Henry Jenkins (@henryjenkins) interviews Peter Ludlow – Watching the Watchers: Power and Politics in Second Life (Part One): where he talks about griefers, virtual superheroes, and politics in Second Life
Ludlow emailed me recently with news of some fascinating new developments in Second Life. It was a story which raised such fascinating issues about fantasy and play, about the shifting borders between pro-social and anti-social behavior, about rights and responsibilities, and about the governance of virtual worlds that I felt like I had to share it now. Over the next two installments, I will be sharing Ludlow’s account of what’s been happening in Second Life, an account which places it in the context of the larger history of virtual worlds. Afterwords, I will share a joint statement which emerged from our conversations together about what this all means.
About Peter Ludlow from Wikipedia;
Peter Ludlow is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University.
MTV.com has described Ludlow as one of the 10 most influential video game players of all time, in part due to his role in showing how video game companies can be challenged as part of the gameplay. In the most famous controversy, reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, Ludlow began a virtual newspaper called The Alphaville Herald and reported on events in the Electronic Arts Corporation online game "The Sims Online" — including some blistering editorials against Electronic Arts Corporation and their failures at managing and policing the gamespace. Ludlow was subsequently kicked out of the game by Electronic Arts.
Ludlow (with the journalist Mark Wallace) has cowritten a book about his career as a virtual world journalist titled, The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse.
Ludlow has been known to participate in what he calls "game instantiation events"; in effect, these bring computer games to real life in some mildly subversive form. At South By Southwest 2006 in Austin, Texas, Make editor Phillip Torrone reprogrammed a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner to be remotely directed, dressed it in a green frog suit, and played "real frogger" on 6th Street. Ludlow has described the events as attempts to subvert the comfortable if flawed distinction between the real world and virtual reality, as well as challenges to suburban conceptions of street decorum in the contemporary United States.
Via @henryjenkins
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