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2011 | Buch

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The Virtual Future

verfasst von: William Sims Bainbridge

Verlag: Springer London

Buchreihe : Springer Series in Immersive Environments

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

The newest communication technologies are profoundly changing the world's politics, economies, and cultures, but the specific implications of online game worlds remain mysterious. The Virtual Future employs theories and methods from social science to explore nine very different virtual futures: The Matrix Online, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Entropia Universe, Star Trek Online, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, and The Chronicles of Riddick.

Each presents a different picture of how technology and society could evolve in coming centuries, but one theme runs through all of them, the attempt to escape the Earth and seek new destinies among the stars. Four decades after the last trip to the moon, a new conception of spaceflight is emerging. Rather than rockets shooting humans across vast physical distances to sterile rocks that lack the resources to sustain life, perhaps robot space probes and orbiting telescopes will glean information about the universe, that humans can then experience inside computer-generated environments much closer to home.

All nine of these fantastically rich multiplayer masterpieces have shown myriads of people that really radical alternatives to contemporary society could exist, and has served as a laboratory for examining the consequences. Each is a prototype of new social forms, a utopian subculture, and a simulation of technologies that have yet to be invented. They draw upon several different traditions of science fiction and academic philosophy, and they were created in several nations. By comparing these nine role-playing fantasies, we can better consider what kind of world we want to inhabit in the real future.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. The City and the Stars

Abstract

Exploring a wild terrain, a team of friends braves grave dangers. Then, the saga dissolves, revealing that they have been playing a virtual reality game. So begins The City and the Stars, a 1953 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke [1]. This story presages today’s virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and it raises the fundamental question about them. We should not merely ask whether they are a kind of reality, perhaps more pale than the material world, but real nonetheless. Rather, we should ask whether they give us important insights about the primary reality we will inhabit in the future. Will humans voyage across immensity to the stars, colonizing world after world, or remain imprisoned on a single planet?

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 2. The Matrix Online

Abstract

of all the gameworlds, The Matrix Online (MxO) most explicitly concerns the relationships between the virtual and the real, and the future and the present. It was based on three popular science-fiction movies – The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) – that were so pretentious in asserting their artistic and philosophical quality that they were subsequently published as a set of ten DVDs including extensive commentary and videos of their own filming. The entire Matrix mythos depicts the way the present might be conceptualized by the future, and in so doing perfectly realizes Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of the future City. Dystopian rather than utopian, The Matrix Online predicts a grim destiny for the human species with only a dubious prospect for salvation. Crucially, while the movies rely upon high-tech special effects, and the game exists only through fast computers connected to the Internet, they prophesy that computer technology will doom human freedom.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 3. Tabula Rasa

Abstract

Intensely ideological, but also rather fun, Tabula Rasa was a glorious failure. Its demise warns that the real human future may fail as well. The name refers to the “clean slate” with which many early psychologists believed an infant enters the real world, and with which an avatar enters this outer space gameworld. Step by step, the avatar adds fundamental concepts to a tabula or tablet, which confer ever greater powers through gradual enlightenment. Tabula Rasa therefore offers fresh thinking about the future and in a sense requires a person to abandon preconceptions and strongly held values. Perhaps that is why it failed: Most people avoid any challenge to the basis on which they live their lives, and few game players are emotionally or intellectually prepared to clean their slates. Tabula Rasa advocated nothing less than escaping the world we currently inhabit.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 4. Anarchy Online

Abstract

In the distant future, a Solitus engineer named Nanobic explores Rubi-Ka, with his trusty robot companion, Tobor. Although covered largely with deserts, this planet does have some rivers and forests, which support a number of indigenous life forms, some of them hostile, and many dangerous if attacked. The landscape is also inhabited by many kind of fugitive mutant, the often horrifying results of genetic experimentation on human beings. Some sections of the planet have been terraformed to make them more like Earth, but most of it is a vast wasteland. Weapons and many other aspects of material culture are based on nanotechnology, and this is a true science fiction world that lacks any hint of magic or other supernatural forces.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 5. Entropia Universe

Abstract

The planet Calypso is in a class by itself. It is not the playing field for an online combat game, or the electronic embodiment of an existing fantasy. Rather, it presents itself as a new world that people can explore and where they can build a real economy. On Calypso, two large continents are accessible, Eudoria and Amethera, plus a small space station and a resort on an asteroid. All four areas are populated with hostile beasts and possess mineral resources. Originally opened for colonists in 2003, Entropia Universe underwent a major geological upheaval in August 2009, and for many months the aftershocks were still being felt. This virtual world is admirable for pioneering a new economic model for online environments, and for being a plausible simulation of real extraterrestrial colonization, but it is also socially problematic and problematizes the future of humanity in outer space.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 6. Star Trek Online

Abstract

The original 1966 Star Trek television series spawned movies, books, and a number of solo games for computers and videogame systems, but only on February 2, 2010 did it give birth to a massively multiplayer online game. Importantly, the entire Star Trek franchise was largely supported by the loyalty of a fan subculture, and fans themselves have created both extensive additional culture plus a set of expectations for new commercial offerings. Set in the year 2409, Star Trek Online (STO) involves both space battles in which the user is represented by a spaceship, and land missions in which the user is represented by a humanoid avatar. The primary conflict pits the multi-species United Federation of Planets against the Klingon Empire.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 7. EVE Online

Abstract

Created by a small group of innovators in Reykjavík, Iceland, EVE Online has a well-deserved reputation for being challenging, immense, and different in many respects from the typical online game. It shares with Jumpgate the feature that the user’s avatar is a spaceship, and all the action takes place in space rather than on the surface of a planet. The pilot is represented by a small picture with personal possessions and a set of skills rather than a human body. For new players, EVE offers many training missions, but the main action is created by the players themselves as they set up corporations that occupy regions of the galaxy and fight battles against each other. Although my two main characters visited about a hundred solar systems, reportedly EVE spans 7,500 of them.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 8. Star Wars Galaxies

Abstract

Immediately after the destruction of the first Death Star, and across a number of familiar planets, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) allows a player to experience the environment of the great saga without contributing to its events. In studying SWG, I found that it was essential to analyze the movies, several of the books, plus earlier videogames, most especially Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith which I completed. I ran an engineer character named Algorithma Teq up to level 20 in Star Wars Galaxies, and a Jedi named Simula Tion up to level 35, but insights seemed to come more from connecting aspects of the mythos across multiple media, rather than concentrating exclusively on the massively multiplayer gameworld.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 9. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade

Abstract

By far the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, is primarily a fantasy universe in which magic and mythology weave a rich tapestry of legend a visitor can experience directly through completing thousands of quests across vast realms [1]. However, the first of its two major expansions, the Burning Crusade, emphasizes science-fiction elements and offers a direct intellectual challenge to the idea that our own science and technology can progress significantly beyond their current levels of development. Beneath all the fun and delight offered by this marvelously crafted gameworld lurks a grim question: Is it possible that the natural laws of the world we actually inhabit are not capable of supporting the kinds of future we might want to create?

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 10. The Chronicles of Riddick

Abstract

On April 1, 2009, I received a phone message on my office voicemail: “This is Vin Diesel. GameStop will have The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena in stores by tomorrow afternoon. So stop into your local GameStop and pick up your copy – or else!” This was no April Fool joke, but a robot alert recorded by the actor, Vin Diesel, and sent to me because I had pre-ordered the game. Actually, there were two games on the DVD, the other being Escape from Butcher Bay, and I finished them both on May 9, taking 1,200 screenshots and many notes about ethnographically interesting observations. I did so playing the role of Riddick himself, because the series does not allow players to express their individuality by creating their own avatars.

William Sims Bainbridge

Chapter 11. The Skylark and the Shuttle

Abstract

This book has applied the methods of sociology and anthropology, drawing upon concepts from science and technology studies plus futurology, to understand our era’s distinctive new artform: prophetic gameworlds. Virtual worlds depicting possible futures may, in time, teach us to know what has hitherto been unknown, through directly experiencing radical alternative to conventional life. Of course, this is not to say that current virtual worlds are realistic. But as the years pass, and the number and diversity of online role playing games increase, we can use them to prototype the real futures we may create for ourselves. This book describes the first decade of online science fiction gameworlds. What will the tenth decade be like, or the hundredth?

William Sims Bainbridge

Backmatter

Titel: The Virtual Future
verfasst von: William Sims Bainbridge
Verlag: Springer London
Electronic ISBN: 978-0-85729-904-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-85729-903-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-904-8