Virtual Worlds

As emerging spaces of human sociality irreducible to any physical-world location, virtual worlds [Page 1739]force a fundamental reconfiguration in the meanings and practices of global studies. Virtual worlds can be most succinctly defined as places of human culture realized by computer programs through the Internet. Although they are shaped by histories of mass media, video games, and the human capacity for imagination and storytelling, they took their contemporary form only in the early 21st century. One reason for this is that virtual worlds depend on broadband Internet connectivity and “cloud computing” protocols, in which data is stored primarily away from personal computers on dedicated servers and accessed in real time.

Although there exist virtual worlds that are solely textual, and one could imagine a virtual world based solely on sound or even smell, almost all contemporary virtual worlds represent place through visual metaphors of a three-dimensional landscape, in which residents are embodied as “avatars.” Strictly speaking, virtual worlds are not mass media (although they may contain mass media inside them, or mass media such as blogs may comment on them). They do not “mediate” between different sites of culture; they are sites of culture in their own right. Also, they are not games (although they may contain games inside them or even be primarily organized as games).

Thus, what distinguishes virtual worlds from email, websites, and many other Internet-mediated technologies is that they are places where persons can meet and interact and where created objects and landscapes can persist after any one person shuts down their computer. For this reason, as a rough terminology it is important to avoid using the word real as the opposite of the virtual. Instead, one might say the actual or the physical rather than the real because virtual worlds are very real in their social consequences. They are legitimate sites of human interaction, even if oftentimes disparaged as the refuge of misfits and loners (recalling negative stereotypes accompanying all new technologies).

One of three key ways that virtual worlds stand to transform global studies has to do with questions of spatial scale. It is not unusual to encounter a scene in a virtual world where five people are dancing at a club, each located in a different nation in the actual world. So is the scene local or global? In one sense, both scales are operative; in another sense, neither is operative. What legal regime should be consulted when one virtual world resident claims that another has defrauded him regarding the purchase of a virtual shirt for his avatar, but the resident is based in Brazil, the shirt-seller is based in Italy, the company that owns the virtual world is based in the United States, and the servers housing (so to speak) the virtual-world place where the transaction took place are in Singapore? Virtual worlds wreak havoc on actual-world notions of jurisdiction, and more broadly on notions of geography and “the global” itself.

Another key way that virtual worlds stand to transform global studies has to do with questions of embodiment, selfhood, and identity. While not all virtual worlds are built around escapism or role-playing, it is definitely the case that the ability to take on different personas in virtual worlds is important to many residents. In most virtual worlds, you can choose an embodiment that allows you to appear as a man or a woman, as any ethnicity or age, or even as an animal or object (from a refrigerator to a ball of light). In many virtual worlds, it is additionally possible to change your embodiment at will (and then back again, if you so choose) and also possible to have more than one account (as it is possible to have more than one email account), making it possible to log in as two “persons” at once. Even though not all residents take advantage of these possibilities, or do so only on an occasional basis, virtual worlds undoubtedly present radical new possibilities for selfhood. These possibilities for identity also mean new possibilities for relationships and community, from romantic love, to interest groups, to families that, in many cases, include persons who are kin in the actual world as well.

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