On virtual worlds

by Alex Evans | Jul 15, 2010 | Influence and networks

About a quarter of a billion people spend time every week inside some kind of virtual world (like World of Warcraft, or Second Life, or IMVU). That’s one of the arresting statistics in an extraordinary talk on virtual worlds given by Rohan Freeman last November, reproduced in full at the end of this post.

Freeman doesn’t like the term ‘virtual’ to describe what he terms the ‘metaverse’, arguing that “it is meaningless in this context. These ‘virtual’ worlds are real. Just as an MP3 file is real, a phone call is real and the intellectual property vested in a Gucci handbag is real. Ideas are real. People are being found guilty of real crimes in real courts if they steal ‘virtual goods'”. Above all, the relationships forged in the metaverse are real:

Let me give you an example from personal experience. When I first started to investigate virtual worlds I bought a small piece of land and I had a neighbour on each side. My neighbour on one side was a single mother, living in a town in Scotland. She was on income support, living in council accommodation, she had no qualifications and was struggling to keep her two sons from playing truant. My neighbour on the other side was a Director of The National Physics Institute. And they knew each other. And she was reading some papers of his, talking about plans they have to create a constellation of satellites that can better measure climate change.

 Two years ago, by her own statement, she spent her days watching Ricky Lake. One year ago she was playing online bingo. Now she lives in virtual reality. She could have found his papers on Internet anyway. She could have gone to the library and requested them there. But the reason she was reading his papers was; she met him. They literally struck up a conversation over the garden wall. The presence of their avatars in a shared space changed things psychologically for both parties.

One of the most significant things about the metaverse, he continues, is how effective it is at creating trust – so much so that people fall in love there, the whole time. This is different from other social networking technologies. “People don’t fall in love on Facebook. It’s not really that easy to fall in love on the phone.” Why? In a nutshell, he argues, because of bandwidth. That’s why, after all, people still like to meet face to face:

When we meet face to face and communicate with each other we inevitably give away thousands of things about ourselves; thousands of tells, our body language and the direction of our eyes, how we respond to the space occupied by other people. Other people pick all this up, both consciously and unconsciously. And this is the basis of trust. We know we all give things away about ourselves when we meet. And that allows us to evaluate each other and take a decision; I trust this guy with my life. I don’t trust him with my life but I trust his opinions on Japanese cinema. I wouldn’t trust him to find his own arse with both hands.

Move that process to the telephone and it’s harder. There is considerably less unwitting information on which to base a decision. Move it to an email it gets harder still. Reduce the bandwidth that dramatically and you necessarily reduce the information on which to base decisions of trust.

But a live 3D metaverse? Very different story.

It’s live; so if someone starts spouting off about what the don’t like about a movie, for instance, then people can gather round if they want and respond in real time. And if I want to be a part of that, the first step to engagement is so low that anyone can take it. I just need to stand near them and listen. I don’t even need to say anything to begin to feel like part of the discussion. I might, after a few minutes, volunteer a ‘”LOL”when someone else says something funny. Maybe I’ll chime in on a comment with others. I might just stand around and take it all in. 

 The entry barrier being much lower, far greater social liquidity and subtlety is created. It  may not seem like I contributed a great deal to the conversation by chipping in with a “LOL” half way through. But my presence, my attention, my occasional displays of alertness created context for everyone else. I was part of what brought other people over to hear this guy. They saw me and a few others. And he was encouraged because he could see people like me paying attention and laughing. I can only repeat; it’s all real.

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