(un)Real Land
Virtual cities, their impact and development: in the second podcast of (un)Real Estate series.
by Alina Nazmeeva and Dr. Andrea Marie Chegut
Disclaimer:
(un)Real Estate is the Medium blog series and podcast series. It is a part of an open-ended research project at MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab, exploring the economy of the virtual, the value and norms of virtual space, land, goods, and a real life made of bits.
This is the third episode of our podcast series, titled (un)Real Land. In this episode we discuss the construction of virtual land, its relationship with virtual world economies, how the users interact with it and what the implications of virtual environment design for the virtual real estate market.
Virtual worlds are isotropic spaces, in which a Cartesian grid serves as a primary structural element: it defines the space, as each discrete element, placed in the virtual world, located in the relationship to the grid. In some spaces the grid is obvious: like in Minecraft, which consists of clunk cube-shaped blocks : voxels — and every element of the world is a voxel. Other virtual worlds, besides voxel-based ones, on the surface are constructed from more sophisticated objects, both structurally and geometrically, simulating organic or curvilinear structures. Yet even in these cases: in Fortnite, World of Warcraft, GTA or Second Life and all others, the grid serves as a basis for space of the world.
The grid can be thought of as one of the most efficient strategies of spatial expansion. From Roman Empire towns to the Great American Grid, this geometric structure has been utilized for the occupation and management of land, and now is being deployed in the virtual frontier. It is everywhere: in texture arrangements, the way how content of the world is stored (as each server core is dedicated to a certain unit of the grid), or it is directly connected to the property ownership structure: in Decentraland, each parcel of the grid can be bought and sold, and traded between the users.
The landscapes of virtual worlds can be thought of as representation of familiar spatial archetypes par excellence. In virtual worlds space corresponds to the action, in one way or another, and is designed to facilitate very specific activities. The space aims to host and facilitate, both spatially and aesthetically,the actions of the users.
However, the spatial design can operate as a mere predetermined set for the activity to unfold, detached from the social and economic activities happening between the users. Even on unreal lands, the geography and economy are deeply connected, and the users reveal the patterns of congregation that might not correspond to the predetermined spatial design of a given virtual world. Edward Castronova, an economist who wrote on virtual worlds extensively, provides an example that has developed in the virtual world Everquest: There users, rather than gathering for trade in a virtual city, instead found it more convenient to meet at a tunnel in the countryside, which happened to be a part of one of the main transportation routes. The city, as a result, was not visited regularly and was not used for trade and social activities, as it did not have any clear purpose, except as representation of the territory for an activity.
In this episode, we also discuss the concept of real estate in the context of virtual worlds. In so-called goal-oriented virtual worlds, virtual land typically is not an asset which can be traded in the secondary market. In social virtual worlds, on the contrary, the real estate trade is one of the major activities for the players. Social groups and communities often revolve around certain locations and land: there are real estate developers that design large scale territories of land for sale and rent; community- and group- owned territories with specific covenants and regulations and other types of social structures that emerge in relationship to the property ownership. In another virtual world we mentioned in our discussion, Decentraland, users collectively own large areas of land that are called districts, each of those is governed and implemented according to the interests of the owners.
Tom Boelstorff, perhaps the most prominent researcher of a virtual world Second Life, states that placemaking is fundamental to virtual worlds. In Second Life, the users design and curate the space they own.
Whether real estate is a part of secondary market or not, the environmental design in virtual worlds matters and affects the economic and social structures, emerging in the virtual.
This is a short sneak peek to what we discuss in our episode. Stay tuned!
In the next episodes we will continue the conversation on the intersection of virtual worlds, real estate and urbanism, and will discuss legal aspects of virtual worlds,and how they can be translated into the physical matter.
References:
Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in Second Life. (Princeton University Press, 2010)
Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds the Business and Culture of Online Games. (Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press, 2005)
For more on the concept of land and social relationship with virtual environment see David J Gunkel, Gaming the System: Deconstructing Video Games, Games Studies, and Virtual Worlds (Indiana University Press, 2018)
