游戏邦注：原作者为Vili Lehdonvirta，他的研究领域是虚拟经济、数字消费、在线社交性和说服技巧，本篇论文主要阐述“虚拟世界”与“真实世界”这种二分模式对研究MMO游戏的不利影响。

摘要：

我认为许多有关大型多人在线游戏（MMO）、虚拟环境的重要学术观点都是由基于“真实世界与虚拟世界”的二元分法引申而来。这种二分法的渊源，可以追溯到游戏研究界的“魔法圈”概念和早期互联网学术界的网络空间分离主义。这种二分法模式曾运用于包括空间、身份、社会关系、经济和法律等多个领域的研究。我认为采用这个模式做研究还存在很多问题，因此建议学者们采用另一个角度，这个角度是基于Anselm Strauss的“重叠的社会世界”。MMO玩家的活动范围并非仅局限于MMO游戏，他们也常常浏览其他的网站和论坛。与此同时，其他的社会世界，如家庭和工作地点，也会渗透到MMO游戏中，并长期与玩家的个人世界交织在一起。有些研究项目将MMO视为一个独立的迷你社区，这显然是不妥的，我们其实还发现了许多更切合实际的研究观点。

关键词：研究设计，方法论，在线游戏，魔法圈，社会世界观点，虚拟空间，身份

引言

这本书无关类比法。我们并不是认为，设计一个商业策略与恢复生态系统、打战等情况类似。商业策略就是商业策略，虽然有时类比法可能很有效，但它们也常常误导研究。我们认为类比法可以有效表达策略，但却不能正确分析策略。（游戏邦注：Shapiro和Varian，《信息规则》）

相对于城市、国家以及通常的地球等说法，文学学术领域常把一些在线游戏和服务称为“虚拟世界”。这些词语是用来表现这些系统，以及发生其中的活动的规模和复杂性。但这种具有说服力的类比法也影响了学者们的主题研究框架。我想在本文表达的是，“虚拟世界”一词会让人们对它所描述的实体形成错误的假想。我认为用MMO（大型多人在线游戏）来代表这些游戏和环境更合适。

多年来，学术界对MMO的研究兴趣正日益增长。Greg Lastowka整理的“虚拟法律”参考书目显示，2007年这类文章的发表数量是2006年的3倍。为了引导和探讨MMO的研究方向和重点，不少学者曾提出了各种不同观点。例如，Caroline Bradley和A. Michael Froomkin认为，可以利用MMO来执行在“现实世界”需要高成本的法律实验。Edward Castronova的看法是，MMO是“社会科学的实验培养皿，或者超级对撞机”。Robert Bloomfield呼吁开发一种可促进商业学科的教学研究的MMO。David Bray和Benn Konsynski尝试了从各种学科角度研究“内在世界和交互世界的活动和行为”。

这些提议和其他各种MMO研究所存在的问题是，它们都是以“真实—虚拟”这种二元的角度看待MMO，我在本文第二部分会对此进行详细论述。这一观点把MMO描述成独立于“真实世界”之外的世界，一个合成的复制品，但它可以像一个遥远的星球那样独立运作。市场营销人员和主流媒体很赞同这种观点，因为它把科幻小说中的同步世界带到了现实中。但这对于研究者们来说则完全是毫无根据的想象。 T.L. Taylor在对大型在线角色扮演游戏《无尽的任务》（EverQuest）做了大量调查研究后做出了总结，“如果我们认为可以把游戏和非游戏、虚拟和真实一分为二，那将导致我们误解人类与科技、文化的关系”。比较遗憾的是，对这一领域颇为感兴趣的社会科学家、法律学者和信息系统研究者们，对MMO形成了一种形象化但错误的观念，这会导致在他们研究的时候做出错误的假设。

在本文的第三部分，我论述了以“虚拟世界”角度看待MMO的常见问题以及新出现的问题。在第四部分中，我认为学者们不应该采用二元方式做研究，而应该对MMO和家庭、工作或者高尔夫活动等系统一视同仁，切入同样的方法来研究这些内容。我在这部分中详述了Anselm Strauss以符号互动角度看待社会世界的观点，它有助于阐述MMO游戏和其他领域活动的关系。本文的最后一部分，主要讨论这种社会世界角度对于研究设计的意义，并简要地批判了“现实生活”有时可以融入MMO研究的观点。

虚拟世界与真实世界

虚拟世界已经成为一个现实。在虚拟世界中，玩家可以创造一个代表自己的数字人物，与其他由电脑生成的虚拟形象、风景、虚拟商业贸易以及社会体制进行实时互动。有趣的是，虚拟世界也出现了经济和社会秩序。在虚拟世界中，政治候选人也参加竞选，虚拟商品在现实世界中也有自己的市场。（游戏邦注：2007年12月“虚拟世界和新现实商业、政治和社会”的大会宣言）

MMO研究所采用的“真实—虚拟”角度，沿袭了游戏和互联网这两者早期的研究传统。在谈论互联网时，使用“IRL”和“网络空间”这类词语表明，以互联网为媒介的交流是存在于“物质世界”之外的活动。Perry Barlow的《网络空间独立宣言》（游戏邦注：A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace ，1996）对这一观点的描述很详尽也很有深度。巴罗的根本观点是，互联网出现了一个新的世界，这个世界与我们原有的世界截然不同。

在计算机游戏领域中，开发商和玩家早就使用“世界”这个词语来讨论《文明》之类的游戏，但这对于人们对现实的理解来说，这种说法只是一个标签而不是一种表述。我所提到的概念二分法，在角色扮演类游戏玩家中间更为盛行，他们经常使用“游戏中”和“游戏外”这类的词语来划分“游戏”和“游戏之外的世界”。在学术圈内，这个界限被称作“魔法圈”。 这一概念是Katie Salen和Eric Zimmerman借鉴荷兰历史学家约翰 ·赫伊津哈（Johan Huizinga，1872-1945）的观点，并将其引进数字游戏研究领域。赫伊津哈对游戏的定义如下：

（游戏是）独立于“正常”生活之外的自由、“不拘谨”，同时又深深地吸引玩家的活动。这一活动于物质利益毫无关系，同时玩家也无法从中获利。游戏按照既定的规则有秩序地在自己的时空中运行。游戏帮助玩家建立自己的神秘群体，通过伪装或者其他手段来掩饰自己与普通世界的不同。

“魔法圈”观点对当代的游戏研究影响很大。根据Lin和Sun的观点，在魔法圈的概念中，游戏是一种“独立于现实生活的世界”。游戏只有在不含物质世界的功义主义元素时，才能让玩家获得最佳体验。许多游戏研究者也从那时开始加入研究讨论，有的支持，有的反对。Malaby认为研究者在游戏观点上的分歧“阻碍他们了解游戏的力量”。经济学家Edward Castronova和法律学家Greg Lastowka也采用了魔法圈的概念，并从游戏研究领域之外的角度，针对MMO表达了自己的观点。

Castronova在研究论文中探讨了如何处理MMORPG相关的法律纠纷，例如用真实的货币购买虚拟的商品。他的主要观点是，玩游戏并没有“遵照‘日常生活’的理性逻辑，因此法律应该采取不同的方法对待有关游戏的问题。“当相扑选手进入相扑赛场的“魔法圈”，或者专业拳击手进入到某一回合的“魔法圈”，他们所面对的游戏规则完全不同于现实生活。法律和社会规范禁止使用暴力进行人身攻击，但这却是游戏中的行为准则。

他受赫伊津哈观点的影响，为MMO和外部世界划分了明确的界限，“MMORPG与博客、社交网站存在一些共同之处，但它与其他形式的在线活动截然不同，MMORPG是游戏”。他认为，法院和律师都明白高尔夫场地和棒球场的游戏规则，他们应该把这一认识扩展到MMORPG领域。法院应该摒弃传统的规则，照顾这种“游戏规则”。

Castronova是一位在MMO学术领域颇有威望的作家，在《玩游戏的权利》（游戏邦注：The Right to Play , 2004）中表示，所有人都有玩游戏的基本需求。对于玩游戏的资格这个问题，他引用了赫伊津哈的观点进行阐述：

赫伊津哈认为，凡是涉及道德问题的游戏都不能称之为游戏，如果让道德观念主宰了游戏，游戏就结束了。游戏可能发生的唯一涉及道德的行为就是结束游戏，否认游戏的假设性、破坏其虚拟性。

Castronova认为，玩游戏的冲动“深深埋在在我们内心深处，处于理性思维之下，生活本能之上”，如果我们无法满足这一需求，可怕的事情就要发生了。虚拟世界是满足这一需求的乐土，“这一世界和我们的现实世界很像，人们开始花大量的时间在其中玩游戏”。唯一的问题是现实世界的触角也开始渗入这个世界，破坏了游戏规则，剥夺了人们玩游戏的权利，结果使“玩游戏”的行为在“现实世界”中变得意义非凡。Castronova的结论是，法律应该保护这种魔法圈的不渗透性特点。

有些研究并没有明确提到魔法圈概念，因此也没有采用类似的一分为二的观念。Richard Bartle极其反对外部对虚拟世界的干扰，尤其是来自监督机构的干涉。Castronova在随后的文章《论大型游戏的研究价值》（游戏邦注：On the Research Value of Large Games ，2006a）中并没有提到“现实的渗透性”，而是表示他认为虚拟世界堪比整个现实社会：

直到今天，我们仍然不能把整个社会作为一个研究对象进行调查。因此，我们虽然可能从理论、历史角度、以及民族意义角度出发，认为这个社会一直在以自己的方式运转，我们也可以通过小规模的实验来证实这一观点。但是在条件受限的情况下，我们不可能充分了解整个社会。而如今，随着人造世界技术的出现，我们完全有可能复制整个社会，让他们平行运转。

为了证实这种研究方法的作用，Castronova观察了《无尽的任务》和《卡米洛特的黑暗时代》（Dark Age of Camelot，2001）的玩家活动，发现他们即使没有事前约好地点，也可以聚集到某个地方，他的游戏理论已提前预测到了这个结果。Castronova认为，这“表明相互协作的游戏确实可以大规模地存在于人类社会”，他也因此将虚拟世界定义为世俗社会的网络分身。

在其他学科早期的MMO研究论文中就有谈到这种分身模式。Bray和Konsynski认为，“在虚拟世界中，所有人都可以创造一个数字人物，与其他由电脑生成的虚拟形象、风景、虚拟商业活动进行实时互动。这些虚拟世界还出现了经济和社会秩序。”这表明虚拟世界是许多现实世界现象的翻版，例如：虚拟商业、虚拟城市、虚拟居住地、虚拟公民和虚拟法律等等。但是，与Castronova的孤立研究观点不同，Bray和Konsynski认为真实世界和虚拟世界可能会产生交集。

Bray和Konsynski的研究成果，以及上述的各种观点均表明，MMO研究中的真实世界&虚拟世界的二分法其实还可以分解为多个层面：

1. 虚拟空间VS.真实空间

2. 虚拟世界的人口VS.真实世界的人口

3. 虚拟身份VS.真实身份

4. 虚拟世界的关系VS.真实世界的关系

5. 虚拟社会制度VS.真实社会制度

6. 虚拟经济VS.真实经济

7. 虚拟法律和政治VS.真实法律和政治

在接下来的部分，我将逐一论述上述各个方面的内容，并探讨真实—虚拟二分法所存在的普遍问题和新问题。

一分为二模式所面临的挑战

虚拟空间VS.真实空间

真实—虚拟二分法最具体的方面也许就是空间了。MMO是以某种方式模仿的几何空间。虽然玩家都置身于现实生活中，但他们的所有游戏活动都仅存在于这个模拟空间。因此，用户和学者们都认为这些模拟的情形和现实空间的各种情况是相通的，其中必不可少的媒介是计算机。

但即便处于虚拟空间的核心地位，真实空间的地位仍然不容忽视。《魔兽世界》的公会、《EVE Online》的运营公司都是根据用户所在地以及时区来招募新成员的。对于《魔兽世界》的袭击公会来说，成员能否长时间地同时在线这一点非常关键。而对于跨地域的《EVE Online》玩家同盟来说，他们很需要可以24小时站岗的成员。所以，这些运营公司经常会通过做广告来吸纳新成员，比如西欧或者美国东海岸的成员。在太空站大战中，作战方一般都喜欢在对手毫无防备的情况下出战。

一个更基本的问题是，虚拟空间在哪里结束，真实空间从哪里开始？除了在《魔兽世界》和《EVE Online》中的平原和星球上碰面，玩家还通过论坛、聊天工具、语音交流服务器和视频分享网站进行互动和交流。比如Avatars United就是一个MMO玩家的社交网站，它不是MMO服务器的一部分，而是其社交场所的延伸。另一个例子是《EVE Online》同盟之间的宣传大战，这些成员遍布各地，从论坛到YouTube都有他们的踪影。Johnson和Toiskallio描述了哈宝（Habbo）的影响力是如何扩散至用户创建的粉丝网站和粉丝杂志。如果研究者把自己的研究范围局限于MMO服务器，他们定会错过其他的玩家活动空间。“虚拟空间”概念作用很大，但概念也很模糊、有多个层面，并不是实体空间的整体参照物。

虚拟世界的人口VS.真实世界的人口

如果要对比真实世界和虚拟空间，计算人均经济水平，或者从中抽取样本来做调查研究，虚拟世界的人口将是一个很重要的参照信息。然而，虚拟世界的人口概念比一个国家的人口还更难理解，有很多学者尝试给它下定义，但都没有什么结果，最终都陷入批判主义的境地。主要问题在于，在游戏中达到什么级别的用户，才可以定义为“积极参与”的用户，这一点会因不同的在线服务类型而出现明显差别。

虚拟身份VS.真实身份

个人身份也是真实—虚拟二分法的一个重要研究层面。 Castronova认为，虚拟世界“提供现实世界所没有的自由，玩家可以随意扮演任何角色。”也就是说，用户具有双重身份，一个是在真实世界，一个是在虚拟世界。事实上，大部分MMO用户在虚拟世界中也讨论学校、工作、家庭问题和电视节目等话题。那些玩角色扮演类游戏的用户甚至还把他们的看法、教育和21世纪的骑士精神带到MMO游戏中，所以两个身份并非毫无关联。用户的身份也会涌入其他领域：在线游戏体验所塑造的人物身份，有可能对用户在其他环境中的个性施加影响。Celia Pearce和Artemesia描述了已经终止的MMO游戏《迷雾之岛》（Uru）所出现的一种情况，即曾经的用户仍保持“迷雾之岛犹太人”身份，甚至转移到新的MMO游戏，形成一个“迷雾之岛种族社区”。

与上述的真实身份与虚拟身份存在“分裂性”相对立的观点是，虚拟身份“折射”真实身份的看法：游戏虚拟形象是玩家真实人格的一种折射和反映，虚拟角色是玩家在虚拟世界表现自己的一种形式。有很多调查结果可以支撑这种观点。例如，Yee表示，MMORPG玩家经常会以自己的真实年龄和性别来创建虚拟形象。在《第二人生》（Second Life）中，玩家往往会以自己的个人形象来创造游戏化身。不仅如此，许多玩家还有多个替身，有些玩家还共用一个替身。处于“间谍”身份的《EVE Online》玩家在游戏中有多个替身，而且这些替身在表面上都假装相互对立。我发现一些《哈宝》玩家也有多重身份，注册多个论坛，他们接触不同群体时，会以不同的身份示人。不论是“分裂论”还是是折射论，它们都无法单独而完整诠释MMO游戏中的身份定义。

虚拟世界的关系VS.真实世界的关系

受早期的计算机媒介社区研究的影响，人们普遍认为计算机网络所促成的友谊，与现实生活中面对面建立的友谊一样深厚而有意义。但是人们也普遍认为要区分“现实世界的朋友”和“虚拟世界的朋友”很困难。玩家和公会在同时参与游戏的时候，可以在游戏之外相互交流。朋友、家庭成员和亲属也可以在MMO中共度时光。Pinckard则指出，生意伙伴们也曾聚在《魔兽世界》中一起打发休闲时光，讨论业务，建立人际关系，就像高尔夫场上的商人们一样。不论是在线上还是线下，他们都可以轻松自如地维持关系。

用户把MMO中的关系延伸到线下世界的其中一个原因是为了增加信任，减少和陌生人合作的风险。例如，《EVE Online》是一个高风险的游戏，用户在彼此还没有相互信任的时候，联系就已经相当紧密。这样的关系不能简单地描述成真实或者虚拟，另一种能够延伸到游戏之外的MMO人际关系则是敌对关系。

虚拟社会制度VS.真实社会制度

Castronova认为，MMO的另一大益处在于，它支持玩家在虚拟世界中发挥无法在真实世界展示的能力。他的观点是，最理想的逃避现实的去处，就是与现实世界准则绝缘的MMO游戏，这个虚拟世界有自己的一套行为准则和制度。但在他看来，很少有MMO可以达到这种理想的境界，比如出手阔绰的玩家就可以通过二手市场购买强大的游戏角色，这一点就可以看出现实世界对虚拟世界施加的巨大影响。除此之外，现实世界的性别不平等现象也渗入了MMO。Holin Lin就曾记述，台湾女性玩家的游戏行为常受到父母不同程度的监视，或者在网吧受到男女玩家团体活动的影响。

那么虚拟世界中盛行的虚拟制度究竟有什么特点？最核心的例子就是MMORPG中的公会，它会在多个方面影响成员的行为表现。典型的公会不仅仅是一群聚在一起玩游戏的用户，它还可以独立于任何一款游戏而存在，可以从一个MMO集体迁移到另一个MMO，或者同时参与多个MMO游戏活动。中国学者熊振就曾指出，中国的“跨游戏元公会”人员规模可以多达成百上千人，他们的不和或者结盟并不仅局限于某款游戏，它可以将一款独立的MMO游戏转变为一个大型元游戏的一部分。他认为，这种元游戏有可能涉及经济利益，比如发生“黄金农场”这种运营商与玩家之间的灰色交易模式。简而言之，虽然现实世界的条条框框会对MMO玩家的行为产生影响，但表面上属于虚拟世界范畴的制度，也同样有可能影响现实世界的多个层面。

虚拟法律和政治 VS.真实法律和政治

在本文之前的部分，我概括了Lastowka关于法院必须区别对待虚拟世界的观点，因为这属于不同时空的概念。但法律学者Joshua Fairfield却有不同的看法，他的观点与Lastowka的二分法截然不同：

初看之下，魔法圈的概念确实很适合形容MMO游戏，玩家所采取的行动是发生在“虚拟”而非“真实”的世界中，所以他们不需要承担法律责任。但如果仔细研究就会发现，“真实”与“虚拟”之间其实并不存在明显的界限。当玩家们进入一个彼此对抗的世界中，就表明他们同意这种安排。（Fairfield, 2008, p. 18）

Fairfield的观点是，不管是在体育比赛，还是在《魔兽世界》这类游戏中，法院在解决法律纠纷时，还是应该将当事人的默认同意及社会准则考虑入内。不过，Fairfield同意Lastowka关于律必须慎重处理“游戏规则”的说法，但并不认为MMO具有特殊性及“虚拟性”。另外他还认为，游戏规则的概念并不模糊：不同的股东对MMO应该采用什么合法的游戏行为有不同的看法，他们可以参照其他法律及道德诫律来支持这种观点。从这一点上看，MMO的法律和道德准则的确无法脱离现实世界而独立存在。

在虚拟世界的政治体系中，MMO中的公会制度经常与统治纠纷及权力之争有关，一些学者因此预测MMO中的“社会秩序可以独立于，甚至超越现实政府的干预而存在”，另外它也“削弱了现实政府的重要性。”但Fairfield的观点却是，至少到目前为止，虚拟世界还是得严格遵从现实世界的政治体系：虚拟世界的游戏规则还是由现实的法官来裁定的。如果玩家或游戏运营商想要掌握更多独立权，那就得去游说国家政府授予他们更多特权。

社会世界的观点

概括以上的论点，我们就可以发现，任何一种研究如果要把MMO视为一个脱离“真实世界”的虚拟世界，那么它在研究过程中就应该考虑以下几个要点：

1.虚拟世界所在的空间并非难以辨别；

2.虚拟世界的人口概念并非模糊不清；

3.不能把虚拟世界的成员身份与虚拟形象划上等号；

4.虚拟世界的社会关系并不仅局限于特定的MMO；

5.外界的准则、制度会规范人们在虚拟世界中的行为；

6.虚拟经济会受到现实经济情况的影响；

7.虚拟法律和政治由真实世界来制定和裁决。

很显然，上述的要点几乎渗透虚拟世界的各个层面。目前为止，解决这种研究难题的典型策略就是，将上述的要点归结为虚拟与现实这两个世界的交集或相互影响。这种策略在解决这种难题的同时，仍然保持着二分法模式。仅有一些例外情况并不能证明二分法模式完全无效，但根据上文所述的内容，这些例外情况已经不在少数，以至研究者们已难以将其一一记录在案。如果二分法模式并不契合基于经验主义的现实情况，那么我们是否还有其他更好的途径来诠释MMO参与性的概念？

从前文列举的一些讨论主题中可以看出，二分法模式的缺陷之一在于，它对人与空间这两者关系的解释有误。二分法模式认为一个虚拟世界是一个MMO服务器，以及其中的社会群体，相关体系绑定的一个合体，它们的界限完美地将其划分为整个单一的社会科技实体、社会或者世界。但根据上文所述的观点，这些界限其实并不存在，因为MMO中的社会群体和亚文化群体可以超越服务器的局限性，从一个服务器转移到另一个服务器、论坛、平台和实体世界。

另一个主题是MMO用户和其他社会群体、体系之间的关系。家庭、商务圈、玩家社区等都会与MMO用户形成交集，而MMO用户又与游戏公会、国家和流行文化活动等更大的实体交织在一起。我们甚至也不能用二分法来界定MMO运营商的概念：一方面，运营商是为获取利润而向用户提供服务的公司；另一方面，它们是MMO规则的制定者和决策者。

要采用一个更好的研究模式，第一步就是将技术平台从用户群体、虚拟制度中分解出来。就像Castronova所说的，这个由计算机生成的虚拟社会仅局限于游戏服务器的管辖范围吗？或者我们是否该将公会、论坛视为与MMO对等的另一个社会世界？这里并不是主张完全无视界限的存在，让我们的研究失去重心，而是力求避免因科技层面的特点，而人为地划分虚拟世界的界限。

第二个步骤就是，将MMO社为与社会其他现象相对等的概念。上文曾提到MMO用户群与高尔夫商务圈、玩家社区可以并列存在。学者和市场营销人员提到MMO用户群时频频使用的一个词就是“社区”，这个概念与Rheingold所提出的虚拟社区相同。不过，这种术语并不适合形容MMO用户群体，Rheingold的虚拟社区以及经典社会科学关于社区的概念，它们往往体现群体之间的熟悉程度、统一性甚至是亲密度。数百万的个体同时购买同一款式的箱子，或者在同个网站上注册帐号，但他们并不具备这种社区特性。而一个MMO服务器却可以让社区群体们聚到同一个地点，但如果要解释比这规模更大的用户群体，那就需要使用其他的概念。

如果要找到一个更合适的抽像概念，我建议大家参照Anselm Strauss的经典之作《社会世界观点》（social world perspective，1978; 1984; 1997）。Strauss的观点对交互式意识流的影响很大，后者的传统是关注涉及民族、种族和国家等宏观群体间的冲突，或者那些没有明确界限或组织的微观社会群体的大规模扩散现象。他的目的是用同一个完整但会考虑社会现实流动性的观点将这些渠道整合为一体。

在Strauss看来，社会世界就是一个“论域”（游戏邦注：universe of discourses，Strauss, 1978, p. 121），它们之间的界限并不是由“领土或正式的关系来界定，而是因无法有效沟通而形成。”在社会世界的观点中，社会现实是一个由无数不同规模的社会世界所构成，它们之间会重叠、交织甚至分割成更小的次级世界。一个普通的个体通常也是家庭、工作单位、职业、兴趣爱好、宗教社区、酒友等多个社会世界的成员。这些世界可以由国际化或本地化，临时性或已建立，公开或隐瞒，阶级或无组织状态的群体所组成。总之，这些社会世界的界限，以及成员关系、主要活动等本质内容仍然存在争议。

尽管如此，我们仍然不能忽视MMO虚拟世界所涉及的科技、空间和动作等具体内容。Strauss强调这些内容是真实存在而可观察的社会世界特性：

每个社会世界都至少有一项最主要、最具标志性的活动，比如说爬山、调查、搜集等。这些活动都有具体的发生地点，所以它的空间与景物有关。科技（继承或创新的社会活动模式）一直在不断发展……各个社会世界在开端时可能只有一些临时性的劳动分工，但随着它的成长和时间发展，不可避免地会出现团队组织这种形式，推动它深入发展或者展开这个世界的另一个活动项目。

在《EVE Online》这种MMO游戏中，玩家的参与活动非常复杂，有可能催生其他二级活动、组织形式甚至是一种新技术来支持他们的核心活动内容。虽然参与者们不一定都具有统一意识或者彼此相熟，但他们可以形成一种“有效沟通”的氛围，让大家团结在一起。不但EVE服务器和论坛可以促进他们的沟通，第三方网站、在线音频播放器、视频媒介、彩印版本的游戏平面杂志，都有可能让这些玩家形成一个以游戏活动为中心的“论域”。

从这个角度来看，我们可以将EVE视为一个完整而独立的社会世界，它也可能是其衍生的次级世界的主导力量。我们可以把EVE与伦敦金融界、相扑界、游戏学术界归为同一类型的世界。

对于用户个人来说，EVE在他们生命中的地位可能与职业圈、附近住宅区，甚至远房亲戚差不多。这些社会世界可能会像MMO一样，涉及同一批人群、活动、地点和科技，并与其他社会世界相互交织在一起。

另一方面，并非所有的MMO平台都会形成一个独特的社会世界，将所有用户的活动卷入其中。比如说《哈宝》和《第二人生》就是一个开放性的平台，但它们的成员并不需要高度集中地参与同一种活动。它们只是邀请和户使用平台提供的服务，实现个体的活动价值。这类用户群体和活动有些是发端于其他已建立的社会世界，有些则是刚通过网络建立起来的关系。可以将这种类型的MMO视为因多个社会世界交织而形成的一个网站，而不是催生一个整体社会世界的摇篮。同一项MMO服务在不同社会世界所扮演的角色也会有所不同，这就是所谓的“界限目标”（boundary object）。对MMO社会世界发挥重大作用的是这项服务的开发者，对他们来说，MMO的目标就是让用户共同参与活动，促进开发者与用户之间的持续沟通。

研究的含义

Richard Bartle将“虚拟”定义为“只是徒有形式或作用但实际上并不存在的事物”。从这个定义看来，“虚拟世界并不存在”就是一个不言自明的双关命题。但我希望可以证明，这个命题引申出的第二个定义也是正确的：“虚拟世界”并没有表现真实世界的形式或作用。

用摆脱科技局限性的社会世界观点，取代二分法的“同一个服务器，同一群人”这种虚拟世界观点，可以让我们更清楚地看出目前的MMO研究命题所存在的缺陷。最明显的一点表现在，MMO服务器并不能将一个“世界”或“社会”从地球中分离出来。MMO服务器可能是一个社会世界、一项活动的中心，它的影响之深很容易让人误以为它是一种不同形式的真实。但从更大范围或更小的层面来看，同一群个体经常会同时成为其他多种社会世界的成员，而这些社会世界也对他们的身份塑造和行为规范产生了影响。

Castronova的结论是，在MMO服务器管辖范围内所形成的协调效应表明，人类社会普遍存在协调效应。从本质上讲，玩家真的无权在论坛或者公会中投票选择集会的地点吗？或者在不同服务器拥有多个虚拟身份的玩家，会把自己在A服务器中习惯带到B服务器中来吗？MMO服务器中的社会世界与其他社会世界交织在一起，它们之间的界限从来不明确。基于经验主义的世界和其他世界从来不会相互分离，所以MMO服务器也不可能形成一个独立的人类社会，研究项目不能以这种假设为切入点。

但这并不是说MMO对调查研究来说毫无意义。我们可以将MMO玩家当成与其他人群一样的研究对象，而且他们的活动很大程度与计算机媒介有关，但又不完全依赖于后者，所以相对容易获得有效的调查数据。例如，MMO可用于研究经济决策权、社会心理和在线消费习惯。这些调查并不是基于MMO是社会化身这个假设，或者局限于服务器所管辖的范围，而是以MMO是一个拥有自身特点的人群互动网站作为出发点。

我的另一个批判观点是，不少与MMO相关的研究总将其归入“虚拟世界”的行列，或者再划分出游戏世界、开放式世界这两个次级类别。但根据社会世界的观点，现实社会中与MMO所发生的类似活动和对话，也同样存在于其他在技术层面还不能称为“虚拟世界”的在线服务领域。这些领域从某些角度来看，可能没有MMO世界那么复杂。例如虚拟经济，它在社交网站和即时信息系统中均广泛存在。事实上，与MMO世界最为接近的参照物可能并非另一个MMO世界，而有可能是另一种由基于计算机媒体的社会世界。比如《第二人生》的特点与《Cyworld》甚至是《Flickr》更接近，但与《安特罗皮亚世界》（Entropia Universe）、《魔兽世界》的相似度却比较低。因此，研究者们不能将“虚拟世界”作为一个笼统的类别来研究，除非他们的研究有足够的证明来支撑这一论据。

为了概括以上论点，我建议社会科学家们对照以下的问题，审视自己的研究是否与原定目标相吻合：

1）在所有的社会世界网站和科技成果中，为什么我要将MMO作为研究重点？

2）在社会世界可能出现多种交集形态的情况下，我是否仅观察MMO服务器管理范围内的活动？

3）我的研究结果是一般MMO的总体情况，还是某个特定MMO的情况，或者其他完全不同的研究对象？

这三个问题都很容易作答，但“MMO是一个虚拟版本的真实世界”绝非一个正确的假设前提。

最后，社会世界观点还强调，虽然我们可以辨别MMO世界中的商品、制度、条款和政治等概念，但不能把它们视为“真实世界”中的“虚拟版本”或者“模仿”。首先，它们并非现实物体的分身，而是自成体系的实体。其次，这种平行现象在一些基于计算机媒介的社会世界中也普遍存在。比如说，我们可以把虚拟商品当成一种新型商品，它们与高尔夫俱乐部或商场的衣服是并列存在的，但绝不是后者的衍生产品。加上“虚拟”这个前缀，是为了让人们更好地理解这些商品是基于计算机媒介的产品，而不是说它们不真实或者是由实物衍生而来的东西。

在大多数情况下，这个“虚拟”的前缀其实是可有可无的，但“虚拟政治”除外，因为它可以更好地解释MMO开发者与用户之间的政治关系。

希望这种认识可以让学者们放弃“虚拟”这个形容词，T. L. Taylor曾表明“我们现在知道线上和线下生活之间并不存在界限，在许多情况下，我们并不需要保留游戏和非游戏状态的二分法”。网络空间孤立主义的观点现在已经过时了，我周围也已经很少人使用“IRL”这个术语。这种非此即彼的二分模式，应该被互联网与人类生活大量交集的观点所取代。尽管Castronova明确反对Barlow早期的观点，但我们还是不难看出这两种思想的异曲同工，他们都是这一学术领域的先驱。

真实世界并不存在

本文原标题是“真实世界并不存在”。如果人们对“虚拟世界”的概念仍有疑问，那么也会对“真实世界”在许多MMO研究中的含蓄概念产生困惑：“真实世界”就是一个统一而综合的现象，人们在这个世界中以“真实身份”过着理性的“现实生活”。这种观点与当代社会科学盛行的观点截然相反，因为后者主要强调现实生活的多样性、流动性、身份分化性、以及通常由人为塑造和美化的特点。

另外，构造主义者以及Pierre Bourdieu等后构造主义者理论家，通常将生活各个领域的规则和结构，视为与MMO世界中书面或非书面游戏规则的相似参照物。“有趣的是承认游戏值得一玩，其中创造的风险值得体验，重要的是认识游戏的本质以及它所存在的风险。”其他MMO研究也曾提到这种日常生活中的游戏化特点，Castronova就曾将社会比作一个大型游戏，不过他并没有将社会当成具有多样性的游戏。相反，MMO游戏设置在许多方面与日常工作很相似：劳心劳力、乏味和偶然的盈利性。Malaby进一步阐述了这种观点，建议我们将游戏当作人为设置的结果，“人为制造的偶然性”，我们就可以发现这个社会中的游戏无处不在：有些人常与商业风险同在，有些人的生活充满政治风险，还有一些人面临难缠的家庭矛盾。未来将有越来越多的旧游戏被搬到网络上，有时候甚至以新游戏的面目出现在同样的地盘，比如说EVE同盟战斗。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Virtual Worlds Don’t Exist: Questioning the Dichotomous Approach in MMO Studies

Abstract:

I argue that much influential scholarship on massively-multiplayer online games and virtual environments (MMO) is based on a dichotomous “real world vs. virtual world” model. The roots of this dichotomy can be traced to the magic circle concept in game studies and the cyberspace separatism of early Internet thought. The model manifests on a number of dimensions, including space, identity, social relationships, economy and law. I show a number of problems in the use of this model

in research, and propose an alternative perspective based on Anselm Strauss’s concept of overlapping social worlds. The world of players does not respect the boundaries of an MMO server, as it frequently flows over to other sites and forums. At the same time, other social worlds, such as families and workplaces, penetrate the site of the MMO and are permanently tangled with the players’ world. Research programs that approach MMOs as independent mini-societies are therefore flawed, but there are many other kinds of research that are quite feasible.

Keywords: reseach design, methodology, online games, magic circle, social world perspective, virtual space, identity

Introduction

[T]his book is not about analogies. We won’t tell you that devising business strategies is like restoring an ecosystem, fighting a war, or making love. Business strategy is business strategy and though analogies can sometimes be helpful, they can also be misleading. Our view is that analogies can be an effective way to communicate strategies, but they are a very dangerous way to analyze strategies.

Shapiro & Varian, Information rules

In academic literature, certain online games and services are referred to as “virtual worlds” and compared to cities (Taylor, 2006, p. 21), countries (Castronova, 2006b) and most frequently, even the planet Earth (e.g. Castronova, 2002; Castronova, 2006a; Nash & Schneyer, 2004, Lastowka & Hunter, 2004). Such language is intended to communicate the scale and complexity of these systems and the activities that take place within them. But these compelling analogies also influence the conceptual framework from which researchers draw their research design. In this article, I attempt to show that the term “virtual world” invites incorrect assumptions about the entity it describes. I will instead use the less popular term MMO (massively-multiplayer online) to refer to these games and environments.

Academic interest in MMOs outside the sphere of game studies has been growing for several years. According to a “virtual law” bibliography put together by Greg Lastowka (2008), three times as many articles were published in 2007 as were in 2006. To guide and focus research efforts related to MMOs, several research agendas have been proposed. For example, Caroline Bradley and A. Michael Froomkin suggest using MMOs to conduct legal experiments that would be too costly to carry out “in the real world” (Bradley & Froomkin, 2004, p. 103). Edward Castronova argues that MMOs are the “social science equivalent of a petri dish, or a supercollider” (Castronova, 2006a, p. 170). Robert Bloomfield advocates the development of a special MMO for the purpose of education and research in business disciplines (Bloomfield, 2007). David Bray and Benn Konsynski attempt to outline opportunities for researching “intra-world and inter-world practice and behavior” from several disciplinary perspectives (Bray & Konsynski, 2007).

The problem with these agendas and various other MMO-related studies is that they are based on a dichotomous “real-virtual” perspective to MMOs, which I describe in detail in the second part of this paper. In this perspective, MMOs are painted as separate worlds, located outside “the real world”, in many ways mirroring it like a synthetic double, but carrying on independently of it like a distant planet. Marketers and mainstream media are fond of this way of viewing MMOs, as it evokes powerful images of parallel worlds from science fiction turned into reality. For researchers, however, it is a treacherous fantasy. In her extensive study on the massively multiplayer online role-playing game EverQuest (SOE, 1999), T.L. Taylor concludes that “To imagine we can segregate these things – game and non-game, […] virtual and real – not only misunderstands our relationship with technology, but our relationship with culture” (Taylor, 2006, p. 153). The danger is that social scientists, legal scholars and information systems researchers now taking interest in the area adopt an evocative but inaccurate conceptualisation of MMOs that leads them to build their research on false assumptions.

In the third part of this paper, I review some well-known problems in the “real-virtual” perspective to MMOs, and present a few new ones. In the fourth part, I suggest that instead of using a dichotomous approach, scholars should place MMOs side-by-side with spheres of activity such as family, work or golf, approaching them using the same conceptual tools. The symbolic interactionist concept of social worlds as advocated by Anselm Strauss (1978) is introduced in some detail and found particularly convenient for conceptualising the relationship between MMOs and other spheres of activity. In the final part of this paper, I discuss the implications of this social world perspective for research design, and finish with a short criticism of the way “real life” is sometimes conceptualised in MMO studies.

Virtual Worlds Versus the Real World

Virtual worlds are now a reality. Virtual worlds allow everyone to create a digital character representing themselves and interact with other computer-generated individuals, landscapes, virtually-run global businesses, and in-world institutions in real-time. Fascinatingly, both endogenously produced economies and social orders are emerging in these virtual worlds. Political candidates are campaigning in virtual worlds, while some sales of virtual assets are producing demand in the real world for equivalent items.(Virtual Worlds and New Realities in Commerce, Politics, and Society，Conference announcement, December 2007)

The “real-virtual” perspective in MMO studies can be seen as heritage from two earlier traditions: games and the Internet. In Internet discourse, use of terms such as “IRL” and “cyberspace” illustrates thinking where network-mediated communication is conceptualised as activity and space distinct and separate from the affairs of the “meatspace”. A very explicit and influential expression of this thinking is John Perry Barlow’s A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (Barlow, 1996). The essence of Barlow’s manifesto is that a new world is emerging on the Internet, and that it is quite distinct from the old one.

In computer game parlance, developers and gamers have of course long been using the term “world” when discussing games such as Civilization (Meier, 1991), but in this use it is more of a label than a statement regarding one’s conceptualisation of reality. The conceptual dichotomy I am referring to can be found among role-playing gamers, who use the terms “in-game” and “out-of-game” to draw a line between “the game” and “the rest of the world”. In scholarly circles, this boundary is known as the “magic circle”. The concept was introduced into digital game studies by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004), who attribute the idea to Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945). Huizinga defined play/game as follows:

[A] free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.

It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means. (Huizinga, 2000, p. 13)

This “magic circle” view of games has become quite influential in contemporary game studies. According to Lin and Sun (2007), the magic circle view entails treating the game as “a world independent of the everyday real world.” The best play experience is achieved when the game is “insulated from or opposite to the utilitarian characteristics of the physical world” (Lin & Sun, 2007, p. 336). Many game scholars have since joined in the discussion to argue in support of or against the view (e.g. Copier, 2005). Malaby suggests that this setting-apart of games is actually “the largest roadblock to understanding what is powerful about them” (2007, p. 96).

Two influential authors writing on MMOs outside game studies who explicitly invoke the magic circle concept are economist Edward Castronova (2004) and legal scholar Greg Lastowka (2007; 2009). Lastowka examines the question of how law should deal with new MMORPG-related legal issues, such as real-money trading of virtual assets. Lastowka’s main argument is that play does not “conform to the reason and logic of ‘ordinary life’”, and that law must consequently treat game activities differently from “ordinary life”.

When a sumo wrestler enters the “magic circle” of the dohyo or the professional boxer enters the space and time of the bout, the rules of what social behaviors are desirable and forbidden are suddenly, radically changed. Violent and powerful physical attacks against another person, which are normally forbidden by law and social norms, become the obligatory mode of conduct. (Lastowka, 2007)

Inspired by Huizinga’s ideas, Lastowka makes a clear distinction between MMOs and the outside world. “[W]hile MMORPGs have some things in common with weblogs and social networks, they are also very different from other forms of online activity”, since “MMORPGs are games” (Lastowka, 2007, p. 3). According to Lastowka, courts and lawyers already understand the special status of the golf course and the baseball field, and they should now extend the same understanding to MMORPGs. Courts should set aside conventional rules in favour of the “rules of play”.

Castronova, one of the most cited authors in MMO-related scholarship, argues in The Right to Play (Castronova, 2004) that all humans have a fundamental need to play. To define what qualifies as play, he refers to Huizinga:

For Huizinga, nothing can be a game if it involves moral consequence […] if some consequence really does matter in the end, the game is over. In fact, the only act of moral consequence that can happen within a game is the act of ending the game, denying its as-if character, spoiling the fantasy [...] (Castronova, 2004, pp. 188-189)

The urge to play is “buried very deeply in our psyches, well below rational thought and somewhat above the urge to eat and have sex”, and if the need goes unsatisfied, terrible things happen (Castronova, 2004, pp. 202-203). Virtual worlds, Castronova argues, are a great place to satisfy this need in a safe way.

“They are worlds much like our world, and humans are beginning to spend many hours in them, playing games” (Castronova, 2004, p. 189). The only problem is that the real world is “seeping” into these worlds. This makes acts of “play” meaningful in the “real world”, spoiling the game and depriving humans of their right to play. Castronova concludes that impermeability of the magic circle should therefore be protected by law.

It is also common for works that do not explicitly invoke the magic circle to implicitly adopt a dichotomous perspective that resembles it. Richard Bartle frequently argues against outside interference in virtual worlds, particularly by regulators (e.g. Bartle, 2006). Castronova, in a later article titled On the Research Value of Large Games (Castronova, 2006a), sets “seeping reality” aside and claims that virtual worlds are comparable to entire societies:

Until now, it has not been possible to take all of society as a research object [...] Thus, although we might believe theoretically, historically, and ethnographically that society operates a certain way, and we might have small-scale experiments that support our beliefs, it has generally not been possible to observe whole societies under controlled conditions. Now however, with the advent of synthetic world technology, it is indeed possible to replicate entire societies and allow them to operate in parallel. (Castronova, 2006a, p. 163)

As a demonstration of this research method, Castronova observes that players in EverQuest (SOE, 1999) and Dark Age of Camelot (Mythic, 2001) converge in certain meeting places even though no such place has been agreed upon beforehand; a result predicted by game theory. For Castronova, this “indicates that the theory of coordination games does indeed operate on a large-scale level in human societies” (Castronova, 2006a, p. 179). Castronova thus positions virtual worlds as something similar to computerised doppelgängers of Earthly societies.

The doppelgänger model is also visible in some of the first MMO-related papers in other disciplines. According to Bray and Konsynski (2007, p. 24), “Virtual worlds allow everyone to create a digital character and interact with other computer-generated individuals, landscapes, and virtually-run businesses. Both endogenously produced economies and social orders are emerging in these virtual worlds.” They suggest that virtual worlds are hosts to a great variety of virtual versions of real-world phenomena: for example, virtual business, virtual cities, virtual inhabitants, virtual citizens and virtual laws. However, Bray and Konsynski are open to the possibility of interaction between the real and the virtual world (ibid., p. 17), in contrast to the Galapagos-style isolation implied by Castronova’s virtual societies research program.

Bray and Konsynski’s work as well as other discussions referenced above suggest that the virtual world-real world dichotomy found in MMO-related scholarship can be broken down to a number of dimensions. For instance, one could identify the following distinct dimensions:

1. Virtual space vs. real space

2. Population of a virtual world vs. real-world population

3. Virtual identity vs. real identity

4. Relationships in a virtual world vs. relationships in the real world

5. Virtual institutions vs. real-world institutions

6. Virtual economy vs. real economy

7. Virtual law and politics vs. real law and politics

In the next part, I will examine each of these dimensions in more detail, reviewing well-known difficulties with viewing the situation as a real-virtual dichotomy, as well as pointing out a few new ones.

Challenges for the Dichotomous Model

Virtual Space vs. Real Space

Perhaps the most concrete dimension of the real-virtual dichotomy is space. MMOs are designed to simulate geometrical space in one way or the other. While users must necessarily remain on Earth, all their actions are directed towards these simulated spaces. Thus users and scholars alike have come accept the simulations as tantamount to actual space for many intents and purposes, with the necessary caveat of them being computer mediated.

But even at the core of virtual space, physical space cannot be ignored. Guilds in World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004; from hereon, WoW) and corporations in EVE Online (CCP Games, 2003; from hereon, EVE) recruit members based on the continent and time zone in which they reside in. For WoW raiding guilds it is important that members can be online simultaneously for extended periods of time. For EVE alliances engaged in war over territory, it is vital that members are available to keep guard at all hours. It is common for corporations to advertise that new members are sought in, for instance, Western Europe or U.S East Coast. In battles over space stations, warring parties try to cause engagements at times that are inconvenient for the opponent (Combs, 2008).

A more fundamental question is, where does virtual space end and real world begin? Besides the plains and planets of WoW and EVE, players make their presence known on discussion forums, chats, voice communication servers and video sharing sites. For example, Avatars United is a social networking site for MMO characters: not part of the MMO server, yet clearly an extension of its social playfield. Another example is the propaganda war between EVE alliances, waged everywhere from forums to YouTube. Johnson and Toiskallio (2005) describe how Habbo spills over to user-maintained fan sites and fanzines. If researchers limit their observations to the MMO server only, they certainly miss a lot of the space where the action is played out. The notion of “virtual space” is useful, but also ambiguous and multi-faceted rather than a monolithic counterpart to physical space.

Virtual Population vs. Real-World Population

The population of a virtual world is an important piece of information if one wants to compare real and virtual spaces, calculate per capita macroeconomic indicators, or generalise from samples to whole virtual populations. However, the population of a virtual world has proven to be a much more elusive concept than the population of a country. Many attempts have been made to define it (Castronova, 2002; Castronova, 2006a; Castronova, 2006b; Linden, 2003), but none have been conclusive and all have been subject to criticism (Shirky, 2006; Lehtiniemi, 2009). A key problem is that the amount of play that qualifies as “active participation” in an online service depends on the specifics of the service in question.

Virtual Identity vs. Real Identity

Individual identity is a frequently cited dimension of the real-virtual dichotomy. According to Castronova (2006b), virtual worlds “give you a freedom that no one has on Earth: the freedom to be whomever you want to be.” The underlying idea is that people have two identities, one for the real world and one for the virtual world. In practice, most MMO users discuss school, work, family issues and television programs in the fantasy environment. Even those who role-play necessarily bring their attitudes, education and 21st century interpretation of knightly values into the MMO, so the two identities are never disconnected. Identity also flows in the other direction: identity-forming experiences in an online game can shape one’s character in other contexts (Fung, 2006). Celia Pearce and Artemesia (2006) describe how the once-members of a closed down MMO called Uru adopted a strong “Uru diaspora” identity that persisted as they moved on to new MMOs, forming “ethnic Uru communities”.

An opposite of the “schizophrenic” real identity vs. virtual identity view outlined above is the “mirror” view of identity: the notion that an avatar is the virtual reflection of a person, the person’s virtual body through which they express their identity in the virtual world. Many observations can be summoned to support this notion. For example, Yee (2007) reports that players’ age and gender are linked to certain MMORPG character creation choices. In Second Life, it is not uncommon for users to attempt to make their avatar literally a digital double of their body. Still, this is not the complete picture. Users frequently have more than one avatar, and some users share avatars between each other (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2004; Taylor, 2006, p. 47). Users involved in the “spy metagame” in EVE Online maintain avatars that are ostensibly in conflict with each other (Combs, 2008). In Habbo, I observed some users maintaining several avatars and discussion board handles, managing their façade towards different peer groups by selectively revealing which avatars and handles they hide behind. Neither the schizophrenic nor the mirror view alone affords a complete picture of identity in MMOs.

Relationships in a Virtual World vs. Relationships in the Real World

Since the earliest scholarship on computer-mediated communities (e.g., Rheingold, 2000[1993]; Turkle, 1995), it has been widely accepted that friendships mediated by computer networks can be as deep and meaningful as those acted out face-to-face. But it is equally well recognised that distinguishing between “real world friends” and “virtual world friends” can be difficult. Players and guilds interact with each other in gatherings and gaming cafés while simultaneously participating in games (Huhh, 2008; Lin, Sun & Tinn, 2003). Friends, family members and relatives spend time together in MMOs (Taylor, 2006, pp. 52-55; Kolo & Baur, 2004). Pinckard (2006) describes how business acquaintances gather in WoW to enjoy their free time, discuss business matters and build networks, much in the same way as some businessmen do on golf courses. Relationships move freely between offline and online environments.

One reason why participants expand MMO relationships to the offline world is to increase trust and to reduce risks associated with cooperating with strangers (Lin, Sun & Tinn, 2003; Taylor, 2006, pp. 46-47). For example, EVE is a high-stakes game where allies may want to get quite intimate before relying on each other extensively. Such relationships are not easily described as either real or virtual. Another class of relationships that can expand outside the MMO are antagonistic relations.

Virtual Institutions vs. Real-World Institutions

According to Castronova (2004), an important benefit of MMOs is that they allow players to engage in behaviour that would not be possible for them outside the game. Castronova’s ideal virtual getaway is an MMO where real-world norms do not reach, and virtual behaviour is instead regulated by a new set of virtual norms and institutions. He regrets that in practice, this ideal is seldom reached: for example, secondary markets allow wealthy individuals to purchase powerful game characters. A similar case of real-world inequity seeping into the virtual can found in gender and MMO participation. Holin Lin (2008) describes a number of ways in which real-world institutions and norms regulate Taiwanese female gamers’ playing behaviour, from differential parental supervision at home to group dynamics of male and female gamer communities in cybercafés.

What of the virtual institutions that reign in the virtual world? An essential one is the MMORPG guild, which influences the behaviour of its members (and others) in many ways (e.g. Williams et al., 2006). But while a typical guild is a group of players playing the same game together, guilds also exist independently of any particular game, moving from MMO to MMO or participating in several simultaneously. According to CCP Chief China Representative Horace Xiong (personal communication, 16 May 2007), Chinese “trans-game megaguilds” can have up to a hundred thousand members. Their feuds and alliances transcend any single game, turning individual MMOs into parts of a larger metagame. According to Xiong, this metagame may even involve economic interests, such as gold farming market shares and deals with MMO operators. In summary, while “real-world” norms and institutions will always have influence on behaviour in MMOs, institutions that are ostensibly part of the virtual world can also have suprising real-world dimensions.

Virtual Economy vs. Real Economy

Virtual economies have been at the heart of the debate concerning the relationship between virtual worlds and the real world from the very beginning. Real-money trade of virtual property (RMT) is said to open a door for real-world rationalism and economic inequalities to seep into the virtual world (Castronova, 2004). A common retort is that not having RMT markets advantages those players who have more real-world time at their disposal. It can be argued that even without RMT, virtual economies would still not be isolated from the patterns of the “real economy”. Nash and Schneyer (2004) describe a situation where the release of an existing MMO to a new market created an influx of new players, which translated to a sudden rise in the number of low-level avatars, which in turn had a significant impact on the game’s internal economy in the form of supply and demand shocks. Nash and Schneyer also observed that the prices of certain goods oscillated as a function of the time of day, because Japanese players had different demand characteristics compared to North American players.

Virtual Law and Politics vs. Real-World Law and Politics

In the previous part of this paper, I summarised Lastowka’s (2007) reasoned argument that virtual worlds should be treated exceptionally by courts, because they are play spaces. But legal scholar Joshua Fairfield provides another prespective, which effectively refutes Lastowka’s dichotomy:

At first blush, the magic circle seems to apply. The action took place in a “virtual,” and not a “real” world, and so legal liability should not follow. But upon careful examination, the distinction between “real” and “virtual” world fails. When a player enters a world in which player vs. player conflict is enabled, she consents to contact. (Fairfield, 2008, p. 18; emphasis added)

Fairfield’s point is that implied consent and community standards are (or should be) taken into account always when courts apply law; not just in the case of sports and games like sumo and WoW, but in the case of every industry and pursuit. Thus, while Fairfield agrees with Lastowka in that “rules of play” must be taken seriously by courts, he denies that there is anything out of ordinary or “virtual” about this. Moreover, rules of play are by no means unambiguous: different stakeholders have different ideas of what constitutes legitimate play in an MMO, and they support these ideas by referring to various other legal and moral arguments. The legal and moral regimes of MMO play are thus firmly part of this world.

As for virtual politics, MMO institutions such as guilds have given rise to fascinating governance issues and power struggles, which have inspired some scholars to go as far as to point to predictions of “social order independent of, and in several ways transcending, real-world governments” as well as “the waning importance of real-world governments” (Bray & Konsynski, 2007, p. 20). But the perspective afforded by Fairfield (2008) shows that at least for now, virtual world politics are strictly subordinate to real-world politics: they create rules of play that are interpreted by real-world judiciaries. When players or operators really want something, it is the national government they lobby (Yoon, 2008).

A Social World Perspective

Summarising the above discussions, we find that any study that chooses to view an MMO as a world, a virtual one, standing apart from “the real world”, must take

into account the following caveats in that model:

1. the space the virtual world occupies is not clearly distinguishable;

2. the population of the virtual world is ambiguous;

3. its inhabitants’ identities cannot be equated with avatars;

4. social relationships are not bounded by its limits;

5. outside norms and institutions regulate behaviour within it;

6. its economy is influenced by shifts in the real economy; and

7. its law and politics are shaped by outside processes.

Clearly, the notion of a virtual world begins to seem strained: a caveat can be found in almost every aspect of the concept. So far, the typical strategy for dealing with this difficulty has been to treat the caveats as “links” or “interaction” between the real world and the virtual world. This strategy attempts to address the issues whilst still clinging on to the dichotomous model that distinguishes between real and virtual. A few exceptions do not invalidate a model, but as the review above shows, the exceptions are beginning to pile up to such an extent that it is becoming difficult for a researcher to keep track of them. It is as if the dichotomous model did not fit together with empirical reality very well. Are there better ways to conceptualise MMO participation?

Some common themes emerge in the above discussions on the shortcomings of the dichotomous model. One is the relationship between people and space. The concept of a virtual world bundles together an MMO server and a set of social groups and institutions, expecting that their boundaries coincide and line up so perfectly that they can be subsumed into a single socio-technical entity, a society and its environment, a “world”. As the examples in the previous section illustrate, these boundaries do not necessarily line up at all. The social groupings and subcultures of an MMO frequently extend beyond the boundaries of the server to other servers, forums, platforms and physical spaces.

Another theme is the relationship between MMO users and other social groups and institutions. Families, business circles and gamer communities intersect with the MMO user base, and the MMO user base is crisscrossed by larger entities such as megaguilds, nationalities and movements in popular culture. The operator of the MMO is difficult to conceptualise in the dichotomous model: on one hand, it appears as a profit-making company providing a service to customers, while on the other, a suprememe government or god.

The first step towards a better model is to uncouple the technological platform from the user groups and institutions. This means stepping back and re-evaluating the relevant boundaries of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Do the boundaries of an entire computer-mediated society coincide with the edges of an EverQuest server, as suggested by Castronova (2006a)? Or should we also look at, for instance, guild servers and forum discussions as parallel modes of the same social world? The point is not to give up on boundaries altogether and let research lose its focus, but to avoid drawing artificial boundaries based on technological distinctions.

The second step is to conceptually reembed the MMO in the rest of society, from which it became detached when rhetoric turned it into a world of its own.

Discussions above place MMO user groups alongside social groups such as golf circles and gamer communities. Indeed, scholars and marketers frequently refer to the user base of an MMO as “a community”, recalling Rheingold’s (2000) notion of a virtual community. This is an ill-fitting term for the user base, however.

Rheingold’s virtual community as well as the classical sociological notion of community are characterised by familiarity, unity and even intimacy. A group of million or more individuals who happened to buy the same box or create an account on the same website will clearly not share those characteristics. An MMO server can act as an arena where communities gather, but some other concept must be used for theorising the larger user base.

To find a more fitting abstraction, I suggest looking at sociologist Anselm Strauss’s classical social world perspective (1978; 1984; 1997). Strauss was contributing to an interactionist stream of thought that had historically focused on either macro-level group encounters, e.g. those involving ethnic, racial and nationalistic groups, or the enormous proliferation of micro-level social groups which are not necessarily clearly boundaried or organised. His aim was to unify these approaches in a perspective that is holistic yet captures the fluidity of the social reality.

According to Strauss, social worlds are “universes of discourse” (Strauss, 1978, p. 121), the boundaries of which are set “neither by territory nor formal membership but by the limits of effective communication” (Strauss, 1978, p. 199). In the social world perspective, social reality as a whole is seen as consisting of numerous social worlds of varying size, which overlap, intersect and segment into subworlds. A typical individual belongs into several: their family, workplace, profession, hobby, religious community, drinking buddies, and so on. Worlds can be international or local, emergent or established, public or hidden, hierarchical or anarchic. The boundaries of the social worlds and the authenticity of one’s membership and activities are under constant debate and negotiation (Strauss, 1978, p. 123).

Though an MMO involves discourses and people, we cannot ignore concrete aspects such as technology, space and action. Strauss emphasises these tangible, observable qualities in the concept of social worlds:

In each social world, at least one primary activity (along with related clusters of activity) is strikingly evident; i.e., climbing mountains, researching, collecting. There are sites where activities occur: hence space and a shaped landscape are relevant. Technology (inherited or innovative modes of carrying out the social world’s activities) is always involved. […] In social worlds at their outset, there may be only temporary divisions of labor, but once under way, organizations inevitably evolve to further one aspect or another of the world’s activities. (Strauss, 1978, p. 122; emphasis in original)

In MMOs such has EVE Online, participating can be a very complex and involved activity, giving rise to sub-activities, organisations and even new technologies arranged around the central activity. [1]While the participants cannot all share unity and intimacy, they form a sphere of “effective communication” that connects them together. Their communications are mediated not only by EVE’s servers and discussion forums, but by third-party sites, online radio broadcasts, video streams and a quarterly print magazine covering events and persons on 84 full-color pages, engaging EVE users in a “universe of discourses” centered around the play activity.

From this perspective, EVE can be seen as a complete and independent social world that moreover hosts constellations of subworlds. This may not sound like a particularly significant claim, until we realise that it places EVE in the same category as London’s world of finance, the Judo world, or the world of game studies. From an individual’s point of view, EVE’s role in their life would thus be comparable to their professional world, neighbourhood or even extended family. Some of these other social worlds will involve some of the same people, activities, sites and technologies as the MMO, representing instances where the MMO social world intersects with another social world.

On the other hand, it is obvious that not every MMO platform will necessarily spawn a distinct social world that encompasses its user base; many services do not even aspire to do this as EVE does. For example, Habbo and Second Life are designed as open-ended arenas where participation does not center around a particular activity to the same extent. Instead, user groups are invited to use the service as a resource for their own activities. Some of these groups and activities are rooted in established social worlds (e.g. school friends in Habbo, academic meetings in Second Life), while others are newly formed online (see Ishii & Ogasahara, 2007, on “real-group-based online communities” vs. “virtual-network-based online communities”). This type of MMO is thus more accurately analysed as an intersection site of multiple social worlds rather than as a cradle of a single monolithic social world. The same MMO artefact occupies a different role in different worlds: it is a “boundary object” (Duchenaut, 2007). One social world to which the MMO artefact is tremendously important are the developers of that MMO. To them, it represents a target of common activity and a matter of constant negotiation with the world of users.

Implications for Research

Richard Bartle defines “virtual” as “that which isn’t, having the form or effect of that which is” (Bartle, 2003, p. 1). By this definition, the proposition “virtual worlds don’t exist” is a truism, a pun. But I hope to have demonstrated that the proposition is also true in the second sense of the definition: that there are no “virtual worlds” that achieve the form or effect of the real world. [2]

Substituting the dichotomous “one server, one people” virtual world perspective with a social world perspective where people are uncoupled from technology allows us to point out certain shortcomings in the current MMO research agendas. The most obvious point is that an MMO server does not enclose a “world” or “society” separate from the Earth. An MMO server may be at the center of a social world, a universe of activity and discourse so deep that it feels like a different reality.

But to a greater or smaller extent, the same individuals are simultaneously part of numerous other social worlds, which shape their identity and regulate their behaviour.

To point out one concrete target for my criticism, consider Castronova’s conclusion that observing apparent coordination effects in an MMO server indicates that coordination effects take place in human societies (Castronova, 2006a, p. 179). In principle, is it not possible that players voted for the meeting place on a discussion forum or at a guild meeting? Or that players who have avatars on multiple servers brought the custom from another server? The social world of the MMO server is tangled with and crisscrossed by other social worlds, and its boundaries are never definite. The experimental world and other worlds are simply not separate in a way that would justify considering the MMO server an independent human society. This is fatal for research programs that make such an assumption.

This does not mean that MMOs are useless for research purposes. MMO participants can be studied like any large group of people, and since their activities are largely though not wholly computer-mediated, obtaining data on them can be comparatively easy. For example, MMOs can be useful for studying economic decision making (Nicklisch & Salz, 2008), social psychology (Igarashi, Nagashima & Baba, 2008) and online consumer behaviour (Lehdonvirta, 2009). These research streams do not attempt to use the MMO as a metaphor for a society, or assume that the world ends where the boundaries of the server lie. Instead, they take the MMO as one particular kind of site where people interact, with its own features and peculiarities. [3]

Another necessary target for criticism is the way in which MMO related studies tend to make statements about a general category called “virtual worlds” and its two subcategories, game worlds and open-ended worlds (Bray & Konsynski, 2007, p. 19; Castronova, 2004). The social world perspective reminds us that universes of activity and discourse similar to those found around MMOs may also be found around other online arenas that do not necessarily meet the technical definition of a “virtual world”. In some aspects they may be less complex than MMO-worlds, but virtual economies, for instance, can be found in many kinds of services, from social networking sites to instant messaging systems. In fact, for many purposes, the closest comparison to a given MMO-world might not be another MMO-based world at all, but some other computer-mediated social world. For example, in some ways Second Life might be closer to Cyworld or even Flickr than to Entropia Universe or WoW. Therefore, researchers should not automatically adopt “virtual worlds” as a category to make generalisations to, unless their research somehow justifies it.

As a way of summarising the above discussion, I suggest that social scientists ask themselves the following questions to ensure their work is in line with their aims:

1) Out of all social world sites and technologies, what is the reason I am focusing on MMOs?

2) Out of all possible interaction modalities used by the social world under scrutiny, am I justified in limiting my observations to the MMO server only?

3) Do my results concern MMOs in general, a specific MMO, or some completely different category?

There are good answers to all three questions, but “MMOs are like virtual versions of the real world” is not among them.

Finally, the social world perspective highlights the fact that while notions such as goods, institutions, norms and politics can be identified over MMOs, they should not be considered “virtual versions” or “simulations” of “real-world” phenomena. Firstly, they are not doppelgängers but entities in their own right, sui generis. Secondly, parallel phenomena exist in several social worlds, computer-mediated and otherwise. For instance, virtual goods can be seen as a new category of commodities, parallel to but not derivative of clubs on a golf course or clothes in a mall. The “virtual” prefix in this case should be understood as signifying that they are computer-mediated, not that they are unreal or derivative. In most cases, the prefix is not even necessary: instead of “virtual politics”, it might be more instructive to talk about the politics among users and developers of an MMO.

Hopefully this realisation will allow scholars to begin retiring unnecessary references to “virtual” from their language – again. T. L. Taylor notes that “[i]n much the same way we now see the relationship between on- and offline life as not a bounded one, in many ways a game/not-game dichotomy does not hold” (Taylor, 2006, p. 19). Cyberspace isolationism is considered antiquated now; few people around me use the term “IRL” anymore. Dichotomous either-or views have been replaced with more nuanced understandings of how the Internet meshes into our lives (Dimaggio et al., 2001; Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002). Though Castronova explicitly denies connection with Barlow’s ancient declaration (Castronova, 2004, p. 208), it is hard not to see kinship in their ideas. Both were undeniably pioneers.

The Real World Doesn’t Exist

This paper could have been titled “The real world doesn’t exist”. If there are problems with the concept of the “virtual world”, so are there problems in the way “real world” is implicitly conceptualised in many MMO studies: as a uniform, monolithic reality, where people lead a rational “real life” with their unitary “real identity”. Such a view is in stark contrast to the views prevalent in contemporary sociology, which emphasise the multiplicity, fluidity and even fragmentation of identities (e.g. Turkle, 1995; Slater, 1997) and the often arational, constructed and “aestheticized” character of everyday life (e.g. Featherstone, 1991; Giddens; 1991).

Moreover, structuralist and post-structuralist theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu see rules and structures in all fields of life that are not unlike the written and unwritten rules of MMO-worlds. “Interest […] is to admit that the game is worth playing and that the stakes created in and through the fact are worth pursuing; it is to recognize the game and to recognize its stakes” (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 77). This game-like character of everyday life has not gone unnoticed in MMO studies: Castronova equates society with a large game, although he only sees one game instead of a multiplicity (Castronova, 2006a, p. 171). Conversely, MMO gameplay has in some instances come to resemble work: laborious, tedious and occasionally lucrative (Yee, 2006; Grimes, 2006, pp. 982-985). Malaby (2007) takes this line of thought furthest. He suggests that if we look at games as domains of artificial outcomes, of “contrived contingency”, we find that society is full of games: ones associated with business risk, others associated with political risk, and still others that relate to family matters. Increasingly, these old games are being played out online, sometimes even on the same arenas as the newer games, like EVE alliance warfare.（source:gamestudies）