SLOW has been posponed, so I'm at Julian Dibble's book talk. Here's a picture and the question I asked:

[19:46] Hamlet Au: Krisjohn Twin had a question-- Kris?
[19:46] You: How do you address a player or virtual citizen's desire to escape the very aspects of our capitalist society that heavy commericalisation of virtual spaces import into the game? Is it time for people interested in abstracted challenges removed...
[19:47] You: ...from the real world to move on to something new, or do you believe the casual gamer and full-time virtual-worker can co-exist in a place like WoW?
[19:47] Julian Dibbell: no, again, fun is also a truly scarce commodity. the Linden's can't arbitrarily decide what the sweetspot between too easy and too hard is.
[19:47] Julian Dibbell: and now back to the chat history to see what was being asked while i wrotet that :)
[19:48] Julian Dibbell: well, i believe that they *do* coexist in WoW
[19:49] Julian Dibbell: i thnk the gold farmers are genuinely annoying to a certain extent
[19:50] Julian Dibbell: but that the discourse of hatred and fury and impatience with them is fueled more by people's trying to figure out and shore up their notions of what the game means to them
[19:51] Julian Dibbell: and i think anyone who ever went into one of these places thinking they could *truly* escape realtiy, economic and otherwise, has bigger problems to grapple with than chinese gold farmers camping their favorite furbolg village
[19:51] You: So, you think any social space is fair game for people who ant to make money?
[19:52] Julian Dibbell: these are great questions though, that people in virtual world studies are constantly hasghing and rehashing
[19:53] Julian Dibbell: open game? no obviously not. i jsut think the nature of these games is that they were never so innocent to begin with
[19:53] Julian Dibbell: they're built around the leveling treadmill, for starters. what is so utopian about that?
[19:53] Julian Dibbell: and once that's there. the snake is in the garden.

Full transcript here

I'm currently reading a virtual copy of a book, called Play Money, about virtual environments and economies. Blame NWN.

This weekend is the Second Life of Warcraft weekend. There has been a sort of convergence on the next week of a number of experiences in my life. It may well decide the future, or at least the immediate future, of my virtual activities.

I've started a Second Life guild in Progress Quest. City of Villians reminded me of Progress Quest, and in a twisted sort of way so do the games in SL.

I found a link to an article about immersion in virtual worlds on NWN, and what little of it I can extract from the lack of capitalisation and other assorted grammatical weirdness is, to me, more or less completely wrong. Here's why.

It speaks of immersion (immerse v. To engage wholly or deeply; absorb) being the result of attention to detail, which is partially true, but it focuses almost entirely on graphical detail, which is not the detail that you need. Looking at a pretty 3D world doesn't immerse you in that world any more than you get immersed in a movie. (Excluding OmniMax, which is pretty immersive though a little distorted for all but about four seats in the cinema.) To engage with a world, you need to interact with it. It's the nature and detail of the reaction that results in immersion. Anyone who claims to feel like they're actually walking around a SL location as if it were real is role playing, not really immersed.

Let's step back from SL for a moment and look at a professional flight simulator. Not software for your home PC, but a real, step in and close the door flight simulator that you'd train a jumbo pilot on. I would hope no one would debate the immersive nature of such a beast. So let's look at what it's made up of:

• A cockpit that looks and acts real
• That cockpit is on hydraulics, for force feedback
• A powerful computer that can model realistic physics
• A wrap-around screen
• Functional graphics

That's right, cute graphics come last. The important things necessary to provide an environment realistic enough to actually train someone to fly a real plane do not include anything more than basic, placeholder, graphics.

For me, immersion in Second Life won't come from some pretty landscape. It will come from a computer screen the size of a wall, from easy voice interaction with other residents and from an interface that provides natural interaction with the world.

While SL continues to be a bunch of fantasy settings you view through a small 4:3 window, it will be nothing more than a fantasy. When people have a "Second Life Room" in their house where they walk in and they're surrounded by the virtual world, that's when the immersion starts.

June archive is available here