William Sims Bainbridge

Virtual Sociocultural Convergence

This book explores the remarkable sociocultural convergence in multiplayer online games and other virtual worlds, through the unification of computer science, social science, and the humanities. The emergence of online media provides not only new methods for collecting social science data, but also contexts for developing theory and conducting education in the arts as well as technology. Notably, role-playing games and virtual worlds naturally demonstrate many classical concepts about human behaviour, in ways that encourage innovative thinking. The inspiration derives from the internationally shared values developed in a fifteen-year series of conferences on science and technology convergence. The primary methodology is focused on sending avatars, representing classical social theorists or schools of thought, into online gameworlds that harmonize with, or challenge, their fundamental ideas, including technological determinism, urban sociology, group formation, freedom versus control, class stratification, linguistic variation, functional equivalence across cultures, behavioural psychology, civilization collapse, and ethnic pluralism. Researchers and students in the social and behavioural sciences will benefit from the many diverse examples of how both qualitative and quantitative science of culture and society can be performed in online communities of many kinds, even as artists and gamers learn styles and skills they may apply in their own work and play.

Linguistic Convergence and Divergence in Middle Earth

While respecting efforts to develop general theories of language, this chapter illustrates data-centric atheoretical scholarship through an avatar based on Angus McIntosh (1914–2005), after whom the center for historical linguistics at University of Edinburgh is named, in Lord of the Rings Online. This massively multiplayer online game (MMO) was based on the Hobbit novels by J. R. R. Tolkien, who was McIntosh’s teacher and life-long friend, so in this case there is a very close affinity between the social scientist and the environment his avatar explores. McIntosh first began working with computers as one of the scholarly leaders at the tremendously important British cryptography facility of the Second World War, Bletchley Park, and later wrote about the use of grammar in computerized language translation. The chapter analyzes 3194 avatar names, draws upon a 100,000-word transcription of tavern chat, and compares German-language with English-language versions of this intellectually rich MMO. As evidence of how much effort is often required for really thorough research in virtual worlds, fully 768 h were invested in operating five avatars, including taking one to all regions of this huge virtual world, and to the maximum level 100 of experience. The history of human language has been marked by constant interplay between convergence and divergence, as new words are shared between linguistic communities, and social cleavages facilitate linguistic differentiation, simulated in this virtual world.

Divergence in the Fall of a Virtual Civilization

The rise of a new civilization can be considered a massive example of convergence, as tribes unify into a nation, so the collapse of a civilization is a massively pathological case of divergence. This chapter explores the aptly-named Fallen Earth massively multiplayer online game with avatars based on three social theorists of civilization collapse: Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), and Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889–1968). Set a few years after the end of civilization, in a thousand-square-mile area around the Grand Canyon, Fallen Earth is like a much larger version of Xsyon, requiring players to make a living off the ruins of technology. But it also adds interaction with a very large number of sophisticated factions of non-player characters, each with its own ideology about why civilization fell and what must be done about it. Gibbon, of course, wrote about the fall of ancient Rome, but both Spengler and Sorokin wrote in the wake of the First World War about the impending demise of our own civilization. Intellectually deep post-apocalyptic science fiction, like Fallen Earth, can have three meanings. First, it is a prophecy of the actual future that may lie ahead, unless social science achieves a better understanding of societal dynamics and gains sufficient political influence to steer humanity away from doom. Second, it offers a simulation of reality in which competing philosophies may be compared, certainly in terms of their claims and possibly also in terms of their consequences. Third and most troubling, it represents what many people wish would happen, expressing their anger, their unfulfilled ambitions, and even their mixture of sadism and masochism.

Alienation and Assimilation in a Warcraft World

The highest level of science and technology convergence is globalization, as Internet, transnational corporations, and a uniform scientific culture encircle the Earth. Some social scientists have doubted that unification is possible, and predict that our world will continue to be a dangerous clash of civilizations. That is the scenario embodied by the most influential massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft. Thirteen societies have combined in two opposed factions, the Alliance and the Horde, but each faction contains hostility and disagreement between societies, as well as examples of close cooperation. This concluding chapter explores nationalism and assimilation using three avatars, two based on a pair of sociologists who interacted often throughout their lives, Daniel Bell (1919–2011) and Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006), and an innovative television personality whose work was intelligent psychodrama masquerading as popular comedy, Ernie Kovacs (1919–1962). Lipset’s theories of democracy, and Bell’s theories of post-industrial society, are relevant, but so also are the difficult paths these two men took from growing up in the New York subculture of Jewish immigrants, to becoming members of the same radical Socialist movement, to becoming in Lipset’s case a Neoconservative, and in both cases, anti-Marxists with love of Israel and loyalty to the United States. The motto of Ernie Kovacs, graven on his tombstone, is “nothing in moderation.” Of Hungarian descent, he was a critic of social pretension and an avant-garde artist who was exceedingly inventive in his surrealist use of television as a virtual world. Thus the three avatars explore World of Warcraft in different ways that offer insights about the American nation that created this premier online gameworld. Is America a “melting pot” dominated by convergence, or a “wild frontier” dominated by divergence?

Social Organizations in Online Virtual Worlds

The development of human society has been a story of convergence into ever larger social organizations, and divergence into ever more complex division of labor. Whether called guilds, clans, tribes, or whatever, long-lasting player teams in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) illustrate many of the features of real-world human groups, and here are analyzed from the standpoint of standard theory in the sociology of religious movements. Part of the theory holds that MMOs, like religious movements, provide compensatory social status, that may become partially real if other players offer emotional support and respect. A guild in the classical MMO, EverQuest, provides a good starting point, illustrating how members may share resources like virtual money and a neighborhood of private residences. The most influential MMO, World of Warcraft, was the scene of a major scientific conference organized by the author in connection with Science magazine in May 2008, resulting in a conventional proceedings book, and the guild organized to manage the conference is still in existence today. The simulation of ancient Egypt, A Tale in the Desert, and the recent fantasy MMO, Elder Scrolls Online, both allow an avatar to belong to multiple guilds. Statistical data on membership, and extensive experience inside these virtual organizations, support analysis of their social and economic functions, as well as recruitment and advancement processes. In the post-modern era, old definitions of societal institutions are dissolving, and guilds in MMOs can be understood from transcendental as well as mundane perspectives. The exclusive guilds in EverQuest and World of Warcraft are more like religious movements, because members must be totally committed. In contrast, multiple overlapping memberships, as in A Tale in the Desert and Elder Scrolls Online, facilitate the emergence of specialized organizations such as trading guilds, that follow a very different logic.

Individual Incentives for Investment in Gameworlds

Social theorist George Caspar Homans (1910–1989) believed that all the social sciences should converge as one, yet was an opponent of functionalist attempts to understand society as a unit, because he believed the individual person was the appropriate unit of analysis. This chapter uses an avatar based on Homans to explore Final Fantasy XIV, after a short consideration of a predecessor massively multiplayer online game, Final Fantasy XI. Both Final Fantasy games minimize conflict between factions of players, yet potentially this pair of games battled each other, and Final Fantasy XIV rather dramatically tore itself apart. This chapter examines a prominent case of bad game design from a theoretical perspective well-prepared to learn from its failure some fundamental principles not merely about games, but about human behavior. Homans was the most influential sociologist belonging to the Behaviorist school of thought, associated with his friend and colleague, psychologist B. F. Skinner, yet his work had a powerful cognitive element and might have been classified as cognitive science if sociology had been one of the fields that amalgamated to form cognitive science, or if he were still working today. Two main theoretical issues motivate this chapter. First, Homans believed that human action is determined by expectation of reward, and his theory allows us to understand why Final Fantasy XIV initially received very negative reviews and failed, then was radically revised and succeeded in the market place. Second, Homans dismissed the concept of culture, saying it was too vague, and the chapter confronts his view with extensive data on players who use the Japanese versus English language. Paradoxically, Homans advocated the importance of unifying social science, while believing that society was the culmination of chaotic processes described by all the natural sciences, and thus had no distinctive discoveries that could be made in the decades following his death.

Modeling Social Stratification in Online Games

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, doubts have been raised whether technological innovation may give unfair advantages either to the existing societal elites or to a selfish rising class with special abilities to exploit new inventions. Multiple avatars, including one based on social scientist Robert Michels (1876–1936), explore this struggle for upward social mobility in a pair of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) hosted by the same company, Rift and ArcheAge. Originally a member of the European Socialist Movement, Michels noticed that when advocates for democracy gained power, they tended to behave just like the old elite they had fought against, exploiting the situation to their own advantage. He came to believe that human society was caught in what he explicitly called a game, in which the elite would tend to prevail, but in a system that oscillated between democracy and tyranny. Popular MMOs tend to exist in multiple versions, each operated by a different Internet server, and part of the Rift analysis compares data on the goals of guilds across servers that emphasize player-versus-player combat, deemphasize it, or emphasize deep role-playing. A question about both Rift and ArcheAge is the extent to which social status inside the virtual world can be purchased by real-world money, in a “pay-to-win” system. A fascinating status-relevant aspect of ArcheAge when it launched in Western nations in September 2014 was numerous examples of sophisticated cheating, in which some players advanced over others by exploiting software bugs. Games combine convergence with divergence in a dynamic system, as people agree to follow a common set of rules, but compete aggressively within the restraints of that structure. At the present stage of human history, computer technologies seem to be competing against some people, while other people use the technology as a tool to out-compete other people. Both of these human-computer contests in real society raise ethical questions, that can be simulated by virtual societies.

Autonomy Within Rigid Rule-Based Systems

Like real society, but more obviously, computer-generated virtual worlds trap human beings within systems of regulations that inhibit freedom, while paradoxically empowering individual action. The pioneer psychologist and philosopher, William James (1842–1910), was an advocate of a doctrine of free will, within a pragmatic ontology that defined the truth simply as ideas that are useful. Operating an avatar based on these principles presents a variety of challenges and opportunities, depending upon the particular rule set of the virtual world. Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a Polish solo-player game that forces the player to adopt a particular identity and to achieve specified goals in partnership with assigned virtual characters, yet it is possible to explore significant portions of the world while refusing to obey. Fallout 3, also solo player, expects the player’s avatar to partner with simulated survivors of a nuclear war in the Washington DC area, yet the well-known existence of hacker commands allows the player to put the avatar in invulnerable god mode and possess great wealth. Guild Wars 2 is a multiplayer online game that expects avatars to engage constantly in sudden battles against virtual enemies, but it is possible for one avatar to live a peaceful life crafting technologies for other avatars, thus suggesting ironically that autonomy requires cooperation. Many scientists and engineers in the contemporary Technology Convergence movement have sought to understand and control the unpredictability of complex systems. The three virtual gameworlds explored in this chapter illustrate the trade-offs between free will, determinism, and indeterminacy that complex systems present to human beings.

Functional Equivalence Across Virtual Cultures

Globalization, economic development, and information technology may either be rendering cultural anthropology obsolete, or giving it a new set of purposes and methodologies. Global communications may either cause convergence of previously distinct national and tribal cultures, or conversely support divergence as individual people may assemble virtually on the basis of unusual interests. Originally, cultural anthropology was both an outgrowth of colonialism and a corrective for its abuses. If all peoples of the world are well educated and communicate over Internet, will sociology replace cultural anthropology as the scientific means for understanding them? Or could all of the social sciences dissolve into a more general science of information and communication? Cultural anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) had proposed that different cultures actually contained much hidden similarity, having found different solutions to a small set of human problems, thus exhibiting functional equivalence despite cultural relativism. This chapter uses ten avatars, all based on Malinowski, to explore cultural differences across ten races of avatars in the Vanguard virtual world, under severe time pressures because the research began when this computer-generated environment had been scheduled for termination. One goal for this chapter was considering whether every single culture on earth deserves close ethnography, before it dissolves into a major global culture, and by analogy whether every single online game also deserves study. An alternative approach to the same question was the attempt to determine why Vanguard had failed. One section closely follows anthropological studies of religious initiation rituals. Cultural heritage is also a theme, for example in consideration of the fact that Vanguard was a direct successor to EverQuest, which led indirectly to a failure to give the avatar ethnic groups sufficient histories and quest arcs. This virtual world simulates challenges for globalization in the real world, through tension between convergence and divergence.

Technological Determinism in Construction of an Online Society

Computerized virtual worlds are amalgams of advanced technology and traditional culture, so this chapter considers this relationship through an avatar based on sociologist William F. Ogburn (1886–1959), a leading proponent of Technological Determinism. This school of thought argued that the engine of history is not the decisive action of individual leaders, but the gradual accretion of human knowledge and its practical applications. The avatar enters a fascinating, experimental, and frankly unpopular gameworld named Xsyon, that takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland around Lake Tahoe. The gameplay requires the user to gather material resources, create tools, produce more and more products necessary for life, and gain technical skills, potentially recapitulating Ogburn’s theory through the rebirth of technological civilization. Simulated resource gathering and product manufacture is central to Xsyon, but also significant in many other MMOs described in other chapters. His central model of social change introduced four concepts that interacted with each other as elements within a dynamic system: (1) Invention, (2) Accumulation, (3) Diffusion, and (4) Adjustment. Each technological innovation has its own impact, whether small or large, but as inventions accumulate so does their force impelling society to change. More than that, inventions combine to produce new inventions, in what today we might call a chain reaction or the convergence-divergence process. An invention made in one industry at one location, diffuses both topically and topographically, thereby amplifying both invention and accumulation. Finally, society must adjust, and the results of that adjustment feed back into the three prior processes.