term paper abstract, Wintersemester 2006/2007, Potsdam University by Lars Dittmer
online gaming has become a standard feature of most games that are put on the market. As a result, online communities and new „social relations“ – the phrase is put in quotation marks with a clear intent here – are established on a permanent basis in these realms with after-effects that seem to be barely controllable by the societies. The people who participate in such games, mostly boys and men between 13 and 25, are confronted with a completely new type of social pressure – online obligations. They are grouped in online „guilds“ that meet and play at certain times of the day, there are special events in which they are expected to join, and if they are not investing a certain span of time daily into their online-characters – which need to be advanced – they are outdone by other guilds or members of their own groups.
Indeed they are spending days of their lives in these realms, which allows for the statement that these places have become anthropospheres, spaces that are filled with human life and everything it entails. The potential to lose contact with real life (rl as it is called among players) is massive. Early the culture industry has been fascinated with living in alternative or simulated realities and its „perpetual oscillation between utopia and dystopia“ (Durham 5). Many visions, as I shall point out in this term paper, presage today’s developments to an astonishing degree – sure enough the ones I deal with are rather dystopian. Notably, the most prominent in recent years has been the 1999 film „Matrix“ by the Wachowski brothers, which has been extended to a trilogy. Also science has come up with certain models that can be employed to conceptualize these spaces – I will outline some of these and try to put them in the context that serves my problem.
It is, in my view, necessary to view today’s colonisation of and living in these spaces that I have outlined above and will further detail in the course of this paper, in front of a background of media production of the period since WWII. The idea that informs this undertaking is, that there have been numerous accounts who predict what is being made accessible to computer users at the moment – Cyberspace is no longer a room that can be inhabited in the future, but it is right now open to everyone; the Cyborg has come into existence.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and problem identification. 3
2. approach of this term paper 6
3. Welt am Draht and its derivates. 7
4. Stephen Lisbergers „Tron“. 10
5. Peter Weirs „The Truman Show“. 12
6. Early cyberspaces and their spatiality. 14
7. Entering cyberspaces by avatars. 16
8. Structures in cyberspaces – non-places or simulacra. 19
9. Power in imaginary spaces. 22
10. Second Life et alie: my personal Dystopia?. 24
Works Cited. 27
1. Introduction and problem identification
After a relatively noiseless online-launch in 2003, the computer Game Second Life has seen an incredible increase in users within the last few months and therefore has attracted the attention of international media. The game provides for an online-world in which numerous activities –chatting, flirting, shopping etc. are being made possible to the users. The players take part in the form of avatars, pixel-figures that can be created and designed according to the wishes of the members.
While in October 2006 the one millionth avatar has seen the light of the virtual world, by now (early April 2007) more than 5 million users roam the places and spaces of the alternative realm of Second Life. The idea behind the game is by no means new and merely marks the latest step in a development that can be traced back to early primitive computer games like flight and sports simulators.
Whereas in most simulation games however only parts of „reality“ where isolated and converted into programs that were mostly played alone, in the late 1990s and the early years of the first decade after 2000 a whole new generation of games flooded the shelves of the games retailers which came as a result of spreading fast broadband internet connections and the possibility of real-time chatting. In Massive Multiplayer Online (Role-Playing) Games (MMO(RP)Gs) like World of Warcraft (WOW), in some aspects a predecessor to Second Life, a confined fantasy realm which is permanently online waits for the young players to be liberated of evil or good forces – depending on the side one aligns with.
Here it becomes real what many authors tend to call „the end of geography“ and „the triumph of technology over space“ (Mosco 38). Heros from all countries in these games are thanks to the internet able to team up in Guilds and Clans and share „valuable“ items like swords and armours that can be found throughout these worlds and thereby improve their avatars. They are of course able to choose their identity – inter alia dwarves, humans, night elves and other races and classes can be deployed in the online-battles that are waged in the game twenty four hours a day.
Second Life is not informed by a fantasy story like WOW – it however addressed itself to the task to deliver its users a complete living space with a broad variety of possible actions and, what is even more important, social interactions designed to attract more and more users. Both games – Second Life will be dealt with in detail later in this term paper – are just the most successful top of the iceberg; online gaming has become a standard feature of most games that are put on the market. As a result, online communities and new „social relations“ – the phrase is put in quotation marks with a clear intent here – are established on a permanent basis in these realms with after-effects that seem to be barely controllable by the societies.
The people who participate in such games, mostly boys and men between 13 and 25, are confronted with a completely new type of social pressure – online obligations. They are grouped in online „guilds“ that meet and play at certain times of the day, there are special events in which they are expected to join, and if they are not investing a certain span of time daily into their online-characters – which need to be advanced – they are outdone by other guilds or members of their own groups. Indeed they are spending days of their lives in these realms, which allows for the statement that these places have become anthropospheres, spaces that are filled with human life and everything it entails. The potential to lose contact with real life (rl as it is called among players) is massive; China has due the rising amount of highly addicted young players reduced the runtime of the servers, there have been even reports about deaths in front of the screen due to dehydration and lack of nutrition (Wikipedia, the free Encyclopaedia). If actually true, online worlds are not only places to live, but also to die.
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