Beyond Virtually Assured Destruction
Raph Koster yesterday extended some ideas from the Metaverse Grudge Match that began last week. Raph talks about the kinds of power users and administrators have over the virtual worlds they occupy and run, and the fact that both camps ultimately find themselves at a stand-off where their final recourse is mutually assured destruction: if governance sucks, users can leave, depriving the administrator of operating income; if the users are out of line, adminstrators can kick everyone out and shut down the world themselves. Until we can break this stalemate, Raph says, there’s no really good reason for administrators to share power. Can we break it, though? Perhaps.
Raph’s interlocutor, Prokofy Neva, seems to be looking for a virtual space that’s governed like a real-world country, only more equitably, with more power in the hands of the people and less in the hands of those who govern the world. Is that possible? Only through someone’s deep benevolence, I think, and perhaps not even then. As Raph points out, virtual worlds cost a great deal of money to build. And the power of the administrator is much greater then the power of a real-world government. You can rise up and overthrow your government, but you can’t overthrow a virtual world administrator, you can only hope to end the world. What keeps us from doing this is exit costs. If I leave a virtual world, I lose everything I’ve acquired and done there; I even lose who I am in that space. The administrator loses the income I generate there.
To me, the problem here is the contiguous-world model. In any walled-garden virtual space, the stand-off Raph describes is going to pertain. There will always be such worlds, I imagine, existing as games if nothing else. But a more utilitarian and/or social world need not exist as a contiguous garden, it seems to me.
The alternative is a distributed metaverse in which a series of online spaces exist not in a contiguous pile but as loosely connected locations on a metaversal web, much as Web sites are connected today. Some of these would be public, some would be private, some would be restricted to a certain group of people. Instead of one administrator, you have thousands or millions. Instead of your inventory and avatar and all that’s associated with it existing in one place, dependent on that place’s back-end, those things exist in portable fashion.
Under this model — in which you can host your own corner of the virtual world (or have it hosted for you through a hosting service) — exit costs are radically reduced. If I leave a loosely connected space in the distributed metaverse, all I lose is access to that space. My inventory and identity go with me. The administrator may lose the income associated with my activities there, but small spaces are much less costly to run, so my power over the administrator is reduced (though not eliminated). The people have more power, much as Prok envisions. (If the network is built on an open-source, peer-to-peer architecture, the people have even more power.)
I actually think this model, or something close to it, is quite possible. The future of the metaverse probably doesn’t depend to a very great extent on contiguous masses of virtual land. These won’t disappear altogether, but I suspect they’ll become a subset. Governing a virtual space will have to be done through new models, much like governing the Web has had to find new approaches — some of which we’re still searching for. Virtually assured destruction won’t be a problem because there won’t be anything to destroy. We won’t be a crowd, we’ll be a collection of individuals, loosely connected. I’d wager that’s a much more powerful and sustainable thing.
Feeds
[…] 3pointD.com picks up on the discussion on horses and governance (alas, without using the horse metaphor!) and offers, The alternative is a distributed metaverse in which a series of online spaces exist not in a contiguous pile but as loosely connected locations on a metaversal web, much as Web sites are connected today. Some of these would be public, some would be private, some would be restricted to a certain group of people. Instead of one administrator, you have thousands or millions. Instead of your inventory and avatar and all that’s associated with it existing in one place, dependent on that place’s back-end, those things exist in portable fashion. Under this model — in which you can host your own corner of the virtual world (or have it hosted for you through a hosting service) — exit costs are radically reduced. If I leave a loosely connected space in the distributed metaverse, all I lose is access to that space. My inventory and identity go with me. The administrator may lose the income associated with my activities there, but small spaces are much less costly to run, so my power over the administrator is reduced (though not eliminated). The people have more power, much as Prok envisions. (If the network is built on an open-source, peer-to-peer architecture, the people have even more power.) […]
Mark –
This is an interesting and important post/topic.
Ideally, things will play out just as you describe with identity and inventory being portable and compatible with a broad range of worlds. This is clearly the more powerful and desirable model for users.
I’m fundamentally skeptical that it will ever materialize however. Scenarios like this that require lots of cooperation by competitors for the eventual benefit of their shared customers are usually untenable. The example I always use is the Las Vegas monorail project. This was a vastly expensive rail system that was financed by a combination of a large bond measure and contributions from the various casinos whose patrons the system would help.
Casinos were told that if they contributed a certain figure (something like $20 - $30 million) they could have a stop on thed monorail outside their property — the equivalent of virtual world interoperability.
If you go to Vegas today you can see how this played out — the casinos that were struggling for business all opted in because a monorail stop represented a possible influx of customer. Meanwhile, the prosperous casinos all opted out. The end result? $800 million spent on a monorail that doesn’t stop anywhere you want to go.
So World of Warcraft and Second Life are unlikely to open up — but I’ll be able to hop from Toontown to There with the greatest of ease.
Hmmmmmmm.
I’m actually thinking of it on an even smaller scale, Reuben. WoW, SL, Toontown, There — they’ll all remain walled gardens. But I’ll be able to hop form Reuben’s little 3D virtual space to my own little 3D virtual space to Prok’s to Raph’s, etc., without much trouble.
I think Mark is absolutely right. The “Metaverse” will come about as a series of evolutionary series very similar to the way multimedia content made its way first onto the PC desktop and then onto your average “no programming skills required” website. The “Metaverse” will be built on a standard for virtual worlds that is going to be open-source or it won’t be a metaverse at all, simple as that. The “gaming worlds” in contrast may keep their proprietary code. The VR server/engine software standard may also fall into the hands of a large corporation (that submits to government control of this important tool) just like Microsoft today. But the “worlds” that hold the content and the avatars will be open standard just like todays web.
Walker, I don’t understand the harshness of the proposition. Why can’t game gods *be* enlightened? They can do this not for reasons of us “naming and shaming” them into it, or for reasons of being backed up against the wall if the players vote for their feet, but merely for pragmaticism, because it’s good business, because good governance makes people stick. Why would our only recourse be to overthrow a game administrator? Couldn’t we ask him through a range of actions, whether dialogue or civic protest or even strategic boycotts not paralyzing the world to change, to mitigate, to compromise? This is never tried, in part because the game gods keep the worlds atomized, but I do believe in the power of interest groups to consolidate and at least give the game gods a run for their money.
I think on his own blog in response to your post here, Raph makes a compelling case for the non-portability of some things like stats or armour or whatever, but I still think the essence of the avatar is, after all, the human soul, and that’s pretty portable.
BTW, my call for more power for the people doesn’t always translate to a call for open source. I’m increasingly convinced that open source=closed society because of these millions of atomized basement-dwelling egos (like in Jarod Godel’s vision) who are going to think on a million splintered metaverses and only hook up stuff they like nad never consider the consequences. I think there’s something to be said for clearing-houses, and maybe not releasing the software until some working culture of peaceful coexistence is worked out.
[…] Stephan notes: Over the past few weeks, there’s been a little more chatter than usual in the mainstream media and on blogs about 3D virtual worlds and their relative merits. Both Google Earth (GE) and Second Life (SL) have been mooted as a paradigm for the budding metaverse. […]
[…] Mientras, desde dentro del metaverso, algunos adelantados como Alberto Navarro, organizaban ya grupos de trabajo para aprovechar la apertura del código cliente de SL con vistas a crear un metaverso distribuido: Situación actual. La liberación por parte del Linden del código del cliente ha sido el escopetazo de salida. La comunidad en favor de la liberación del código de Second Life no se caracteriza por su paciencia, y con algunos hackers en sus filas, se han integrado dentro del proyecto de 3pointD en sus objetivos de conseguir un Metaverso Distribuido, y para ello han iniciado su proyecto de código abierto, ó secondlife liberado: libsecondlife. […]