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MMORPGs as Operating Systems

There's a post from Robert Scoble that's been rattling around in my head for almost a month now: Second Life +is+ an OS.

(Rest of the essay behind ye olde jump to keep my RSS feed from spinning out of control.)

The notion is that the "game" Second Life (I'll come back to why I'm being coy about the "gameness" of Second Life in a moment). The blog discussion then devolves into petty bickering about what an OS is, how feasible the idea is, etc. But let's defer that, too -- the core notion is interesting and worth exploring.

First, what is Second Life? It's one of these Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) thingies. However, it differs from the rest of its commercial brethren in that it's not really interested in having do game-like things -- acquiring macguffins, doing quests, leveling up -- and is instead of interested solely in the social angle. One might argue that the "game" portion consists of the economic game -- the act of figuring out in-game occupations which are sufficiently interesting that other players will pay you for them.

These occupations range the gamut. The most discussed, of course, is porn -- there's a thriving and well-documented virtual sex worker trade going on in this environment. But while that gets a lot of press, what's really interesting is the actual world-building trade. Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life, provides tools for doing 3D model editing and texture creation, as well as providing programmability for these in-game objects, so that it's actually possible to become a digital craftsman, creating objects for the enjoyment (or purchase) of your fellow Second Lifers.

In fairness, this is not the first time this idea has come up: the text-based MUDs and MOOs which predated the current batch of commercial, graphical MMORPGs had this kind of functionality, although for the most part the "creation game" was really the end-game. Players who had already demonstrated commitment to the gameworld were rewarded with the title of "Wizard," and given the ability to create new spaces and objects in the world for other players to experience.

The core idea here is that Second Life -- on top of being an visually immersive environment -- also has enough programmability to make it truly customizably immersive environment.

What I find fascinating here is that this opening up inevitably leads to a profusion of content that the original producers don't expect. Second Life is populated with a baffling and fascinating array of neighborhoods and avatars, because the limits are essentially the player's imagination and time. The truly hardcore can purchase "land," and construct fanciful mansions in the sky. And, while my impression is that the digital sex trade wasn't what Linden Labs was counting on for getting attention focused on their game, I doubt that they're wringing their hands too much about how to stop it.

But customizable content is only part of the story. World of Warcraft, the ten-billion pound gorilla in this space, doesn't have customizable content at all, but what it does have is a customizable interface. There is a thriving fan-provided trade in free UI add-ons. The add-ons range from the obvious (laying out the interface differently), to the subtle (providing additional UI affordances for making repeatable tasks easier, like reminding you to re-cast a spell that lasts half an hour), to the bizarrely innovative (full-featured group calendaring applications that run entirely within the game).

It's these applications that fascinate me. In World of Warcraft's case, there's the core game, and then there's what amounts to a mediocre chatting app. The game keeps you interested by giving you interesting repetitive tasks to accomplish, and a way to talk to your friends while you're doing it. The construction of these applications are, for the most part, entirely about figuring out ways to improve both of these meta-games. The gameplay and social angle keep you coming back, and playing for hours at a time, so the social space becomes -- even though it's virtual -- a very real space where you spend a non-trivial portion of your time, and where connect with a non-trivial peer group. And now you're actually customizing that environment -- building or acquiring a library of applications which make your "work," for lack of a better term, in this space more productive and fun.

So are they really operating systems? Well, I guess you could probably set up your laptop so that it appeared to boot up into Second Life or World of Warcraft. They've got login screens, they've got mail and calendaring systems, you could probably even write yourself a nice little word processor. Some guys spend all non-sleep and non-work time in these environments -- really, all they're lacking is a web browser and an AIM gateway. I don't think Apple or Microsoft are in danger of being outsold by WoWtops -- I feel certain there's no percentage in Blizzard going all the way down to the wire of writing OpenGL drivers and disk drivers and keyboard drivers and all the other crap that is, really, what an OS is.

But are they customizable environments where actually people spend their time doing "work" with a variety of "applications"? Absolutely. And that's a little freaky and interesting. The diversity of activity that can be engaged in in these environs is pretty astonishing. WoW currently has six million users -- there's something going on there.

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