For example, Ludlow and Wallace (2008) describe a case inside of (the now defunct) virtual world The Sims Online. If you are familiar with griefers, then you are probably also familiar with user created virtual security operations that have emerged to counter griefers. The transgressive behavior might range from profanity, scatological behavior and racism to the writing of programs (scripts) that tax the servers of the virtual world to the point where it goes offline. People who have spent time inside virtual worlds are familiar with griefers - game players (stereoptypically adolescent males) who engage in transgressive online gameplay to disrupt the online experience for others. Afterwords, I will share a joint statement which emerged from our conversations together about what this all means. Over the next two installments, I will be sharing Ludlow's account of what's been happening in Second Life, an account which places it in the context of the larger history of virtual worlds. It was a story which raised such fascinating issues about fantasy and play, about the shifting borders between pro-social and anti-social behavior, about rights and responsibilities, and about the governance of virtual worlds that I felt like I had to share it now. Ludlow emailed me recently with news of some fascinating new developments in Second Life.
Ludlow, along with his coauthor, Mark Wallace, wrote a book for MIT Press, The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid Which Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse, which I am planning to teach as part of a course I am developing this fall for the USC Journalism school on civic media. In early 2007, I ran an interview on this blog with Peter Ludlow, who teaches in the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University, and who has emerged as a key observer of how people are interacting within virtual worlds, such as The Sims Online and Second Life.
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