Henry Jenkins has posted a thoughtful essay on that nationalist "riot" (fn1) that took place in a Chinese MMOG last month (ref "House of the Rising Sun" ). We then move to Simtropolis and end with a wonder of the politics of land in virtual places...
I was struck by this linkage made by Henry Jenkins:
Arguably, the Chinese government's efforts to regulate game playing -- and to promote games as part of the national culture -- have transformed what might have been a mere passtime into a more politically charged environment...
A further question might be whether the politicization of a virtual environment somehow diminish its worldy-ness in proportion to the degree it becomes a medium with a message. Truman Burbank (ref Truman Show) might have thought his place a world, for a while, as did those on the outside looking in might have fantasized it. Yet lacking the conflicts of otherness and the cacaphony of mixed purposes, could Seahaven have ever been any more than a parody of television?
Mark Wallace brings us a great glimpse into the confluence of human expression and virtual territory (Sim City as a Mirror World). Apparently Stefan Greens (Simtropolis) has gone to great lengths to recreate Omaha in Sim City 4 using data from Google Earth. Mess with land and its depiction in an urban simulator, can the real world politics of land and its use be far behind? Consider even this innocuous example, and imagine the slippery slope (comment against the DEDWD Highway Wall mods, Aug 5):
This download contains a set of highway noise barrier walls. Whilst being of a simple and cheap concrete and steel design, they have a more pleasing curved pattern look as seems to be the trend in a lot of road construction these days.
Metro Quest broaches some of the questions, but still under the safe wing of urban planning. To come out from under this bird - e.g. depicting places like Jerusalem to a mass audience - strikes me as full of pitfalls.
The pollution of virtual worlds with real world politics is perhaps inevitable as the meaning and applications of virtual worlds extend vigorously from the traditional dwarf/elf/orc (geek) ghettos that have also protected them to some extent. To a brave new mirror world indeed.
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fn1. I first noticed "riot" associate with this story in Andrew Leonard's "Fantasy gaming, Sino-Japanese style." July 11, 2006. Salon.com.
See also eOmaha.com forum discussion of the Omaha mod.
Our new MMO was announced in July and deals heavily with Jerusalem: http://forge.ironrealms.com/2006/07/10/the-crusades-online/
It's going to set the world on fire.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Aug 06, 2006 at 13:37
Nate said: "The pollution of virtual worlds with real world politics is perhaps inevitable as the meaning and applications of virtual worlds extend vigorously from the traditional dwarf/elf/orc (geek) ghettos that have also protected them to some extent. To a brave new mirror world indeed."
It's fascinating to me that you use the term 'pollution' to describe the transfluence of global politics into virtual worlds and use 'protect' to describe how Tolkien-ized virtual worlds have contributed to the medium.
For the most part, I would describe the situation as nearly exactly the converse.
Posted by: monkeysan | Aug 06, 2006 at 16:19
HEEENRRRYYY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS
Posted by: duh | Aug 06, 2006 at 17:05
It's fascinating to me that you use the term 'pollution' to describe the transfluence of global politics into virtual worlds and use 'protect' to describe how Tolkien-ized virtual worlds have contributed to the medium.
For the most part, I would describe the situation as nearly exactly the converse.
If I get your meaning - are you suggesting there is somehow a 'parity' between the real world and the virtual world per the relative impacts of transfer?
If one could measure the contribution of (Tolkien-esque) MMORPGs to the real world and then vice versa, perhaps in some absolute measure you are right (e.g. more folks talk about orcs in Fenway Park (link for benefit of our foreign readers) because of the media coverage of WoW than folks in WoW talk about the Red Sox). But I think MMORPGs are handicapped in many ways that leaves them very much the paler cousin of the real world. The impacts are disproportionate.
A WoW server that became polarized by some RL fault line would likely become transformed in ways that would become off-putting to many whereas an office-full of WoW addicts talking about trolls around the water cooler may be easily dissed in passsing as a cultural divide.
Posted by: nate combs | Aug 06, 2006 at 18:52
HEEENRRRYYY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS
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Just in case someone reading this is not in the know. I presume this a pun on my friend Leeroy.
Posted by: nate combs | Aug 06, 2006 at 18:56
From the essay:
(emphasis added). The property talk is remarkable. The player is trying to set up his property interest in his name as an argument against the game company's ability to make him change it. The discourse shifts fairly soon after that to become nationalist, but this is an interesting early twist.
Posted by: James Grimmelmann | Aug 08, 2006 at 09:13
I think I'd have to agree with the implication in monkeysan's comment that "pollution" is the wrong word to use wrt real-world issues making themselves manifest in virtual worlds (if I'm understanding him correctly). To me it looks more as if the orc/elf/dwarf paradigm (the OEDP?) is the primordial soup from which more useful forms will arise. The OEDP has but limited usefulness in a few concentrated areas, whereas the broader metaverse can encompass both OEDP and mirror worlds. At least, that's what it looks like at this point.
Posted by: Mark Wallace | Aug 08, 2006 at 10:37