The Soul of a New Regime: Thomas Malaby’s Making Virtual Worlds
June 20th, 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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