Making Virtual Worlds

Thomas Malaby

Description

The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online. Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created.Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? "Lindens"-as the Linden Lab employees call themselves-found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions.Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab.

Sujets

• Informatique
• Virtual world

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801458996
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MAKING VIRTUAL WORLDS

MAKING VIRTUAL WORLDS

LINDEN LAB AND SECOND LIFE

THOMAS M. MALABY

C O R N E L L U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S I T H AC A A N D LO N D O N

Copyright © 2009 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For informa- tion, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2009 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Scott Levine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Malaby, Thomas M., 1967–  Making virtual worlds : Linden Lab and Second Life / Thomas M. Malaby.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-0-8014-4746-4 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Second Life (Game)—Social aspects. 2. Linden Lab (Firm). 3. Shared virtual environments—Case studies. 4. Com- puter games—Design—Social aspects—Case studies. 5. Busi- ness anthropology—California—San Francisco—Case stud- ies. 6. Corporate culture—California—San Francisco—Case studies. I. Title.  GV1469.25.S425M35 2009  794.8—dc22 2008052550

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsi- ble suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine- free,orpartlycomposedofnonwoodfibers.Forfurtherinforma- tion, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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Second Life is a trademark of Linden Research, Inc. Certain materials have been reproduced under license from Linden Research, Inc. Copyright © 2001–2008 Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

F O R S A M U E L A N D J U L I A N

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: A Developer’s-Eye View

1. The Product: Second Life, Capital, and the Possibility of Failure in a Virtual World

2. Tools of the Gods

3. Knowing the Gamer from the Game

4. The Birth of the Cool

5. Precarious Authority

Appendix A: The Tao of Linden

Appendix B: The Mission of Linden Lab

Notes 145

Bibliography 1 5 1

Index 159

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the course of this project I have relied on the good graces, bril- liance, and support of many people. First, I want to express my appre- ciation to Linden Lab, for being willing to let an anthropologist cross into their domain of synthesis and world creation. In an industry only just now learning what it can learn from researchers, Linden Lab has been a pioneer. Philip Rosedale, Robin Harper, and Cory Ondrejka deserve special thanks for being open to the continued presence of the anthropologist who dropped into their midst. To the many Lindens who sacrificed their precious coffee time to help me understand how they worked and saw the world, I extend my deepest appreciation and thanks. The research upon which this work is based was conducted with the vital support of the National Science Foundation, through its subpro- gram on Ethics and Values Studies in the Science and Society Program (grant #0423043), and by a fellowship from the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. A fellowship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Institute for Research in the Hu- manities provided support during the writing of the book, and the com- munity of scholars there were a regular source of stimulating conversa- tion for the project.