig back in the archives you will find that in 2002 there was a sudden burst of publications on the law / virtual property front: Molly Stephens was first out of the gate with her Texas Law Review piece, “Sales of in-game assets: An illustration of the continuing failure of Intellectual property Law to protect digital-content creators” rapidly followed by the almost simultaneous publication of TLs "'Whose Game Is This Anyway?'": Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World" (Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings) and my “Intellectual Property Rights in Community Based Video Games” (The Transformation of Organisation in the Information Age: Social and Ethical Implications).
Reaching back further, on the law side other scholars have touched on the virtual, though often from the digitisation of the physical and the use of those data. The most interesting piece in this camp I think is Beard’s 2001 piece “Clones, Bones and Twilight Zones: Protecting the digital persona of the quick, the dead and the imaginary” (Berkeley Technology Law Journal).
Winding the time machine back more as flairs go out of fashion only to be seen distantly on our reverse event horizon, in 1999 we meet TL again with “Life in virtual worlds: Plural existence, multimodalities, and other online research challenges” (American Behavioral Scientist). Also in 1999 we meet Hayles’s book “How We Became Posthuman - Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics”
On the sociology, literature and cyber culture beat we can keep going back though Murray’s “Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace” (1998); Turkle – Life on the Screen (1995); Jullian D’s “A Rape in Cyberspace - How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society” (1993); Allucquère Rosanne Stone / Sandy Stone’s Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? (1991). Not to mention Haraway, Poster, Latour etc etc…
Ren
Posted by: Ren | Feb 01, 2004 at 04:15
Thanks a lot, Dear Ren Reynolds
Reaching back, on the law side,the most & first impressing piece I felt is
Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO by Jennifer L. Mnookin
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol2/issue1/lambda.html
Posted by: Unggi Yoon | Feb 01, 2004 at 04:58
Doh. Nice ref Unggi, I’d forgot that one. And it reminds me of another good legal one: Scoville, A. W. (1999), Text is Self: The Merger of Property and Identity (infoeagle.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/commentary/content/1999060507.html).
More ?
Ren
Posted by: Ren | Feb 01, 2004 at 05:45
Some more:
>> APPLICATION-CENTERED INTERNET ANALYSIS
by Timothy Wu (1999)
especially next part is about the ontology of MUD/MMOGs
II. PRIVATE ORDERING: THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF
CYBERSPACE SOVEREIGNTY
http://faculty.virginia.edu/timwu/WuPDF.pdf
>>Emergent Authorship: The Next Interactive Revolution
by Celia Pearce (2002)
http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/pearceCAG.pdf
Posted by: Unggi Yoon | Feb 01, 2004 at 06:14
I'm with Ren here: it's evolution rather than revolution. We're seeing some very high quality papers appearing, but we're some way short of achieving the critical mass of publications that would enable us to write about virtual worlds without first having to explain what they are.
Academic disciplines have descended upon virtual worlds before, picking over what concepts they find interesting, fitting them into their existing theories, then moving on (Gender Studies is the classic example here). Other disciplines take a look, decide they're not interested, and step back (Anthropology would fall into this category).
Enthusiastic though I am that what we're seeing now is beginning to make people sit up and take notice, this is tempered by the fact that we've been here before more than once. The main difference this time round is that virtual worlds themselves have become sufficiently important that what we say about them is also regarded as being important.
So although I think we can pat ourselves on the back, it's not yet time to plan how we're going to spend our Nobel Prize money.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Feb 01, 2004 at 06:28
Just to avoid any misunderstandings, Dan and I do cite to (and discuss where relevant) prior scholarship, legal & otherwise, including Lessig, Wu, Castronova, Mnookin, Bartle, Harraway, Kerr, Miller, Stephens, Yee, Taylor, Dibbell, Turkle, Johnson & Post, Curtis, Koster, Reid, Burka, Mulligan, Morningstar & Farmer, Rheingold, Poster, Boyle, Radin, etc., etc., etc... there are 388 footnotes. And I've noticed that Nick, Ted, and TL are also aware of (and footnote) relevant prior material.
Unfortunately, Dan and I shipped our piece before Dr. Bartle came out with his book. It's a great resource. In my humble opinion, it has the best bibliography of VW literature out there. There's even a hyperlink to it on the right, and many of the articles listed are live links to the texts.
Posted by: greglas | Feb 01, 2004 at 10:46
greglas> Just to avoid any misunderstandings
Sorry yes, I should have said too that the paper itself is very well referenced and in no way denies its origins - which could be the interpretation of my origional post.
ren
Posted by: Ren | Feb 01, 2004 at 11:56
Greg>Just to avoid any misunderstandings...
That's my fault. I didn't really intend to imply that we're seeing a revolution - sorry about that. My point was more that the impact was widening to a different kind of placement that what we've seen before. I should have made it very clear that these are by no means the first high-impact placements. Rather, the impact is hitting a wider audience.
Richard> Enthusiastic though I am that what we're seeing now is beginning to make people sit up and take notice, this is tempered by the fact that we've been here before more than once.
I think about this quite a bit. That's exactly my take on much of the prior literature - a field stumbles across virtual worlds circa 1994 and comes out with web-based pdfs, conference volumes, an influential book, and a hit or two in refereed journals. It's a research dynamic driven by novelty: some field discovers VWs, says they are neat, and moves on. It's basically hands-on empirical work (like that first paper I did): it points out onto the internet and says "LOOK! There's something cool there!" Then it moves on to the next edgy thing.
I keep asking myself if this will happen with respect to economics and law. My gut feeling is, the new research is here to stay. (I'm not going anywhere, that's for sure.) I suspect that the other fields will continue to do work in this area too. I think a shift is happening from that kind of novelty-based dynamic to something quite different. Look, economics, as a discipline, will zealously reject anything that claims attention just because it is new or edgy or interesting. It's about as anti-fad as any field could be. If it begins to accept virtual world research (and I am not saying it has just yet), that really does signal a shift.
The reason things are changing is what Richard brought up near the end of his post - technology is now driving things forward. Virtual worlds in 1994 or 1995 could still be pigeon-holed as edgy and interesting but not significant in the way that pundits, policymakers, and editors need to see something to really move resources and pages toward it. Exponential growth, however, makes any phenomenon significant in this sense very quickly. Virtual worlds circa 2004 host many hundreds of millions of human hours; they nibble at TV ratings and movie viewership; they threaten personal relationships all over the globe; they lure transactions from the dollar into shadow currencies; and they lure entire communities of people who don't fit, for good or ill, into a still-free social space. And they are still growing, in size and sophistication.
Virtual worlds have gone from being a hobby to becoming an amorphous set of temporary autonomous zones, to use Hakim Bey's term (see Ludlow's Crypto Anarchy book). I guess from there they will evolve into something less shadowy, more legal, and bigger. I tend to think these developments will occupy our scholarly attention for a very long while, probably until society no longer perceives a significant distinction between avatar-mediated communication and body-mediated communication (if that day ever comes).
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 01, 2004 at 12:42
Ted> It's basically hands-on empirical work (like that first paper I did): it points out onto the internet and says "LOOK! There's something cool there!" Then it moves on to the next edgy thing.
Certainly if one looks at many fields you do get the feeling that a researcher stumbled across a bright shiny VW, stared at it a bit, then put it down and moved on.
The academic TN’ers (and the Games Studies crowd generally) seem to represent an odd bunch who just keep on researching the field (and finding ever more interesting things of course). The problem for the rest being that the bright shiny thing just kept getting bigger and brighter.
Some other academics I find to be in a state of denial. I went to a certain conference – OK AoIR 4.0 and was staggered by the fact that many researchers who talk learnedly about on-line communities don’t even seem to know that VWs exist ! A fact that, in some cases, runs a cart and horses though much of what they say (though not if they substitute claims about ‘online communities’ with the words ‘email lists’ – which is fine researched but just cant be generalised).
Though I also hear researches say that people study internet communities coz it is or it appears to be easy. None of that messy field work stuff, participant observation can be done from the office. But as we here know – it’s really not that simple. Just pitching up in a community wandering around for a little bit is not ethnography.
Ted > I keep asking myself if this will happen with respect to economics and law.
Well looking at the West I suppose that depends on how big VWs get. Right now they are small in the grand scheme of things, so small that its probably not worth legislators spending a bunch of time on them or rooms upon rooms of economists er, erm ecnomisting about them - but if the growth trends continue then I think its gonna get pretty packed in here. After all things do have a tendency of following the money.
Ren
Posted by: Ren | Feb 01, 2004 at 14:41
Edward Castronova>My point was more that the impact was widening to a different kind of placement that what we've seen before.
I'd certainly agree with that, but caution that it's only mere blips on the radar at the moment.
One of the things that's different this time round, which is encouraging from my perspective, is that virtual world advocates themselves are being invited to participate. When the psychologists got hold of virtual worlds, there was absolutely no chance that they would organise a conference and invite designers and developers along to discuss it. As State of Play showed, lawyers are not cast in the same mould.
>it points out onto the internet and says "LOOK! There's something cool there!" Then it moves on to the next edgy thing.
Yes, this is the main worry. With it comes that niggling concern that if you don't have something quirky to say, you won't get published. For example, although your Kyklos paper could just present the data as is, it's your interpretation ("men are sexist") that catches the headlines. Without that extra frisson, would they have published it? Probably, but the point was your case for publication was stronger because you did make it.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Feb 02, 2004 at 03:33
Btw, another late 2003 book worth mentioning is Borland & King's Dungeons and Dreamers -- they've got a great account of some of the hilarious antics that ensured when Ultima moved from a single player game to an MMORPG. (Raph, of course, knows a bunch more.)
And, btw2, it looks like they're coming out with a new one on game violence:
[link]
Posted by: greglas | Feb 02, 2004 at 09:44
Oh, and Nick Monfort's 2003 book looks really promising:
[link]
Haven't read it yet--but will soon.
And the Zimmerman/Salen 2003 book, and the Mulligan 2003 book -- okay, I'll stop now...
Posted by: greglas | Feb 02, 2004 at 09:50
Given that i've been such a grouch recently, I have to say that I've been dipping into Salen and Zimmerman's book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals and so far its very good.
coughRichard'sbookcough
Ren
Posted by: Ren | Feb 02, 2004 at 16:00
Curious -- there's a strong split of reader opinions in the Amazon system on the Zimmerman/Salen book. Only 5's and 1's at present.
[link]
I wonder what's up with that?
Posted by: greglas | Feb 02, 2004 at 16:16
I have a couple questions/comments on Edward's avatar paper: I'm not an economist, and my statistics are a bit rusty, so feel free to laugh and correct me...
The paper makes some ado about the mysterious devaluing of the female "label", and offers no real explanation other than implying Richard's "men are sexist" line. Many game-related explanations are considered and then removed from possibility, but it seems to me that a couple basic market considerations were ignored.
Presumably, roughly 82% of players buying EQ characters are going to be looking for a male character. Might this alone not be able to explain the higher selling price of male characters? If not, what about the fact that only 18.3% of players primarily use female avatars, while 20.1% of auctioned avatars were female? This would seem to be a slight oversupply of females and/or implies that the lower valuation of the female label might come from the supply rather than the demand end of the market. Additionally, if many of the auctions finish on the buy-it-now scheme rather than completing a full auction run, wouldn't it statistically be the case that it is RL females setting the lower price for their female avatars? Or further still, since most female avatars will be sold by females to other females, doesn't that take the whole evil patriarchy out of the picture?
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Feb 02, 2004 at 18:15
The avatar attributes paper was debated on MUD-Dev quite a bit, no need to rehash it all here. But Richard, just between you and me and the Supreme Court, your conjecture that the sexism argument is what got the thing published in Kyklos is the exact opposite of the truth - it was the primary barrier to publication and had to be excised completely as a condition of acceptance. I took it all out.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 03, 2004 at 00:02
Edward Castronova>your conjecture that the sexism argument is what got the thing published in Kyklos is the exact opposite of the truth - it was the primary barrier to publication and had to be excised completely as a condition of acceptance. I took it all out.
[Laugh]
OK, well you blew my argument out of the water with that one, Ted!
I stand (very much) corrected.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Feb 03, 2004 at 03:44
Their point was that since I have no data at all about the characteristics of buyers and sellers, there's no statistical basis on which one could speculate about the male/female price difference. And they are right: All of the arguments about this paper are based on more or less free speculations about buyer and seller characteristics, and what they mean. The editors' advice was to leave all of that open; rather than speculate, leave it for some future researcher to explore statistically.
Grad students: that means you could have a knockout paper by doing the same thing but adding a survey of your eBay buyers and sellers.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 03, 2004 at 11:49
I should add: that's what Bartle has been saying for months too, so, I also stand corrected in the end.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Feb 03, 2004 at 11:51
On my serfing net, I found out meaningful works more.
# ETHICS AND LEGALITY IN VIRTUAL WORLDS
by Michael Knight(May 20, 2004)
http://www.mikebknight.com/courses/PHIL/knight_ethics.pdf
# LEGITIMATE BY DESIGN: TOWARDS TRUSTED SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS (2003)
by Brian Whitworth & Aldo de Moor
http://maximus.uvt.nl/~ademoor/papers/bit03.pdf
Posted by: Unggi Yoon | Jun 06, 2004 at 10:16