Plenary talk for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, March 2012

1. “space makes you bitter”
the evolution of sandbox culture
in second life and eve online
john carter mcknight
vwbpe 2012

2. “two platforms, alike in dignity…”

3. second life
• launched 2003
• carefully managed real-money economy
• about 50,000 concurrent users
• community-driven “sandbox”
• global user base
• terrible UI and social tools

4. eve online
• launched 2003
• carefully managed real-money economy
• about 30,000 concurrent users
• community-driven “sandbox”
• global user base
• terrible UI and social tools

5. a roadmap
1. programmer culture:
san francisco bay area and iceland
2. eve online’s emergent user culture
3. second life’s emergent user culture
4. y so difrunt?

6. 1. programmer culture

7. iceland = san francisco?
• “the californian ideology”
• “viking programmers”

8. “the californian ideology”
• (wikipedia)
• Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture
• Barbrook & Cameron essay
http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-
californian-ideology-2/

9. recipe
• “a mix of cybernetics, free market economics,
and counter-culture libertarianism”
- barbrook & cameron
http://www.arpnet.it/chaos/barbrook.htm

10. in california
• Ayn Rand + hippie culture
+ engineering culture +
1980s-1990s cyberpunk
• generally idealistic

11. in iceland
• the californian ideology
+ the sagas +
globalization
• more nihilistic

13. david friedman – silicon valley
scholar of icelandic law
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

14. mid-2000’s – iceland’s 60’s and 90’s

15. linden lab and ccp
• programmer’s culture (not sales/marketing)
• decline in platform use by employees
• growing rift between designers and users

16. ideology in platform design
• negligible corporate management /
governance
• weak social tools
• individualism in design and coding

17. 2. eve online’s culture

18. what is eve online?

21. facebook – eve online (albums) (csm7 propaganda)

25. 3. sl culture

26. http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2003/07/war_of_the_jess.html

30. 4. y so difrunt?

31. the easy answer
• sl: making stuff = women, teachers, older
• eve: blowing stuff up = guys, younger

32. but wait!
that’s too easy!

33. demographics
• sl as the last expression of the techno-hippie
demographic (california 1998)
• eve as the first expression of young bitter
anarcho-capitalists (iceland 2008)

34. • sl – how 50-somethings wish the world was
• eve – how 20-somethings believe the world is

35. • sl – “your world, your imagination”
• eve – “space makes you bitter”
“yummy tears”

36. “A year in EVE will teach you more about human
nature than a decade in any other MMO, but
what you learn may scar you.”
http://tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/65

37. mirror/mirror?

38. contact me!
johncartermcknight.com
combatanthropologist.
blogspot.com/
@john_carter