Earth Fires Destabilize Virtual Governments

Posted by simoniker on Monday October 27, 2003 @11:12AM from the looting-on-the-virtual-streets dept.

Thanks to Terra Nova for their article pointing out that Sony Online's virtual worlds are missing their customer service, "...due to the wild fires raging throughout San Diego and the proximity of those fires to the SOE offices. Normal operations will resume once this local emergency is over." Edward Castronova comments: "In other words, a firestorm has knocked out the government that rules over 750,000 accounts", and suggests: "We tend to think of synthetic worlds as decentralized because the users are spread over the globe. They are still highly centralized on the production side, however, a state of affairs with clear implications for the relationship of synthetic worlds not only to Earth's weather, but to its politics as well."

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Man! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-27 11:14 · Score: -1, Offtopic

These skyscraper ads on the right side suck ass.
Anarchy!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-27 11:16 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Follow me, follow me to FREEDOM!!! (if you don't get the reference, that is Charlie Steiner's line in the greatest ESPN commercial ever (titled Year 2k I think)).