Emerging Virtual Institutions

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Emerging Virtual Institutions are patterns of organized culture; such as forms of government, business models, or social norms, that develop endogenously within a virtual world. Just as real world institutions are introduced to virtual worlds by their users and designers, virtual institutions are carried back into the real world when those people “log off.”^[1]

Emerging Virtual Institutions collectively include the future economic and community-based growth of virtual reality worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, the point where these spaces are no longer just a place for individuals to interact through computer-mediated reality, but instead become significant structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation within the real-world. As demonstrated by Prof. Larry Lessig of Stanford University in 2003, citizens of Second Life are capable of protesting the virtual laws of their space to enact positive change (in this case, allow individuals to have virtual property rights).

Institutions emerge in virtual worlds when the rules of the world encourage users to act in a way that creates a widespread pattern of behavior. Such rules can be hard-coded by the developers, but may be existing informal norms from within the virtual world, or imported from the real world experience of its users. The institution that results from this emergence then becomes a part of the rules that will seed future emergent conventions. The developer of a virtual world can shape the values of its users by carefully choosing the appearance of the world, the capabilities of its avatars, the challenges presented, methods of communication, and even the laws of physics, among countless other design decisions. These shared values, in turn, shape patterns of behavior and the development of institutions within the world.^[1]

1 Types of Virtual Institution
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Types of Virtual Institution

[edit] Politics

Citizens of virtual worlds often try to change the rules of that world. These actions can be a part of the existing rules, as a user-regulated system, or they may be acts of protest. These conflicts frequently enter into the real world as letters of suggestion or complaints to the virtual worlds' developers, or hot debates posted on fan forums.^[1]

A Tale in the Desert allows users to write up and vote on laws, which are then implemented by the developers.^[2] It also grants elected players the ability to permanently ban other users' characters after passing specific, socially-oriented challenges.^[3]

EVE Online will be implementing an elected council of player representatives, who will travel to Iceland once every six months to meet with the game's developers. However, in keeping with the game world's cutthroat theme, vote-buying, proxy voting, coercion, and other unsavory tactics will not be prevented in the elections.^[4]

The browser-based game NationStates has a system of local influence that players can leverage to evict other players from an in-game region.^[5]

Unsanctioned protests often amount to gatherings and disruptive behavior that can tax the servers which run a virtual world. Such protests have occurred in Ultima Online, Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, and others. A gathering held in World of Warcraft by members of the Warrior class protested the perceived weakness of that role, and managed to shut down the Argent Dawn server before it was broken up by developer authorities.^[6]

[edit] Economics

The value of a virtual world's currency, items, and services are ultimately an emergent result of that world's rules. The resulting virtual economy then meshes with that of the real world when virtual goods and services are traded for real world currency on auction sites and specialist trading venues.^[1]

Some virtual worlds are designed with real-world economic interaction in mind, such as Second Life. The Linden Dollar, Second Life's currency, is exchangeable for real-world currencies through the developer's own LindeX system. Here, exchange is facilitated between users, although Linden Labs has the ability to sell Linden Dollars directly.^[7]

Other virtual worlds, including many of the popular MMORPGs, discourage real money trading as policy. Such exchanges are thought to be disruptive to the in-world theme and economy, and many players view the practice as a form of cheating.^[1]^[8]

[edit] Social Groups

Friendships and social groupings often develop within virtual worlds, from a first-person shooter clan of a few players, to a MMORPG guild of hundreds, to a faction in World of Warcraft constituting tens of thousands. Often, these users are encouraged to form bonds by the world's structure – dividing them into opposing teams, or enforcing roles on avatars such that a group is more than the sum of its parts. These social groups persist outside the virtual world in real life friendships, email, voice chat, fan parties, and even marriages that occur in both the real and virtual worlds.^[1]

[edit] Language

The communication mechanisms and cultures of virtual worlds can lead to new forms of language. Dialects of l33t are common, as are esoteric greetings and phrases, such as "Hail" or EVE Online's "Fly safe."^[1]^[9]