The Social Life of Virtual Worlds

Aleks KrotoskiBrighton Girl Geek Dinner

Twenty-Fourth April Two Thousand Seven

Two thousand US Dollars

Dear Jesus – what is she talking about?

Gross Domestic Product

It’s all about who you know

But before we get ahead of ourselves…

The differences between online and offline:

AnonymityPhysical appearance

Quality of Relationships(Absence of social cues

So how can the interactions in cyberspace be

meaningful ?

In traditional definitions of “community”, there’d be no such

thing in cyberspace

How can you develop meaningful relationships with people you’ve

never met?

It’s been happening for years

These virtual worlds are the places which the online communities are tied to

London Memorial in Second Life

– Between noon and two pm on the seventh of july over seven hundred and fifty Second Life residents visited. It was open for a week and racked up thousands of visitors

– Fewer than ten per cent claimed any British ties– Maker’s motivations were altruistic and purely community-driven

Places of ritual?

Places of collaboration?

Neualtenburg: an experiment in collective democracy

Places of friendship?

Anonymity becomes

Pseudonymity

So how does it happen?

• The same reasons offline community does:– Make friends, offer support, meet like-

minded others

• What we know about online relationships:– Proximity and frequency of contact– Similarity– Self-presentation– Reciprocity and self-disclosure– Consistency

Virtual worlds are designed for sociability people must rely upon one

another to survive and advance

Whatever role trust plays in offline communities, it plays in online communities because these

interactions are human-bound

So what do we know about the social lives of virtual worlds?

• Economics• Politics• Psychology• Sociology• Medicine

Who Plays?

Men:

Eighty per cent in Fantasy titlesTwenty to twenty-Eight years

old 25)Students or tech-heads

Who plays?

WomenTwenty percent of Fantasy-based

gamesSixty percent of The Sims Online

Thirty to thirty-five years old*

In a Relationship*Seventy percent play with partner*

New mums

Social Virtual Worlds

Second Life:Forty-sixty gender split

Older on average

Unless you’re into Disney

Diving in

What does it mean to TRUST in this world?

Who’s FRIENDS with whom in this world?

What makes and breaks REPUTATIONS?

What’s VALUABLE in this world?

Virtual communities operate in very similar ways to other communities – both on and

offlineThey bring together distributed individuals based on common experience, motivations

and reputationThis is particularly true for virtual world participants because of the explicit social

design of the softwareTrust varies according to communication

mediumTrust is paramount

Don’t jeopardise that trust.

Aleks Krotoskiwww.toastkid.

com