Article in the Guardian about Virtual Worlds

Wow this is a busy week! While little in this article in the Guardian is particularly new, especially to those of us who track these things, what is interesting is the critical mass the article portrays. Naturally, it has the usual hypey tone of these things. I would be surprised if this reporter had actually visited any of the virtual worlds in question. However, it's interesting to hear claims like "virtual worlds will create 10,000 jobs in China" and "Second Life...claims to have created the equivalent of 6,000 full-time jobs." Also, note the sub-heading: "People to work from home in an alternate reality." These tidbits speak to the conflation of work and play that a number of us have been taking about for the past year or so. 

Once again China is front and center in this picture, with the one piece of "real news" that I was previously unaware of: Swedish Entropia partnering with a Chinese company to build a new virtual world. I was curious about the description of Entropia's partner as being "an offshoot of the Beijing municipality." I did a little research and found this article in Marketwire that describes Entropia as having been selected by "Beijing Municipal People's Government supported online entertainment company Cyber Recreation Development Corp. (CRD) to create a cash-based virtual economy for China." So this is very interesting vis a vis my last post regarding HiPiHi, the new Chinese "Second Life" which has been in Beta since March. I hadn't considered the possibility that an arm of the Chinese government would actually build its own virtual world. Interestingly, the Guardian article makes no mention of HiPiHi.

 

Comments

[michaelArteaga]

That's pretty interesting, thank's for the update, Celia, I hadn't heard about this.

Perhaps a little off topic, but . . .

In reading the marketwire article I couldn't help but notice how some of these works or aspects of them are often described as 'real' in some regard (i.e. 'real cash economy' ''real' virtual univers' 'real life occupations' and so on).

It made me think back to an paper by Alexander R. Galloway at GameStudies.org, 'Social Realism in Gaming.' It can be found here: http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/galloway/

In the conclusion there is a bit that runs;
''But for games to be realist, they cannot be excised from the material realities in which they are played. To put it bluntly, a typical American youth playing Special Force is most likely not experiencing realism, where as realism is indeed possible for a young Palestinian gamer playing Special Force in the occupied territories.''

I think I agree with this to some extent. And I am again reminded that Second Life (among other things) is not to be taken lightly.

thanks again for the update