Screenshot from "Transformation" a video accompanying Rita J. King's forthcoming art installation to be published by Proboscis Art Studio in London, England.If you have ever wondered about the significance, meaning and experience of virtual worlds, you must read these two new essays:
- "Where virtual worlds once ruled, FarmVille dominates," a CNET article by Dan Terdiman, and
- "Are Virtual Worlds Over?" by Raph Koster on his blog.
Terdiman has been writing about the virtual worlds industry for longer than almost anyone else. I first met Dan when I launched the "Public Diplomacy through Virtual Worlds" worldwide game design competition in 2004. Relevant to Dan's article, the winner of that competition was a stand alone game called "Peacemaker" but the second through fourth place awards were all for games built within the virtual world of Second Life -- back when Second Life had less than 100,000 registered users.
Terdiman uses the wildly popular Facebook game, Farmville, as a launchpad to explore the direction virtual worlds seemed be headed in 2005 and where they are today. He traces what he sees as a declining arc of innovation in virtual worlds toward things like Farmville: "The rub of it, for folks like me, is that kids and tweens don't need 3D environments to get their social needs met. Rather, they need a platform that makes it simple and easy to get together with their friends, play simple games, and have fun. And the same seems to be true of the mainstream adult audience."
He ends the article with a call for the virtual worlds industry to get back to innovating.
Raph Koster's essay is a lengthy dissection of the core elements and expectations of virtual worlds, games, social media and the current beliefs within the industry as to how virtual worlds should be made. Raph ends at a somewhat depressing prediction that virtual worlds, as we know them, "For those of us who dream of a place we can’t possibly be, doing things we couldn’t do, as someone else, with friends… well, we’re a little bit out of luck."
For those who don't know him, Raph Koster is a game designer, the CEO of Metaplace (a virtual world that recently closed), and more importantly to my formative virtual world experience, the former Creative Director for Star Wars Galaxies, a massively multiplayer online game made by Sony Online Entertainment that had peak growth and usage from 2003-2006. (I've written about the influence of Star Wars Galaxies on our work here.)
Raph's post, despite its dark prediction, which I disagree with, gives an excellent description of the pyschology of creating multiplayer environments.
I think the mass-commodification of virtual worlds had to simplify toward lowest common denominator experiences like Farmville. It's like tabloid magazines versus newspapers. Tabloid magazines are thriving in an era in which we are decrying the death of newspapers. Or its like wondering why more people eat at McDonald's despite the constant media reminder about the health-risks of eating too much high-cholesterol foods.
I'm most interested in the value of these spaces for cultural relations: Providing meaningful opportunities for shared experiences despite geographic location. I do not think that virtual worlds are fading nor that their innovation will disappear amidst the backdrop of Farmville. Farmville was to be expected. It means that virtual worlds as a meta concept have matured. The multi-billion dollar worldwide fashion industry exists on creativity, not on decrying the natural appearance of derivative works in which concepts are diluted and sold to mass audiences with low creative expectations and needs.
Virtual worlds, I believe, exist and thrive on the foundations of creativity.
Rita J. King described it like this in her essay, Art, Reality and Cultural Diplomacy: "As far as the practice of cultural diplomacy goes, we finally have a platform that equalizes all participants by making creativity and innovation the highest aim, and that’s a good thing. That isn’t to say that some people don’t use Second Life for less than progressive purposes, but so do people in the physical world and that doesn’t stop diplomats from practicing. Race, age, gender, ethnicity and extreme physical beauty or disability all cease to matter. Second Life is whatever users make of it."
I also agree with what Richard Bartle said in the comments section of Raph's blog:"... People have always sought to visit imaginary worlds, whether transported through books, music, theatre, dance, ... and they always will ... it’s as if we invented the novel and now people have taken that idea and developed newsletters, textbooks and magazines. Same technology, content that is similar in some ways but different in others, but only a challenge to novels because they compete for the reader’s time."
2 comments:
It seems to me that as virtual worlds shift from early adopters to a mass audience, it makes sense that the way they are generally used will shift from cutting edge cultural, social and artistic experimentation to the "lowest common denominator" that we see in all other forms of mass communication.
That said, I suspect that in the long term, the common experience of being an avatar in virtual worlds will eventually create some shifts in human psychology and culture.
Agreed!
That said, I don't think that the spread of mass-marketed, simple kids virtual worlds naturally leads to the conclusion that the adult versions of those kids will, in turn, only want the fast food of virtual worlds.
Just as some people hunger for the in-depth story of a novel and others consume tabloids does not mean that novels are on the wane.
Post a Comment