Within reading the first three pages of the Castronova article, I immediately come up with my discussion question: Will the existence of “normal” professions become minimal in comparison to the growing careers in professional gaming, development of games, and careers that solely involve playing these games? And does learning how to develop things in a synthetic world serve as a training tool for what someone can do in the real world?
Castronova talks about synthetic worlds and states that, “Anyone can try her hand at building a church, an empire, or a business. Anyone can learn how to run a city” (pg 252). I find this statement to be true, but only in the virtual world. Just because you can click a mouse and change the dimensions and levels of an object to eventually build a beautiful church doesn’t mean that you can necessarily to it in the real world.He then says “Synthetic worlds are also methodologically superior teaching and training tools”. This is another statement that I have to disagree with because even though virtual worlds can appear to be realistic and have multiple similarities, there are still an abundance of distinctions that still separate the two.
I think Castronova has a hard time distinguishing that the real world and the virtual world are just that, two different worlds. What happens in one does not happen in the other, unless someone programs it to do so after one has already happened.
One aspect of the article I do agree upon is the idea of vulnerability of time and and assets one possesses in a synthetic world. If a server crashes and everything a user had built up to that point disappears, there is no liability on the manufacturer of the game. The user of the game has to develop a trust in the game even though anything can happen. Hours of building objects and relationships can be quickly forgotten and there would be no blame to pass around. So that makes me think of another discussion question: Do you think there will ever be a time in which real world laws can be enforced online?
