Week 12 – Online Worlds

Katie Freund
Email: fanthropology@gmail.com
Twitter: katiedigc
Scribd: nushana
Blog: Fanthropology
Definition
• Castronova 2005: Synthetic world: “An
expansive, world-like, large-group environment
made by humans, for humans, and which is
maintained, recorded, and rendered by a
computer.”
• Boellstorff 2008: “A place of human culture
realized by a computer program through the
Internet”
History
• Predecessors:
▫ Role-playing games
like Dungeons and
Dragons
▫ Self-contained
virtual worlds like
Sim City (1993)
History
• 1978:
▫ MUD – first online,
multi-user environment
• 1986:
▫ Habitat – first graphical
chat world
History
• 1990:
▫ LambdaMOO
 Text-based
Still online today
Emphasis on
imagination
Infamous:
“A Rape in Cyberspace” essay
Community reactions
History
• 1996:
▫ First visually immersive
synthetic world released,
Meridian 59
• 1997:
▫ Ultima Online
 200,000 subscribers
History
• 1998:
▫ Lineage
 First online world
to hit 1 million
subscribers.
History
• 1999
▫ EverQuest
 77th richest
country in the
world
Higher GNP
per capita than
China and India
 History
• 2000
▫ The Sims
 100 million copies sold by
2008
Expanded audience of
gamers – 60% of players
female
Online version not very
successful
History
• 2004:
▫ World of Warcraft
10 million
subscribers
Holds 62% of
the entire MMOG
market
Second Life
• Released in 2003
• 15 million registered
users as of Sept. 2008
• 88,000 concurrent users
on April 2009
• Average user age is 33
• Heaviest users age 45+
• Largest virtual economy:
$500m USD per year
▫ Source: Linden Labs
Second Life
• 1,700 virtual square kms = larger than metropolitan London
• 18,000 servers in the United States
Why Look at Second Life?
• Largest and most significant virtual world
• Focus on user-generated content
▫ “Your World, Your Imagination.”
▫ More than 100 million user-created objects
▫ Intellectual property rights retained by user
• Extensively used by media, marketers,
educators, governments, and businesses
• Diverse global population
Methods of Communication
• Text
▫ Public chat
▫ IM
• Voice
▫ Public
▫ Private
• Visual
▫ Appearance
▫ Proxemics & body language
Strategies for Communication
• Text vs. Voice

• Public vs. Private

• Friend structures

• Group structures
Methods of Communication
• Profile
▫ Creating your own identity
▫ Avatar versus user
• Search
• Meta-texts
▫ News services
▫ Avatar blogs
▫ Commentary
▫ Fashion
▫ Machinima
Language
• Slang and jargon
▫ BRB, AFK
▫ “I love to fly because it’s NPIRL.”
▫ “There’s so much lag in this sim because of all the
prims that nothing will rez properly.”

• Speech styles

• Cross-cultural and global

“The Earth is very nice, but there are experiences we can
imagine in our minds that we cannot have here.”
– Edward Castronova (2005, p. 25)
Exploration
Exploration
Education
Interactive Learning
Education
Virtual Lectures
Business
Business
Media and Entertainment
Health and Medicine
Architecture
History
Socialization
Fashion
• Thriving fashion and
appearance customisation
industry
• Everything made by Residents
• Popular designers extremely
profitable

• Check out fashion blogs:

▫ Shopping Cart Disco
▫ Vain Inc.

• Image:
http://shoppingcartdisco.com/?p=5238
Subcultures
• SL extremely diverse
• Home to many subcultures
such as Furries, medieval,
fantasy, and WWII roleplay
• Cyberpunk & steampunk

• Sexual subcultures: ranging

from burlesque to Goreans to
BDSM
Virtual Intimacy
• Hyper-personal connections

• Long-term friendships
• Romantic relationships
▫ Partners
▫ Weddings
▫ Sex
▫ Moving into RL
▫ Media scandals
 BBC Article
Watch documentary
Read SLers response
Criticisms
Identity
Readings
• Meadows, Mark Stephen. I, Avatar: The Culture
and Consequences of Having a Second Life.
▫ Personal and subjective account of SL
▫ Connection to avatar: isolation, addiction
▫ Bending traditional values: age-play

▫ Is virtual socialisation as “valuable” as RL

socialisation?
▫ Is “age-play” wrong if both participants are over 18
in RL?
Readings
• Boellstorff, Tom. “Place and Time”, from Coming of Age in Second Life,
2008.
▫ Actual world versus “real” world
▫ Tries to complicate the understandings of place, time, presence, and
immersion
▫ Virtual but authentic places
▫ Lag and synchronicity – the flexibility of time
▫ “afk” and virtual presence
▫ Voice and the border between virtual and actual
Blog Assignment
• Choose one of the following and reflect on your blog:
1. Respond to one of the issues brought up by Meadows
(addiction, socialisation, or age-play/pedophilia, etc.)
How does the virtual world effect how we think about
these issues? (See slide.)
2. In your SL profile, you have 500 to describe yourself.
Think about what you might write here. What kind of
person will you be in SL? How is it different or similar to
your RL self? How did you choose your avatar’s name?
What, if anything, will you put in the “First Life” tab?
Group Work Task
• Get into groups of 4 and do one of the two tasks below:
1. Task One: Choose a company (either one that already
exists, or create your own). Your boss wants to expand the
product or services of your company into a virtual world.
Think about some of the different possible uses of SL, and
how you might use SL to help your company. What sort of
virtual world tie-in would you create?
2. Task Two: You are a virtual world entrepreneur, and you
want to create a business in Second Life. What sort of
service would you provide? What purpose would it serve?
(Social service, building specific item.) Who is your
demographic?
Resources
• http://delicious.com/nushana
▫ Tags: digc101, secondlife
▫ Slurl = Second Life URL. Will take you directly to
a location in Second Life.
• “Search” function within SL