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world of democracycraft
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World of Democracycraft
(Originally published as “Why Online Games Are Dictatorships,”
InformationWeek,
April 16, 2007.)
Can you be a citizen of a virtual world? That’s the question that I
keep asking myself, whenever anyone tells me about the wonder
of multiplayer online games, especially Second Life, the virtual
world that is more creative playground than game.
These worlds invite us to take up residence in them, to invest
time (and sometimes money) in them. Second Life encourages
you to make stuff using their scripting engine and sell it in the
game. You Own Your Own Mods — it’s the rallying cry of the new
generation of virtual worlds, an updated version of the old BBS
adage from the WELL: You Own Your Own Words.
I spend a lot of time in Disney parks. I even own a share of
Disney stock. But I don’t flatter myself that I’m a citizen of Disney
World. I know that when I go to Orlando, the Mouse is going to
fingerprint me and search my bags, because the Fourth Amend-
ment isn’t a “Disney value.”
Disney even has its own virtual currency, symbolic tokens
called Disney Dollars that you can spend or exchange at any
Disney park. I’m reasonably confident that if Disney refused to
turn my Mickeybucks back into U.S. Treasury Department-issue
greenbacks that I could make life unpleasant for them in a court
of law.
But is the same true of a game? The money in your real-world
bank-account and in your in-game bank-account is really just a
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