Growing Out of Its Skin: Principles of the Evolution and Extension of the Internet Chess Club, 1995 to Present

The Internet Chess Club, or ICC, is a highly successful virtual gaming community. This paper examines the evolution from its 1995 inception as a pure gaming community to the present day as a successful business with over 26,000 paid members. We give a particular focus on the underlying qualities the ICC possesses in order to succeed and grow such as utilization of real-world credibility indicators (titles), a robust economic system, and mechanisms for user-contributed feature extensions. As ICC expands in scope and scale, its segmentation strategies are analyzed as well as the impact of these extensions on its business strategy. The paper also discusses a novel method of data collection in an online community; the use of a participant/observer software agent to poll the community at regular intervals at collect data as well as promote a voluntary questionnaire as part of its service to the ICC community. Data collected by the agent in its first month of operation are analyzed and discussed

The Law and Ethics of Virtual Sexual Assault

This chapter provides a general overview and introduction to the law and ethics of virtual sexual assault. It offers a definition of the phenomenon and argues that there are six interesting types. It then asks and answers three questions: (i) should we criminalise virtual sexual assault? (ii) can you be held responsible for virtual sexual assault? and (iii) are there issues with 'consent' to virtual sexual activity that might make it difficult to prosecute or punish virtual sexual assault

Gamers’ Sensations of Spatial, Social, And Co-Presence While Playing Online Video Games

There is an increasing number of video gamers who are playing games online. Previous research has demonstrated that off line gamers experience sensations of presence “the illusion of non-mediation” (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). The current study, explores through focus groups, the type of presence online gamers report experiencing. The results demonstrate that online gamers report having sensations that can be classified into all three main presence types: spatial (physical), social, and co-presence

Gamers’ Sensations of Spatial, Social, And Co-Presence While Playing Online Video Games

There is an increasing number of video gamers who are playing games online. Previous research has demonstrated that off line gamers experience sensations of presence “the illusion of non-mediation” (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). The current study, explores through focus groups, the type of presence online gamers report experiencing. The results demonstrate that online gamers report having sensations that can be classified into all three main presence types: spatial (physical), social, and co-presence

From Community Governance to Customer Service and Back Again: Re-Examining Pre-Web Models of Online Governance to Address Platforms’ Crisis of Legitimacy

As online platforms grow, they find themselves increasingly trying to balance two competing priorities: individual rights and public health. This has coincided with the professionalization of platforms’ trust and safety operations—what we call the “customer service” model of online governance. As professional trust and safety teams attempt to balance individual rights and public health, platforms face a crisis of legitimacy, with decisions in the name of individual rights or public health scrutinized and criticized as corrupt, arbitrary, and irresponsible by stakeholders of all stripes. We review early accounts of online governance to consider whether the customer service model has obscured a promising earlier model where members of the affected community were significant, if not always primary, decision-makers. This community governance approach has deep roots in the academic computing community and has re-emerged in spaces like Reddit and special purpose social networks and in novel platform initiatives such as the Oversight Board and Community Notes. We argue that community governance could address persistent challenges of online governance, particularly online platforms’ crisis of legitimacy. In addition, we think community governance may offer valuable training in democratic participation for users

User-Generated Content and Virtual Worlds

Many legal commentators have claimed that virtual worlds owe their popularity to their focus on user-generated content and user creativity. While this is true in part and authorial freedom may draw consumers to virtual worlds, user-generated content can also pose risks to virtual world business from both an aesthetic and legal perspective. A significant tension exists between permitting participants to create content freely and building a successful virtual environment. In some instances, user-generated content can overwhelm virtual worlds. The future of user-generated content in virtual worlds is not clear, given the significant practical and legal problems that accompany user-generated content

The Zarathustra Project

There is a widespread demand for general, all-purpose platforms for e-teaching. It is argued that such platforms are ill suited to explore the wide range of possibilities opened up by digital communication technologies, in particular by object oriented MOO servers. Drawing on the author’s use of a LambdaMOO server in teaching Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” the innovative potential of interactive, virtual text-worlds is explored

"PanaeaMud An Online, Object-oriented Multiple User Interactive Geologic Database Tool"

This paper provides an overview of the design, development, and use of the PangaeaMud Database System. Section I gives an introduction to pertinent concepts and discusses previous work in the area. Section I1 is devoted to the non-technical aspects of the system. A brief user's view of the system is provided, along with discussion of the internal environment utilities. Section I11 illustrates the workings of the system from the programmer's viewpoint and contains information on the main entity relationships within the database and their implementation

The Avatar-Self Relationship: Enacting Presence in Second Life

Avatars are technological artifacts that provide communicators a body in virtual spaces. It is through this affordance of embodiment that people, places and things are made concrete, tangible, and present. Presence consists of two interrelated phenomena: (i) telepresence: the sense of being there, and (ii) social presence: the sense of being together with others. In the context of virtual worlds, telepresence or the degree of immersion and engagement in the computer-mediated space is achieved through communicators’ interaction with their avatar, and social presence through their interaction with others as an avatar. Building on this typology, we develop a multidimensional conceptual framework of the avatar-self relationship, that is, the interaction between a communicator and his/her virtual (re)presentation. Relying on data collected via photo-diary interviews from residents of Second Life, a virtual world, we then identify and empirically describe various enactments of the avatar-self relationship. Our results highlight that Second Life residents enacted multiple avatar-self relationships and cycled through them in quick succession, suggesting that these avatar-self relationships might be shaped and activated strategically in order to achieve the desired educational, commercial or therapeutic outcomes

Framing Virtual Law

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the real-virtual dichotomy in terms of a series of five frames or layers which interact simultaneously to create the phenomena associated with virtual worlds. The framework presented in this paper is intended to be used as an analytical tool in studying phenomena related specifically to virtual worlds, but is undoubtedly applicable to a broad subset of computer games and interactive fiction. The model provides a useful tool fpr studying a number of aspects of virtual worlds, ranging from geography and economics to identity and literary theory. This paper will limit itself to an application of the framework to various legal issues identified by virtual world researchers and designers. Focussing on one example will allow us to illustrate the usefulness of a layered analytical approach to virtual worlds in general, while providing a more coherent structure for understanding the legal issues in particular. The framework consists of five major frames of analysis, each of which has been identified in the work of theorists and researchers in various disciplines. The actual or \u27real\u27 world, in the context of the analytical framework presented here, is the space where we work, eat, sleep and study when we are not connected to the virtual world at all. The interface layer represents the physical medium and communicative framework used by participants to interact with the system layer and ultimately the virtual world. The interface consists not of the information itself, but of the media which are employed to give a physical intantiation of the virtual world in the actual world, and to allow participants to effect change within the virtual world. Third is the system layer, which consists of the rules, protocols and processes which translate and regulate the input/output streams between participants and the virtual world. The system includes the more mechanical processes in which data is physically manipulated as well as semantic features which play an important role in defining the underlying structure of the events and objects which are elaborated at the instantiation level. The instantiation layer is the level at which the discourse which creates a specific virtual world is uttered or produced. Finally, the virtual layer is the fully immersed frame in which the characters, objects and settings of the fictional world exist without any reference to the other levels of the model. Discussion of the relationship between law and virtual worlds in recent years has ranged from the application of the laws of the actual world to regulate virtual worlds and their participants to the (re)creation of self-contained virtual legal orders within the worlds themselves. The purported complexity of the real-virtual dichotomy has been a recurring theme in many of these discussions, but there has not been a model with allows the phenomena in question to be coherently distinguished from one another. Ludologists such as Huizinga conceptualize games as occuring within a magic circle which separates them from the normal rules of real life. Attempts to define a single magic circle with respect to virtual worlds have been unsatisfactory, at least in part because participants disagree about where to trace the outer limits of the circle. In practice, courts in the actual world can assert their sovereignty over activities related to virtual worlds for the simple reason that they can assert effective physical control over both the hardware and the wetware (human bodies) associated with those worlds. The interface layer presents an important threshold from a legal perspective, because it is at this level that the participant and the developer enter into a binding contract or EULA which will structure many of the power relationships in the remaining layers. This is also the level at which participants log on and thus identify themselves to the system. In the vast majority of virtual worlds, the interface layer is clearly outside the magic circle, and strategies which exploit the interface are generally considered deviant. Such strategies could include modifying the game client to obtain additional information or varoius forms of identity theft including the obtention of passwords to break in to other participants\u27 accounts. The system and instatiation layers reflect to a large extent the distinction made by Lawrence Lessig between code and law. Regulation and control of the virtual world at the system level is what Lessig would refer to as code. The rules are physically built into the system, and therefore detection and enforcement are not really issues because the very stucture of the virtual world makes the prohibited conduct impossible. The ability to kill other players or steal their virtual belongings is commonly regulated in this way. Law, on the other hand, acts at the level of the instantiation or the virtual world itself by proposing certain rules of conduct or guidelines which may or may not be enforced. The code may support these types of rule-based systems by providing for sanctions at the system level (such as toading), the interface level (such as banning). It should be noted that the EULA could also integrate an ultimate recourse in the real-world legal system, to the extent a contract is necessary to import legal norms into the virtual world. Other virtual legal systems, such as those in worlds focussed on role-playing, have developed purely in the virtual frame, with little or no recourse to the system or even the instantiation layer. Many guilds and organisations such as the Sims Shadow Government have thus been able to create defacto normative orders within virtual worlds without any ability to manipulate the underlying code or instantiative discourse. The proposed approach does not purport to solve all the problems inherent in what is indeed a complex phenomenon. Hopefully the model presented here will contribute to development of a common vocabulary and conceptual framework with which we can build on the growing body of work relating to virtual worlds