Judging worlds

Both Alice and Cory happen to have noted the "review" of social worlds over at Second Life Games, so Onder is getting quite a lot of play over his view of significant social worlds. Leaving aside the odd choice of worlds that he chooses to discuss, I am weirded out by his criteria of assessment:

"Since these are entirely formed from my little brain, we’ll call them “Onder’s Big Three”. They are:

1. Cash transactions must be easy and readily accommodated flowing both into and out from the system.
2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain some form of ownership over it.
3. The fabric of the world itself must be possible to affect. IE: land ownership, room decoration, or some other content that remains viable even when the player who created it is logged off. (”Pervasive” is the word I’m groping for here…)"

Since I've been in a bad mood for about the last 4 weeks, I hope that Onder will forgive me for suggesting that these three criteria are actually pulled from his arse and not his brain. Well, actually I don't care whether he forgives me or not, coz these are close to the stupidest criteria that I can conceive of to assess social worlds. I mean, why exactly should the ability to engage in cash transactions be a relevant criterion for success in VWs? Coz we think that more worlds should be just like Project Entropia? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. The requirement that the world have user-generated content makes a little more sense I guess, as long as you're a huge fan of poor design, sexual-content, and the tyranny of libertarianism in social spaces. Oh and I love the fact that the users have to have "ownership" of the stuff they create, because, well, private property in non-scarce resources is absolutely vital to its generation since human beings would never produce stuff except if they are given economic incentives to create (pace Wikipedia, ohmynews, open source software, blogs, game mods, etc etc). And I have no idea what Onder actually means by the last criterion. It seems to mean that VWs should be persistent; which, last time I checked, was a definitional requirement of them being worlds in the first place.

Anyway, so we've all just discovered that I'm in a pissy mood and maybe that Onder's criteria aren't exactly tremendously helpful at making any judgment about VWs. So my question is what would be interesting or useful criteria for judging social worlds? (Let's leave aside game/competitive worlds for a bit, coz they have special success conditions. And I promise to try to be less snarky in the comments field, although, I'll be honest, I'm not promising anything. I really am in a deeply shitty mood.)

Comments

[ErikC]

1.

Dan,
I agree with your criticism of Big Three point 1.
In fact, at a stretch, an internet banking account satisfies points 1, 2 and maybe even 3.

Hmm do you mean social worlds or virtual worlds or virtual social worlds (not exactly the same)? I note he does not give any criteria for the social..?

I'd have to ask though, do you want something descriptive or prescriptive? Ie a virtual world as one can clearly see from current examples? Or (I guess you mean this), the virtual worlds that really do *world*, ie in order to be virtual worlds, they have to satisfy x criteria?

[Rich Bryant]

2.

Onder's Big Three equate to "VWs must be Second Life" from the look of it.

[Onder Skall]

3.

I'm not really all that interested in justifying myself here, to be honest. It's my blog, and my opinion. There's no pretense to anything else.

I slapped all this info together in my spare time. I didn't even proofread it. I didn't even draw a conclusion at the end.

The fact that you feel it's so important that it's worthy of discussion at Terra Nova is, in my opinion, a terrible shame. Why in the world isn't this kind of comparative review done on a regular basis?

I guess the only other comment I'd add is that I'm baffled by your dismissal of a real-world economy as something that makes Second Life unique. Real-world economies make it possible for entrepreneurs to work in that world. It means that people can work from home instead of going out and getting some lame job. It's a huge thing that changes the way people live. Why in the world would you dismiss that?

Also, I think you should ask Second Life's residents if they feel "ownership" is important. From the sounds of it, you might be a bit surprised.

Oh crap... I'm starting to try to justify myself. Exiting debate mode... *shudder*

Hope you feel better soon! :-)

[Prokofy Neva]

4.

Go, Onder!

Your "big three" were brilliant. They are *exactly* what everyone is looking for when they look for worlds, and they are exactly the right filter to use to look at some of these big new pretenders to the crown of Second Life clone out there now, like Outback and Sony's Home.

Home, for example, only has one of the three, changing their world and leaving behind something persistent in the form of rearranged company content and your uploaded clips. But it sounds like other than being able to upload movies or music, you can't put user-made PSP-type of content into that world, and there don't seem to be interactions to buy and sell and make an economy in the world.

I think the bastion of academe in general, which has a good deal of Marxism melded into it, and this one in particular, finds really, really distasteful, is that ordinary people really like economies involving buying and selling for a profit. That's why they work hard to get WoW gold or build up SL real estate empires. You can't seem to engineer that out of them, even though leftist game-gods and theorists would love to be able to do that and make people all play "serious games" and become socialist utopians.

Real people in the real world reject that kind of lunacy, and they want to play store, on a continuum of virtual to very real. It just can't be bred out of them. It's one of the rationalities of virtual worlds that helps them become less hopelessly virtual.

You also can't seem to engineer out of people the desire not to have the game-gods provide all the content, and tell them what to do. Oh, to be sure, there are people who want a pre-fabbed game with game-god content and instructions and rote skilling and questing. But even within that, people make an economy and drive toward user content in spite of the game-gods.

Is this a blanket, sweeping generalization about academics in general and in particular on this page? Oh, yes, that's indeed what it is, even if some, like Thomas Malaby, have tried to establish their credentials as critical of kneejerk Marxism. Is this an ad hominem attack? Um, so...this post by a credentialed member of TN isn't one??? It's really a very poor showing; it indicates that this collection of "associate professors" and such are willing to attack viciously anybody who begins to get a hearing outside their Ivory Tower.

I think a TN author hazing you like this, Onder, is proof of how unsettled and insecure they are that the big conversations about the Metaverse just aren't happening on their own pages; or at least sometimes happening, but without them winning the arguments, or even being the slightest bit persuasive (as they sure weren't on metrics to measure SL; on voice; on emergent gameplay; on any number of topics in the last year).

I've become more and more convinced of this -- and it's sad, really, because one expects a concentration of eggheads around the theme of games not to be hopelessly mired in games circa 1990 or earlier, but to step up and realize that their games are now very pervasive into real life everywhere in the forum of the emerging 3-D Internet. They were the first to glimpse this; why are they falling behind now in being willing to think and talk about this with far more open minds?

Perhaps you aren't an "expert" or a RL credentialed egghead, Onder, but your reviews of games in and out of SL has given you credibility and a following, and people around SL read your Herald contributions with interest. Don't let people worried about their tenture, real or imagined, RL or in synthetic worlds, get you down.

[Rich Bryant]

5.

I only bothered to reaed up to "ordinary people really like economies involving buying and selling for a profit." because life's too damn short to wade through drivel (unless you're an academic, which i only do two days a month).

But really, it is drivel. And the "Big 3" is not any useful form of yardstick. The thing about WoW, Prok, is that far less than one million of those eight million ever cash out. And the thing about SL is that, as Randolfe showed, it's almost impossible to cash out on any scale even if you want to. Anshe Chung's virtual millions are just that - virtual. They can't become real.

While i respect Onder's right to his opinion and blog, commentary elsewhere is a part of blogs are for. Except for yours, of course, which is limited to SL cultists. I wish you'd post those these essays on my blog so i could edit them at my evil whim while my wife watches hospital dramas.

A communications medium does not need a currency. A communications medium does not need ownership of property or ideas beyond the name the users go by - or number in the case of telephone networks.

A Virtual World can only be defined by two things.

1. Is it virtual? If you switch it off, does it exist?

2. Does it meet the definitions of a "world" in any or every other sense?

If you believe that "worldiness" is defined by property, i'm very glad i don't know you.

[Elle Pollack]

6.

The key words in the post are "Alternitives to Second Life", not "things that make great virtual worlds". In other words, Philip Linden keeps claiming that there are no real competitors to Second Life as of yet and the question might be phrased as "Is there somewhere else I would rather go for my Second Life-ish desires?" Judging the list and criteria by any other standard is silly.

[Indy]

7.

Those three criteria were proposed by the author to be used for judging alternatives to Second Life. As someone who hasn't even played SL (I prefer gamey worlds), but read about it here (and there), those three standards did scream 'SL!' to me when I first read them, so I'd suggest that they're quite good for that purpose.

For generally judging virtual social worlds, I agree they lack a lot. But that doesn't seem to be what they were meant for?

[Tackleberry]

8.

Bad mood indeed! Granted the criteria Onder used does not represent a 'Turing' test for what constitutes a virtual world, but at the very least he has spawned a very intriguing discussion.

Whether any of the social worlds mentioned currently fit the bill or not is immaterial from my perspective. Similar to other technology paradigm shifts in the past, the best outcome we can hope to see from this is the proliferation (10 or more maybe?) of different social/virtual worlds battle for dominance and market share over the next 5 years. Then we will be left with a few top contenders who constantly try to one-up each other with technology enhancements.

My favored contender would always be the one with the open-sourced model. I hate to thank of a future where all content is produced by Sony and its affiliates.

[rikomatic]

9.

For me, some useful yardsticks might be:

1. IDENTITY: How fine grained is your control over the appearance of your avatar, your digital representation of yourself?

2. INTERACTIVITY: In what forms can you interact with other players / residents? I.e. chat, IM, voice, hitting each other with blunt objects.

3. NETWORKING: Does the platform facilitate social networks, communities, small group interactions?

[Sadstateofaffairs]

10.

I'm pretty shocked by the immaturity of your post Dan.

Also, I think I counted that you used 'coz' a total of 3 times! Seriously, if I wanted to read something that looks and reads like the whinings of a pre-teen I would go to myspace.

[KirkJobSluder]

11.

Just thinking about those three, do ebay and amazon count as meeting all three criteria? Arguably they do, I think we are running into the same problem of definition that led to one of my favorite quotes from the online community days.

Though investigations of community computing are not common in HCI, the term ‘community’ has become a pervasive mantra.. . . I believe the popularity of the term reflects a desire on the part of many HCI professionals to participate in and contribute to more meaningful social interchange. The term is also clearly now just a buzzword: the collection of people who have recently ordered a pair of socks from the same web site is a rather impoverished example of community. (Carroll, 2001, p. 308)

There are dozens of examples of physical social worlds that do not involve the liquid exchange of capital. Participants spend hours in churches, sporting clubs, and volunteer groups. I'm not saying these three are not important. But I don't think you can really evaluate "social worlds" in any medium or context without looking at social networks, norms, and communities.

[KirkJobSluder]

12.

Profky Neva: Your "big three" were brilliant. They are *exactly* what everyone is looking for when they look for worlds, and they are exactly the right filter to use to look at some of these big new pretenders to the crown of Second Life clone out there now, like Outback and Sony's Home.

Everyone? I don't join online communities looking for a way to spend my rather scarce spare cash. I join online communities that provide positive support and communication with people who share similar interests.

[Bernard]

13.

To perceive the criteria for judging the efficacy of any on line world by only three criteria really exculdes a large number of people as well as worlds that offer many other kinds of opportunities. Some of these are social interaction, ease of use, technical support, cost to join, variety of play opportunites within the virtuality, levels of difficulty of front end-that is can one go deep within the front end to explore operations, open code, customer support etc. etc. etc.

I think if you just examine your choices using these three criteria you exclude the many other reasons and needs that people have which certainly do not condense down to capital exchange, longevity of effected change in the environment, or creation tools.

[Onder Skall]

14.

Elle Pollack, Indy - Thank you for making the point I had forgotten to make myself - that this was a comparison to SL, not WoW. The blog is called "Second Life Games".

KirkJobSluder – That is a fascinating comparison! I wonder what would happen if Amazon or eBay were to incorporate even more social tools - making public customer / vendor profiles more detailed and customizable, for instance, or having a chat window open next to every product. I can’t be the first one to ask that question though. Is there a place we can look to explore that idea more?

Prokofy Neva - That was really very nice of you, thank you. Academics have the same tendency as everybody else: they see things filtered through what they are currently interested in. This particular issue (Second Life, specifically) doesn't seem to interest him. Joke's on him though... putting up a big sign with an arrow pointing at something and saying: "This isn't interesting" doesn't always get the desired effect.

I won't take it personally but this is why I tend to avoid engaging in academia ... ugly, ugly stuff. No sense of wonder, no regard for desire, no yearning, no longing, just… analysis. It’s a useful perspective, but when involving human subjects always seems to be dissatisfactory (to me) on some level.

Still, Prok, I genuinely needed to hear something kind and you stepped up. Greatly appreciated; you seriously changed my whole day!

[Prokofy Neva]

15.

>I only bothered to reaed up to "ordinary people really like economies involving buying and selling for a profit." because life's too damn short to wade through drivel (unless you're an academic, which i only do two days a month).

Then perhaps you are a) a non-ordinary people, not one of the many normal people in the world who buy and sell in RL and expect it in games and worlds, too b) are a member of a tiny sect of Marxian or utopian academics. If you're something else, let's hear it!

>But really, it is drivel. And the "Big 3" is not any useful form of yardstick. The thing about WoW, Prok, is that far less than one million of those eight million ever cash out.

Who said economies have to involve RMT and cashing out? Duh. I said "buy and sell". They may be content to stay in the world and buy and sell. But every single major game in the universe now has currency, people hoarding it, people getting it to buy stuff that levels them up, people then even selling it on third-party sites. My God, doesn't that tell you everything? Or did you think everybody's supposed to play some UN-created game about water rights in the third-world? Good luck with that.

>And the thing about SL is that, as Randolfe showed, it's almost impossible to cash out on any scale even if you want to.

I cash out every month *shrugs*. It's very curious what he's done. He's made an accurate critique of SL as a place that is not a good investor if you are looking for *financial investment* i.e. a stock, a money-market, a hedge fund. Trying to play the LindEx is no better an "investment" than trying to buy, I dunno, the currency of Belarus.

But it is an economy where profit can be made and where people really enjoy making even a mere $15 US in gas money a month,or merely enough to pay for the Internet bill. And that's important, because it's growing and scaling.

>Anshe Chung's virtual millions are just that - virtual. They can't become real.

You haven't understood the basics of the economy or Anshe's business model if you think something silly like that. Each money, Anshe Chung takes out of the "game of Second Life" in hard, cold, real US cash AT LEAST the following amount: US $102,500 on PayPal, completely free of "virtual assets". Don't confuse the fact that virtual assets purchased stay in world with the fact that you can make a profit from renting, selling, or developing activities on that, then take the profit out and convert it legally through the Lindex to a PayPal deposit. Go and study up more on SL to get your story straight here.

>While i respect Onder's right to his opinion and blog, commentary elsewhere is a part of blogs are for.

Um, are you on drugs?! Seriously, this is totally messed up. This total asshole named Dan Hunter gets up on the wrong side of the bed, and takes a big long piss on Onder Skall completely unprovoked. Dan *raises Onder's blog here and its coverage -- what, Onder can't comment back, none of us can comment back, we have to just watch in puzzled amazement???

Onder *was* on his own blog DUH. He also happened to reprint in the Herald, and that got him more readership, and Alice and such picked it up and commented positively.

And that's why your pal Dan is jealous and out of sorts. He can't BEAR the fact that he didn't control, shape, or get in on this discussion about "how do you define virtual worlds." It happened without him, the train left the station. So he, unprovoked, did a smackdown of this guy who just printed a rather informal commentary to get a discussion going -- a *free and open and interesting discussion* UNLIKE WHAT TERRA NOVA HAS BECOME, hobbled by raving asstards and beligerent orthodox nigglers.

>Except for yours, of course, which is limited to SL cultists. I wish you'd post those these essays on my blog so i could edit them at my evil whim while my wife watches hospital dramas.

Do whatever on your blog, champ, hey, it's the Internet, the field is open.

>A communications medium does not need a currency. A communications medium does not need ownership of property or ideas beyond the name the users go by - or number in the case of telephone networks.

Oh? Well, um...who will pay for said communication media then? Internet sites have subscription and bandwidth fees they pay and they put things for sale on them. Marketing through the Internet of real-life perishable and non-perishable goods is part of what sustains the Internet.

Or do you imagine the Internet just to be a lot of geeks holding hands and singing Kumbayah while they program and code?

>A Virtual World can only be defined by two things.

Oh? Says who?

>1. Is it virtual? If you switch it off, does it exist?

But that's exactly what Onder has said by talking about persistence, and whether the stuff you make is still there when you log on again or whether it is swept away. People so want to make user content that their "emergent gameplay" in a fixed set of stuff like WoW will even do things like kill a character and leave him dead and un revived as a kind of "monument". There's even a dead "Prokofy Neva" WoW character that has been left on the plains of something-or-other which I didn't make, some kind of wierd commentary on me -- fun, eh?

>2. Does it meet the definitions of a "world" in any or every other sense?

Well, people argue a lot about what world means! And what basic argument is:

1. Should we have communism? Most vote "no" in real and virtual.
2. Should we have capitalism? Most vote "yes" and proceed to bring it about.

If you are in the sectarian minority of 1), well, make your own game and find a rich philanthropist to fund it?

>If you believe that "worldiness" is defined by property, i'm very glad i don't know you.

Well, know the millions of other people on the Internet and in games and worlds who want property?

Social sites may not have property; what could I get from a social site like Digg or Twitter except a t-shirt or a mug?

But worlds with continuity, persistence, virtuality are places where people want to BE. And wherever people want to BE, a market, buying and selling, and economy appears -- and that's ok.

[Prokofy Neva]

16.

>To perceive the criteria for judging the efficacy of any on line world by only three criteria really exculdes a large number of people as well as worlds that offer many other kinds of opportunities. Some of these are social interaction, ease of use, technical support, cost to join, variety of play opportunites within the virtuality, levels of difficulty of front end-that is can one go deep within the front end to explore operations, open code, customer support etc. etc. etc.

>I think if you just examine your choices using these three criteria you exclude the many other reasons and needs that people have which certainly do not condense down to capital exchange, longevity of effected change in the environment, or creation tools.

And then what you'll find is a handful of "serious games" designed to force-feed you propaganda about "OMGODZORZ oil companies are evil 1111" or games of intricate fantasy or skill that somehow don't even have a game currency.

Examples, please?

Capitalism makes the world go round. Socialism, especially communism, kills the world. We've got lots of examples of that from real life now. Virtual life, too.

Anybody up for a rousing game of umm....Sociolotron? they don't have user content or game currency and they're uh...so much fun! How about a really pippin' session in...uh...Restaurant? Hope you like Mouselook!

[Gabriel]

17.

Academics have the same tendency as everybody else: they see things filtered through what they are currently interested in.

What's surprising is how you view SL to be the benchmark against which all should be compared, and then accuse Dan (and dissenters) of seeing things through filters ... I'm not saying they aren't approaching this from an academic standpoint (and they should be doing so) but you might want to take off your own blinders first. The question I would like to see you answer:

Why are all your criteria necessary?

[KirkJobSluder]

18.

Prokofy Nevka: Well, know the millions of other people on the Internet and in games and worlds who want property?

Social sites may not have property; what could I get from a social site like Digg or Twitter except a t-shirt or a mug?

Interestingly, the sites that offer little "property" beyond a profile and a place to leave your mark on the wall are not only larger than Second Life by a few orders of magnitude, they are growing faster than Second Life.

Capitalism makes the world go round. Socialism, especially communism, kills the world. We've got lots of examples of that from real life now. Virtual life, too.

Ohhh, for pete's sake. Social spaces and communications networks as a prerequisite for capitalism go back (at least) to seasonal neolithic gatherings. It's a rather impoverished conception of capitalism that sees it as incompatible with non-commercial social spaces.

[Gabriel]

19.

And Prokofy, can we stop the ad hominem attacks? It's just childish.

Um, are you on drugs?! Seriously, this is totally messed up. This total asshole named Dan Hunter gets up on the wrong side of the bed, and takes a big long piss on Onder Skall completely unprovoked.

[Prokofy Neva]

20.

>Interestingly, the sites that offer little "property" beyond a profile and a place to leave your mark on the wall are not only larger than Second Life by a few orders of magnitude, they are growing faster than Second Life.

They are social networks, social media? They aren't words. Worlds? This is a discussion started by the reactionary Dan Hunter about *criteria for virtual worlds*.

And social worlds are rapidly -- right before our very eyes! Amazingly! -- leveling up to become *worlds*. Look at how Kaneva seems to be a MySpace with 3-D rooms and content being promised and even an exclusive beta and an elite developers' group made already. Look at how Home holds out the promise of more stuff coming down the line that will network and expand it out. It's going to be a place to show off content you upload -- at least music and videos. What, independent musicians and filmmakers are supposed to just slap Creative Commons licenses on everything, give it away for free, and put out tip jars, and will never sell some of this stuff as time goes on? The desire of a lot of people to live from home off the Internet is so great, that they won't wait for you to approve, or come around to it ideologically, they'll just go for it *shrugs*.

I said: Capitalism makes the world go round. Socialism, especially communism, kills the world. We've got lots of examples of that from real life now. Virtual life, too.

>Ohhh, for pete's sake. Social spaces and communications networks as a prerequisite for capitalism go back (at least) to seasonal neolithic gatherings. It's a rather impoverished conception of capitalism that sees it as incompatible with non-commercial social spaces.

The non-commercial social spaces aren't really the object of this discussion about virtual worlds; but I accept that your desire to trash capitalism as some sort of evil is so enormous, so overweening, that you wish to extend it backwards into another subject, and I accept that -- because my point is that social spaces are *well on their way to becoming* virtual worlds and it is happening rapidly, and it will monetarize.

Non-commercial social spaces, that are a kind of public utility, are the gateways to economies. Look at some of the prominent academics and non-profit people in Second Life who started out with these mantras about academic this and non-profit that but converted to for-profit metaversal services agencies within a year of arriving. And why shouldn't they? It's a gold rush, and why shouldn't they get in on it? At least be honest about it.

Social spaces will increasingly monetarize. How? Well, for one, people like Murdoch will buy them, and when they are done "listening to everyone" talk about their cat and their emo nervous breakdowns, they will figure out how to advertise to them, so that the space will have features of it being for sale at least to somebody, or they will figure out how to make it monetarize for people-- like Google ads or any ad system where you put up a space and permit a partner to have an ad on that space, maybe even adapting to your content.

Another way it will monetarize is with user content. And this won't be just user-created content from amateur or professional ability in range, but things like outsourcing or crowdsourcing or micropayments to people to find facts or perform chores or monitor trends or whatever needs doing.

I don't understand why you aren't looking into the future, because the future is arriving very fast.

[KirkJobSluder]

21.

I'll offer a few counter claims:

1: Any examination of why people engage in online social spaces including virtual social worlds needs to also look at the popularity of facebook, flickr, and livejournal as well.

2: A small minority of people are engaged in entrepreneurial activities online. I suspect the number of people who make enough to cover the costs of their bandwidth is even smaller. So the question is, why are most participants throwing away a large chunk of their free time and disposable income on participation in these online social spaces, or are willing to tolerate advertising as a cost of participation?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

22.

KirkjobSluder: So the question is, why are most participants throwing away a large chunk of their free time and disposable income on participation in these online social spaces

Because they are bored, single and lonely?

[randolfe_]

23.

I wish I could say I was shocked by the OP. But it seems that some of the authors around here consider themselves so vastly enlightened that they need not bother to entertain alternate perspectives, analyses or even simple musings. After all, my own devil's work was dismissed as so ridiculous it wasn't even worth discussing, while at the same time criticized for not being a proofed, printed and bound dissertation.

Onder's opinions are no less deserving discussion than more pedantic diatribes one might find elsewhere. That Dan appears to not like capitalism and its implications, and takes such a reactionary position towards Onder's writing, tells me more about Dan Hunter than anything else.

At least Onder has had the courage to take a position. Since Dan appears to have a better ideas about how to structure and operate virtual world economies -- ideas that don't involve the evil tyranny of private property liberties and capitalist endeavors -- I'm all ears. Offer forth your prescriptive criteria, and allow us to have at it.

[Rich Bryant]

24.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad: Because they are bored, single and lonely?

Or because they like a challenge. Or because beating the odds is always the ultimate game.

Anyway, you want to talk about social worlds? YouTube. I see no involved currency or ownership, except when people sue the site.

[KirkJobSluder]

25.

Prokofy Neva: They are social networks, social media? They aren't words. Worlds? This is a discussion started by the reactionary Dan Hunter about *criteria for virtual worlds*.

The more I participate in these discussions, and the more I read about these discussions, the less I'm seeing that this "world" distinction has much meaning behind it.

What, independent musicians and filmmakers are supposed to just slap Creative Commons licenses on everything, give it away for free, and put out tip jars, and will never sell some of this stuff as time goes on?

I've not addressed this. However, since you insist. I grew up in a very "bells and smells" church that had the good grace to attract professional musicians who would do ensemble performance just for the fun of it. The fact that Joshua Bell played gratis one Sunday certainly has not hurt his career as a professional recording artist.

I don't make money off of the thousands of words I post to the Internet. First, because there is no market for those kinds of writing, second, because that would suck the fun out of it. I do write professionally, but sometimes, I like writing for fun as well.

The non-commercial social spaces aren't really the object of this discussion about virtual worlds; but I accept that your desire to trash capitalism as some sort of evil is so enormous, so overweening, that you wish to extend it backwards into another subject, and I accept that -- because my point is that social spaces are *well on their way to becoming* virtual worlds and it is happening rapidly, and it will monetarize.

I wasn't aware that I was "trashing" capitalism. I go to a coffee shop and buy a snack. I go to a mini golf course and pay a fee. I go to a virtual world and buy a subscription. I go to Livejournal and see advertising. I go to a church and donate some money. I join a professional organization and pay a yearly fee. All of these are various forms of capitalism at work. And in all of these spaces, the customer accepts that "cost" as payment for...what???

In your posted view, "everyone" wants to get in on the gold rush (never mind that most people failed to profit from gold rushes). "Everyone" wants to "cash out" at some point.

In my contrarian view, I think most people are going to be content to be consumers. They will willingly pay money or accept advertising for the ability to engage in some form of social activity.

Of course, people investing in and building these spaces are going to find ways to pay the bills and make a profit. But that is a vastly different claim from what you said earlier which is that "everyone" participates in these spaces with the expectation of "cashing out" on a later basis.

[Xander]

26.

I'd have to say my level of respect for Terra Nova has gone down a notch after reading this unprofessional post. All interesting discussion aside, the author failed to project any level of authority on his part.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

27.

Rick Bryant: Anyway, you want to talk about social worlds? YouTube.

Good point. Or Wikipedia. Or project Gutenberg. Or archive.org. People like to think of them selves as altruistic, and other people like people and systems they perceive as altruistic. Altruism doesn't threaten you identity. Those systems have a positive constructive cycle due to the lack of capitalism and competition. IMO, much more powerful than the capitalism of second life, which is a veeery american concept.

[KirkJobSluder]

28.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad: Because they are bored, single and lonely?

I think that's a large part of it. But I'd also say that there seems to be a human drive among many to expand their social networks beyond what is available locally.

[Prokofy Neva]

29.

YouTube is a place where aspiring film-makers post work eventually to get paying work. YouTube hosts many instructional, business-related, training, etc. videos and marketing videos as well, all part of *making money* which most people, in the normal world of real life, don't have any allergenic reaction to.

>Good point. Or Wikipedia. Or project Gutenberg. Or archive.org. People like to think of them selves as altruistic, and other people like people and systems they perceive as altruistic.

Well, that's not true. Do they? Some do; some don't. I loathe Wikipedia. It's biased, kooky, cranky, and anonymous and unaccountable. It's not a reliable source. Give me a decent encyclopedia or media company any day with a responsible editorial board with a line, so I can at least understand their tilt.

Hiding behind the guise of "the collective and endless correctives" the tiny sects that invade this or that topic on Wikipedia just tug and pull it to their own designs. Any topic where you have some expertise can be seen to suffer from this problem.

Altruism is the tekkie geeky clarion call. But...so often they can afford to be altruistic because:
o they are in college on their trust funds or scholarships
o they are working for giant IT companies that pay them young fortunes
o they are in universities where somebody else foots the bill and deprives them of contact with real life

These three factors conspire to make tekkies and academics surrounding the whole digital revolution often very out of touch with reality, out of touch with the general publics, and very much in entitlement mode, Marxist mode, or utopian mode. They ought not to be allowed to have the influence they do precisely because they are dangerously out of touch and not responsible in any way for real costs and accountability.

>Altruism doesn't threaten you identity. Those systems have a positive constructive cycle due to the lack of capitalism and competition.

This is about the most preposterious thing I've ever read on two legs. Who pays for Wikipedia? It has servers, it has data, it has workers. Some work for free; but the dude who opened it up, with his nutty Ayn Randian theories and such, is no doubt a wealthy fellow who bankrolled it and sustained its Internet hosting costs. My God, that ought to be obvious! The Internet doesn't just come out of the sky like manna; somebody, somewhere, is paying for broadband even if you aren't.

>IMO, much more powerful than the capitalism of second life, which is a veeery american concept.

Gosh, tell that to my Italian, British, Korean, Brazilian, Russian, and Japanese customers who are all working hard in creative or service businesses and making money. They are there to create content and sell it.

This silly notion that there is some Geekworld out there where everybody really does want to sit around and play Altruism in the Sandbox all day is hopelessly outmoded and hopelessly sectarian. It's a little sect that games and worlds like SL can tap into early on because geeks and IRC channelers love just coding for coding's sake and imagine themselves to be great Friends to Humanity and Altruistically Performing A Much-Needed Service.

But the more normal ones just sell stuff. They sell their scripts and gadgets and *gasp* make a profit *ungasp* which enables them to monetarize their time on line and pay costs, if nothing else.

My God, why do we have to be stuck in this goddamn 19th century SWAMP here of old thinking on Terra Nova? When will TN join the 21st century???????

[KirkJobSluder]

30.

Onder: KirkJobSluder – That is a fascinating comparison! I wonder what would happen if Amazon or eBay were to incorporate even more social tools - making public customer / vendor profiles more detailed and customizable, for instance, or having a chat window open next to every product. I can’t be the first one to ask that question though. Is there a place we can look to explore that idea more?

Well, from my point of view, the features are only a small part of what makes up sociability. The other parts involve things like social norms, language, and persistent networks over time. So I'd be reluctant to point to eBay and say, "that's a community," but I would say that comp.lang.lisp is a community, in spite of having a smaller population and fewer technical features.

And it's not because I think that eBay is commercial and comp.lang.lisp is usenet, it's because I don't see the same kinds of persistent social networks on eBay. (Obligatory mention that text-based muds have been sites for commercial activity in real dollars.)

Ola Fosheim Grøstad: Good point. Or Wikipedia. Or project Gutenberg. Or archive.org. People like to think of them selves as altruistic, and other people like people and systems they perceive as altruistic. Altruism doesn't threaten you identity. Those systems have a positive constructive cycle due to the lack of capitalism and competition. IMO, much more powerful than the capitalism of second life, which is a veeery american concept.

Well, I'm not certain that I entirely buy the notion of altruism. I think that a lot of people find amateur-level activity to be rewarding, and will do things with no expectation of reward beyond a "thank you" and a pat on the back. I don't see this as being "trashing capitalism" because amateurs are a huge market for goods and services.

One of the services most desired by amateurs is the opportunity to engage in a larger community of practice. So they are often willing to pony up money for subscriptions, user fees, tournament fees, workshops, conventions and meetups.

I certainly think that for some people, the opportunity to go professional and semi-professional is a big carrot. But I don't think this is what really drives most participants in online social spaces.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

31.

Well Prokofy, then I humbly suggest that you quit being altruistic yourself. Obviously, you don't get paid for writing on this blog? Why on earth would you participate in such a communist activity? *ponders* Of course, you could be one of those droids... I remember SGI paying people for spamming VRML mailinglists with propaganda ten years ago or so.

It didn't work. People didn't like it. People liked their mailinglists to be altruistic.

[Bernard]

32.

i think one factor that would put a dead end stop to most people that inhabit virtualities for profit would be the IRS. If and when, and I am sure there will be a when, they decide to begin to tap the profits received, more than likely many who have been using the virtualities as an under the table cash cow will run for cover for fear of audits. At the present time the lack of taxing intervention does tend to attract members who wish to capitalize off that freedom but you can bet your bottom dollar when the tax man starts coming around things will change radically.

[KirkJobSluder]

33.

Prokofy Neva: Gosh, tell that to my Italian, British, Korean, Brazilian, Russian, and Japanese customers who are all working hard in creative or service businesses and making money. They are there to create content and sell it.

Sell it to whom? And yes, I am one of those hard-working creative professionals who gives away unmarketable work (like this post) for free because I enjoy doing it.

And to ask the obvious question, who is paying you to post on TN, and how much are you getting per word? If you are not getting paid to do it, why are you spending so much time writing here?

It's a little sect that games and worlds like SL can tap into early on because geeks and IRC channelers love just coding for coding's sake and imagine themselves to be great Friends to Humanity and Altruistically Performing A Much-Needed Service.

Yes, for some projects, I don't mind writing or coding for fun. And if I can't make a living wage at it, I might just give it away. That is one of the liberties of capitalism. I'm not obligated to devote every minute of my waking day to a profit-making enterprise.

But the more normal ones just sell stuff. They sell their scripts and gadgets and *gasp* make a profit *ungasp* which enables them to monetarize their time on line and pay costs, if nothing else.

Nothing wrong with that. I'm willing to write off the time and costs as entertainment, I don't see anything wrong with that.

[Bernard]

34.

Prokofy Neva posted:

>And then what you'll find is a handful of "serious games" designed to force-feed you propaganda about "OMGODZORZ oil companies are evil 1111" or games of intricate fantasy or skill that somehow don't even have a game currency.

Examples, please?

I dont understand what you dont understand. Game currency is one motivating factor and only one. People inhabit on line virtualities for many other reasons and to think that it is just one of money is only perhaps your personal motivation.
People use vitural worlds to meet other people, to have imaginary play, to build perhaps, to drive a car they cant in real life, to fall down without getting bruised, to escape the boredom of their work a day world, to play games of chance, to have virtual sex, to expand their world of experience which may be limited due to phycical challenges. All of these factors and many many more are the things that motivate people to inhabit all kinds of virtual worlds. Money may be one motivating factor and perhaps your motivating factor but it certainly is not the single criteria or even perhaps the most popular one. If the world of experience could be reduced down to just three criteria for why people choose to play and do what they do on line and those three criteria could be considered the only important ones for evaluation of attractiveness of on line worlds then I think perhaps there would be quite a few less players within any of these worlds.

[Peter Amstutz]

35.

Disclosure: I'm the primary developer on the Interreality Project (VOS) which was mentioned in the original article.

What I find more interesting is not the importance of currency itself, but to what extent what goes on in the virtual world is relevant the real world. Making money, as it happens, has a concrete effect on your material wellbeing, i.e. by allowing you to pay the rent by "playing" a game instead of flipping burgers. However, this two-way interaction between the virtual world and RL shouldn't stop at currency transactions for in-game goods -- there's a rich ecosystem of internet applications (the web, email, IM systems, databases, etc) that are used for very real business, organizational and political purposes, from which virtual worlds have traditionally been mostly isolated.

I think Second Life straddles the fence in a very uncomfortable way, which is evident even in the name. They want the ability to have their own walled garden where they control the technology, the servers, the currency and the rights of the users while at the same time their marketing tries to potray SL as cool and relevant and the biggest thing to happen to the Internet since Mosaic. Indeed, the fact that people are expected to create alter egos and NOT represent themselves as who they are that leads to much of the sociopathic behavior that Prokofy often complains about.

Now, please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the primary value of holding L$ is to authorize the user to be able to create or modify objects in the simulation. As such, the fundamental purpose of L$ would be to ration scarce server resources, rather than as a general purpose currency -- which goes back to my question of whether SL as it is currently operated can really engage with the "real world" in a sensible way in the long term.

So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I tend to agree that the issue of real money economic activity on a platform is a relevant criteria, but that it should be considered more a reflection of the overall goals, design and maturity of a platform rather than an end unto itself.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

36.

Kirk, yes. People are willing to spend large sums of money on their hobbies. Never denied that. Even hard-core communists do that.

Some people who create _substantial_ works would like to get paid for it for various reasons, one being that they would like to quit their job and turn their hobby into their profession or to get some compensation for the money they put into it (equipment and materials), or to measure how much people care about what they do.

Not really sure with what you are disagreeing. For non-substantial works I think most people feel better about sharing than charging. Though there are several examples of people feeling good about sharing massive works too: FSF, etc.

Btw: one should try to separate what some individuals would like to do and what is strengthening a community. I am sure that some people love tupperware home parties etc, but I guess most don't. We don't have this basic human need for doing business with our friends... ;-)

[KirkJobSluder]

37.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad: Oh, sorry, I wasn't really disagreeing with you.

[Peter Amstutz]

38.

Prokofy:

Yes, there's a certain amount of intellectual masturbation over the idea that geeks are particular "altruistic" for writing and releasing software (or editing wikipedia pages, or any of a hundred other things) that they would have done for fun anyway.

But, that shouldn't affect the value (or lack thereof) of the contribution.

I should point out here that most of what we're talking about in terms of "content" that people are paying for is entertainment. We're not talking about physics textbooks, or even news headlines, we're talking about something inherently subjective and difficult to attach a value to. If we're concerned with having a real-world economy in a virtual space, then we're going to contend with the rules of real-world markets.

[Prokofy Neva]

39.

>Well Prokofy, then I humbly suggest that you quit being altruistic yourself. Obviously, you don't get paid for writing on this blog? Why on earth would you participate in such a communist activity? *ponders* Of course, you could be one of those droids... I remember SGI paying people for spamming VRML mailinglists with propaganda ten years ago or so.

>It didn't work. People didn't like it. People liked their mailinglists to be altruistic.

Well, Ola, no need to play the fake humble altruistic blog poster here, I don't get paid to write except $3.70 US per Herald article, which isn't exactly a princely sum.

Don't be silly Ola, truly, it's ridiculous. Communists don't have a patent on being altruistic; I think some of the world's major religions like Christianity and Buddhism and such had a bead on altruism long before Marx and Lenin -- and their altruism was suspect because they always spoke in the name of "the people" when they didn't really represent them or listen to them.

But we're not talking about altruism as somehow not acceptable behaviour in a game or world; everyone knows the Inkeeper type and the Good Samaritan type who populate games and are the ones willing to help newbies or clean sandboxes. Altruism is a good thing; it just doesn't pay the bills, for the game company, or people. It's always easy to be altruistic when Uncle Sam is paying for it.

That's not the basis of an economy, however. It's simply not, as much as you wish it. It's not even the basis for some earnest and wholesome w'ur'al'd where you imagine men in tights who are consulting for a marketing company are having discussions about solar energy and American imperialism, in between dances with women in long silken gowns with Birkenstock sandals who have a novel out on Creative Commons and are working on a lifelogging film together. That sort of world pertains only when Daddy is paying the bills somewhere.

Time and again, we've seen that altruism -- of the geeky beta sort that we had in Second Life, where people just made stuff for "the good of the community" cannot last. It cannot pay the bills. It cannot sustain itself. People need compensation for their time. And it's more than fine if they get it. They want it. They come in, they make it, as soon as they are free to trade, value land, and value labour.

Spaces can have combinations of non-profit and for-profit, of course, as long as there is tolerance for pluralism, and not hysterical orthodoxy about commerce, money and land sullying the utopia. Haven't you ever seen these games with the go-gooders screaming about how the economy is being ripped off by gold-sellers and Chinese farmers? They *are* the economy and they come in because you cannot keep out the eagerness of people to work for money in any way they can. The idea that you can is utopian. Each brand-clean game tries it again, then gives up as their currency is devalued. Even getting that idealist philanthropist Pierre Omidyar to remove the ability to trade game stuff off ebay didn't stop people from wishing to trade stuff SOMEWHERE -- and they do now, with more risk.

There's a lot of hatred of people who injected commerce, money, and land into Second Life from the oldbie tekkies who first came to it and just wanted it to be a sandbox -- the altruistic types you imagine are the only ones who exist, and the only ones who will get to use social software "properly" and the only ones who "should" be in games or worlds. Wonder what Clay Shirkey will say about the small numbers of populations in set-ups like this!

No, it's not about only altruism or only capitalism; capitalists are among those who have the luxury of being altruistic, in fact. And to a certain extent, the attitude of dismay and suspicion about big corporations, which I share to some degree, grows out of that sense that the balance between altruism and profit is out of whack.

It's about *balance*. And you're just talking about it in the extreme, as if it is all one or the other.

So veeerrrry European! Eh? Two can play at that stereotyping and hating game.

[Prokofy Neva]

40.

Um, Gabriel, where were you when Dan Hunter pissed in Onder Skall's wheaties first? Hello? Where was your umbrage and civic disdain then about "ad hominem attacks"? It's SO selective. I mean seriously, I don't recall such a nasty and vicious attack on another person on a blog since the latest rabid fashionista dissed some other sim diva for having an ugly RL picture. Next thing we'll be seeing is Dan telling Onder to post tits.

No, I don't refrain from ad hominen attacks when I see them come here *first*. I see a persistent, growing, aggressive and surly attitude on TN that wasn't here a few years ago as *certain people* feel their privileged positions are challenged. And hell yeah, I will fight back when I see that happen.

What do you call this, if not an adhominen attack?

>I hope that Onder will forgive me for suggesting that these three criteria are actually pulled from his arse and not his brain.

>Well, actually I don't care whether he forgives me or not, coz these are close to the stupidest criteria that I can conceive of to assess social worlds.

Well?

Nobody has yet to point to a successful, thriving, growing social platform or world out there now, that doesn't have money, or else, doesn't have the potential for advertising by companies and individuals to make money very much welded into it.

Could you cite an example of these completely economy-free, money-free, advertising-free worlds or social spaces and then also indicate that it is thriving and growing and has a future? Oh. Wikipedia is all you can come up with? Well, that's not a source acceptable in many serious quarters and somebody has to pay for the servers even there!

[Prokofy Neva]

41.

Bernard,

>Game currency is one motivating factor and only one. People inhabit on line virtualities for many other reasons and to think that it is just one of money is only perhaps your personal motivation.

No, it comes from observing many people, on Second Life and WoW and the Sims Online. People need the game currency, or even RL money, to justify their time, their leveling up, and such. It would be very hard to get people to play a game that didn't involve collecting inventory, selling it, buying stuff to have potions or leveling, or providing other goods that have real money value. I don't think you can come up with one.

If you tell me some yarn about how people hanging out in WoW to have quests are just there for the thrill of the chase and the smell of Orc blood in the morning, and the lovely chats with their pals after killing the monsters, you have GOT to be kidding. If there were no pelts to collect; no game gold; no auction house, it would be hard to organize these worlds.

>People use vitural worlds to meet other people, to have imaginary play, to build perhaps, to drive a car they cant in real life, to fall down without getting bruised, to escape the boredom of their work a day world, to play games of chance, to have virtual sex, to expand their world of experience which may be limited due to phycical challenges. All of these factors and many many more are the things that motivate people to inhabit all kinds of virtual worlds.

But they participate in an economy. That economy is based on the concept of capitalism. Even if all they do in SL is come on and drop $100 US to buy skins, a house, and some land, they are part of the capitalist ethic. They aren't sitting there meditating in an ashram. Capitalism isn't only about selling and making a profit; it's about consuming, too! Isn't that evident?

>Money may be one motivating factor and perhaps your motivating factor but it certainly is not the single criteria or even perhaps the most popular one.

Bernard, you're taking the discussion off to another tangent, which a) false represents my position as somehow extrapolating from my own experience in wishing to ascribe the large majority of people the desire only to make money and b) somehow segregates profit-making off as a separate activity, when in fact it's an activity embedded in buying and selling and a free market in a capitalist system.

Go back to what Onder said, which was quoted by Dan. Onder didn't say, "Oh, only the ability to engage in profit-making and farming game gold or renting land can distinguish a world as a feature."

He said something different, and broader:

"Cash transactions must be easy and readily accommodated flowing both into and out from the system."

CASH TRANSACTIONS. That's all. The ability to buy and sell. Some will buy and sell at a loss or only flow in, others will cash out.

This is what I said in my first response to this post:
"Real people in the real world reject that kind of lunacy, and they want to play store,"

Play store! That means selling and also shopping.

>If the world of experience could be reduced down to just three criteria for why people choose to play and do what they do on line and those three criteria could be considered the only important ones for evaluation of attractiveness of on line worlds then I think perhaps there would be quite a few less players within any of these worlds.

No, if you boiled down the features of these worlds only to socializing and skilling up and performing skilled operations, with no economy, trade, farming, real estate encouraged or even allowed, they'd have a lot, lot less people in them. The whole reason WoW has 8 million people is precisely because of all of those features of an economy. That's the wave of the future.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

42.

Prokofy Neva says:
So veeerrrry European! Eh? Two can play at that stereotyping and hating game.

Aw, but Second Life _IS_ a manifestation of classic american ideology. The dream of the self-made (rich) man. How anyone can fail to see the connection is beyond me.

And no, WoW is not proving your point. In-game economies serve many purposes, one of them is "artificially" slowing down access to content in order to increase subscription lengths. They aren't designed to make players happy, but to make them stay. They are balanced to find the "pain threshold" of the players. If they quit, they are in pain, but the fun stops long before that. Economies can be fun too. Play-pretend is fun. Pretend. Play-pretend as reality is converging towards pathetic for most people.

[randolfe_]

43.

Back to the original tantrum that started this thread:

It seems to mean that VWs should be persistent; which, last time I checked, was a definitional requirement of them being worlds in the first place.

Considering that no one can authoritatively define exactly what persistent means, I have no idea why Dan has no idea what Onder meant.

Dan, is persistent a binary categorization? Please show me any virtual world that is categorically persistent. Is persistence a complete, uniquely referenced representation of all states as time progresses, as with the real world (above quantum levels). Is persistence a memento pattern of storage and retrieval that algorithmically mimics states in time as if they've been fully dehydrated? Or is persistence just whatever Dan Hunter decided Onder didn't understand?

[KirkJobSluder]

44.

Prokofy: Spaces can have combinations of non-profit and for-profit, of course, as long as there is tolerance for pluralism, and not hysterical orthodoxy about commerce, money and land sullying the utopia.

As opposed to hysterical orthodoxy pulling red scare and saying everyone who disagrees with you hates capitalism?

Really, what do you expect? You pull out the absolute claim that everyone is participating and looking for the cash-out opportunity, then you flip right around and make an appeal to pluralism. It seems your orthodoxy changes from hour to hour.

[Andy Havens]

45.

Couple things. I originally read Onder's post on the pointer from BoingBoing and thought it was a bit odd, too. There have been many discussions -- not just here, but on lots of game/VW blogs -- about what makes for a good MMO/VW, and these three(?) criteria don't dip into many of the previous conversations.

To begin with, Onder's list of three things is actually, by my count, eight, burried in three:

1. Cash transactions must be easy.
2. Cash transactions must flow into the world.
3. Cash transactions mus flow out of the world.
4. Users must be able to create content
5. User content must be unique
6. Users must retain some form of ownership over content.
7. The world must be changeable by players.
8. Player changes must be pervasive.

He actually kinda breaks things down like that in his review. For example, re "The Sims Online," Onder says about Point 2: "You own everything you create, but you upload nothing and you can’t build from scratch." So, per my list, above, #4 = yes, #5 = no. Plus he's added another condition in that review... something about "Uploading." Which would add another item to the list, I guess:

5b: Users must be able to create content using tools from outside the game platform.

Which is, I admit, an interesting criteria. But one that isn't measured across the board.

I didn't find Onder's reviews particularly helpful, for the reason that, as I said, his criteria were confusedly ungranular, and mixedly applied.

On the other hand, I agree with the folks who have said that Dan's particular tone in the coverage of such is, well... snarky at best. Even when admitting snark, and appologizing for it... well. I would have preferred, I think, a post in which a proposed, better ranking alternative was provided.

Onder does make it clear that his is a list of things that make SL "irreplaceable at the moment." That's cool. It's a good bar. It removes from the discussion all talk of WoW, Puzzle Pirates, Wikipedia, MySpace, etc. etc. The discussion *CAN* be narrowed down to: What is it about SL that we really, really like/need (if we do), and how could those things be improved either in SL or in other platforms?

A follow-up question might be: What things about SL are so prevalent in other systems that we really don't need them in our VW's? Or, are they requirements of all social spaces?

If we get done calling names and going off into weirdo communism/blogolism land on this thread... I, for one, would value a post that actually poses those questions for serious discussion without all the rancor.

PS to Prok: I am confused. How is it that you are pro-capitalism when it comes to folks who are making money on the grid, selling their creations, etc. etc... but are against "corporations" and marketing/PR folks who want to do the same thing on a larger (or simply "different") scale? Where do you draw the line?

[Matt Mihaly]

46.

So, when I read the article I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes when I saw that he threw out the term Web 3.0. Web 2.0 is bad enough as a term, especially since it absolutely does not describe the evolution of the web as people use the term at least.

Still, if Onder's goal was to set up criteria for being like Second Life (rather than for being a social virtual world), they seem rather reasonable to me.

Prokofy wrote:

Um, are you on drugs?! Seriously, this is totally messed up. This total asshole

Wow. If there's ever been a case of the pot calling the kettle black, this is it.

Dan's post was a bit more acerbic than I'd prefer to see on SL but he was attacking Onder's ideas, not Onder himself.

And that's why your pal Dan is jealous and out of sorts. He can't BEAR the fact that he didn't control, shape, or get in on this discussion about "how do you define virtual worlds."

Yes, no doubt, you're privy to Dan's state of mind. Couldn't possibly be that he had a bad day (sounds like a REALLY bad day to me). Dan's really a pretty reasonable guy from the limited interaction I've had with him here and on an email list.

Incidentally, this isn't a discussion about how to define virtual worlds. It's about how to define the small corner of virtual worlds that are exemplified by Second Life. (If it were about how to define virtual worlds I'd hope we'd be talking about things that are a LOT more important to a real "world" than whether you can pull cash out of the system. Things like actual 3d, rather than the faked 3d of today's games/worlds, involving more than 2 of our senses in the world, and so on).

It happened without him, the train left the station.
So he, unprovoked, did a smackdown of this guy who just printed a rather informal commentary to get a discussion going

No, what he posted was a smackdown of the guy's ideas. I realize you're not going to see a difference, since you appear to be on a mission to take absolutely anything anyone ever says about Second Life as a personal insult or a personal challenge.

-- a *free and open and interesting discussion* UNLIKE WHAT TERRA NOVA HAS BECOME, hobbled by raving asstards and beligerent orthodox nigglers.

Can't we just ban children who make posts like this here?

--matt

[KirkJobSluder]

47.

Prokofy: Time and again, we've seen that altruism -- of the geeky beta sort that we had in Second Life, where people just made stuff for "the good of the community" cannot last. It cannot pay the bills. It cannot sustain itself. People need compensation for their time. And it's more than fine if they get it. They want it. They come in, they make it, as soon as they are free to trade, value land, and value labour.

And yet, time and time again we see communities pop in which people willingly share their time, expertise, and services with others. Many of these communities are larger and faster-growing than SL subscriptions.

In fact, I would argue that such "altruism" probably does as much, if not more to define a community than monetary economies. Some of us find the "grey" market of sharing content and services that are difficult to sell for hard currency to be quite satisfying.

No, it's not about only altruism or only capitalism; capitalists are among those who have the luxury of being altruistic, in fact. And to a certain extent, the attitude of dismay and suspicion about big corporations, which I share to some degree, grows out of that sense that the balance between altruism and profit is out of whack.

If it's really about "balance" then I think this is less an authentic disagreement, and more an authentic example of a pissing match.

Matt: So, when I read the article I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes when I saw that he threw out the term Web 3.0. Web 2.0 is bad enough as a term, especially since it absolutely does not describe the evolution of the web as people use the term at least.

I'm still profoundly convinced that Web 2/3.0 is little more than a rhetorical device that allows people to take credit for 20 years of work in building internet-mediated community systems.

[Thomas Malaby]

48.

@Randolfe_: Persistence as I understand it means that the effects of human action within a space, like an MMO, accumulate over time. There is no end condition, like a game reset or similar, where (nearly) all of the effects are effectively wiped away (perhaps surviving only in a system of scoring or the like). Admittedly, it's not airtight, since not only scoring and other rationalized systems of accounting of those effects might persist, but also the accumulated competencies of the players would persist as well (in their bodies), along with social capital, perhaps. But the specific array of such effects would in any event lose its moorings if the world did not have persistence.

[Prokofy Neva]

49.

>Dan's post was a bit more acerbic than I'd prefer to see on SL but he was attacking Onder's ideas, not Onder himself.

Um, telling somebody that they've pulled their ideas out of their ass -- especially when on the face of it there's nothing that wrong with the ideas even if you disagree with them -- IS attacking Onder himself. And your failure to see that is typical of what happens on a forums like this dominated by a certain arrogant type who imagines everyone else is on suffrance and they are entitled to behave in this outrageous fashion!

And that's why your pal Dan is jealous and out of sorts. He can't BEAR the fact that he didn't control, shape, or get in on this discussion about "how do you define virtual worlds."

>Yes, no doubt, you're privy to Dan's state of mind. Couldn't possibly be that he had a bad day (sounds like a REALLY bad day to me). Dan's really a pretty reasonable guy from the limited interaction I've had with him here and on an email list.

I can surely imagine the incredible state of arrogance that enables one to inflict a private bad mood or bad month on a public forum in that fashion.

His inner state is very easy to extrapolate. And it's an inner state pervading the permanent authors of this forums lately more and more. And that is their prickliness, irritability, and downright nastiness to people promoting, defending, or even sometimes merely discussing Second Life or other worlds like Project Entropia (which they loathe even more). The hatred and contempt is palpable; that's why I try to resist it, it just isn't right.

It's clear that by huffing that this Onder Skall guy even got mentioned in the all-sacred Cory Doctorow's boing-boing and the all-hail Wonderland, Dan was exuding the kind of indignation that people excude when they are jealous. How else to explain all the ruckus?

The other permanent members here should have stepped up and said the post wasn't appropriate, as some commenters did, and shouldn't have defended it.

Xander said it best, and randolfe analyzed the problem perfectly.

[Prokofy Neva]

50.

>Incidentally, this isn't a discussion about how to define virtual worlds. It's about how to define the small corner of virtual worlds that are exemplified by Second Life. (If it were about how to define virtual worlds I'd hope we'd be talking about things that are a LOT more important to a real "world" than whether you can pull cash out of the system. Things like actual 3d, rather than the faked 3d of today's games/worlds, involving more than 2 of our senses in the world, and so on).

I think this is the root of the problem here, Matt. You imagine that there is this vasty deep of virtual worlds out there, of which SL is only a tiny projectory, and not even really fully qualified because it's nothing like the worlds you know, not perfectly virtual, not virtual that way, too real, or not magic enough -- or something.

But the worlds you know are disappearing before our eyes; even the worlds I know; they are all being displaced by people who are only 12 now and will have a profound influence on shaping the Metaverse, just as Mark Wallace noted at the Metaverse Meet-up. That's an unsettling feeling, when all the worlds you know are disappearing. But they are. When MySpace can become Kaneva and and Xbox can have Home, it means the worlds you know with all their arcane quests and puzzles and names and creatures are all disappearing into the mist, replaced by non-games but aimless entertainment activity, "consuming media", people doing stuff that will seem really lame, in mass taste, and American to you, no doubt, like dancing to some clip on their suburban patio similitude in Home or Kaneva or Second Life. You wanted to have something so much more rich and cultural but it was not meant to be.

BTW, I wrote to you repeatedly with questions about your upcoming title to cover it in the Herald and you just ignored me.

>Can't we just ban children who make posts like this here?

We?

WTG Matt, you could sit still for literally hundreds of insanely gross and idiotic posts of real children and actual childish idiots in W-hat on those previous threads of the last weeks like "Emergent Gameplay", and not call for any banning of children. You were silent as those barbarians crashed the gates.

As soon as I make an astute and to-the-point about what's happening with the TN gamerz and lamerz right now getting behind the curve on virtual worlds, you get all freaked and start screaming about "children".

Thanks for putting yourself on the moral spectrum for me.

[Prokofy Neva]

51.

And yet, time and time again we see communities pop in which people willingly share their time, expertise, and services with others. Many of these communities are larger and faster-growing than SL subscriptions.

In fact, I would argue that such "altruism" probably does as much, if not more to define a community than monetary economies. Some of us find the "grey" market of sharing content and services that are difficult to sell for hard currency to be quite satisfying.

The cliche about capitalism and profit-making by sectarians on the left always involves Mr. Moneybags from the game of Monopoly with Depression-era graphics.

What most of the people trying to make a buck in Second Life are about is not Mr. Moneybags, but about just trying to pay for their game. Some have more ambitions; some have less; their buying and selling activity is primarily a form of sustenance so that they can maintain what is of most value to them, relationships and creativity.

Yet you cannot strip away those relationships and creativity and have them in some isolated altruistic and socialistic sphere where no money ever taints their hands. They wish to have an economy because *it's fun*.

The idea that capitalism is *fun* for most people buying and selling in SL escapes the dour socialist sectarians.

[KirkJobSluder]

52.

Prokofy: The cliche about capitalism and profit-making by sectarians on the left always involves Mr. Moneybags from the game of Monopoly with Depression-era graphics.

Which is the bigger myth in this discussion, Mr. Moneybags, or the socialist sectarian?

What is not a myth is that computer-mediated communities that don't have economies dwarf SL and WoW in participation and growth. Obviously, something other than the prospect of subsistence cottage industries is drawing people to communities supported primarily by user fees and advertising.

What most of the people trying to make a buck in Second Life are about is not Mr. Moneybags, but about just trying to pay for their game. Some have more ambitions; some have less; their buying and selling activity is primarily a form of sustenance so that they can maintain what is of most value to them, relationships and creativity.

I don't know where you get the idea of "Mr. Moneybags" from what I've posted here. After all, I'm just another creative professional currently living from contract to contract. I pay for my DSL $25 a month out of my own pocket, just like the majority of peons out there on the Internet. I make creative works to satisfy a particular market and need. And I make creative works as a form of recreational activity to share with a small audience.

Yet you cannot strip away those relationships and creativity and have them in some isolated altruistic and socialistic sphere where no money ever taints their hands. They wish to have an economy because *it's fun*.

Well, it seems that there is an element of a false dichotomy here. I'd estimate from my experience that most creative communities fall along the the 90-9-1 rule.

90% work on a strictly amateur basis sharing their work within supportive communities of amateurs.
9% sell their work or related services semi-professionally or part time.
1% make a living wage or better.

The 90% of amateurs are the "fans." We are the ones who do the word of mouth marketing, handhold novices into the community, provide alternative channels for technical support, and provide a supportive audience and feedback for amateur-level performance. We are also the ones who will spend our money on goods and services offered by semi-professional and professional practitioners.

The idea that capitalism is *fun* for most people buying and selling in SL escapes the dour socialist sectarians.

Well yes, I'm certain it is fun for those who do it. I don't know where I said or implied otherwise. I do the calculus of fun, effort, and profit in my head and conclude that selling some types of creative effort would be more trouble than it's worth. However, I'm more than willing to share them among a supportive audience of friends.

[KirkJobSluder]

53.

Prokofy: And as one last attempt at finding some common ground here. Would you agree or disagree with the observation that a healthy market for professional and semi-professional goods and services often depends on a rich community of amateurs who are willing to exchange goods and services on a voluntary basis?

[randolfe_]

54.

@Thomas

Persistence is -- or at least was -- an open issue of quite some discussion here on TN.

My point is that Dan dismissed Onder, be it his ideas or him, on the premise that it was somehow silly to suggest persistence as an important attribute of definition. Dan implied that persistence is obvious.

I could equally make a statement that Dan's dismissal of persistence (as a technology-psychology interface) as an open attribute of debate is itself silly, or that he is for waving it away with such callousness.

And why the rush to defend this OP anyway? We've all had a moment of anger, weakness, insobriety where we made an email/blog/etc. faux pas. When I've done so, and it was pointed out to me, I apologized and moved on. That takes far more strength than circling the wagons and insisting on righteousness. I made a, upon reflection, terrible judgment at the end of my first article on the SL economy. Instead of defending my words, which I very easily could have done with a lot of conviction and hard to defeat logic, I instead publicly strike-tagged it out, and apologized. It's more fun to do that and then watch the real cowards attack you for having the audacity to be humanly fallible.

[Thomas Malaby]

55.

@randolfe_: All I was trying to do was answer the issue you raised about whether there is a consensus view of what counts as persistence with the one I work from. It was offered in the same gracious spirit with which I recall you concluded our first exchange on that other thread. Please don't assume that I was making any statement about the original post (which indeed seems to be the product of a VERY bad day), nor disagreeing with your suggestion that a working definition of persistence is an open issue.

[Prokofy Neva]

56.

>Prokofy: And as one last attempt at finding some common ground here. Would you agree or disagree with the observation that a healthy market for professional and semi-professional goods and services often depends on a rich community of amateurs who are willing to exchange goods and services on a voluntary basis?

It doesn't sound to me as if the sequencing is right in your premise. And...only in a game, Kirk. Because in RL, somebody's capital and labour is always back of the ability for people to have that leisure time to be altruistic. The wealth of the industrial giants of the 19th century persisted in stocks and businesses and foundations into the 20th century enable a vast non-profit world to emerge with universities, think-tanks, hospitals, associations...then new wealth was created in high technology and computer and Internet businesses...somebody is paying somewhere.

If a man can sit home at his computer and help newbs from 9 pm to midnight, it's because he doesn't have to do freelance work or work a night shift or take care of kids or elderly parents, he has a job that pays him enough to give him leisure time to be altruistic. So his boss who owns his company, that evil capitalist, is making it possible for him to be altruistic.

I still don't understand why you are trying to paint me as some absurd slash-and-burn capitalist. I often find that merely speaking up for the permissiveness of a liberal market that is not hog-tied to some shrill socialist dogma is enough to be categorized as some exploitative capitalist "neo-liberal" imperialist or slumlord. I am constantly being called by such types on forums "a slumlord" even though among my rentals are 6 newbies communities which are subsidized out of...altruism! And they are loss leaders!

Of course liberal free-market societies have *civil society* in them and civil society is made up of all kinds of volunteer groups, altrutistic helping groups, charities, churches, synagogues, etc. That rich texture of civil society is what you imply is needed first, for the business and commerce then to hang from; but...I feel it's the reverse, that without the economy, you couldn't have the leisure and philanthropic funds generated.

But is it really so important to determine which hangs from what? The point is, the OP dissed Onder for making a simple comment: that cash transactions are needed! Buying and selling. Is that so horrible???? Do an honest survey of WoW players; think about how it has grown, and try to imagine it without game gold, auctions, leveling up to buy stuff that helps level up further, and the rich pleasure of selling a maxed-out 70-level account. This is all part of a vast culture. Why undermine it by insistence that there must be first do-gooders who do everything altruistically before anything else can take place?

Did you ever see a single game in the universe, or world, or social software, that didn't have a *venture capitalist* or six venture capitalists to get it going, or philanthropist?

Sure, these game gods exploit the altruism of geeks in their famous beta tests, where they get people to work for free. But..those game gods sure don't work for free!

[Prokofy Neva]

57.

>Which is the bigger myth in this discussion, Mr. Moneybags, or the socialist sectarian?

The socialist sectarian, by all means. I'm truly astounded how much warmed-over Marxist drivel there is bleeding into so much of the "ludology" and serious games movement, even though all of the people in it rely on the capitalists who funded their universities or corporations or game companies. It's truly a marvel to see.

>What is not a myth is that computer-mediated communities that don't have economies dwarf SL and WoW in participation and growth. Obviously, something other than the prospect of subsistence cottage industries is drawing people to communities supported primarily by user fees and advertising.

I think you're playing fast and loose here with taking social software or "communities" -- which is a very loosely-defined thing -- that spring up around this or that interest or activity or following on the Internet and *worlds* and *games* and *platforms*. Further down there is a discussion about what a world *is* -- the feeling of starting in kindergarten, a sense of place, a set of things to learn, etc. Just because I'm on the mailing list for Urban Outfitters or am registered to post Clickable Culture or something doesn't mean we are in worlds together. We're just on flat Internet pages with some exchange of information or views. Yet underlying this exchange for free, for fun, for altruism is somebody's hard work and somebody's capital somewhere.

Here's a great article to read about the essential idiocy underlying YouTube:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/13998.asp

Whose going to pay to keep it going? How to keep it afloat? How to monetarize it? How to advertise on it? These are such conundrums, and they seem so fascinating and sophisticated as conundrums, but I always come back to the famous (for me) example of the photo collection site known as Zing. I loved Zing. Free photo storage for life! Once they got over their shock at having 4,000 screen shots from stories on the Sims offline Family Albums, they resigned themselves to never selling a single developed photo to gamerz with poor-quality screenshots that might not even make good t-shirts (back in the 90s). Then...they couldn't make good on their promise and went bankrupt and closed. There weren't enough people to pay to print photos or t-shirts and too many people putting up thousands of screenshots and ignoring the ads. That's how socialism works. It sucks off other people's labour and capital for a time, perhaps even has a good run, then it collapses.

>I don't know where you get the idea of "Mr. Moneybags" from what I've posted here. After all, I'm just another creative professional currently living from contract to contract. I pay for my DSL $25 a month out of my own pocket, just like the majority of peons out there on the Internet. I make creative works to satisfy a particular market and need. And I make creative works as a form of recreational activity to share with a small audience.

It sounds to me like you still hold the dream of somewhere, somehow, a more perfect world being able to be created out of creativity and altruism. But the reality is, you can only live from contract to contract -- which are paid for by capitalists, even if you don't want to be one.

>Well, it seems that there is an element of a false dichotomy here. I'd estimate from my experience that most creative communities fall along the the 90-9-1 rule.

>90% work on a strictly amateur basis sharing their work within supportive communities of amateurs.
9% sell their work or related services semi-professionally or part time.
1% make a living wage or better.

That sounds about like the same percentage that everybody talks about in games that 10 percent of the people make the content for the other 90. But what makes it possible for the 9 to always be replenished and to face competition and to have *customers* is the 90 percent. You couldn't artificially isolate that 9 or 10 percent. This incredibly skewed line of 1-9-90 of course is a *game*. It's synthetic. In real life, you can have one percent of the people farming to feed 99, or 10 percent of the people making up the intellectual and media products for the 90, but the 90 are also busy doing tons of other services and manufacturing and sales to each other, they are not hobbyists at leisure.

And that's why the statistics and discussions around SL are so misleading, because what drives people to noodle around with their amateur stuff as I see often is that they aspire to becoming better. And they may sell a house design here, a t-shirt there, a used bed over there, and feel, well, I'm getting somewhere.

>The 90% of amateurs are the "fans." We are the ones who do the word of mouth marketing, handhold novices into the community, provide alternative channels for technical support, and provide a supportive audience and feedback for amateur-level performance.

I think in games, yes, that is likely the case. It was with TSO and is in WoW. However, SL is not as much like that. There are many, many more people in a far longer tail.

And who says this is *the right way*? See, this is what I question about this 90 percent fans activity, and have heavily questioned ever since I came to SL. Because:

o Many of the people holding themselves up to be altruistic Friendz 2 Noobz are in fact merely prim divas hustling those noobz to their stores, slinging them freebies in the welcome area to entice them into their commerce circles. They give them a free shirt, but then charge them $200 Lindens for the pants to go with.

o Many people literally got paid for being rated positively from grateful people helped by those altruistic ones, and literally got higher stipends -- which were of course gamed and finally the system removed. But it tainted the entire thing to be clearly about a game of leveling up and collecting points to enable you to sell your products or enhance your reputation better.

o People made stuff, but then put it on no-mod, no-copy, or worse, put it on transfer but then screeched like stuck pigs every time someone took that freely transferrable item and resold it. The issue of selling freebies that people in fact deliberately did not protect from re-sale and distribution even though they could have (they wanted everybody distributing and displaying their stuff for free as loss leaders) is one of the greatest bones of contention in SL.

o People who spent a lot of time "making things for the community" like, say, an elaborated scripted gizmo that did X, Y, and Z services that everybody couldn't live without were merely leveling up to become Lindens. They beavered away, working 10 hours inworld and chatting on the IRC channel and then one day, they were beckoned into Lindenor further up and further in and they took the last name Linden and disappeared into the Lab -- while still getting to keep their mains, now alts, which continued their lucrative businesses or reputation-enhancement activities.

So you see, Second Life has given us a petri dish to test all those wonderfully altruistic, socialist, utopian ideals about altruism and how things get built. And I've been able to follow just how fake it all is -- the mentors are merely grabbing the newbie flow to get stuff sold out of their store; the scripters in sandboxes are merely trying to get noticed by game devs to get a job in the game itself or somebody's game; most people have a hustle going on somewhere.

I remember once I met this guy when I was very new who had a store with dance animations that were complicated to set up. He patiently spent loads of time with me and even gave me replacements of stuff I messed up. He was selling his stuff for a pretty penny but also willing to help sometimes for hours. He seemed to be devoted to building and scripting for its own sake. So I was surprised when later I saw his name on this or that real estate parcel clearly being just flipped for the money -- a thing the forums regs of his beta generation would screech about as harming the economy. And even being as jaded as I've been forced to become as I see how all this fake altruism stuff plays out, I still did a double take when I saw his name as one of the main metaversal development company employees. So now he's long since left his newbie helping, his little inworld business and his land flipping and makes top REAL dollars from big corporations.

I could say a LOT more about all the non-profit do-gooders, seminar-holders, academics, programmers doing altruism who are now hustling for those metaversal big bucks -- but this is already enough of a flame.

All I can say is: point to me a game that lasts like that -- I just don't see it. It sounds like an idyllic picture out of touch with human nature. Games start like that then cheat hacksters hawk the game gold on ebay or whatever and the fun is vacuumed out of it.

>We are also the ones who will spend our money on goods and services offered by semi-professional and professional practitioners.

But that's just my point. See, again, you are viewing the pro-capitalist position as some "evil moneybags exploiter". But it merely means a world, as Onder simply stated it, with cash transactions like real life. With selling and buying. Buying is where the people who SPEND come in that keep it afloat. Trust me, there are still tiny sects in SL ranting about how nobody will do things for free anymore and it's all commercialized and how awful it all is. Some of them still rant about this completely schizophrenically in between their gigs with big corporations LOL. Watching the scene here is like Russia c. 1992 when all those dissidents who used to work on voluntary civic groups began to be picked off to work at the World Bank, Citicorp, CBS, etc. and began to drive around in BMWs soon enough. Very similar phenomenon.

>Well yes, I'm certain it is fun for those who do it. I don't know where I said or implied otherwise.

But you just said that you and others SHOP. and BUY. That IS the fun thing I'm talking about. A lot of the people selling stuff in SL have no real market niche. They just sell to their 100 friends, who also sell back to them. The fashion industry especially is run with those little and big concentric circles.

>I do the calculus of fun, effort, and profit in my head and conclude that selling some types of creative effort would be more trouble than it's worth. However, I'm more than willing to share them among a supportive audience of friends.

You never said which game or world you are doing this. If it is SL, well, you are like a relatively small class of people made up of the early adopters, the beta-testers and then various RL professional coders and artists who came along later for the interest of it. They like to think of themselves as "the community". They aren't. There are many more kinds of people there. If you mean another game, then all the more so; they are games.

[KirkJobSluder]

58.

Prokofy: It doesn't sound to me as if the sequencing is right in your premise. And...only in a game, Kirk. Because in RL, somebody's capital and labour is always back of the ability for people to have that leisure time to be altruistic. The wealth of the industrial giants of the 19th century persisted in stocks and businesses and foundations into the 20th century enable a vast non-profit world to emerge with universities, think-tanks, hospitals, associations...then new wealth was created in high technology and computer and Internet businesses...somebody is paying somewhere.

Actually, I was thinking about such RL activities such as music, chess, and sports. Just as an example, the structure of participation the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers (I'm not a member, but I've sold graphics work to a chapter) usually consists of 10-20 amateur musicians, one part-time director (associated with a Church) and a handful of full-time conductors and composers. Or the participation of chess clubs, you have millions of people who play, thousands who play at a level to win $100 at a tournament and do part-time tutoring, and a few hundred full-time professionals. Sports work the same way. Millions who participate in amateur leagues, thousands who coach part time, and a small percent of full-time athletes and coaches.

People who engage in these communities pay for them through fundraising labor or user fees. And for most of these people, their participation will cost a lot more cash than what they take home.

If a man can sit home at his computer and help newbs from 9 pm to midnight, it's because he doesn't have to do freelance work or work a night shift or take care of kids or elderly parents, he has a job that pays him enough to give him leisure time to be altruistic. So his boss who owns his company, that evil capitalist, is making it possible for him to be altruistic.

I thought we were talking about opportunities for financial gain within a specific setting (such as SL) rather than in terms of global economics. I mean, Duh! Of course people who are homeless and have no cash have problems participating in online spaces. Online spaces also would not have existed without GE and AT&T at the turn of the century, or the mini-ice age that kicked off the renaissance. It's turtles all the way down.

My point is, as much as you have previously dismissed asynchronous CMC, conversations about cats, and emo angst, there certainly seems to be quite a bit of it being produced by people who don't get any direct economic benefit. Therefore, I'm not convinced that economic exchange is the key driver behind sociability. Which is, I think what we are ultimately talking about here, social worlds as opposed to commerce sites.

I still don't understand why you are trying to paint me as some absurd slash-and-burn capitalist. I often find that merely speaking up for the permissiveness of a liberal market that is not hog-tied to some shrill socialist dogma is enough to be categorized as some exploitative capitalist "neo-liberal" imperialist or slumlord.

I can't paint you as anything because your position seems to change from hour to hour. You initially made a rather dogmatic claim that everyone was looking for the opportunity to "cash out." This certainly seems to be taking a slash-and-burn capitalist position. When challenged on this, you then make this appeal to "balance." When I see this and offer up a view of what this balance really looks like and why I see amateur exchanges as important parts how communities work, you take a right turn and say that amateurs have support from outside of specific communities.

So I'm baffled because you've switched positions so many times that I think you are taking a piss. I'm also getting a bit tired of patting your head, rubbing your tummy, and saying, "But dear, the rhetorical slash-and-burn capitalist is just as much a myth in this discussion as the shill socialist." Especially since I seem to get called a shrill socialist anyway regardless of whether I call you a slash-and-burn capitalist.

Perhaps instead, I should just paint you teal, and call you a goose. Then you can take honest offense, I can give an honest apology, and we can get on to more productive discussion.

I am constantly being called by such types on forums "a slumlord" even though among my rentals are 6 newbies communities which are subsidized out of...altruism! And they are loss leaders!

Please don't take your personal problems out on this discussion. If you want to take a piss about being called a slum lord, the restroom is that way.

The point is, the OP dissed Onder for making a simple comment: that cash transactions are needed! Buying and selling. Is that so horrible????

I didn't think it was so horrible, which is why I gave some polite reasons for disagreement, that were well received by Onder. I think that trying to "judge" social worlds by looking at features of the system rather than features of the culture is missing the point. I decide which online communities I contribute to based on the quality of social contacts I make in the first few weeks.

Did you ever see a single game in the universe, or world, or social software, that didn't have a *venture capitalist* or six venture capitalists to get it going, or philanthropist?

I had a great game of kick the can with my wife earlier today.

[KirkJobSluder]

59.

Prokofy: I think you're playing fast and loose here with taking social software or "communities" -- which is a very loosely-defined thing -- that spring up around this or that interest or activity or following on the Internet and *worlds* and *games* and *platforms*.

Well, yes. I don't see that the educational 3D communities I've participated in are qualitatively different in social dynamics in web-based, mud-based, or chat-based communities. So when we are talking about human motivation and sociability, I don't think it's wise to exclude spaces like Livejournal or MySpace because they don't satisfy some arbitrary standard of "worldness".

It sounds to me like you still hold the dream of somewhere...

It's hard to have a conversation with people doing such extremes of projection. Mr. Neva, I don't know how to get this through your thick skull, but you are not my shrink, and you are not my friend, and I'm not your neo-Marxist shrill socialist strawman that you can freely abuse in this discussion.

In real life, you can have one percent of the people farming to feed 99, or 10 percent of the people making up the intellectual and media products for the 90, but the 90 are also busy doing tons of other services and manufacturing and sales to each other, they are not hobbyists at leisure.

Well, duh! Again, here you are mixing scopes. Of course my amateur contributions to my small circle of amateur game fiction writers is subsidized by my "day jobs." Of course my ability to sit down in a cafe and play a pick-up game of chess is subsidized by my "day jobs." Of course my ability to play kick the can is subsidized by my "day jobs." Which is why I make the distinction between "work" and "recreation" as part of my life.

But at the end of the day, when I pop up livejournal, go to a chess club, or play kick the can, the thought of my personally making a profit on those activities is entirely not on the radar.

So you see, Second Life has given us a petri dish to test all those wonderfully altruistic, socialist, utopian ideals about altruism and how things get built. And I've been able to follow just how fake it all is -- the mentors are merely grabbing the newbie flow to get stuff sold out of their store; the scripters in sandboxes are merely trying to get noticed by game devs to get a job in the game itself or somebody's game; most people have a hustle going on somewhere.

I've been in plenty of examples of amateur groups in which most people didn't have a hustle. Perhaps Second Life has become a petri dish grown stank for the reasons you describe. But there is no reason to assume that all amateur or non-profit groups must work the same way.

All I can say is: point to me a game that lasts like that -- I just don't see it. It sounds like an idyllic picture out of touch with human nature. Games start like that then cheat hacksters hawk the game gold on ebay or whatever and the fun is vacuumed out of it.

Perhaps part of the problem is looking at "games" in which there are some rather obvious extrinsic rewards for fake altruism rather than "communities." That said, I will agree that altruism is overrated, which is why I try to avoid using it. I certainly get irritated if I post a story to my writing group and no one comments, or if I offer someone help and don't get thanked.

But that's just my point. See, again, you are viewing the pro-capitalist position as some "evil moneybags exploiter".

Again, Mr. Neva, I'm not your neo-Marxist socialist straw man. Quit treating me as such.

And this I think is the last straw for me. I gladly extend the same courtesy and professionalism to other professionals and semi-professionals that I request for my own work. I try to cultivate wonderful relationships with programmers, artists, teachers, and writers, and I donate money in "tip jars" when available for items offered gratis. I have offered my services to the support of projects that have produced free software that I use. I have nothing but respect for people who make a living off their creative work, and refuse to use work that I've not properly purchased or obtained permission.

I don't fucking care who pissed in your cheerios today or last week. I'm not that person. I am a person who tries to make a living off my creative output, and for you to repeatedly accuse me of regarding my peers with deliberate disrespect is deeply offensive, and totally unwarranted.

Trust me, there are still tiny sects in SL ranting about how nobody will do things for free anymore and it's all commercialized and how awful it all is.

If you have objections to those people, could you take that conversation up with them.

[Andy Havens]

60.

@KirkJobSluder: Yes.

I think Prok would be horrified to know that I'm seeing his argument as essentially the bizarro-world flip-side of Randolfe's recent anti-SL "Ponzi/Pyramid" arguments. The idea that a VW must be an "entire" world, whether economic or otherwise seems, to me, absurd.

I could bet on the outcome of your kick-the-can game with your wife, Kirk, eh? At which point, that game has an economic feature. Your neighbors and I could begin, if you two played every night, to start a betting pool, and to put the results up on a blog. Over time, perhaps, we could allow people to bet-forward and invest in "Kirk And Spouse Kick-the-Can Betting Futures." Damn it, Kirk! Buy the new Nike high-tops! My kid needs to go to an Ivy League school! But no matter how much we tried, that game wouldn't ever be "an economy," it would simply have "economic features."

Same holds true for SL. As long as I can't (as I've said before, repeatedly) actually eat a cheese sandwich in SL, it's never going to be a world. It's a Second Class Life, as well as a Second Life. I'm not saying that to ding the experience; I enjoy the thing for what it is. Same holds true for just about any media, entertainment system, social group, etc. In the words of my mom, "You have to go outside sometime."

It has always been tricky trying to define chicken-and-egg for these things, and it's getting trickier, because we've got more chickens and more eggs. I agree with Prok that there needs to be, at the bottom of the stack of turtles, economic, captitalist value. But I also see that a system that provides for opportunities and platforms for horizontal, social opportunities will often allow for greater growth in all verticals.

My term for this is "trickle up economics." Another way of saying "a rising tide lifts all boats." To put it even more plainly, we didn't have millionaires in the world until we had lots of people in the middle-class, and we didn't have billionaires until we had lots of upper-class folks. Wealth begets wealth. Hording money doesn't make money. And so systems -- like socialism -- that encourage the systematic spreading of some of the benefits of wealth -- like education, healthcare, police protection, transportation, etc. -- will, over time, provide the tools for more people to get wealthier, generating more wealth that will, eventually, make more people even more concentratedly wealthy. IE, if you want to get really, really rich... make other people kinda rich. If you want to get mega-rich, help everyone else get richer.

SL is interesting in that it has a number of different mechanisms for attracting revenue for the owners; subscription, land fees and (one suspects), eventually licensing agreements. What is tricky (chicken and egg) is that all of those require an audience. Part of that audience wants to play an economic game as buyers, some as sellers. Some of those sellers (as Prok says) want to sell enough to pay for their game... at whatever level that means. Because I might want to sell enough to buy clothes, bling, hair, etc. Say... US$30/month. But a friend of mind might have an island and a clan and a bunch of hangers-on and his nut might run to US$400/month. So... my hobby-time income requirements might run to a couple hours a week, whereas his might run to a couple a day. And for somebody else (let's say in a non-US country), $US400/month is a decent wage...

And if somebody else comes in and says, "Hey... You know what? You're doing this for love, right? You're just trying to make back your land rental and cost of good clothes, skins, animations etc. for your crew? Well... if you'll agree to be part of my advertising collective and always have at least one XYZ item on all your clan's person... I'll pay your nut."

At which point... is it an "economic" game from the point of view of that clan-lord? If someone, as you say, Prok, is playing only enough to pay their costs... is that an economic requirement of a VW or game? Or is it simply a "nice to have?" I pay for all kinds of social and other media and don't wonder, "Gee... how could I exchange work in this sphere and end up jake with the system." I've never approached the maitre d' in a restaurant and asked to wash dishes, or an usher in a theater and said, "Hey... if I pick JuJu Bears off the carpet, can I see '300' for free?"

I think the economic features of SL are, indeed, significant and important. I think they're fun. I think the attract players that wouldn't otherwise have gotten into the environment. I think they're cool. But the final questions end up being these two:

1. For Linden, would a system in which a straight-up payment/subscription system replaced a "live" economic system make more net profit for the company?

2. For players, would such a system be more attractive?

And those two questions are, of course, linked.

If, for example, there are more people playing SL who are simply buying/selling in order to cover their costs, and who are spending an inordinate amount of time that they feel is "grinding" to do so (ie, too much time doing "non fun" stuff in order to pay for the "fun stuff,") then they might be happier with a system that allowed for less expensive, straight-up purchase... and no "real," in-game economics. IE, a completely "social" in-game system, whereby once you pay to get in, everything is peaceable-kingdom, free-like-speech free.

I'm not saying I think that's the way it is in SL... But I'm not saying it ain't, either. Currently, the most popular and profitable MMO in the universe is WoW, which, while NOT a VW (IMHO), has one price per entry, provides all in-game materials for free (from an in-game economics standpoint) after that, and disallows, by rule, economic features other than your monthly payment. Yes, yes. RMT. But that's part of the same world that Kirk brings up; day job, etc. It's me betting on his game of kick-the-can with his wife. It may be "of" the MMO, but it's not "IN" the MMO.

So... you could certainly, I think, have a successful VW that didn't require the kind of object/script/texture specific economics that SL does. Yes, it needs macro-economic foundations. Of course it does. It needs somebody, somewhere to pay for the servers, code, connections, employees, etc. But it doesn't have to be in 1/4-cent increments for every prim, does it?

I can imagine a VW where I pay my $20/month and I get a piece of land to build on that's X-sized. Big. Island sized, let's say. Because server space is only getting cheaper. I can build and prim and script and texture using in-world tools as much as I want. I can build a disco or a classroom or whatever I want. And when I have attracted enough people to my space or island or whatever... bloop! it expands to the next size. No increase in price. Just a bonus for doing popular, exciting stuff. You want the 2X island? Fine. You need to have, on average, Y-number of people on your land during a month. Go get 'em, tiger.

If you just want to play in the sandbox and practice primming and have a few friends over and cyber and be left alone... fine. Have a good time.

And if you want to make money... You *can* do that, but it's all extra-worldly. IE, you can do the RMT thing however you want. Because in my thought-experiment world, my publishers aren't getting into that. Why? Because we believe that, A) the Feds/IRS are going to eventually come down like a bag of hammers on that crap. B) More people want to play than to earn. C) In-game economics leads to behaviors that are inimical to long-term $20/month subscriptions. D) We have far more examples of businesses that make money without internal credit systems.

So, yeah. You can make money on Andy's World. Sure. We just don't want a cut. You can charge somebody $50/hour to build their house to order. Pay 'em on PayPal. That's super. You can auction your island on eBay. Knock yourself out. You own your account, and we're fine with that. Local laws apply. We don't want a cut. Lather, rinse, repeat. What do we want to do? Build the finest platform for presenting rich, user-centric multimedia and social interaction available. We don't want to get into the currency exchange biz or the arbitrage biz or the real estate biz. Why? Because doing one thing very well is very hard. Doing five things, and those things especially, very well is nigh on impossible. One of them will trip you up, and bad.

So. I would argue that, eventually, we will have a highly social, highly successful VW where once you pay your initial entrance fee -- maybe a one-time fee, maybe a subscription fee -- everything else, in world, will be free.

Yes, there must be an economic basis for the success of a VW. But it doesn't need to be internal to the world. Blizzard doesn't get paid in gold. And, frankly, Linden Labs doesn't get paid in Lindens, either. I'd also be interested to see, at this point, how much more money has been made "of" Second Life than "in" it; ie, the salaries of reporters who write SL stories, graphic artists and designers who do out-of-world work on SL web sites, marketers who pimp SL stuff on the Web but not in game, etc. etc.

Is SL "cash positive" in-world? I have no idea. I don't think it matters. I've said before... it's a game with economic features. It doesn't have to be economically robust at all levels. Not all players have to make a living at it, not all companies who go there have to make a profit, it doesn't even have to be profitable from in-game economic activity. As long as the aggregate has a basis, and it's fun, we're fine.

But if the in-game economics makes it less fun, or subtracts substantially from the aggregate profitability (or legality)... well, the turtles fall down.

[KirkJobSluder]

61.

Andy: I agree with Prok that there needs to be, at the bottom of the stack of turtles, economic, captitalist value.

Well, yes. I think what is at the bottom of that stack of turtles can vary depending on which system the online community is hosted on. SL uses a complex economics, (and this is probably the point at which I should have given Prok the wolfsbane by saying "the SL economy is a good and wonderful thing".) Cell Phone companies use per-message fees. Web-based social networking sites use a combination of advertising and user fees. And we seem to both agree that amateur communities are supported by "day job" cash.

My stake in this debate is on claims about motivation for participation. That is Prokofy seems to insist (again because he's changed his position from post to post, it's hard to summarize) that "cash out" opportunities are the primary driving force behind a desire to participate. My best grasp of his opinion is that everyone has business plan, and those that don't are either new, or "shrill socialists."

If someone, as you say, Prok, is playing only enough to pay their costs... is that an economic requirement of a VW or game? Or is it simply a "nice to have?" I pay for all kinds of social and other media and don't wonder, "Gee... how could I exchange work in this sphere and end up jake with the system." I've never approached the maitre d' in a restaurant and asked to wash dishes, or an usher in a theater and said, "Hey... if I pick JuJu Bears off the carpet, can I see '300' for free?"

Bingo!

I think that if you look beyond "social (virtual) worlds" at "social spaces" there are plenty of examples which suggest that this kind of cash-out value is a "nice to have" rather than a requirement.

And Prokofy's claim that everyone has an angle makes me reluctant to participate in SL because, well, I have a day job and just want a place where I can hang out, put my virtual feet up and communicate with other people who share similar interests, and I'm willing to pay a few dozen dollars a month for that ability.

[Andy Havens]

62.

@Kirk: Indeed, again.

And if we look at the numbers for SL -- which is what I did when I disagreed with the "SL is a Ponzi scheme" argument -- we see that very, very few people are making any money. It's a feature, yes... but is it an important one? Lots of people are spending money... but are they doing it in enough dribs-and-drabs to make the economic features of the space an aggregate "good thing?" I don't know.

As I said... I like the economic features of SL. I think they're interesting and cool. But I would also love to see a competitor that removed them from the picture and said, as I imagined above, "Here is a world about sharing, play, interaction and content. Money is OK, but please take it outside."

[robusticus]

63.

I think for people who want to play an economic game, cash transactions in and out are an important feature. Not so much because people are looking to make a buck, fun be damned, but more so because it is a benchmark of economic accuracy.

And yes, there is a huge and growing number of people who would rather their high fantasy RPG games like WoW downplay the economic aspects. Get rid of it all, even. Why? Because getting $.038 for each mouseclick does not represent economic activity; it represents a house of cards. It will always boil down to an arms race no operator can win. Inversely proportinate to the popularity of the world. The more money you make, the more people you will attract who want to get a piece of it.

Which rings more true as an idealized archetype: some nameless third world gold shop, Anshe Chung, the Last Pride or Fata1ity?

Interesting, Andy, that you turn kick-the-can into a tournament complete with gambling, because IMO that is a valid, and relatively undeveloped economic input for VWs.

Not disputing the fact that people DO want monopoly money, just disputing the validity of the concept. It can not be ONLY monopoly money; therefore, the industry must work to make it real and as broadly accessible as possible.

[randolfe_]

64.

@Thomas,

Thanks for the clarification, and I apologize for reading too much into your original reply.

[randolfe_]

65.

And if we look at the numbers for SL -- which is what I did when I disagreed with the "SL is a Ponzi scheme" argument -- we see that very, very few people are making any money. It's a feature, yes... but is it an important one? Lots of people are spending money... but are they doing it in enough dribs-and-drabs to make the economic features of the space an aggregate "good thing?" I don't know

a) The virtual economics and markets are a central feature of SL, not an auxiliary attribute.

b) Whether participants are profitable are not is entirely irrelevant. Nine of ten start ups fail too, a much higher percentage of games start ups. That they aren't "making money" does not mean they are not participating in the for profit economy.

c) A very large and growing portion of the SL population is endeavoring to earn profits. This is a direct effect of the primary mode in which the game's makers and promoters market it in the media. When Rosedale repeats "play the game, pay your rent" in the hype machine, he is implying a profit opportunity to participants.

And incidentally, there were plenty of "millionaires" before the rise of the middle class -- in fact even more starkly so when considering relative purchasing power parity.

When will Mr. Havens recognize that I have repeatedly and exhaustively defined the scope of my criticism to "The Economy of Second Life", not to "Everything Second Life is, could be, or should be". Second Life could represent some fundamental shift in the very cornerstone of humanity, for all I know. I'm not a cornerstone of humanity expert. I do know how to do economic and financial analysis. On those subjects, and a couple others, I'm willing to discuss and debate. Whether a non-economic Second Life would be better than bubble gum, I don't know and frankly, I am far less interested in even knowing the answer. Regardless, the answer to that question reveals nothing about my original criticisms.

[Rich Bryant]

66.

Could someone please post a cogently argued piece positing the Second Life is inherently communist and witten for the technologically adept?

I'd just like to know that somewhere, Prokofy Neva's head is exploding.

[ErikC]

67.

Sorry Onder, I see now you are only looking at economic alternatives to SL per se, not "social [virtual] worlds".

@Thomas, part of the confusion I think, is that earlier technologists talked of data persistence rather than interaction cause and effect persistence.
-I guess a world is persistent if it remains, if it keeps a record/physical trace of what people did, but also if these actions keep accumulating (ie internal cause and affect internally dynamic, not just that created by human player intentions), if that is your point, I like it, I just think there should hopefully be technical names for these different forms of persistence. I'd add an optional 'cultural intelligibility,' people can infer actions and mental states of people and inworld communities by looking at how they have inhabited and re-artefacted the virtual world.
To others:
Interesting that some people think a vw must have rw significance in terms of money, what about financial persistance? (your inworld money working for you even when you are not there). Are there three major camps here? VWs don't need an economy, VWS need an internal economy, VWs need an internal economy that has RW significance/implications?
No one plays A tale in the dessert?

[randolfe_]

68.

Persistence, as it were, is an overloaded term which has similar but differing meanings in different contexts. In computer science it roughly refers to the ability for data and/or execution state to survive independent instances of execution. Object and post-object paradigms modify this notion with encapsulation, but the principles are still the same regarding state.

In philosophy it's an open debate about how material objects exist, whether as whole things within instances of time or things spread through time. I think this crosses into physics, with all kinds of quantum survivability of matter stuff. And there's some postmodernist stuff that baffles me -- something like nothing is persistent and everything is some grand narrative story written through our biases.

It's no wonder that adding the term to massively online games and worlds is just that much more confusing.

[Thomas Malaby]

69.

Very interesting stuff to think about ErikC and randolfe_. I'll have to ruminate a bit on these possibilities. To be sure, we would do well to try to sort out the relationships and differences between how persistence has material, cultural, and social dimensions. It's illuminating to hear that it has these technical connotations in some quarters.

I also wanted to flag a tendency I've noticed in this discussion, which is a common one, but in my view it is a big obstacle to our understanding of what people do in virtual worlds and why they do it. This is the tendency to see market exchange (and the interests that drive it) as somehow separate (or separable) from the other things people do. We should think of the economies of virtual worlds, always, *in the broad sense*, including not only market exchange but also reciprocity (which generates social capital), and learning and authorization (which generate cultural capital). Of course the market, made up of isolated and precise transactions (for the most part) is amenable to all kinds of specialized analysis, but for the actors involved, it is never really separate. They are pursuing their (broader) interests, and market capital is just one kind of capital in which they might be interested.

[Amarilla]

70.

Onder's criteria are "...tremendously bluring the lines ..." between arse and brain , between common sense and propaganda , between " working to " and " working for " . A interesting three ; small, tho ....

Thomas my dear, but ofcourse Onder knew the difference between " values " and money ! Between market and exchanges.Between interracting and socialising.Afterall,many of us are professionals ( not me, not me ! ).

[ErikC]

71.

well I don't see a criterion that persuades me to enter a virtual world to buy and sell independently of say 3D objects available via daz studio or turbo squid--I see placed objects but nothing contributes to a significantly meaningful worldful shopping experience.

[Andy Havens]

72.

Randolfe said: "When will Mr. Havens recognize that I have repeatedly and exhaustively defined the scope of my criticism to "The Economy of Second Life", not to "Everything Second Life is, could be, or should be".

Mr. Havens does recognize this. Mr. Havens has repeatedly tried to explain his opinion that (oh, I can't do that... never mind...)...

As I've said now repeatedly... I don't think SL has "an" economy, or "is" an economy in and of itself. It has economic features. Like a grocery store or a shopping mall or a club or a casino or, on a much more complex level, a game of kick-the-can. You can't expect to make perfect economic comparisons between any of those things, because in the big "Venn Diagram" of "Economy," the largest circle is, at this point in history, pretty much the whole dang world. When I can trade currencies themselves, and currency *futures* for the love of Hamilton... there is no closed, micro (or even super-micro) system that itself can be said to mirror the whole on an accurate level. Is there, for example, a "US Economy" separate from the "World Economy?" There are aspects, yes. We can compare how bits and pieces measure up with other countries, but since the US is not a closed system, and since we trade with other countries exhaustively, both in terms of real goods, economic markers, currency itself, ideas and even people... there is no "US economy" where you can say, "I'm going to do *this thing* here in the US, and completely ignore what's happening in the EU or Japan or China." Other countries with smaller (or different) economies (or economic features... cue ominous music) will have *different* comparative analyses applied to them, as appropriate. And yes, economists are great at sifting through mountains of incredibly complex data and saying, "This criteria matters more *here* because the results can be applied at this time, and this place more significantly." That's the whole point of economics, eh? To see how and why prices differ in different places. If the world were all one, big, simple, linear homogeneous market... we wouldn't need economists. Everybody would know, "You pay X for Y and that's that." The complexities are interesting. Yes. Difficult. Sure. And knowing them well allows good "money people" to leverage the understanding of different economic frictions into value for themselves and clients. I get that.

What the argument boils down to, I guess, is three things;

1. How *much* of an economy does SL have (or, as I'd put it, how significant are its economic features)?

2. Do the economic features allow users to do what they want on the platform?

3. Are the economic features an aggregate good/bad for the overall health of the service?

4. And, specifically per Onder's claim, would it be possible to replicate some major portion of SL's current value for a major portion of their current/future users without any explicit player-to-player economic features.

On the one hand, Randolfe seems to think that the answer to #1 is (or should be), that SL has "an actual economy." That it approaches in scope and features the economic possibilities and depth those of, let's say, a small country. I assume this, because he repeatedly exposes it to economic tools and analyses and expectations that are commonly reserved for full-fledged, nation-state economies. Not tools that we would use to, say, evaluate the performance of a quasi-game that has some (I would argue, few) economic features. On the other hand, we have Onder, who says that the economic features of the game (whatever their scope) are necessary to the success of SL or any competitor.

I happen to disagree with both those positions, as they aren't, currently, either borne up by any evidence that I've seen, or by inherent logic based on what I've experienced in my career of observing media, marketing and social spaces.

Let me repeat again again... I like SL. I think its economic features are fun, interesting and provide a fine spice to the space. I think that they have also tweaked the press into more stories than are really deserved; in this, I agree (I think) with Randolph; the "make money in SL" story is overhyped. Not because Linden is trying to scam people into some kind of pyramid, ponzi or whatever scheme. But because it is, currently, what we in advertising call a "USP," or "Unique Selling Proposition." There aren't many other game-y type spaces where you have *any* explicit, real-world economic features. Yes, you can make a ton of cash doing RMT in WoW... but that's not "part" of the game. You leave the circle, make yer bread, and don't even ever have to go back in. That doesn't appeal to a lot of people who want, as Kirk and I have been saying, to have some "fun with their fun."

I would agree with Onder that persistence is a required feature in a VW that would compete with SL. You want to know that what you do is "sticky." That some (all?) of your efforts don't blow away when you log out. I would also agree that user created content is a requirement. I'd probably put those two things at the top of my list for any VW that wants to be in serious contention; I gotta be able to make stuff, and it's gotta be around when I come back.

The incredible prepoderance of people doing non-economic or micro-economic or buyer-only stuff in SL, to me, point to those features as being nice... but not necessarily a requirement of success in the space. I point out, again, the difference between an activity serving as a "feature" vs. a "function." eBay is a social media that serves an economic function; it must have economic features that support that function or it might as well be a MySpace clone. Its social features also support those economic functions.

I would argue that the primary roles of any VW are to facilitate creation and communication. Why? Because those are the roots of behavior in RL. And the Internet, especially in social spaces right now. More people are creating more stuff for non-economic reasons than ever before. If your model *RELIES* on economic functions (rather than some features) as its foundation, you better be sure that people are there primarily to make money; like they are on eBay.

I don't believe that people are coming to SL primarily to make money. See percentages of money-makers vs. not. Thus, economy = feature, not function. Thus, not a ponzi/pyramid/fraud, whatever. Thus, I believe, you could have a version of SL where the primary functions and motivators (creation, socialization, communication, persistance) are funded yes... but not through player-to-player, on-platform economic transactions. Where all land, for example, is free. Where all creations are completely copy-able. Where once you pay to get in, the rules of "who gets to do what" have nothing to do with economics, and are based on something else entirely; reputation, fame, points, tenure, votes... all kinds of "game-y" mechanics, rather than the "world-y" mechanic of money.

So, yes, Randolphe... I am, in fact, only focused on the economy of SL at the moment. But as it is, in my opinion, just a feature of a game/platform, and not the be-all-end-all of the experience for 99% of the players... it has to, for me, be evaluated as one part of the user experience, rather than "that which is wrong, and has failed, and so must be cast out."

You want to look only at the "economy" of SL. I think that's, frankly, a bit odd, when you compare the amount of time and effort the majority of people spend on non-economic efforts in the game. If 99% of the time spent playing golf involves hitting the ball, and 1% of the time involves adjusting your sun-visor... well, you can focus on the sun-visor adjustment factor, and how it's clear that Player A always tweaks his cap just before putting, and Player B always pinches the bill just before hitting out of the sand... but it ends up looking, to me, like you're overanalyzing a tiny portion of the game without looking at the context. Which is what I've been saying all along. Not that your analysis is necessarily wrong... but that applying a macro-economic analysis to a *game-feature* that is used by such a tiny percentage of the players isn't even appropriate.

[KirkJobSluder]

73.

Ohh, thanks to Thomas Malby for hitting the word I've been searching for.

Social systems almost always involve some form of reciprocity. I don't think it's safe to say that reciprocity based on a currency exchange is a primary motivator for many people, or is a requirement of all online social systems.

[livvie]

74.

Prokofy Neva word-saladed (having forgotten to take her Seroquel for the past few months):

blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice blah blah blah i love the sound of my own voice

ad infinitum.

go take care of your kids prok.

[JuJutsu]

75.

"a *free and open and interesting discussion* UNLIKE WHAT TERRA NOVA HAS BECOME, hobbled by raving asstards and beligerent orthodox nigglers.

Can't we just ban children who make posts like this here?"

Please. Once a post has been PROKed it degenerates very quickly.

[Timothy Burke]

76.

One angle to come at the question raised by the original post (let's leave the trollage by the wayside) is the rhetorical character of prescriptive arguments about virtual worlds.

We all recognize a variety of strongly vested, intensely felt "camps" that want virtual worlds to preferentially become one thing or another. For all of us with a prescriptive view of VWs, it's hard to simply leave the prescription to the marketplace or to the hidden deliberations of developers.

So I think sometimes we try to repackage our prescriptions in other rhetorical guises. In this case, as a definition or set of fundamental attributes that a VW must have. I am interested in Onder's list as a set of arguments about what VWs should be; it doesn't seem to me that they can be specified as a list of attributes that they must have.

[Bruce Baugh]

77.

I think that the simple dichotomy of profit-seeking versus altruism really fails to match reality, and that a very simple extension makes it much more useful. In addition to profit, most people seek some mix of all three of these:

1. Altruism: Doing good for others because you believe it's good to do, and you're not concerned with any reward but your hope that it will be godo when it's done.

2. Individual credit: Doing things because you hope that others will see and know that you did. This is a major factor in open-source programming, of course, and in lots of other fields. Crudely, it's seeking fame rather than cash.

3. Shared achievement: Doing things because you hope that your work will join with others to make an overall whole that's good and admirable. We do this when we propagandize for our various causes - Onder demonstrates it in his efforts to make Second Life-style concerns as he visualizes them more widely accepted, so that those concerns will get more chances to succeed thanks to his work plus everyone else's, including all those people he'll never know and vice versa. Cathedral-building draws heavily on this impulse. In practice, a lot of projects combine this and the pursuit of individual credit.

It's worth noting for anyone who isn't irretrievably committed to a hyper-capitalistic cliched view of these that both 2 and 3 can be very highly competitive, and often are. Me against you for the best widget to do X. My team against yours to complete a Thing first, or best, or most thoroughly incorporating some list of features. Within my team and among the members of yours for recognition and boosting of the "we've got These People" sort. Attention and respect are in finite supply; of course peopel compete for them.

A good virtual world, I figure, has ways to put all those to work.

[Bruce Baugh]

78.

A side note: I'll bet some folks don't know Samuel Delany's excellent comparison of definition and description, and it might be useful here.

According to Delany (a novelist, poet, and literary critic), you can approach the question of "What's this genre?" two ways. To define a genre, you try to draw its boundaries as precisely as possible, so that if it has X it's in, while if it has Y it must be out, and you spend a lot of time on fringe cases of various sorts, including genre hybrids and crossovers and such. Your attention goes to the margin. In description, on the other hand, you try to start at the center. What will as many fans (and as many non-fans) as possible point at and say "That's in"? When people try to sum up the heart of the thing and cite the works that most thoroughly embody its spirit, what ones do they cite, and what do those have in common?

Delany doesn't altogether dismiss definition, but he thinks that description is on the whole both more interesting and more productive. I agree.

[Thomas Malaby]

79.

/applauds Delany's pragmatism. :-)

[Amarilla]

80.

Bruce ,often fame brings cash. @ altruism : doing good is rewarding by itself , because the more good is done, the better is for me too. I'm waiting to see a VW where players does not compete each against the others ( individuals or guilds or whatever ). I'm waiting to see a VW where the devs, the gods , are role playing : a VW where the players have nothing to compete each others against for , but rather to compete to themselves in order to compete the system, the GMs, the gods , the devs. I'm not a native english speaker and i apologize, i dont know how to explain my view . I'm awared that a VW where is nothing to compete for ( items, skills, respect, money , fame and so on ) is a boring one , but i'd just love to see a VW where the goal to be " against " the Company itself ; ofcourse, in this case the Company should be " roleplaying ", not necessarily only by " prims ", " alts ", " avatars ", but by the designed " rewards/punish " systems and all, too. But in this situation , i guess the Company should have a very " competitive " AI entities , and many employees doing just this : roleplaying the game . It would be interresting to hunt a Linden guy/gal and to loot his/her ammo :) And i'll be willing to some RMT too, in order to increase my firepower :) Well. For this, i'm afraid the Company have to earn player's trust first.....

[Andy Havens]

81.

@Bruce: Nice.

I'd also add "Joy," and "Learning" as motives. There are things many of us do simply because they are either fun (which we discuss here a bit), or (on a higher? plane) give us great pleasure. And we do many other things, even though they may *cost* us money, pleasure, time... if we have a chance to learn.

Current MMOs of the WoW variety don't teach us much, do they? I mean, besides how to play them better. That's not a dig... If what you get out of them is fun, it's fun, that's great.

But one of the things I've always said about SL, is that if you "level" at it... going in as a noob and really playing for a few months or a year... spending the same amount of time that you would on something like WoW... you can come out, instead of a 60th level Thief... a 2nd or 3rd level texture artist. Or a 4th level 3D object designer. Or a 5th level scripter. Or a 2nd level marketer. What you learn in SL does *not* necessarily stay in SL. Those are *real* craft skills, in some cases, even if the platform shuts down tomorrow and your "virtual assets" go poof.

So... a VW based entirely on learning? Why not? The idea of Wikipedia was absurd a few years ago... Pay your monthly fee into the Virtual School game and get X credits of learning fees with the in-game tutors. Anybody with a rank higher than yours is qualified to give you quests. Finish enough quests, and you go up a level in that skill, and you can train lower-level players and assign quests. Higher level quests could be given by the publishers and assigned monetary value based on sponsored deals with partners (ie, "We need a set of VW learning tools to teach marine biology to 4th graders"). The apprentice, journeyman, master system overlaid on a virtual "College in the Air." No player-to-player economics besides "I either teach you or learn from you or work with you on building new learning objects as part of learning from this other guy."

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of VWs that have something besides economy at their center. Again... not that I think SL does ;-)

[Amarilla]

82.

@Andy,great post of your, i totally agree your ideeas. I really like them. Btw, Wiki was absurd as an ideea and is absurd as an accomplished ideea.So please, dont give your excellent ideeas to LL , they gonna make a sort of Wiki from them :) Back on topic : i think there are no VWs at all, yet.We call them VWs , the same as we call the " web2 " , just fancy names.There is no 3D on my screen, but only 2D. Make it holo, then there is a chance; until then, are just MMORPGs and e-Bays . The Wiki thingie remainds me of a joke : once, a dude asked Stalin about how he sees the ideea of spreading the culture among masses; Stalin said : " ....well, you see this glass of Vodka ? If i drink it, i'm not thursty anymore; the same even if we both share this same glass; now, imagine that i spill it over the table and i call the masses to drink it; also imagine that many of them, the masses , wants wine , others wants beer....1 glass of each those drinks and bingo ! we have the culture and we spread it to masses;but dont expect any of the individuals there to feel satisfied ". Somehow the same is with the VWs today; you add a little " economy ", a bit of RMT, some traces of " user created content ", and then you scratch your head wondering : " wtf, i gave them all these , even Teamspeak and Ventrilo, i've told them a lot of BS about ownership and rights and they still keep going to WoW :( ". I give you a tip , one of the things that makes WoW so successful is : mostely when starting and ending its " game session " the player wants to know what is /was the deal about , the player wants to know what he/she paid for. The fun he/she had in game is not enough , the player wants to feel secure about its ID, privacy, and likes more a subscriptions system ; the player wants to have a clear business when he/she enter the Theatre, even - or more because - as a performer.Wants a fair play.
1. " Cash transactions...." is none of Company's business , as long as i've paid my monthly subscription.Allow the trades between players, of anything , including the accounts.
2. " Users must ...." users must nothing. When somebody creates anything , he/she wants to retain full ownership and freedom to decide on its creation ; make the " valuables " and the " creations " in game to be the ideeas, the reputation,the sense of community, the players' spiritual values .
3.I dont give a fat rat's arse on the wallpaper of a virtual room wich i dont own anyway ,nor on " skills " that you nerf and change all the times;nor on a fake economy ; and that's the problem : you the devs are offering the wrong Illusion .

I dont want another similar world, be it even virtual. I want a virtual world where , before i enter and after i get out , to feel safe and secure with my real life. But a world in wich , while i'm there, to have fun . At this momment, playing the " economy " in such genre of games is not funny, but it's stressful.And extremely risky if you take it seriously. I do know what sort of game could become a Virtual World for me , a World where i'd like to go each day , for wich i'm willing to pay the devs' and admins' work : it's a world where i pay the ticket to enter it as a performer of a game ; today i wanna play the terrorist in the Virtual Sadr City; tomorrow i wanna be Rockefeller on Virtual Wallstreet; Monday i wanna hold a conference and Thursday i wanna learn Nihon Cuisine ;but Sunday i wanna see Prok's tits ,because there is an Island where this sort of peoples use to freely meet;i wanna be free to do all and any of these , as a game ; and if i need more skills or ammunition or a larger conference room , i wanna be free to buy it outside the game , from another player, or/and to earn all these from the game, doing what pleases me more : PvP, or quests , or answering questions to NPCs.

C'mon devs, make me such a game and i'll call it " My Virtual World, much better than my real one ".

[Bruce Baugh]

83.

Andy, those are indeed great additions. I was thinking mostly in terms of the real marketplaces where concerns besides profit play economically significant roles, but that's not the only sort of interaction we should be considering anyway. Thanks!

I love the idea of a learning-focused virtual world. It could be adventurous, too, with challenges that hinge on knowing more.

[Andy Havens]

84.

@Bruce: Right... "When you are *smart* enough to snatch this pebble from my hand..."

[Allen Sligar]

85.

@Andy

Young Padawan, one day you will realize there is no pebble :)

[Vietnam travel]

86.

Good morning, everybody. I'm a Vietnamese. Do you toured whatever times? If not already please come with our country to discover Vietnam travel agencies, Vietnam tour operators and Vietnam holidays.

[Bruce Baugh]

87.

Andy: Inevitably I'm reminded of the Mad magazine parody, in which young Caine smacks the guy senseless and takes the pebble while he's dazed.

Learning of a sort!

[Dr. Cat]

88.

I think taking an angle of "is this really the right group of questions to ask" contains a tacit assumption of "There is only One Correct Way to come up with a set of questions to analyze virtual worlds".

I would claim, on the contrary, that there are many interesting and valid questions, evaluation criteria, and groups of same that are worth asking and discussing. Whether your perspective is academic, commercial, that of a gamer looking for something to play, otherwise, or some combination. I could imagine a set of "Three questions for golf enthusiasts looking for an alternative to Second Tee-off", which would be perfectly worthwhile for some people to ask and discuss - even though very uninteresting to other people.

[galiel]

89.

I would only note that discussions of this type among MMO developers and students of the field tend to focus on quantifiable, tangible, measurable criteria, whereas, I would argue, most people are attracted to and sustain attention to entertainment because of the quality of the experience.

Things like "joy and learning", as Andy said, may be hard to squeeze into a database table or Powerpoint investors presentation, but ultimately it is these "mushy" qualities that translate into subs retained and net revenue.

Folks, it's time to stop trying to find the magic CS algorithm for successful MMOs. Focus on the quality of the experience, not the database-friendly score-keeping. Make people happy, and they will come.

Isn't that how you would like to be treated? Are you exclusively motivated and jazzed by the size of your bank account, the weight of your armor and the heft of your fucking sword? Why do we design worlds for players less human than ourselves, reducing all human experience to numbers in a chart?

MMOs greatest asset is their human populations, yet all too often developers seem to yearn for a game full of AI-driven NPCs.