Book review
Synthetic Worlds
The business and culture of online games
Author: Edward Castronova
Publisher: University of Chicago Press (2005)
Review by Donald Clark, Epic
What has a book on online games have to do with online
learning? MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Games) are already being used
in education and training. Patients with aspergers/autism use these
worlds to learn social skills, public health simulations are used
to train emergency workers, young adults learn financial panning
skills and soldiers learn cultural skills in preparation for Iraq.
Almost everything in the real world is now being mimicked in these
parallel worlds. It is therefore inevitable that education and training
will use such worlds. As the author says, “There are enough
applications of this technology in the area of education and research
to occupy several generations of teachers and researchers”.
MMOGs are only one species of new Web 2.0 tools, such as open source,
podcasts, videocasts, blogs, wikis, file sharing and others, that
are likely to accelerate informal learning. Now is the time to understand
what’s happening, before it becomes a bandwagon.
This is a serious book about a now serious subject. Castronova
is an academic (economist) and this book is an academic text, fully
referenced and heavy on data and argument. It is not a light hearted
and lightweight introduction to online games and other forms of
online worlds. However, being data-rich is no bad thing, and the
first few chapters are readable introductions to what it is like
to enter such a world, create your avatar and encounter others within
the world you enter.
Part I, The Synthetic World: A Tour, describes literally what it’s
like to sign up and enter a world, create things within these worlds,
meet others and trade. His findings often surprise. The users in
the newer synthetic worlds are not all solitary, teenage boys. The
newer non-gaming worlds have huge numbers of women and older participants.
He asks what draws people into these parallel worlds – transcendance
and escapism, it seems, from the tedium of everyday life of the
modern world. Characters are sold on eBay for thousands of real
dollars and millions in real money is spent on virtual trade. The
sheer complexity of these created world is likely to astonish, but
not nearly as much as the behaviour of the participants!
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Part II, When Boundaries Fade, looks at the blurred boundaries
between the real and synthetic worlds, and how each influences the
other through a sort of ‘porous membrane’. The political
economy is untangled to show markets, problems of governance and
economic issues that are now being mapped and provide a huge amount
of information for political, legal and economic speculation. The
dark side, criminal and terrorist use, are also considered.
Part III, Threats and Opportunities, looks at policy issues and
longer term issues. He is right to speculate wildly on this phenomenon.
These worlds are likely to play a huge role in our culture, affecting
our entertainment, social relationships, politics and many other
areas. These games and worlds came from nowhere, they have no real
precedent and the future is open and uncharted but Castronova provides
many speculative signposts.
The book is honest to its subtitle (The business and culture of
online games) and delves deep into the business and economic issues
that such worlds create. This is fascinating, but much of the detail
is probably only of interest to political scientists, lawyers and
economists.
Descriptions of the worlds themselves could have done with at least
a few images. These worlds are highly visual and the created avatars
are astounding, yet in 332 pages of small print there’s only
one bar chart. Synthetic worlds are rich extensions of our visual
world. Broadband has given us all a chance to enter the movie and
play a role. It’s a shame to rely on pure print to get the
message across.
Personally, I’d recommend that you don’t read this
book until you’re at least a little familiar with online games.
If you’ve never heard of Everquest, Runescape, World of Warcraft,
Habba Hotel or Second Life, then type these words into Google. Or
get your 12 year old to show you as they’re probably using
them.
Being in these virtual worlds may turn out to be as normal and
acceptable as watching TV. For many these worlds will seem strange
and worrying, but speaking to my 12 year old son, who’s an
expert in Runescape and Habba Hotel, they’re thrilling, compulsive,
entertaining and satisfying in a way that other media are not. We
are at the start of something very big here – read it while
it’s not yet hot.
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