10 Big Pieces: Castronova, Exodus to the Virtual World

Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Shaping Reality
Edward Castronova
Palgrave Macmillan, New York N& 2007

Summary

Since “[e]ver larger numbers of people will spend many hours inside online games,” “the public at large will come to think of game design and public policy design as roughly similar activities. This is because, structurally, they are the same…. Because of these similarities, there will be crossovers in know-how…. As the lines between public policy and game design blur, public policy will begin to focus more directly on human happiness, even fun, than it does now. Ultimately, games will force fun onto the policy agenda.” (xvii)

Game design, he says, is “equivalent to public policy design.” (emphasis in original, 110) “Game designers make the rules by which people play, in the same way that governments make the rules by which we all live. “We are witnessing the birth of a new science, the practical science of giving people the sensation of fun thorugh the design of social institutions…. [M]ore and more people will come to view the tenets of this new science as practical rules for running the real world.” (111)

Castronova posits an economic competition between the virtual (“synthetic”) and the real. “Simple economic theory predicts that in this competition, the real world is going to lose,” and therefore “[i]f it is to survive unchallenged, the real world is going to have to offer experiences similar to those available in virtual worlds. In short, the real world will have to become more fun.” (7)

He critiques 1990s radical internet politics on economic grounds: “Sovereignty follows economic and political power, not vice versa. Internet communities, such as they were, did not have an economic or political or cultural base required for civitas. The cart was before the horse….Today, the economic clout is not at a level that would allow a virtual world to impose trade sanctions against the real world, for example, but it is at a level that allows users to feel economically invested in the place, and to draw a substantial income from it..” (38)

He makes a critical distinction between old-style “online communities” and virtual worlds: “The center of gravity in a chat community remains offline, but the center of social gravity in a virtual world is completely online. That’s where the things people care about actually live. The discussion is most about things inside these worlds, not outside them.” (42)

In discussing migration, Castronova mentions the Turner thesis, noting that the internet provides all the benefits that Western expansion did in the last century. (64-5) He observes that “[m]igration tends to equalize living conditions across the places the migrants are leaving and the places they are entering. In the case of real and synthetic worlds, reality will be a constant invading pressure in virtual worlds, something we have seen already in the blurring of boundaries – people using real money to buy coins in a fantasy game, for example. But this also means fun will be a constant invading pressure in the real world.” (70).

He sees a problem with contemporary economics in that it seeks to maximize well-being, not happiness, and can easily result in generating “objectives that we know will lead us to misery.” (85) Therefore, “it becomes clear that the core objective of public policy should be to promote happiness, not well-being,” (88) citing development economist Amartya Sen.

Castronova sketches the outlines of “the fun economy” which he sees resulting from the real world adapting to competitive pressures from the virtual: “Gamer generations will not only expect work to be universally available, but also organized as self-employment with voluntary yet profitable team building” (emphasis in original, 141) “[I]n all likelihood, some concept of leveling will be required for the real world, systems whereby any person who performed a certain task a sufficient number of times would automatically be “promoted” to the next level…none of those people at the top have any authority over those below them (though they do have more prestige and better rewards).” He notes that “[g]eneral economic growth can impede the maintenance of a consistently fun and fair game,” as the goal should be “the growth in wealth and power for individuals.” (151)

He observes that “the rules of the game in virtual worlds break down 80-10-10: 80 percent code, 10 percent terms provisions that are rarely enforced, and 10 percent terms provisions enforced through draconian measures,” (169) noting that “[w]hile governance is not apparent, governing is going on – in the code. People seem to like that.” (170)

Critique and Analysis

This work is a superficial treatment of a profound idea. Castronova’s argument contains the flaw argued against in governance.com – assuming the weakness of legacy systems, ignoring the drag of history and culture. Castronova’s world is abstract, frictionless, and strangely apolitical for a political argument.

Castronova, who strongly prefers games to social virtual worlds, seems blind to imbalance of power between players and developers in game worlds, concentrating his analysis on player-to-player power dynamics. He advocates a game model for nation-states while ignoring the key fact that in games, the developers own everything, and have infinite power in the meta-game relative to players. He cannot seriously advocate a state in which the political rulers own all of the means of production eternally, in return for providing citizens with “fun” and no other civic or psychological value set.

Utility

It won’t be hard to do better than this. Castronova sees the equation between game development and public policy, but fails to provide a coherent value system for either, rather describing the primitive status quo in virtual worlds design as ipso facto some sort of ideal. Taking Castronova’s basic equation, and the notion of a competition between virtual and legacy social systems (though a competition at many more levels, and with a much greater imbalance than Castronova sees), and adding strong democratic theory, theories of learning through self-actualization and agency, and making the process reflexive in both directions (applying ethical game theory to public policy, and strong democratic theory to game design), is what I hope to achieve.