joaoflux / digital / analog / culture

Last Night I saw a 6 minute report about Second Life on Arte. The first part of the report resembled a mediocre advertisement clip. At the the end “Kulturwissenschaftler / spécialiste des médias” Winfried Kaminski was asked about SL’s economy. He actually compared it with a chain letter and declared that it was all about expectation. He claimed that those expectations needed physical fulfillment at some point - which he thought was impossible. Therefore he expected that at some point everybody was going to pull out their money and thus cause a crash. The report finishes with the prophetic claim “Auch virtuelle Paradise können zur Hölle werden” (Even a virtual paradise can turn into hell).

While I think that an economic crash in SL is possible and may even be likely sometime, the comparison with a chain letter is ridiculous. Chain letters are systems of redistribution in which it is inscribed that the last generation of investors lose their investment because there are no more new investors (the chain letter needs an infinite number of investors in order to work). The situation in SL is completely different:

• becoming a resident is free
• all residents are potential customers (there is consumption inside SL)
• not all residents are entrepreneurs (making money is not the only motivation to join SL)
• it is possible to create new items, which did not exist before and that can be sold inside SL
• residents have a desire to own virtual items (because their possession is prestigious or useful inside SL), there is no apparent reason to suspect that this desire will decrease with an increasing number of residents (the opposite is probably true)

I do not see how a crash when reaching the limit of potential subscribers is inscribed in this system. I also don’t see why expectations need to be fulfilled physically. Is there a fundamental difference between owning a cool outfit in SL and owning music in the real world? Isn’t much of what is important to us purely cultural and not at all physical? In the end fulfillment of expectation is mostly social: What I own helps define who I am and position myself in a community. This happens inside virtual worlds all the time.

I think that Arte’s media expert needs to do his homework and most of all that the people at Arte should research a bit better. Kaminski probably just happens to be the guy they ask when it comes to computer games, because he at some point published something about computer games and because they happen to have his phone number. It is obvious that he has no clue what he is talking about and nobody even bothered. I expect more of Arte. Come on Arte, fulfill my expections, it does not need to be physically - intellectually is enough.

Technorati Tags: economics, economy, MMO, Second Life, TV, virtual reality