Speaking of terms…
Dusanwriter blogs about the alleged challenges that came up for adoption of virtual worlds by enterprise at the Engage/3DTLC show, one of which is — gasp — the term virtual worlds in the first place.
But Ron Burns, ProtoPrez, lay part of the blame for a lag in industry adoption of virtual worlds at the feet of Second Life, saying that virtual worlds have a reputation for being a place to ‘goof off’, and this fit into the broader meme that we need to stop CALLING them virtual worlds at all, which Erica Driver was of course all over with robust Twitter nods, preferring her term Immersive Internet which is meant to paint a broader picture to include – well, to include what I’m not sure, because ThinkBalm doesn’t often look at things like PaperVision or augmented reality or, dread term….games.
— via Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » Has Second Life Poisoned the Well for Business? Thoughts from 3DTLC.
One solution to this, of course, is to quit trying to sell enterprise. 🙂
Dusanwriter likes enterprise, but not this overall line of thinking. He reports that the reason the term is apparently now passé is that
– We can’t call them virtual worlds anymore, it sounds frivolous, it reminds everyone of furries and ‘goofing off’.
– We can’t ever ever use the “game” word. Talking about games or play is like giving a corporate mandate to employees that they can play solitaire all afternoon (or, the modern equivalent, watch youTube videos when the boss isn’t looking).
Leaving aside whether enterprises this blinkered are long for this world, let’s please not go inventing yet another term.
39 Responses to “Speaking of terms…”
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HAHA – well, some of us want to do work in the same place we have so much fun. So why not try to do some training or collaborating in a VW?
By the way – the post implies that I agree. I don’t. It’s such a ridiculous notion that by changing the name or avoiding the game word that somehow those stodgy business types will nod their heads sagely and sign on the dotted line.
So I’m with you – these are the new worlds, and to call them something else is wallpaper over the power of what they can be.
Now – I’m sending a bunch of suits into Metaplace to hold meetings if that’s OK – would you mind setting out some plastic chairs and a board room table and keep the meeps out?
Amen. Just when people are starting to realize what a Virtual World is, someone wants to change it.
@Dusan Writer Meeping is no different than texting… Why discriminate?? What did the meeps do to you? They’re cute and they love corporate meetings almost more than text messages do. *grin* /sarcasm
The meeps can’t come in unless you place them there. 😉
I’ll edit the article to make your position clearer, too!
Thanks Raph.
Hmmm….let me check with the guys in HR. Maybe they can whip up a meep exemption policy in the spirit of corporate diversity. If they’re not all out to lunch.
I don’t even like the phrase “virtual worlds”–it’s like calling the garbageman a “sanitation engineer.” He’s still picking up garbage. And, you know, there’s nothing wrong with picking up garbage.
(Says the guy who just used the phrase “virtual worlds” in an article… )
Mitch Wagner
I wonder if its worth making anything of President Sarkozy’s [possibly] deprecating reference to a “virtual world” in his UN speech today: hhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092401721.html
see.. exactly like 1999 again.:)
names, shmames, and panels making BANK!…
uh huh.
show me the money!
made, not spent.;-)
This same naming issue has been around in the Serious Games space for some time. Do you use the word “game”, or something like “simulation” or “application”? Do you use the word “player”, or do you use words like “user”?
Personally I gave up on trying to use words like “application” and “user” in presentations. People know what you mean when you say “game” and “player”. Maybe at the beginning I say “By player I mean user” and “By game I mean application or simulation” and then go from there.
Mind you it can vary what you say based on the audience. But a lot of what you’re trying to do is say, “Games are ubiquitous in society now. People ‘get’ games. What we want to do is leverage that for non-entertainment applications.” So talking in terms like “game” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The problem with the term “game” is the immense baggage with it. The terms “art and artist” and the “inability” to find consensus as to what and who it describes is a good example as to the place this “media” is today and will be im afraid for quite a long time. Its already been 30 plus years of interactive electronic entertainment.
“radio” “tv” “film” type ubiquity is found in standardized devices, not media types…. and since “digital” devices morph, obsolete, every 5 years, and software even sooner… dont expect the same “branding” of terms that less accelerated devices or forms took in the past.
Immersive Internet!
Dey bin stealin’ my terms!
But no, let’s stick with virtual world and game.
It’s really, really sad that ‘game’ has any kind of negative connotation — seriously, the only reason we’re here today is because of life being one big game.
If life wasn’t fun, or if it was just one big grind with no win or lose scenarios, I’m pretty sure we’d all still be primordial goop.
Actually cube, I don’t think it does carry baggage. If the premise of your argument is that games have certain features that are highly valuable for non-entertainment applications, then saying “game” is just fine.
It also really depends again on if you’re talking to game savvy or non-game savvy people. Game savvy people will go “Yawn” if you keep talking about users and simulations. Non-game savvy people just need to be taught that games have value, then you can start using the word “game”. Maybe just to be safe you say, “Game like” 🙂
People keep calling it their game. So let them.
Bah, it all started to go downhill when they stopped calling them MUDs…
Richard
++ Richard
no tim, that wasnt my premise.
“games” by mass definition ARE still activities via a process that excentuates “fun” and “entertaining actions” The term really hasnt morphed yet beyond its last meaning cemented before electronic acceleration.
my main point was that the “acceleration” of this media and its methods and its resulting cultural values, makes such name branding a useless excercise.
anyhow:)
Because “dungeon” has no baggage 😛
A visit to the “virtual worlds” side of the 3dmedia blog rolls will show they too have nothing much to say other than “what should we/I attempt to call this media”.
ugh.
I’ll play devil’s advocate, since I don’t totally disagree with the original point. The term “virtual”, in meaning “not real”, is inherently devaluing, and it is going to continue being so. The term “game” being used to refer to spaces where there isn’t actually any game simply communicates an incorrect idea; how would you explain the use of this word to someone new to the English language, for example?
Ten years ago, the answer would have been obvious: it’s electronic space, or e-space, if you will. E-space would be real the same way e-mail is real: it is mail, just electronic. If it were called virtual mail (or v-mail, if you must) I think we’d still be seeing the same treatment of it as non-real and thus non-valuable. V-mail isn’t mail, it’s virtual.
(Dammit, now I have this weird urge to just mutter “e-mail, v-mail, real-mail…” over and over again. 😛 )
Please note: I am playing devil’s advocate here. The first person to sincerely use the term e-space outside of this discussion should be slapped. 😛
Peter, you may want to slap me because I like the phrase “electronic spaces.” It gives some hint about what we’re discussing, which the phrase “virtual world” does not.
Peter S.>The term “virtual”, in meaning “not real”, is inherently devaluing, and it is going to continue being so.
When I wrote my 2003 book, “Designing Virtual Worlds”, I had to think long and hard about what to call them. I knew that whatever I did call them wouldn’t last very long, as these things have a long history of terminology changes; for any umbrella term, either the social worlds side or the game worlds side will appropriate it or disavow it, and there are also external factors. Right now, “virtual worlds” is being used more and more to refer to social worlds, and people who work with social networking sites are also keen to extend it to them (in a “Facebook is a virtual world” kind of way).
I was aware when I chose the term “virtual” that commonplace use of the word was something along the lines of “almost”, as in “the team is virtually assured of victory following their rival’s defeat last night” or “he lived in the hills, a virtual recluse”. However, I wanted a scientific term which hadn’t already been grabbed for something else and yet which did have the right connotations. The sense in which I used “virtual” is the same as in optics: a virtual image is one that appears to be real, but is not. When you look in a mirror, you see a virtual image – you’re not really standing behind the mirror, it just looks as if you are. With virtual worlds, there isn’t really a world the other side of your computer screen, it just looks as if there is (for graphical worlds, anyway).
Now you could argue that there IS really a world the other side of your computer screen, or at least that there is an actual world that the screen displays as if it were a camera. Email really is mail, just in electronic form; Azeroth really is a world, just in electronic form. I agree with this, but there’s a reason not to want to do it.
The thing is, when players start playing virtual worlds they know they’re not real. They can’t be real, because the player is in the real world, not in the fictional world. They have to visit the fictional world using a character (avatar) as a vehicle. However, the players really, really WANT for the fictional world to be real. They will themselves to believe it is real, disregarding all evidence to the contrary, because they so want it to be real. They want this because this means that their fictional character is real; they sense that their fictional character is becoming a better reflection of who they are than their real-world self, so they want to be this “real” person. How can it be their true self if the world is imaginary, though? Therefore, they have to imagine it isn’t imaginary.
OK, so what we have here is a tension between the real and the imaginary. In order to break the social rules imposed by reality, so that they can be and become their “real” self, the players visit computer-moderated fictional worlds. It’s important to them that they establish in their minds that these worlds are not real but are framed in some way; this means they can play with their identity without fear of real-world consequences – the worlds are not real. However, the whole point of play is to be and become your true self, which means the closer you are to being your in-world character, the more real to you the fictional world becomes (which is what we mean by “immersion” – so identifying with your character that the world seems real as a result). When you and your character finally do coalesce into one, then the world ceases to be fictional and becomes just another adjunct to reality – a place like any other.
In short: players have to believe that these computer-moderated worlds are not real in order to give them the freedom to discover their real self. Doing so collapses the conceit, and makes the not-real real.
If we insist that virtual worlds are real by using a term to describe them that implies this, then we are robbing players of the excuse they need to start playing. It’s as if we’re telling the actors on the stage that they are not really Roman senators and they’re fooling no-one. Yes, we KNOW that, but we want to IGNORE it to get a benefit we wouldn’t get if we didn’t.
In the end, everything is real. Either that, or everything is imaginary.
Richard
Long ago, as a theatre major, I dated a psychology grad student. She advanced the hypothesis that method acting comprised a voluntary, controllable schizophrenic state, insofar as the actor is able to create a genuine emotional response to an imaginary situation by making it “real” in his or her subjective reality.
She was less than receptive to my counter-hypothesis that objective reality was nothing more or less than a consensus of socially-acceptable delusional states, and the role of the psychologist was less that of healer than that of referee.
This was before the rise of commercial virtual worlds, but they fit the general framework of the debate nicely.
@Mitch,
Personally, I think the phrase “Electronic Spaces” would be an awesome book title, and is a cool phrase. But I don’t want to be the one blamed when someone’s boss walks by talking about how he “put the company on the e-space”. 😛
@Richard,
I largely agree with you, but I think what we have here is precisely an issue of framing. When we’re looking at a virtual world, then the term “virtual world” is completely appropriate. I also think, though, that virtual worlds may be best described as a subset of what can be done in electronic space, and that we are starting to see a bleeding together of these different areas.
When I log on to my bank account through my bank’s website, I’m engaging in real banking. At present, the interface for this is professional but simple, with text boxes, various buttons, and simple text displays. But, in theory, my bank could also create a virtual lobby, with virtual tellers etc., with which to provide the same service. We’re seeing, I think, more areas deciding whether to adopt this sort of display layer, and the more real functionalities this begins to encompass the more the limitations of calling it “virtual” becomes. How would a virtual ATM really be different than a real ATM?
What about a virtual casino? Here we have a space that is certainly for and about games, as well as a venue that is traditionally social (to an extent). But if you’re logging on to really gamble real money at electronic versions of real games (real games that are electronic anyway as often as not)… certainly, the intent of this space isn’t necessarily to do the unreal, and “virtual” gives the wrong impression (you really did lose $100, dumba**. 😛 ). Your “avatar” may be little more than the little icon-image you’re allowed on a given message board, even. Do the same issues of constructive fiction really come into play?
And, of course, you could take your virtual casino and put it into Second Life, and then you would have all of these issues again, of the flying minotaur at the slot machines and whatnot. They’re bleeding together.
Thus, for me, yes, I’d say you have virtual worlds in electronic space, as planets float in normal space. But as the interactive features that we wouldn’t describe as virtual worlds become more and more robust, it does highlight a boundary to the term that we hadn’t yet had sufficient contrast (or hadn’t yet encroached close enough to) to see. What’s on the other side of the glass can be real, in certain circumstances and for certain bounded definitions of real (real banking, real gambling, real buying and selling, etc.).
The difference here is that online games are games – the goal is to have fun, be entertained, socialize, be amused.
The goal of online banking is to bank.
The goal of online gambling is to gamble.
Catch the pattern here?
When the goal of logging in to “Azeroth” is to earn money, eat food, raise children, provide shelter, keep the lawn mowed, etc, then we can talk about it as a “world”.
If someone is somehow confused in to thinking that “Azeroth” actually is a world, then they’re delusional, deeply addicted, and need help.
It’s amazing what folks can come up with when they’re way to close to something to see the forest through the trees, but hey that’s why I enjoy message boards nearly as much as I enjoy games: people never cease to amaze…
@Corwin… uh… people can use WoW to pay the bills, which can be used to eat food, raise children or provide shelter. It’s a violation of the ToS, but it still happens. Gold selling is a market, with employees. For them WoW is most definitely a job. It’s a kinda pointless thing to say, anyway, because your central argument is rooted on a distortion of terminology.
You’re drawing a very bizarre distinction between “world” and place, one that can only be explained with a four term fallacy; World is not being used to refer to Life in this context. It’s being used to refer to “a set of places” and in that context, it works perfectly fine as a description of Azeroth.
A place is not something with a goal. At most you have predisposition toward it being used in a particular way. WoW with it’s multitude of goals cannot be said to conform to such a narrow definition as “game”, it’s not a thing with a goal as much as a place with activities. It’s a community, a place to learn, a place to meet new people, and many things besides. It’s a series of spaces in which many things happen. Ultimately the things that happen are the important bits, and they’re no less valid than the things that happen in clubs or playgrounds or theaters or churches, or whatever. But Azeroth is also separate and distinct and it has it’s own internal logic, and it’s space is not contiguous with physical reality. It’s whole in and of itself.
And it’s a world. It’s not the world we live in, but it’s a world.
Corwin>If someone is somehow confused in to thinking that “Azeroth” actually is a world, then they’re delusional, deeply addicted, and need help.
The term “world” in “virtual worlds” isn’t supposed to be taken that literally. People who talk about “the world of high finance” aren’t positing there is an actual planet out there, they mean an environment to the inhabitants of which seems fairly self-contained. It’s like that with virtual worlds.
Richard
Eorlin> Lot’s of people earn money by playing games, that ability doesn’t make Counter Strike a world, nor Chess, nor Football.
Richard> When people use the term “the world of high finance” it’s understood they’re talking about the field of finance. They don’t have to be fooled in to thinking it’s false so they can better accept the reality. Electronic finance is not looking through a camera at a fictional world of finance, it’s just as real as all the traders standing down on the floor on Wall Street. When something is not real, or is pretend, then we call that a game – or a work of fiction. The social interactions in these games are real, but that doesn’t make them a world either.
I’m not just arguing semantics here, for instance, when you said:
“In order to break the social rules imposed by reality, so that they can be and become their “real” self, the players visit computer-moderated fictional worlds.”
You sure seemed to be claiming that computer games void of social rules, allow people to become who they truly are, that somehow virtual worlds are more real then the real world?
You’re not just arguing a semantic difference, and neither am I.
@Corwin, Eolirin,
I read “When the goal of logging in to “Azeroth” is to earn money, eat food, raise children, provide shelter, keep the lawn mowed, etc[…]” as almost referring to something like The Sims, that is, referring to those things taking place there rather than here. Which means I likely read it wrong. 😛
@Corwin specifically,
The goal of a given endeavor may not be straightforward. A goal of an online casino may very well be to provide fun, entertainment, socializing, etc. in an effort to keep you as few clicks away as possible from the buttons that give more money to them. More cynically, the goal of saturday morning cartoons is to extort money from parents.
Meaning, there is a pattern, but the colors are starting to run a bit.
@Richard,
I’m tempted to suggest calling “virtual worlds” a genre, but only for the sake of being even more of a devil’s advocate in the invocation. 😛 But, more seriously, perhaps it was really nailed by you here, and I just missed it:
“It’s as if we’re telling the actors on the stage that they are not really Roman senators and they’re fooling no-one. Yes, we KNOW that, but we want to IGNORE it to get a benefit we wouldn’t get if we didn’t.”
Maybe we’re all just upset that calling it “virtual” breaks the suspension of disbelief (and in terms of the original article, particularly on the part of our supervisors/management).
Virtual worlds inseparable from “the real world.” They are part of the real world, they are real media through which real communication occurs, and thus they are real worlds.
Right, “world” being a contained subset of broader reality, whether we’re discussing a single planet or a limited aspect of the social behavior of one species on that planet.
Corwin>They don’t have to be fooled in to thinking it’s false so they can better accept the reality.
I was using “the world of high finance” to explain where the word “world” came from in “virtual worlds”. It’s a space that the inhabitants regard as generally self-contained. The term makes no statement about whether it refers to something real or not – that’s what the word “virtual” is there for. I can talk about “Tolkien’s world” or “the Roman world” or “the world of science” without having to change what I mean by “world”. It’s the same meaning in “virtual world”.
>You sure seemed to be claiming that computer games void of social rules, allow people to become who they truly are, that somehow virtual worlds are more real then the real world?
No, I was claiming that a particular kind of computer-moderated environment, which may or may not be a game, presents players with the opportunity to behave under a different set of social rules than they do elsewhere, and that some are so constructed as to provide pressure for individuals to reflect upon how they operate under these different conditions such that when they stop playing they are better armed to operate in their other social spaces.
It’s not that they are more real than the real world (how could they be?!); rather, it is that by encouraging players to treat them as separate from reality, individuals are more easily able to experiment with their identity in ways that outside of this kind of cordoned-off space they would find difficult. As Amy Bruckman succinctly put it back in 1991, these things are basically identity workshops.
Example: if in the real world you have a domineering father who restricts your social movements, then you may not have much chance to blossom into the bubbly, outgoing person you really are. However, if you visit a virtual world, you have the opportunity to be yourself for once. There are other outlets for pent-up frustration, of course, but they don’t really structure the path to self-expression as well as virtual worlds can.
Richard
PS: Good lord, there’s an Evony ad beneath this post as I look at it right now – is nowhere safe?!
Peter S.>Maybe we’re all just upset that calling it “virtual” breaks the suspension of disbelief
Yes, that’s it in a nutshell.
Richard
They might not be more real than the real world, but they are as real as the real world. Sectioning off an area of a park does not not remove the area from the park. The area is simply designated for unique purposes, but the area remains “of the park” just as virtual worlds remain “of the world.”
It’s interesting that I came to that conclusion independently just a year ago or so. Nice to know I’m not crazy, or at least not alone in being crazy.
Virtual reality: where the game is more real than life so only losers win.
len>Virtual reality: where the game is more real than life so only losers win.
Virtual reality makes no claims to be more real than life. Hyperreality, on the other hand…
Richard
Peter> Real casinos also try to entertain, engage, inebriate, and distract their customers so they’re more willing to waste their money. The goals are the same. The outcome is the same. Online casinos ARE casinos. Online worlds are not worlds.
Richard> That bubbly online teen would likely exhibit the same personality trait in any setting that separated him/her from the domineering father, whether it’s an online game, a message board, or a private relationship with close friends.
Again, my persistent monopoly board example could provide the same comfort zone that allowed that bubbly personality to come out. I suppose you could insist that my persistent monopoly board hence then becomes a world, but I feel more comfortable insisting that your online world is just a multi-player game. 😉
Corwin>That bubbly online teen would likely exhibit the same personality trait in any setting that separated him/her from the domineering father, whether it’s an online game, a message board, or a private relationship with close friends.
Perhaps. The difference is that with MMOs the path is already marked out and you’re directed along it, which means that in the end you get further.
Richard
Unfortunately the true real person can’t escape their father, they can’t escape real life, they can’t just log off when they feel stressed – well, you’d hope not anyway.
Folks will warn you that living together before getting married is not a good way to tell whether a marriage will work because it isn’t real … it’s like living in a doll house where each person is on their best behavior and your don’t get a true feel. Well, personally I feel your mileage will vary based on the tendency of the couple to play the role of boyfriend/girlfriend rather then being themselves, but in an anonymous game setting the skew is potentially off the charts – for the simple fact that you’re not seeing people dealing with real situations, real problems, and real stress – you’re just seeing how they interact in a game.
If that’s a world, it’s a false world that is far more likely to lead to delusion then insight if you’re trying to learn about someone’s true personality – and it’s because the anonymous game world encourages people to act outside themselves.
“Virtual reality makes no claims to be more real than life. Hyperreality, on the other hand…”
That explains Sons of Anarchy.
World vs Real World seems to be a matter of separating imagination and reality, something most of us can’t do, won’t do and don’t want to do.
If it weren’t for my imaginary friends, who could I really trust?