Fantasy Crime: The Role of Criminal Law in Virtual Worlds

This Article analyzes activity in virtual worlds that would constitute crime if they were committed in the real world. It reviews the evolution of virtual worlds like Second Life and notes research which indicates that more and more of our lives will move into this realm. The Article then analyzes the criminalization of virtual conduct that inflicts harm in the real world and virtual conduct that only inflicts harm in the virtual world. It explains that the first category qualifies as cybercrime and can be prosecuted under existing law. Finally, it analyzes the necessity and propriety of criminalizing the second category of conduct, both now and in the future

Fact, Fiction and Virtual Worlds

This paper considers the medium of videogames from a goodmanian standpoint. After some preliminary clarifications and definitions, I examine the ontological status of videogames. Against several existing accounts, I hold that what grounds their identity qua work types is code. The rest of the paper is dedicated to the epistemology of videogaming. Drawing on Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin's works, I suggest that the best model to defend videogame cognitivism appeals to the notion of understanding

Narrative Substrates: Reifying and Managing Emergent Narratives in Persistent Game Worlds

International audiencePlayers in modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games progress through ambitiously designed narratives, but have no real influence on the game, since only their characters' data, not the game environment, persists. Although earlier games supported player influence by persisting changes in the world, they relied on players' capacity to form their own stories and lacked guidance for character progression. We explore how persistence and narrative emergence let us build upon players' influence rather than restrict it. We ran four studies and found that players highly value first-time and unique events, and often externalize their experiences to the Web to collaborate and socialize, but unintentionally also disrupt some aspects of in-game play. We introduce Narrative Substrates, a theoretical framework for designing game architec-tures that represent, manage, and persist traces of player activity as unique, interactive content. To illustrate and test the theory, we developed the game We Ride and deployed it as a two-phase technology probe over one year. We identify key benefits and challenges of our approach, and argue that reification of emergent narratives offers new design opportunities for creating truly interactive games

Me vs. Super(wo)man: Effects of Customization and Identification in a VR Exergame

Customised avatars are a powerful tool to increase identification, engagement and intrinsic motivation in digital games. We investigated the effects of customisation in a self-competitive VR exergame by modelling players and their previous performance in the game with customised avatars. In a first study we found that, similar to non-exertion games, customisation significantly increased identification and intrinsic motivation, as well as physical performance in the exergame. In a second study we identified a more complex relationship with the customisation style: idealised avatars increased wishful identification but decreased exergame performance compared to realistic avatars. In a third study, we found that 'enhancing' realistic avatars with idealised characteristics increased wishful identification, but did not have any adverse effects. We discuss the findings based on feedforward and self-determination theory, proposing notions of intrinsic identification (fostering a sense of self) and extrinsic identification (drawing away from the self) to explain the results

The Strange Case of the Animated Jekyll and the Online Hyde : a documentary study of Korean youth culture and identity

Robert Louis Stevenson s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is the starting point for my practice-led research project. Stevenson's Victorian novella enables me to identify core themes which are pertinent to a discussion of the construction of contemporary identities in Korean youth culture. These identities are exemplified in the creation of avatars the virtual characters of animated online games such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). My animation practice is developed by addressing how Jekyll and Hyde provides useful critical and creative tools, such as gothic imagery and detective thrillers, for looking at the double . This concept is used to investigate the case of a young Korean boy, addicted to online gaming, who committed violent acts. My animated drama-documentary draws on research into the real and virtual Korean worlds and employs a visual ethnographic methodology to test my research question: in what ways can the construction of 'identity' (based on concepts drawn from 'Jekyll and Hyde') be identified in contemporary 'virtual' media (i.e. 'MMORPGs'/the 'animated' documentary), and how does this facilitate an address of the specific case of 'Korea' and 'Korean-ness'? The thesis is structured into five chapters: The Idea of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Theorising Identities in a Korean Context, Theorising Visual Ethnography, Theorising Animated Drama-Documentary, and A Film Practice as Animated Drama-Documentary in Visual Ethnography. Evidence of the research process and findings is located in a series of appendices. Theories about the construction of identity are discussed from three different perspectives: sociology, psychoanalysis and bio-culturalism. In my film practice, I look for the connection between the anxious self and Korean social issues, such as modernisation and the 1997 IMF economic crisis, to account for Korean youth s identity formation through online gaming. My research shows that many South Korean MMORPG users construct identity within contemporary virtual media and that this contributes to a very complex Korean-ness amongst Korean youth. Online gaming has both positive and negative consequences. Immersion in the virtual world can lead to addiction and to the violence which is at the core of my film narrative. It can also result in close online friendships, offering kinship not available in many broken families, or families inhibited in their communication by social roles and expectations, or the effect of economic failure and loss. My practice criticises young Korean people's narrow and limited social environment and proves that they desire liberal expression and decision-making for themselves, which can be experienced through the embodiment of animated avatars in MMORPGs. Hence, the online Hyde , though assumed to be a negative or destructive force, is actually a vehicle for varied and numerous social identities for youth culture preferable to those available in real Korean society. The research mounts a critique of the meaning of the online Hyde , not as a misrepresentative and negative representation of Korean-ness, but as a revelation of its contemporary meaning which can be articulated though animation, a tool which has applications within visual ethnography

The Dynamic Story Mosaic: Defining Narrative Strategies in Transmedia Environments

Transmedia storytelling became one of the most prevalent buzzwords in the mid- 2000s used to describe a wide array of storytelling forms ranging from entertainment franchises to alternate reality games to any project that told stories across more than one medium. Over time, the term had been diluted so significantly that it has lost most of its meaning, and the opaque discourse has left practitioners, scholars, and audiences alike confused about its true meaning. The Dynamic Story Mosaic: Defining Narrative Strategies in Transmedia Environments charts this development and offers a typology to identify and explain narrative strategies in multi-platform environments. The typology anchors on the two dimensions of narrative deviation and the number of release events over time; these dimensions are constitutive for the production, reception and marketing and branding of transmedia projects, and provide a stable basis for analysis and interpretation. Through a blend of analytic, comparative, and descriptive approaches, paired with a number of case studies, this dissertation is a historical analysis of the emergence of transmedia storytelling and transmedia discourse, and provides a direction in the analysis of transmedia projects by providing a typology that remains stable regardless of the future of storytelling in this area

Fantastic Realities: Solid and Virtual Resonance in MMORPGs

This dissertation is a qualitative study that examines how game worlds and positive game experiences are neither equally accessible nor equally enjoyable to many who wish to participate in them. Newer research on games argues that those who master them are fulfilled socially, are highly productive, are motivated, and are invigorated by participation in grand narratives. Using a mixed methods approach, I drew on seventy in-depth interviews with gamers coupled with observational data from my membership role in several virtual worlds. Through these data I examined the social barriers deployed to fracture game world communities and arguably disperse the positive benefits of play. Specifically, my participants and my observational data indicate that rigid social categories of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the assumptions bound to their maintenance and reinforcement, disrupted the possibility for a more inclusive collective identity. I use an interactionist theoretical framework to understand how the rigidity of social categories and identity politics are recreated and enforced through virtual conversation and relationships. This dissertation explains how the labeling and exclusion of various \u22others\u22 in game worlds, including women, gender-bending men, non-hardcore geeks, fluid sexuality players, and cyberworkers, entrenches the stereotypes of who gamers are and who they can be. The consequences of these practices erode the possibilities for how the solid world and reality itself might benefit from becoming similar to a game

Battlefields of Negotiation

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft has become one of the most popular computer games of the past decade, introducing millions around the world to community-based play. Within the boundaries set by its design, the game encourages players to appropriate and shape the game to their own wishes, resulting in highly diverse forms of play and participation. This illuminating study frames World of Warcraft as a complex socio-cultural phenomenon defined by and evolving as a result of the negotiations between groups of players as well as the game’s owners, throwing new light on complex consumer-producer relationships in the increasingly participatory but still tightly controlled media of online games