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Doug Thomas: Under the Surface of Virtual Worlds

Filed at 2:50 pm on April 30, 2008

Understanding what is happening in virtual worlds is a tricky business.  It is easy for us to assume that the things we see on the surface are representations of what lies underneath.  As with most things, however, the story is usually more complicated that it appears.  In the language of Science and Technology Studies, we often talk about the various features of technology as “affordances,” referring less to what they are than what it is that they allow users to do.  Technologies are designed with users in mind, to “afford” them certain actions or abilities.  But things don’t really get interesting until the users begin to explore, experiment, and discover their own affordances, often the ones the developers never intended or even envisioned.

It is deceptively easy to look at some specifications or user interfaces and conclude that games or virtual worlds have particular affordances or that they limit the ability of users to participate, create, or engage with each other productively.  However, users are clever and more often than not they will find a way to subvert limitations by using the tools that are available to them in unexpected ways

As we engage these new worlds as researchers, it is critical that we understand not only the affordances and limitations of the technologies themselves, but also the practices of the participants who are engaging with the technology.  Perhaps the greatest object lesson comes from Cory Ondrejka, former CTO of Second Life, who, when describing the early days of development of Second Life found himself confronted with an object that one of the users had created using in-world building tools.  Neither Cory nor any other member of Linden Lab could figure out how it had been made.  It was at that point that they realized they had created something special.  The users were now creating things that the developers had never considered.

If we think about the primary affordances of virtual worlds as the ability to engage the imagination, then the tools themselves become interesting not as instruments, but as resources for the imagination.  Limitations are not seen as barriers, but as challenges that need to be overcome by creatively engaging the world and by experimenting, playing, and thinking beyond boundaries.  Innovation and creativity are not usually born out of freedom, but instead are often generated by the moments that we are forced to push back on the world.  We innovate and create because the tools we have are no longer sufficient for the task at hand.

Second Life, Whyville, There.com, and a host of other virtual worlds all provide users with different tools to live, learn, engage, act, and play.  But beyond that, each of these worlds also engages the play of imagination and provides the opportunity for users to collectively create the world they live in.  In each of these spaces will undoubtedly see new and interesting approaches to questions of community, citizenship, play, and entertainment.  But we will also see innovation and experimentation, often emerging from the most unlikely places.

I think we err if we only look at what we believe is possible without looking more deeply into what is actual in the everyday practices of those who live in the worlds we study.  Doing so is likely to reveal for us that what seems simple on the surface is often times concealing a much deeper and more complex world than we can initially see.

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Tags: affordance, second-life, virtual-world, whyville