Part of me wants to do a paper on labour/society in MMO games. I want to understand how people in different MMO's/Virtual worlds/Physical Life see their labour differently. How does the structure of game or workplace, (And different kinds of games or workplaces) affect how people view (and practice) their labour. However I think that might be too simple.
It might be more interesting to examine what sort of social relations different virtual worlds set up. I'm fascinated by how WOW wants to keep out the real world economy and have it's own closed protectionist economy where everyone has a "fun" job, a job that they do because they like playing the game.
I think this sort of social examination would be more interesting than the big keyboard. I was thinking about the second life residency, and honestly I don't know what I'd do with it, but if I had a better idea about how society in Second Life functions, and how I think it should function then I might know what to do with the residency. If second life is a world it needs a government. What kind of government? What kind of strategy would lead to the formation of a government that could negotiate with Linden Labs.
http://secondslog.blogspot.com/2005/11/lets-have-party.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/
http://www.dragonscoveherald.com/blog/index.php?p=942
http://slla.blogspot.com/
work vs fun in MMORPGS
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/Yee_labor_of_fun.pdf
By the way this seems like a pretty good site for MMO research.
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/arch_cat.php
Comments (1)
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I have this theory that the bulk of people in Second Life and playing WoW are academics. They're positively salivating over the chance to secretly study people in controlled environments. Like looking at mice in cages. But the joke is they're all looking at each other! I've also been thinking of MMOs as a kind of existential hell - "l'enfer c'est les autres" (Sartre).
Isn't all just the spread of capitalism and it's dynamics into digital space? We are all free in cyberspace but some of us are freer than others. And quite frankly, why should we give a rat's arse when much of the world lives off of garbage? We'll have downloaded our brains into virtual worlds long before the environment is destroyed.
[end of rant]
Posted by Andy | November 26, 2006 11:53 PM
Posted on November 26, 2006 23:53