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Archive for June, 2009

Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life, by our own Thomas Malaby, has its official release today, and the timing couldn't be better. I'm writing from the midst of State of Play VI — "The Conference on the Serious Study of Virtual Worlds" — where Thomas's book will be feted this evening and where the mood, in general, is that of a not entirely unwelcome intellectual hangover. The hype surrounding Second Life (and the broader phenomenon of virtual worlds for which it's been so fallible a proxy) has come and, finally, gone, and there's a sense that only now can we begin to dig beneath the shiny, first-pass questions that provoked the hype and get a deeper handle on what we've been talking about. It's a challenging, exciting project, and if the thoughtful, game-changing ethnography Thomas has produced is any indication, it's off to a promising start.

That's not to say that plenty of vital ethnographic work on virtual worlds hasn't already preceded Making Virtual World. But the critical move this book makes is to 

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Yesterday at State of Play, Bart Simon made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion: that journals like Games and Culture adopt a five-year ban on articles that focus on Second Life and World of Warcraft.

He wasn't seriously arguing that this should happen but it is a pretty useful way to poke researchers about the degree to which these two places have become defaults for study as well as for play or social interaction in virtual worlds.

So as a reminder, if you're doing research, justify a focus on them. Here's a list of legitimate reasons that I thought of right away.

1.     

Because
they constitute most other virtual worlds, maybe on a metropole-periphery model, even. E.g. that World of Warcraft now determines what most other game-like worlds will be, and Second Life will shape any primarily social world in the future, in all likelihood. (I can see the very strong influence of many Second Life institutions on Metaplace, for example.) So you study them because they're determinant, and because in many other worlds, you'll just studying them from a distance.

On the other hand, there are a whole host of casual games, kids' worlds and so on which aren't determined by these two poles.

2.     

Because
any virtual world is just as good as any other for studying certain problems or questions. E.g., throw a dart at the dartboard, and if it lands on WoW, and what you're interested in happens there, why not?

3.     

Because the researcher is attracted to/interested in a given world, or have an investment of time
that allows him/her a good qualitative understanding of a given world. We don't tend to admit in some cases that we pick our fieldsites because of a prior affinity for that place or culture, or at least that doesn't express itself as a justification for that work in formal publication. But it's still a good reason: if you know a place, and more people know Second Life and WoW than other games, why not make use of that experiential knowledge?

4.     

Because
WoW or Second Life has a particular feature that is most distinctively realized
or expressed in them, or a sociology that is best vested there. If you're interested in the sociology of raiding, arguably WoW is now one of the best places to study that.

5.     

Because
there’s a literature, a canon, and it lets the researcher not have to explain everything
that I would have to explain about a more obscure game; or because there is a
community of colleagues who provide scaffolding/support. Obviously that's a kind of closed feedback loop which if you take it too seriously means that there is never any reason to study something which is not already heavily studied.

6.     

Because there are tools or affordances, some created by other researchers, which make the collection of data in these two worlds easier. I don't think that actually works as a justification for World of Warcraft, which is still a frustrating thing to study (or to demonstrate to classes).

Others? Still, the point is sound: there are other worlds that are studied, and some which should be studied vastly more than they are. (Yes, I know what you're all going to say next, EVE Online, and I agree. Maybe that's another post: why isn't EVE studied even more than it already is?)

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The regulation and governance of technology has tended to be based
around industry sectors such as film, radio, television etc., or on things such as the radio spectrum or personal data.

I propose that we change this on a global scale and frame regulation in terms of the relationship between Functions and rights.

The Problem
Any practical taxonomy (including the one that I propose) has gaps. In the world of ‘old’ media this was not too much of a problem as media were relatively separate and static. Radio was Radio, TV was TV.

In the world of Convergent media (to use Jenkins’s term) this type of notion becomes problematic. Not only do particular technologies and notions of media change rapidly, they also blend, overlap and re-mediate each other. What’s more taken at face value even the notion of ‘media’ be it convergent or not may be inadequate to capture key features of the socio-technical practices that we see around us.

For example – ideas of virtual worlds as ‘places’ where speech may occur is a much more useful concept than ‘media’ for many purposes, though for other purposes is inappropriate.

We are thus left in a position where governance in its many forms has gaps, overlaps and contradictions. We also have initiatives that are likely to find that as their ink dries the intended objects of governance have evaporated.

The Solution
There is no simple solution to this. However what I believe will help as an approach to (at least some) regulation and governance bodies is – to see the universe of regulatatory objects in terms of Functions and collections of Functions, and not in terms of industries or applications.

What’s a ‘Function’?
Search, is a Function, as is User Registration, or Ranking. Each of these are processes that:

• occur in a number of application;
• have been relatively stable over time;
• are capable of being understood in within regulatory frameworks and boundaries.

Now this is already partially applied in various forms of regulation; e.g. the EU have specific laws on the treatment of personal data. However statute in this area tends only to be at a highly abstracted level. Here I propose to move up one level of abstraction from notions such as ‘personal data’ and ‘common carrier’ to ‘Function’.

Across and Down
Let’s look at this two ways.

First let’s take ‘Registration’. What I mean by this is the bundle of processes whereby a user registers with something. Here we have a mixture of best practice and pre-existing statute e.g. the Data Protection Act in the UK which regulates how certain data are stored and treated. Though we might want to include other things into the understanding of what might be governed as a Function e.g. display and consent to terms and conditions during the registration process – which might be subject to industry best practice.

When we look at things in these terms we can see that there can be quite a rich set of Functional sets that would be highly common across applications. So registration for Club Penguin is very much the same as for Flickr and Facebook and Maple Story or for the Huffington Post.

To take a second Function – Ranking. There has been a recent controversy over YouTube’s ranking system wherein ‘Most Viewed’ and ‘Most Favorited’ videos are in fact not Most Viewed etc., as certain content is demoted. This seems the kind of area that may companies might want to do.

I’m not going to get into whether this is correct or not, rather note that this seems exactly the kind of Function that all stakeholder might want to see a consistent approach to – even if that approach is clarity (exempting trade secrets) in how the system works. It would help me as a user to know what I’m looking at if I’m told something is the most popular room in Metaplace or most popular group in Facebook – and I don’t want one to fall under ‘virtual world regulation’ and another to fall under ‘SNS regulation’ excepting in those places where there is something conceptually exceptional.

Now if we look down the Functional stack and take, say, Flickr we can see that it might have a bundle of Functions that overlap in many places with Second Life – especially in the areas of user generated content / IP. Second Life and World of Warcraft may be common when it comes to in-world money (though there we have an interesting question of sub-division which is well worth debating – I suspect there is a large common set between all virtual currency systems from a regulatory point of view).

EULA Freebie
Readers will probably be ahead of me here also in noting that with such a system we can see how at a certain level we can also start to move towards a common system of EULA not just across virtual worlds (as has been discussed in a few places) but across all online applications that have EULAs.

More Functions
Below I’ve suggested a few more Functional areas that look like they may be suitable objects of governances. As you see this is list is nested. I think this is critically important as it allows people to agree one what is common and leave what is unique or contested at the appropriate level of details – hence, while we might not know a specific thing about a virtual currency in a game with a fictional setting, this does not mean that we don’t know a whole lot about how virtual currencies in general should be governed.

• Ranking
• Registration
• Search
• Virtual Currency
  • Closed economy (no RMT)
    • Fictive / game based
    • Non-fictive
  • One way exchange (currency buy systems)
  • Exchange based (fully exchangeable virtual currency)
• Provider based content provision
• User Generated Content
• Synchronous textual / symbolic communications
  • one-to-one
  • one-to-several
  • one-to-many

Governance
Almost lastly I should point that that I am not advocating a highly top down system of government regulation. I’m NOT suggesting more governance – in fact viewing the world this way may expose overlaps which would lead to less governance (should we live in a world were redundant statutes etc were ever taken off the books).

What I am suggesting is that we look at what the objects of governance might be in a more rational way for the internet age and then decide whether they need to be governed at all and if so who by.

We may determine that some things are simply down to user choice, other things may fall under standards created by industry or even cross-industry groups and / or by regulators and state actors.

The framework I propose is wholly neutral about the from of governance that may or may not apply to any Function, what the contents of that governance, if any, are and who the governing actors are – it’s and empty framework.

Rights
I made not of ‘Rights’ at the top of this post as I tend to think about these matters in terms of individual and group rights.

Let’s think globally for a moment – after all, that’s what the internet is, global. This proposal might help to set the scene for a slightly different tenor of internal debate.

There are various rights frameworks such as: those from the UN, EU Convention on Human Rights and the US Constitution. The Functional approach may open up an illumining debate about matters such as the various conceptions of free expression and Functions related to things like User Generated Content and Search.  A US / EU debate over raking systems as interpreted under Article 10 of the Convention on Human rights and the 1st amendment would be a fascinating thing.

Again, while not a panacea this is another way to approach the international debate over regulatory harmonization (or lack of) and the burden that this places on any business seeking to use the internet and any user seeking to use a system based on the internet.

Endnote
Lastly as with any sweeping suggestion like this I awaited someone to tell me that there is an entire library on the subject, or it’s been tried and failed or it’s exactly what’s going on already. I’ve not read anything that propose this form of governance but please supply reverences if it’s already out there it will simply add weight to the idea.

Oh, and the pun that this is both a system of Functions and a system that should actually Function is well intended

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I figured that it was time to share with my secret stash. I’ve been using Google Reader to tag interesting articles and publish them all to a single location. Occasionally, I’ve added snarky comments. You can find the entire treasure trove here:

What a glorious summer day,

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“Bacchus is a multiplayer dancing game with a religious theme. The selling point is its ability to evoke intense emotions.

Imagine if you will, a decrepit theater filled with writhing, dancing people. The lights flare and swoop in time and the people chant in unison. A massive screen shows a mirror image of the hall like some surrealistic portal into an alternate universe. Instead of blokes and lasses in street clothes, the on screen spirits are clad in ornate ritualistic garb. The movements on each side of screen are eerily synchronized. The pitch of the chant rises.

The screen zooms in on a girl in the center of the room. The crowd, as one, turns and watches her figure on the screen. She begins to dance. At first her movement is controlled and intricate. The screen pulsates and she yells to its beat. The room takes up her words and amplifies them, giving them god-like resonance. Bass mixed with reverb mixed with primal, guttural passion. Her dance becomes wild. The pace increases and she begins to confess.

The theater reacts. Each word she utters shimmers on screen, merging with ghostly photos from her past. In a beat, the entire room witnesses her sorrow over the death of her mother, her time alone in an empty apartment, and her first kiss. An inhumanly beautiful electronic chorus rises, matches and turns her words into a song. Her movements become a blur. Her glowing eyes are ecstatic. At the peak, her spirit on the large screen explodes in light and the girl collapses to the floor in fervent religious swoon.

The crowd goes wild. The screen zooms out and the next god dancer is chosen. 

Later, the girl writes to her online friends that the night she danced was the single most powerful spiritual and emotional experience in her entire life. It was the night she was touched by a higher power while playing a video game.”
(http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1992/constructing_artificial_emotions_.php)

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This August, Lee Sheldon and I are hosting VW², a one-week workshop on the possibilities and pitfalls of using virtual worlds for business and research. Our aim is to help professionals who are new to the field from wasting several years and heaven knows how many millions of dollars re-learning the same old lessons. Our focus is practical, not academic: Here's what you do, and here's what you DO NOT do.

In designing the program, we've been fortunate to have the input of an illustrious advisory board. Rich Vogel and Ron Meiners are coming to give keynote lectures. Participants will learn by developing applications specific to their own environment. This includes pitching ideas, writing design documents, setting up hiring plans, choosing tools, and building their own virtual environments. On exit, participants will have created a shovel-ready virtual world project for their home organization.

More information about the board and the workshop here.

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At the Digital Entrepreneurship conference, I remarked on the rising number of bankruptcies of virtual worlds or companies that develop them (most cleverly illustrated by Woody Hearns' bugzapper at gucomics, here, here, and here).  I'm interested in what we can learn about the bankruptcies of virtual worlds. 

What I wanted to ask the Terra Nova community is this: Is there anything special that we should think about or plan for when a virtual world goes under?

Questions include:

• Can virtual property be used as collateral for loans, such that secured lenders get first priority in bankruptcy? 
• If courts treat users as having merely non-exclusive licenses for software, can users enforce those licenses over the world creator's objection under Bankruptcy Code 365(n)?
• Can virtual worlds use 365(n) to retain rights under licenses governing user-generated content?
• Is there less, or more, of a problem valuing virtual assets than valuing intellectual property in bankruptcy more generally – on the one hand, we have grey-market economies to provide a value baseline.  On the other hand, the world only has value on its own terms: if the world is gone, its assets aren't worth much.
• Is there any reason to treat intangible assets like virtual property differently than, say, a bank account (given that both are more or less contract rights in an entry in an electronic database)?

I value your questions and ideas more than those I've posted above! What catches your fancy about the end of worlds?

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