I’ve posted a number of times on the definition of virtual worlds. The search for a common taxonomy reflects both a need to find common language within an emerging culture, a business need to quantify and measure the spaces, and a way to use shorhand so we all understand each other.
I also thing there’s a great deal of danger in our rush to judgement over what to call these “spaces” (and I have 10 pages of notes on the “magic circle” and the permeability of the “membrane” to follow when I have time to write!). As we rush to a taxonomy and naming conventions, we also rush towards putting boxes around spaces that don’t yet deserve boxes (unless self-imposed).
Remember the early Internet days? Do we still call Web sites portals? Is there such a thing as an e-commerce sites? There was a time when the rush to create a “portal” was the Holy Grail, but no one would argue that Yahoo is a pure portal anymore than mySpace is a “Geocities” for our time (personal Web page builder). Each of them is a combination of social networking tool, search engine, information hub. Mash-ups, crossovers, shifting communities and loyalties – if we name this stuff too soon we risk getting lost in thinking we’ve wrapped our heads around a rapidly evolving universe.
There are as many evolving views of how the Metaverse is shaping up as there are stakeholders. Some of these views are skewed towards being able to able to make money – in today’s panting, greedy Web 2.0 world (a bubble waiting to burst IMHO), any model that manages to slip the word social into it 100 times raises eyebrows of suspicion.
However, for the model-inclined, or for businesses who need SOME way to explain all this to their anxious shareholders or bosses, a few jumping off points of interest to the definition of Virtual Worlds:
Metaverse Definition
starting with the Metaverse Roadmap which said that:
The Metaverse is the convergence of 1) virtually-enhanced physical reality and 2) physically persistent virtual space. It is a fusion of both, while allowing users to experience it as either.
The Metaverse looks at the future of virtual spaces and compares their attention to whether the space is augmentation of or simulation of reality, and whether it focuses on social (external) versus intimate (internal) perspectives.
I recently posted two maps that attempted to make visual sense of this space. All of this brings to mind the early Internet days – trying to make sense of chaos, and through the use of pictures try to ignore the fact that things are changing so quickly and are so dynamic that the map today will be a historic relic tomorrow.
Gaming Definitions based on Role of Social vs. Instanced Spaces
From the gaming universe comes debate over whether Hellgate London, (a highly advertised and anticipated environment in the game world) is a MMORPG (virtual world). Hellgate follows a similar model to Guild Wars – there are social spaces, but “adventures” take place in instanced areas (sections of a world that appear only for small groups at a time, are separate from the “social” spaces, and are thus ‘contained’).
Lagorama proposes a taxonomy of MMORPGs split between:
MMP (Massively Multi-Player) – a mostly non-instanced online game, with only a few instanced areas (such as raid zones, etc). Examples: World of Warcraft, Everquest II
IMP (Instanced Multi-Player) – a mostly instanced online game with central non-instanced social hubs, where players can restock, meet up, form groups and socialize. Examples: Guild Wars, Hellgate:London.
Lifesim - a virtual world with no real “game” incorporated into it. Examples: Second Life, There, the upcoming Twinity.
Gamehub – a collection of casual games held together with a social setting hub. Examples: Zwinky, Neopets.
Dueler – primarily a head-to-head online multiplayer game, where the online presence is there, but practically no social setting exists…it’s all about the combat, baby! Examples: Gunbound, Yu-Gi-Oh Online.
Content Map
In a previous post, I pointed to a graph of virtual worlds that created a taxonomy based on whether the platform being business, social, game or entertainment driven. In this case, the underlying technology is less the point, and the reason for a user engaging with the world has all the meaning. Am I visiting a site for social reasons? To do work or collaborate?
November 2, 2007 at 4:19 am
When this conversation surfaced at Metaversed, I asked pointedly: but we don’t have a taxonomy for the Internet, surely. That is, yeah, there’s gov, com, org. Or there’s e-commerce. Or there are portals. Or there are search sites or link farms or porn or intranets. Sure. But the content isn’t as analyzed as everybody seems to want to analyze VWs.
THIS — “a business need to quantify and measure the spaces” — seems to be driving the mad rush now. And frankly, that’s not compelling enough reason to rush to judgement, IMHO, just so somebody can sell widgets to better link the worlds. Oh, I realize they will do that *anyway* — but we should try to preserve the freedom of the spaces anyway, too.
In one way, deciding this or that world is “social” and this or that world isn’t social seems odd — all sites are social at some level — isn’t the stuff you are searching for in Google at times stuff that wants to be found?
Lagorama seems ok — except what if you use Second Life to make a game, or use it for an educational purpose — then it isn’t such a Lifesim.
You could judge them by whether or not they have RMT — and frankly, I look at every game/world and ask whether it has real estate. Because private property is part of the bulwark of player or resident freedom against game gods or coders — even if emulated, even if remaining proprietary. I realize this isn’t a very popular concept among leftoid geeks who hate private property. Look at Twinity, grudgingly giving out only apartments, and even Second Life, only rewarding the “value add” and never conceding that land is really stake.
One thing I really loathe is this constant Geek intrusion of “the lessons learned” of past iterations of the Web, 0.0 or 1.0 or 2.0. This or that thing is “Prodigy” or “Compuserve” and must die or will die anyway on its own. This or that thing is Geocities. This or that thing is “just like a MUD we had, really” etc. I find this terribly constrictive — it’s like a Vietnam Syndrome. Why must we be doomed to have this past and all the concommitant guru thinking around it inflicted on us at every new crossroads in the Metaverse? I’m glad you’re willing to think out of these boxes, Dusan.
It might just happen that walled gardens protect freedom more than open-sourced sandboxes filled with script kiddies that grief everybody and constrict freedom that way.
November 2, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I agree. I also loathe the ‘lessons learned’ mentality. Although I suppose my point with the definitions that seem to be surfacing about the Metaverse is to use the lessons learned from the past and try not to repeat them. The venture capitalists and the “script kiddies” who managed to throw a business plan together often used artificial definitions and taxonomies as window dressing to disguise that a) they had no actual business behind their so-called business models and b) they needed some sort of way to address the fact that there is no line item in a revenue projection to address the nature of a creative, chaotic, changing and ambiguous media.
Here’s how I imagine a pitch to a group of bankers or investors who know nothing about virtual worlds:
“We’re going to create branded entertainment products and aggregate social communities by creating a Web 3.0 space that leverages best in class talent incentivized with virtual currency. Investment in this opportunity is high risk but the risk:ratio return is high because we will establish best practices and aggregate eyeballs within the social/entertainment Web 3.0 space towards creating a portfolio of opportunities for future monetization.”
Here’s what it really means:
“3D stuff is really cool. We really have no idea where this is all headed. We want to take a gamble on creativity, passion, collaboration. We’re going to work with some Neko who hangs out at the Missing Mile and a Gorean Master who also runs an erotic strip club for furries. We figure we’ll throw a bunch of prims together, hope we don’t get griefed, make some cool stuff, and have some fun – and if we can do all that, a whole bunch of people will probably hang out, become friends, and our passion will spread, and some day that whole thing might make us some money or it might not, but we’ll probably survive, we’ll learn a thing or two, we’ll for sure end up with some possibly worthless real estate, a bunch of code, and some objects that we’re just as likely to give away as sell, and hey, maybe we’ll become better human beings by learning to work with each other in a different way, and to help people experience emotional, immersive evnironments in new ways.
Wanna come along for the ride?”
November 6, 2007 at 4:08 am
prokofy: Good points, which I think play right back into something I said on Lag-O-Rama…”This leads me to ponder two things:
1. When did we decide that we had to start classifying online games like championship dogs? “Ah, yes…that’s a sheephound, but it’s not of the Austrian Bluehair variety, so it’s inferior.”
2. Why does it freakin’ matter so much to so many people?”
People tend to spend time arguing about this type of thing, whether it’s relevant or not. Personally, I think VW’s should each be judged on their own merits, and not shoe-horned into some pre-existing category…if it’s designed well, it shouldn’t neatly fit into a category at all.
Also a good point regarding making a more traditional “game” within Second Life…there are several already present in SL, of course, but your point is taken. Of course, a television show that anyone would agree is a comedy still has moments of drama in it…there are no absolutes.
dusan: That may be the best pitch/translation I’ve ever seen. Awesome! By the way…does anyone else find it sadly humorous that the ones that preach the “lessons learned” philosophy are usually the ones that didn’t learn the correct lesson anyway?
November 6, 2007 at 12:07 pm
On the one hand, the rush to create a taxonomy of virtual worlds seems to combine a desire to attach any world-building, platform-creating, 3D project with the right catch phrases so that investment money can come pouring in.
I met with someone yesterday who said he’s launching “The Facebook for healthcare…we’re going to do for healthcare on Web 2.0 what mySpace did for kids communities of interests.”
The meeting was booked for an hour. I left after 10 minutes. He’ll probably be a gazillionaire in 6 months but his Koolaid has a weird glowing look to it.
On the OTHER hand models are ways of representing reality to test out theories. The idea SHOULD be that a model can let us examine, explore, dissect, criticize and then improve upon our understanding of reality – with a model, its cheap to build and it doesn’t need to change reality but can create feedback loops WITH reality.
My point about these taxonomies is partly to remind people that they’re just models, partly to debunk business models against a repeat of the old Web portal/e-commerce/aggregate eyeball days, but also to ask whether we should be seeking alternative taxonomies.
Maybe look at them, Prokovy suggests, for whether they have ‘real estate’ and what models of property drive the spaces. Maybe for economics. What about categorizing the worlds for the ‘cascade’ of creative content? Or for the availability of collaborative creative toolsets? A lot of attention is given to the definition of these spaces based on their social tools and level of immersion (fantasy/game vs. mirror worlds/LifeSims). But if the 3D Web is a new platform for human creativity and a possibly powerful tool for social change and creativity, then why not create a taxonomy based on how flexible a platform is in allowing creative, collaborative development (either by the code and tools themselves, the ToS, or the intellectual property “rules”).
I’m not suggesting an alternative taxonomy but I’m also suggesting we not throw the idea of models out entirely. Each “world” WILL be judged on its own merits – basically, if anyone shows up or not.
Until then, a helpful quote from our collaborative friends at Wikipedia on the definition of models:
A mental model is an explanation in someone’s thought process for how something works in the real world. It is a kind of internal symbol or representation of external reality, hypothesized to play a major role in cognition and decision-making. Once formed, mental models may replace carefully considered analysis as a means of conserving time and energy.
(emphasis added)
November 11, 2007 at 1:53 am
[...] Reading academia is a lot like listening to venture capitalists and the people after their money. I previously offered an interpretation of: [...]
January 10, 2008 at 5:30 pm
[...] Darüber hinaus werden interessante visuelle Charts wie z.B, das “Virtual Universe Landscape” von Fred Cavazza hervorgehoben. Alles in allem eine gute Quelle zur Kategorisierung von Online-Welten. [via Dusan Writer’s Metaverse] [...]