Online and Offline
Virtual worlds and game worlds aren’t always the same thing – that is something we discussed with Dr. Richard Bartle when he was a guest on the show. I have heard definitions given that consider virtual worlds limited to online persistent worlds, but even online worlds aren’t “online” 24/7. There is little doubt that the more dynamic of the two are online virtual worlds – or synthetic worlds as author Edward Castronova (Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games) describes them. Here is a quote from an interview with the author:
“In virtual worlds—or synthetic worlds, “virtual” having lost much of its meaning—only the icons around which human interactions flow are nonreal. The interactions themselves are as real as any we have outside synthetic worlds. When six soldiers take out a machine-gun nest at Fort Bragg, the machine gun is real and the teamwork is real. When the same six soldiers take out a dragon in a synthetic world, the dragon is not real but the teamwork is. In synthetic worlds, the things we trade may be fantastic, but the process and value of the trade is real.” – Edward Castronova
Whether you call them a virtual world or a synthetic world, the common misconception is often that the interactions are as non-real as the pixilated world in which they take place. Perhaps the perceived (and erroneous) conception of the anonymity of the internet does something to people – like putting a normally demure person behind a mile long back up of cars on a hot August day, in a car without air conditioning (a catalyst for road rage if ever there was one).
Initially my concept of a virtual world was limited to movies like The Matrix and games with persistent worlds like World of Warcraft. Author Castronova takes the concept further:
Finally, I can see a forest of unruly and unstoppable little worlds that breed in peer-to-peer environments, hundreds if not thousands of alternative spaces, each one with a slightly different take on what “fantasy” means, all of them collectively creating a powerful condemnation of the social and economic and political and relational assumptions of the “real” world. – Edward Castronova
I will be the first to admit that I hadn’t considered chat rooms, and even blogs as a virtual world. Yet the term “blogosphere” seems to have grown out of it. I won’t even begin to debate the etymology of the word. But the fact that it is so apropos in describing a world within the world of Marshal McLuhan’s global village is what seems to stimulate the use of the term.
Most offline single player games I wouldn’t consider a virtual world at all – Not, at least, those games like the Half Life series which are really a story on rails. Let the player stray from the intended track just once (I did) and the game comes to an abrupt halt. Anytime a player has a choice of going forward or not at all, it seems to exclude it from definition of a virtual world. Sand box games like Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion may not be online, but they certainly resemble virtual worlds. But are they persistent? If you define a virtual world as those which continue to exist even after the user exits certainly those fit the description. However, unless purposefully programmed to do so, they do not simulate actions which would have occurred in real time once the game has been shut off.
Worlds within worlds
It is not the pixilated part of virtual worlds that I find fascinating but rather the persistence. Author Edward Castronova extends the definition of synthetic (virtual) worlds beyond the boundaries of common definitions. If we think of the books written by J.K. Rowling there is little doubt that she has created a fascinating world. Millions of people the world over (myself included) would give their eye teeth to spend some time in it. Yet, barring time spent at the new Harry Potter Theme Park in Orlando, Florida and watching Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows (due out this November) that isn’t possible. On the surface of it all it seems like it would be thrilling to be part of the process that brought the Harry Potter stories to life, yet the very act of “breaking the proscenium” seems like it would make the virtual world seem less “real”. I have come to think of it like watching a magic act. If you try and figure out how it was done, it becomes simply a trick – the sense of amazement gone out of the whole thing. In the end, if you don’t know how the trick was done – if Hogwarts persists only in your mind, it seems as if it would be a lot more “real” than if you saw the famed castle as the production of computer graphics set to film.
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather
(posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)