Thanks for the post.

I really took him to task here:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/11/troll-at-the-br.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/11/ted-castranova.html

I frankly think we need to yell long and hard about economists-turned-ludologists who think games and worlds are a great way to tap into reptile-brain impulses in human beings and addict them to behaviours in games and worlds run by artificial intelligences that are in fact merely the tools of coders with oppressive and even totalitarian views. He’s far too supportive of these sorts of scenarios, and wants to take the medieval law of MMORGPs and push it into real life — where it was banished centuries ago with what we like to call “The Enlightenment”.

Marshall McLuhan said education would need to change due to the awesome impact of technology, or rather, traditional education was ineffective and would be chasing uneducable kids — but that was 40 years ago. The question isn’t to report on this anymore but to do something about it, and do something demonstrably effective, other than make some silly politically-correct “serious game”.

Ted’s idea was to have people get jobs the way they get quests, with little NPCs showing up to offer them jobs in real life if they could accomplish certain tasks. My God, as you say, who will do all this indulging of all these entitlement-happy freaks created by virtuality?!

I was so thrilled the first time I heard Castronova speak and take virtual economies seriously, speak of the naturally, say in 2004 that the only thing odd about his topic “virtual stock exchanges” was that in 20 years, the adjective “virtual” wouldn’t be tacked on; it would be just the way all stock exchanges were. And yet…now they are crumbling in Second Life as a victim of policy, not law, and fear of regulation, not the chasing of virtual worlds by real-life law enforcers, which he fears — and I guess he imagines he can create a realm strong enough to evade.

Castronova is also far too welded to game-games, not the games of worlds, or open-ended virtual 3-d platforms like Second Life. He just hasn’t had enough experience with it. It’s like…too much real life.

I think you have to be more than queasy about totalitarian wannabee game gods with experts like Castronova serving them — you have to be standing up and fighting.

I don’t want the values of MMORPGs — sychophantic fanboyz, toadying resmods and wizards, arrogant game devs, dismissive “code-as-law” and “information-wants-to-be-free” criminality to start holding sway over real life — and the culture already does in many areas.

What I do have to wonder about is the premise that such large portions of populations will “escape to virtual worlds” that there will be no one to run the factories and keep the electricity turned on. The reality is that as much as these games and worlds have booming populations, they also don’t have “everybody” like the Internet. Or they don’t have them 24/7. Or they don’t have them such that people all quit their day jobs and sit at home all day levelling up. In part because they are worlds that don’t really capture people’s imagination or effort, as they are those droning and dreary skill=grinding and war-fighting games that Ted loves.

And another important point: I think we can’t look at artificial intelligence as some kind of abstraction, some kind of “technology”. Artificial intelligence is a manifestation of an elitist movement in society that has the power to code, and code power over all in their realm. AI is an extension of rule, not something separate from it. It’s character isn’t ’science’; it’s nature is cultural and political. This is often overlooked, as people imagine AIs will only be helpful librarians at your elbow, and not bots blocking you from accessing content or expelling you from groups, which is what happens in Second Life. AIs don’t acquire purity because they are automatic; they are creatures of the coding elite, and it is shaped by a culture that is making you queasy.

I think what’s important about Castronova’s two books, which are indeed seminal in this field, is that they indicate serious study and the creation of a system of thought about virtuality. Now we need 100 other thoughts and systems and schools to spring up, too, so that this “early adapter” doesn’t hold sway without challenge. There’s no reason why we all have to live like orcs in WoW or avatars keeping our mouths shut in Linden townhalls.

It’s only because of the newness of this field that it is so bereft of any critical challenge to Castronova. So I have felt I had to make a special effort to criticize him very hard. I find him frankly unconvincing as an economist of virtuality if he dismisses SL so glibly. It’s appalling. I guess it’s too real or too complex for him.