Memetic Horizon

Some interesting cultural and memetic developments in the circles that participate in the massive online virtual environments. It appears the social cross over from an immediate environment focus to a virtual environment focus has some rough patches. I had a conversation with an acquaintances who described the motivation to play, and the difficulties.

"It's hard going over to friends house and their all talking about WoW [World of Warcraft]. I end up just sitting in a corner and reading. That's why I started playing [World of Warcraft]"

Why don't you play with friends?

"Well, originally that is what we were going to do. Everyone was supposed to play on this Orc server, but they ended up going back to the Alliance server they originally started with. I made an Alliance character, it's all the same old missions, though. Went from 0 to 14th level. They're up to 43rd and said 'go on some missions and you can join us when you get up there'. But now they don't play much, either."

One desirable feature of online virtual environment's is the ubiquitous presence of others. At any hour potential comrades and opponents lurk on the servers that host these scenarios. If one, however, desires to play with specific people, not open up to the larger community it loses some of that spontaneous social potential.

Virtual environment focus gives humankind a new opportunity for memetic dissemination. While some are based around a game structure, with their own goals and rewards, others, like Second Life, offer a different take. The strength there is community and creativity. That community reminds me a little of the virtual world featured in Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash. Probably we'll have a virtual service that will be taken seriously enough to be integrated into business and government interactions will be something like Yahoo!'s avatar feature.

http://terranova.blogs.com/