Virtual worlds

From Blindside

1 What is it
2 Impact & Maturity assessment
3 Information Assurance issues
4 Timescale
5 Examples
6 Comments (attributed)
7 Organisations
8 Documents & research papers
9 Experts (academic, practitioner)

[edit] What is it

Virtual worlds are persistent, multi-user environments created online. More recent examples include game worlds (often known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games, variously abbreviated to MMOGs, MMORGs, or MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and Everquest and non-game worlds such as There.com and Second Life (Linden Labs), which are the latest reinvention of virtual communities. All of these are graphical worlds; in Second Life, currently the most popular among consumer and businesses alike, residents are represented by graphical avatars they may design any way they like, and the platform incorporates not only graphics but sound and text. Users communicate by typing either privately (instant messages) or publicly; the system has recently begun to include voice. The oldest virtual world still operating is the MUD (for multi-user dungeon) co-written by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw at the University of Essex in 1979.

Almost all of the virtual worlds active today are privately owned. Therefore, they are governed by either an end user licence agreement (EULA) or terms of service agreements (TOS). Game-based virtual worlds tend to be highly controlled. Players typically cannot build their own extensions onto the world, and EULAs tend to include provisions that if players do create any content of their own inside the world the intellectual property rights in that content belong to the owner company. Sony's TOS for Everquest is an example: its intellectual property clause retains ownership of all game-related content and specifies the exact terms under which fansites may be created. There is a business reason for this control: game worlds make their money through player subscription fees.

The business model for non-game worlds is still unclear. Early in its development, Second Life charged players taxes based on the size of the buildings they constructed. Eventually, the residents rebelled by planting signs and tea crates throughout the world until Linden Labs changd its policy. Currently, residents pay Linden Labs for virtual land, beginning at $9.95 per month for a premium account, which includes a small allocation. Linden Labs also sells islands, which are intended for larger installations and begin at $1,675 to create and $295 per month rental. Linden Labs defines the property it makes available in this way in terms of the number of processors a user rents to maintain its existence. A number of large companies such as IBM and Cisco maintain one or more public and/or private islands in Second Life, and BBC Radio 1 recreated the 2006 One Big Weekend on an island. Other organisations experimenting with a presence in Second Life include Harvard Law School, Reuters, and Sky News. Some companies make back some of their costs by renting out portions of their islands.Other large companies such as Coca-Cola, Toyota, Mazda, and Reebok have put money into marketing in Second Life.

There is a long history of experimentation with virtual worlds, and today's examples, although technically more sophisticated, are grappling with the same problems as their forebears: how to control an economy, how to scale, issues of privacy, intellectual property, and abuse, and how to create a sustainable business model. Previous graphical worlds include: Habitat (Lucasfilm), The Palace (worlds based on The Palace's open-source server are still being used and created), Worlds Away (Fujitsu), and Ultima Online.

[edit] Impact & Maturity assessment

Impact: 3 and Maturity: 2 (varies according to the individual virtual world)

[edit] Information Assurance issues

Like the Internet before them, virtual worlds pose considerable legal and social challenges, and many of the same issues that have been raised throughout the history of online communication will be revisited as usage grows.

Since all of today's virtual worlds are privately owned, privacy is non-existent in them: all online activity by all users is logged. This is to some extent necessary to allow developers to debug the software and to settle disputes between users. However, as usage of these worlds for education, business, and social networking grows, privacy and control will become greater issues. In September, 2007, for example, Italian workers for IBM intend to hold a strike in Second Life; Harvard's Berkman Center has already held a class in Second Life and the US's MacArthur Foundation has allocated $50 million to study the educational potential of virtual worlds.

So far, legal issues surrounding virtual worlds have been concentrated in two areas: 1) intellectual property; 2) taxation. The best-known intellectual property dispute so far is a case brought by Marc Bragg against Linden Labs over virtual property the company had confiscated when it discovered that Bragg had been assuring himself of exceptionally low prices by exploiting a loophole he had discovered in the company's software. In May 2007 a Pennsylvania judge ruled Linden Lab's TOS illegal. The case may set a precedent for how the law views virtual property, and also may begin to force virtual worlds to create EULAs and TOSs that are more fair to users and less one-sided in favour of world owners.

In a second case considered potentially more important, World of Warcraft player Antonio Hernandez is suing the Hong Kong-based company IGE over the practice of "gold farming". IGE employs low-paid labourers to play through the lower levels of online games to gain status, property, or the game's currency that it can then sell for real money on eBay. The practice is against the TOS of almost every game world; Hernandez's complaint is that although farming violates WoW's TOS Blizzard Entertainment, the owner of WoW, the practice has continued to the detriment of the enjoyment of the game's paying players.

Intellectual property issues are also likely to surface in disputes over the usage of trademarks and designs within virtual worlds, particularly as businesses increase their involvement.

A Korean law came into effect at the beginning of July 2007 that makes property exceeding $100 a month won in MMORGs (which are hugely popular throughout Asia but especially in Korea) subject to tax, payable every six months. So far, Western countries have yet to follow suit, but it seems inevitable that income earned in from virtual world transactions will be taxed; the only question will be at what point.

In 1996, the former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow proposed that cyberspace should not be subject to national laws. Many members of today's virtual worlds have a similar feeling – but the fact that money can be made in and around these games makes them unlikely to escape.

The bigger question is whether non-game virtual worlds can scale. To survive as a business, Second Life needs to increase the numbers of individual and business users. Virtual communities – which may mean anything from a blog's long-term persistent readership to organised systems like the WELL and AOL – typically work best at a particular size. Too small, and there isn't sufficient critical mass to be worth logging in. Too big, and typically problems with abuse surface. Venture capitalist Susan Wu has argued that Second Life's business model is not sustainable. Certainly, network lag is the bane of online existence for all Second Lifers. The number of avatars any online space can accommodate is entirely dependent on the amount of computing power available, and the greater the complexity of the avatars (which may use scripts to create complex adornments), the more demands they make on computing power.

Virtual worlds also attract the same social questions as computer games in general. In a recent Korean case, a member of a losing team in an online game was so incensed that he ran to the Internet café where the winning team was playing and beat up one of that team's members.

An issue that virtual world members and scholars discuss but that has not yet reached the public at large is the question of interoperability. Today, no disaffected service member can pick up his character and virtual assets and transfer them to another service, just as no one can move their eBay reputation to Amazon.com.

Finally, there is the issue of energy consumption. This issue is largely ignored in all technological development, even though large companies like Google and Microsoft are increasingly forced to build their data centres as close as possible to power sources. Avatars may be virtual but they have real-world impact: it has been calculated that a Second Life avatar consumes approximately the same amount of electricity per day as the average Brazilian and consquently emits as much carbon per year as driving an SUV 2,300 miles.

[edit] Timescale

The earliest virtual worlds go back to 1979 (or even earlier, depending who you talk to). Today's virtual worlds, while they are considerably more successful in terms of both business interest and the mass market, especially in Asia, are some way from a mature technology. The impact of this technology is already being felt and will continue to grow over the next 20 years as the necessary computing power becomes available and the generation that is growing up with these worlds matures.