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Towards a Theory of Place in Digital Worlds

Posted by Zonk on from the introspective-navel-gazing dept.

Following last month's State of Play Conference, Gamespot has a good discussion of some issues brought up at the conference, as well as some analysis by Cory Ondrejka of Linden Labs. From the Article: "There is no spoon ... is a tempting shorthand, made all the more powerful by its association with the Matrix. It is also clearly wrong. There is a spoon, just not one that you can eat with. Digital worlds are very real places." Relatedly, Cory Doctorow has up today a short story on Salon.com (registration required) that takes place inside a MMOG.

2 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. The command-line as a "virtual place"... by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 4, Funny

    I compiled up and played with a "MUSH" server once - I thought having a multi-player text adventure engine that you could program on-the-fly was nifty...

    It was interesting to notice that I frequently found myself typing "ls" instead of "look" when I wanted to see the contents of a "room" that I was in. I hadn't previously realized the similarities between the CLI and a text adventure...

    Where do I submit a patch to change all of the instances of "(filename): file not found" to "I see no (filename) here" in the standard command-line tools?

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  2. Re:I dunno... by Mad_Rain · · Score: 2, Funny

    Reality is that which, when you ignore it, does not go away.

    Applying some slashdot logic here:
    So if I'm playing Halo2 and ignoring my girlfiend, and she goes away, does that mean she's not real?

    Oh wait, I'm posting on slashdot. I think I answered my own question. ;)

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