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Aug 06, 2006

Comments

1.

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

2.

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.

3.

HEEENRRRYYY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS

4.


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.

5.


HEEENRRRYYY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS

---

Just in case someone reading this is not in the know. I presume this a pun on my friend Leeroy.

6.

From the essay:


The incident started on July 4 when the game's administrators placed a high level player (level 144, only 11 levels away from maximum) with an anti-Japanese name ("Kill the little Japs") in an in-game virtual jail. They ask him to change his name as it is too politically sensitive and he refused. As he explained in a public statement:

I began playing this game two years ago. When I first applied to Netease, you did not say that my alias was unacceptable! But now you come and lock up my ID. This is obviously depriving me of my private assets. Over these two years, I have spent more than 30,000 RMB on game point cards, and I have also spent more than 10,000 RMB on equipment trading.


(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.

7.

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.

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