Virtual Property, Rights, Riots and Governance

“Virtual property” popularly refers to virtual goods – items purchased for use or display within virtual worlds, online games, and social networking platforms (like Facebook). The term could equally apply to other cyberspace assets, like land in Second Life or Entropia. Even items acquired through the investment of time or expertise (rather than a specific currency exchange), like my Sea Turtle. If you use such simple definitions, property does not influence rights or governance: The virtual environment doesn’t substantively change anything in law. Contracts can still control the relationship between the people and organisations involved. Copyright still protects the underlying electronic and creative concepts. What’s all the fuss about?

The utopian ideals of some of the early internet pioneers are long since forgotten. More recent debates about the rights of avatars have been steam-rollered under “the tyranny of the End User Licence Agreement” (quoting Andres Guadamuz – although perhaps such an agreement is still more democratic than a unsigned contract with society). So who cares?

Thoughts on the Resolution of Nothing

I ponder nothing. Endlessly. Nothing in the intangible sense – the increasing dominance of things without physical form in society and economy. Nothing in the sceptical nihilistic sense – the “meaninglessness of existence”. Even the nothing inherent in the stupidity required for cleverness.

Nothing isn’t new. The problem baffled thinkers for much of the 20th century. In the 21st we may finally be being overwhelmed by it. Possibly without realising. How society resolves a potentially uncomfortable relationship with nothing is important. And intriguing. It’s possibly the most difficult problem to resolve, yet underpins many contemporary issues.

This article introduces 3 approaches to resolving nothing. They are an attempt to summarise various different articles I’ve written over the past year. Broadly:

• Tangible Renaissance: Physical representations of nothing. Idols to communicate abstract values. Belief in certainty.
• Virtual Illusion: Virtual consumerism. An economy base on nothing, happily sustained in the denial of the meaninglessness. Belief in who cares?
• Post-Existential Skepticism: Understanding built from nothing. Presumption of illusion. Belief in uncertainty.

This text is poorly researched, incomplete, and, well, uncertain. But it might be an interesting summary of the extent of my current confusion. This is written from a Western, especially British-American perspective. Keep these quotes in mind:

Animal Farm

We finally have some reliable figures for the commercial value of “minipet” micro-transactions in the game, World of Warcraft. Specifically, the sales of just 1 item: In November and December 2009, at least $2.2 million worth of Pandaren Monk pets were sold. 220,000 at $10 each. We know this because “50% of the purchasing price” was donated to charity, and “more than $1.1 million” was donated (via WoW.com).

Over 220,000 sales to a market of about 4-5 million potential customers (only active WoW players can use the minipet, and the pet does not appear to have been sold in China or Taiwan). Roughly 5% of potential customers spent $10 on an ostensibly useless vanity item: A small pet that follows you around, looking cute.

Like most virtual goods, the cost of making and selling this pet is marginal: Primarily some additional art and marketing time, all built on the back of existing systems (store, staff, world). The first 2 months of Pandaren Monk sales will have made contributions to Blizzard’s profits of about $1 million. That’s only around 1% of the business’s turnover in that 2-month period. But that 1% is “free money”. Blizzard (-Activision) would be doing a dis-service to its investors if it did anything other than continue to milk this virtual cash cow.

Apply a healthy bit of European cynicism, and it is easy to conclude a scam. Tobold‘s:

“Send me $10, and I promise to send $5 of it to charity.”

Of course, Europeans fundamentally don’t understand US philanthropic culture: The idea that it’s fine to exploit your fellow human and make outrageous amounts of money, so long as you give some of it away in the end. Some philanthropy is able to take a somewhat rational, balanced view of what is good for the world. But there is a tendency to support visually appealing issues, such as charities servicing the needs of children.

The purpose of this article is not to argue that a European, government-centric re-distribution of wealth is preferable to an approach lead by personal responsibility. (I’m not sure it is.) The problem emerging here is more fundamental: That virtual goods are replacing trade-able value with non-trade-able value. Non-trade-able value that, by definition, can not offset inequality in (game) society. Donating part of the price of sales to charity is pure irony. In true Orwellian style, we’re sleep-walking into a potentially broken social structure with the best of intentions.

This article started as a box during my Adventures in the Invisible Tent, but has been expanded here in much greater detail. This article describes what a minipet is, highlights the role of money to balance inequality in society, and explains the problem with virtual goods.

Adventures in the Invisible Tent

Here’s a tent.

It’s invisible. But it is. There. Walk forward into the space it occupies, you find yourself within the tent.

The tent only exists when one is within it. When outside, we see the world without the tent.

This article explores the implication of this uncanny art form on how we build and use virtual environments. It first explains why this invisible tent is considered to be a software bug. The article explores how our ability to accept the uncanny varies from person to person. It then suggests that the spatial, built, environment is far less important than the social structures that exist within them. This topic contains a lot of images.

Valuing Nothing

In 2007 I wrote some introductory Thoughts on a Socio-Economic Environment based on Nothing. This article continues to explore the value of things in a highly intangible, knowledge-based economy. It wanders through internet-based payment systems, economic structure, role of government, organisation of information, community, and society, before disappearing into the realms of philosophy. It contains no answers, but may prove thought-provoking.