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May 28, 2004

Gods — Virtual, Ancient, and Human

I'm behind today because I got caught up with a long, but absolutely fascinating, piece about the degree to which online virtual-reality fantasy games are becoming almost small nation states:

[Economics professor Edward Castronova] gathered data on 616 auctions, observing how much each [virtual] item sold for in U.S. dollars. When he averaged the results, he was stunned to discover that the EverQuest platinum piece was worth about one cent U.S. — higher than the Japanese yen or the Italian lira. With that information, he could figure out how fast the EverQuest economy was growing. Since players were killing monsters or skinning bunnies every day, they were, in effect, creating wealth. Crunching more numbers, Castronova found that the average player was generating 319 platinum pieces each hour he or she was in the game — the equivalent of $3.42 (U.S.) per hour. "That's higher than the minimum wage in most countries," he marvelled.

Then he performed one final analysis: The Gross National Product of EverQuest, measured by how much wealth all the players together created in a single year inside the game. It turned out to be $2,266 U.S. per capita. By World Bank rankings, that made EverQuest richer than India, Bulgaria, or China, and nearly as wealthy as Russia.

It was the seventy-seventh richest country in the world. And it didn't even exist.

As the self-contained worlds of such games have aligned with real-world systems and attitudes, they've not surprisingly moved toward the core influences on society. As the objects and "lives" in them begin to have real value, the games seem to me to be moving out of the phase during which it was possible to talk about a utopian reality in which everybody begins from equal footing and advances based on effort and merit. Human nature is too complicated, and intractable.

In some ways, the virtual worlds can be likened to a newly discovered, inhabited and intellectually modern, country — like an island paradise. Whatever tenuous dreamworld has been enabled by the absence of physical pain and mortality is drained through interaction with the wider world. The major difference, although the article doesn't go this in depth, is that these worlds have powerful "gods" — the designers and administrators — with control over every detail of the internal reality. One doesn't expect, for example, that a jealous god will wink an island nation out of existence as external economies make inroads, but such a thing is still possible in the games.

The formulation of the people who run the games as gods points to an interesting trend. The common (simplified) view of theology's progress in human history is from sort of mechanical gods spiritually connected to specific things in the world; through the concept of powerful deities who aren't much different than comic book superheroes, replete with human-like foibles and passions; followed by distinct, often competing, "forces"; and ultimately to the all-powerful God of the monotheistic faiths. The virtual gods have gone in the reverse.

At present, they are like the ancient Greek gods. They can dictate certain rules of nature, transform objects, make things (like money and goods) appear and disappear, but the medium in which they work imposes restrictions. However, as our legal system begins to assert rights to regulate — if the game owners choose to continue to allow the expansion of the games — they will become somewhat less powerful, even, than world leaders. If a head of state pushes a button and annihilates a civilization, he faces only what consequences other nations or his own people are able to force. Were the game owners to do the same, they'll eventually be criminally liable, at least for lost money.

What this really means, though, is that, as the gods of the games shift toward their actual humanity in power, as the games become more a component of this world, the God of the games becomes the real God. And that raises some intriguing ethical questions. Primary among the answers, I would suggest, even before the questions begin to be asked, is that excessive immersion in a virtual world threatens one's soul, inasmuch as it moves one's consciousness an implementation of reality further from God.

How significant would charity within EverQuest be if it came at the expense of, for example, depriving children of an active father? Not very, I'd say. But turn that question around a bit, and an answer to the real-world parallel must be more intricate: how significant is charity of the body that comes at the expense of the soul?

Economics isn't the only field that can find a model in these games, but I don't know how much our secular society will like the theological and philosophical conclusions to which the virtual worlds may lead.

(via Shiela Lennon)

Posted by Justin Katz at May 28, 2004 2:33 PM
Culture
Comments

Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy into the "danger to the soul" bit in general, although there are certainly some people who do get addicted.

Posted by: Michael Williams at May 28, 2004 7:23 PM

Michael,

It might be that the we think of soul and its interaction with life in slightly different ways.

Would time spent parenting virtual children compensate for time spent neglecting real children? Of course not, and neglecting the latter harms one's soul. In cases of excessive immersion, there are unknowable numbers of such trades being made.

Posted by: Justin Katz at May 28, 2004 8:26 PM

If participating in a fantasy world is morally dangerous, then we've got much more to worry about than Everquest. How would time spent playing Everquest be any worse morally from time spent reading a novel, watching a movie, or watching TV?

Posted by: Ben Bateman at May 30, 2004 1:26 AM

Ben,

You elide what makes EverQuest different from reading or watching, or even writing, content about a fantasy world. Part of the allure of the game is that one is acting and interacting with other players, that it can come to seem, as the article itself suggests, like a real place.

I'm not taking a puritan stand, here, and suggesting that the games ought to be avoided. I do think it's somewhat easier to become excessively immersed in a virtual reality than in a book or movie, though. (For one thing, books and movies have defined endings.) Cast your mind forward, for illustration, to a time when technology is such that players put on goggles and play in the world in 360-degree 3D. Or even just consider that there are people marrying each other within the game. That shows, perfectly, the difference between the activities.

Even a virtual marriage, of course, isn't necessarily morally dangerous. I'm merely pointing out that there is a relatively easy path to spiritual harm, here.

Posted by: Justin Katz at May 30, 2004 7:28 AM

People have always been afraid of new entertainment forms. I once read an article from the twenties titled "Radio: Mass Educator or Pied Piper?"

TV used to be the evil entertainment medium. It was supposed to be evil because it's passive and anti-social. An online game has neither of those problems. It requires constant thought and activity from the player, and it centers on interaction with real people.

On immersion, you've got it upside down. Online games are far less immersive than other forms of entertainment. The most immersive is a movie, and second would be a single-player game. A book might be third.

The entire problem with online games from an entertainment standpoint is that they're not very immersive becuse they're full of ordinary people instead of the idealized characters you have in other entertainment forms. On average, the people you meet online are no more interesting than your real-life neighbors. In fact, they're usually much less interesting, because the anonymity of the online environment brings out the worst in people. Spend an hour online in one of those games near some twelve year old spouting insults in all caps, and you'll find out quickly just how non-immersive an online game can be.

The technology and extreme immersion you're talking about can happen in a single-player computer game. Just as with books, movies, or even live theater the whole point is to find that immersion. Maybe there's some harm to that, but if so it's no different from the harm in a book or movie. The question shouldn't be how immersively it makes its point; the question should be about the moral content of that point.

If there's a moral danger in online games, it's in their anonymity. It's the old Ring of Gyges problem: When they won't suffer consequences for your evil acts, people quickly become immoral. The people who make these games are assiduously battling this problem, because it ruins the game. (The invisible hand is hard at work, as always.)

An online game is really just a way for people to communicate, and the hazards it carries are generally those inherent to all human interaction. Technology allows people to do new and interesting bad things. It always will. The real problem is that people want to do the bad things.

BTW, in case you think I'm just defending my favorite vice, I'm not an avid player of these social online games. I've tried them, but they bore me. I don't like to sit around and gab with people about nothing in particular. Personally, I like competitive online multiplayer games and single-player games.

I just want you to be careful about criticizing online computer games generally. There are lots of games out there, and they differ from each other in many important ways. No doubt each of them has a unique set of moral hazards. If you're going to worry about those hazards, you have to be specific.

And now I must tear myself away from the deeply immersive and entertaining world of political blogging, and get back to work. ;)

Posted by: Ben Bateman at May 31, 2004 2:11 PM

Perhaps I meant something other than I said, or perhaps we're working from different conceptions of "immersion." For one thing, I've never heard of people "marrying" characters in a book. More generally, my comment wasn't meant to disparage any particular form of entertainment. But in the context of an article about people treating EverQuest as a real place, it seemed reasonable to suggest that it wouldn't be spiritually helpful to forget that it isn't a real place.

Posted by: Justin Katz at June 1, 2004 10:54 PM