Creating Second Lives: Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of the Virtual (Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture)

241 Pages·2011·2.04 MB·English

by  Astrid Ensslin, Eben Muse

Creating Second Lives
Routledge Studies in New Media
and Cyberculture
1. Cyberpop
Digital Lifestyles and
Commodity Culture
Sidney Eve Matrix
2. The Internet in China
Cyberspace and Civil Society
Zixue Tai
3. Racing Cyberculture
Minoritarian Art and Cultural Politics
on the Internet
Christopher L. McGahan
4. Decoding Liberation
The Promise of Free and Open
Source Software
Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter
5. Gaming Cultures and Place in
Asia-Pacifi c
Edited by Larissa Hjorth
and Dean Chan
6. Virtual English
Queer Internets and Digital Creolization
Jillana B. Enteen
7. Disability and New Media
Katie Ellis and Mike Kent
8. Creating Second Lives
Community, Identity and Spatiality
as Constructions of the Virtual
Edited by Astrid Ensslin
Eben Muse
Creating Second Lives
Community, Identity and Spatiality
as Constructions of the Virtual
Edited by Astrid Ensslin
and Eben Muse
New York London
First published 2011
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
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© 2011 Taylor & Francis
The right of Astrid Ensslin and Eben Muse to be identified as the authors of the edi-
torial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf-
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Creating second lives : community, identity, and spatiality as constructions of the virtual /
edited by Astrid Ensslin and Eben Muse.
p. cm. — (Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture ; 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Human-computer interaction. 2. Virtual reality. 3. Online social networks.
4. Online identities. 5. Second Life (Game)—Social aspects. 6. Avatars (Computer
graphics) I. Ensslin, Astrid. II. Muse, Eben J.
QA76.9.H85C74 2011
006.8—dc22
2011011905
ISBN 0-203-82857-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-88420-4 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-82857-1 (ebk)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
ASTRID ENSSLIN AND EBEN MUSE
PART I
Creating Second Communities
1 Liberate your Avatar: The Revolution Will Be
Socially Networked 15
PAUL SERMON AND CHARLOTTE GOULD
2 An Imagined Community of Avatars? A Theoretical
Interrogation of Second Life™ as Nation through the
Lens of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities 32
KEVIN MIGUEL SHERMAN
3 Programming Processes: Controlling Second Lives 54
ELIZABETH BURGESS
PART II
Creating Second Identities
4 Embodiment and Gender Identity in Virtual Worlds:
Reconfi guring Our ‘Volatile Bodies’ 75
SONIA FIZEK AND MONIKA WASILEWSKA
vi Contents
5 The Body of the Avatar: Constructing Human Presence in
Virtual Worlds 99
DENISE DOYLE
6 The Grips of Fantasy: The Construction of Female Characters
in and beyond Virtual Game Worlds 113
ISAMAR CARRILLO MASSO
PART III
Creating Second Spaces
7 Second Chances: Depictions of the Natural World in
Second Life™ 145
JOSEPH S. CLARK
8 Avatar Needs and the Remediation of Architecture in
Second Life™ 169
ASTRID ENSSLIN
9 The Event of Space: Defi ning Place in a Virtual Landscape 190
EBEN MUSE
Afterword 212
TOM BOELLSTORFF
Contributors 219
Index 23
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
1.1 Liberate your Avatar, a merged-reality demonstration,
Manchester, 2007. 24
1.2 Liberate your Avatar, live video streaming fl ow diagram,
Manchester, 2007. 26
1.3 Urban Intersections: Sermon and Gould at ISEA Belfast,
August 2009. 27
1.4 Motion tracking movement of avatar, Charlotte Gould,
ISEA, August 2009. 27
1.5 Barbecue in First Life controlling Second Life barbecue,
ISEA09 Belfast, August 2009. 29
5.1 Wanderingfi ctions Story in SL (2007). 101
5.2 Two avatar sisters in SL (2008). Used with kind permission
of Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie. Chingaling Bling and her
sister in China. 101
5.3 Wanderingfi ctions Story in a sari in SL (2008). 107
5.4 Looking for India in Second Life (2007). 108
6.1 Text chain for WoW and Diablo. 134
7.1 Bora Bora. 160
7.2 A heron fi nds lunch. 161
7.3 A polluted harbor. 162
7.4 All manner of wildlife for sale. 164
viii Figures and Tables
8.1 Maslow’s human needs hierarchy. 171
8.2 Absolute fi gures of most frequently given answers. 173
8.3 Distribution of the four prepotent avatar needs. 174
8.4 Needs pyramid revisited and adapted to SL avatars. 175
8.5 FL characteristics in SL residential architecture but distinct
SL location. 185
9.1 Visuals are also sliced: E. Muybridge, ‘The Horse in
Motion’, c. 1878. 193
9.2 The road draws the eye to create depth. 198
9.3 Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) ‘Draughtsman Making a
Perspective Drawing of a Woman’, 1525. 200
9.4 Islington town hall—our wedding (ron_edwards 2008). 202
TABLES
6.1 Frequency of Male and Female Characters’ Names in
Offi cial Diablo Websites 125
6.2 Frequency of Male and Female Characters’ Names in
Unoffi cial Diablo Websites 126
6.3 Frequency of Male and Female Pronouns in Diablo
Corpus (All) 127
6.4 Frequency of Male and Female Pronouns in WoW
Corpus (All) 128
6.5 Representation of Professions Using Male and Female
Characters 129
6.6 Image Analysis Grid for Diablo Avatars 130
6.7 Image Analysis Grid for WoW Avatars (Sample)
Internal Analysis 131
6.8 Questionnaires’ Respondents 136
6.9 Lexical Items Associated by Participants with Male and
Female Characters 136
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank a number of people, without whose sup-
port this book project would not have been possible: not least, Atik Babo-
rie, Eirian Jones Muse, and Stephanie Marriott. We are also especially
grateful to Erica Wetter and Liz Levine at Routledge for their consistent
help throughout the entire process of planning and production, as well as
Eleanor Chan at IBT Global for her meticulous proof reading.
This volume was inspired by the conference, ‘Creating Second Lives:
Reading and Writing Virtual Communities’, held in October 2008 at Ban-
gor University. We are particularly grateful to our sponsors, The Game
Creators and Technium CAST, and our tireless conference offi cers, Simon
Holloway, Sonia Fizek, and Jack Green.
Finally, the editors and authors would like to express their gratitude
to those individuals and organizations who gave permission to reproduce
various items in individual chapters, and to Linden Lab, Blizzard Enter-
tainment, and MindArk, for providing virtual environments within which
to research, record, and document ‘Second Life’ creativity, communities,
identities, and spatiality.