Who needs a “first life” anyway?

I’m not sure we can simply dump our “first” life, otherwise known as the real world, but it’s a good thing we can build cultural capital within a second life as well. Where can you build a second life you may ask, well it could be in Second Life by Linden Lab, World of Warcraft (WoW) by Blizzard Entertainment, or really anywhere you so desire. When you first step into these types of new worlds, you may think they are simply virtual and completely distinct from the real world. Thomas Malaby in “Parlaying Value - Capital in and Beyond Virtual Worlds” suggests that the distinction might not be as large as you first imagined.

World of Warcraft - Stormwind Auction House - Sargeras Realm

Malaby suggests that it is understood that these virtual worlds allow generation and transferral of market and social capital, but the idea of cultural capital is not as well understood to be tied to these virtual worlds. To help bridge this gap, he instead uses the term “synthetic worlds” as they can be just as real in terms of human action and its results. Then he presents a new framework based around the existing parlaying of value between “domains of human action.” (Malaby 2006, 143), showcasing how the value generated from human action in these “synthetic worlds” is not much different than any other domain. 

To build this framework, Malaby provides background on various types of capital and provides examples from various “synthetic worlds”, primarily Second Life and WoW, in relation to the different kinds of capital. Capital is defined specifically as “a resource for action” (Malaby 2006, 146), all resulting from the resources of human capital, or what humans generate over long periods of time. This can easily be taken to mean the material resources generated, particularly if we look far enough back, but also the results from the shared experiences humans undergo. 

Due to the more complex nature of other forms of capital, market capital is perhaps the easiest to see and understand in the context of synthetic worlds, with some worlds, such as WoW having a clearly identified market which even presents “basic laws of supply and demand for desirable ‘virtual goods’” (Malaby 2006, 145). It’s larger than just that though, with the items being desired enough so that they are often auctioned or sold through online marketplaces like eBay. This is a direct example of capital crossing realms of human domain and finding meaning in what we may call the “real world”. Some of this results from the forced scarcity by developers, such as in the case of WoW, where items can sometimes take months to collect. That does not mean capital is only the result of scarcity though, in the case of Second Life, assets and creations can be copied and distributed easily. This is where the interweave between all forms of capital is introduced.

Social capital, “a resource that depends on the special qualities of reciprocity” (Malaby 2006, 153), also can be clearly outlined within “synthetic worlds”, with the most clear examples being social groups built directly into the worlds, such as guilds in WoW. Malaby suggests we need to look beyond these though, as social capital is about the “practices of reciprocity that sustain these networks” (Malaby 2006, 154), and not all social networks fit a strict criteria. Within any type of world, networks can be built for many types of reasons with many types of people, with one provided example being the discourse around WoW’s in-game marketplace. These connections can then be parlayed, for example into market capital, both in game and out. Perhaps the easier transfer to see though, may be into cultural capital, or status, such as Wagner James Au accomplished by providing free, virtual copies of his book during an event in Second Life. 

Cultural capital, which Malaby mentions as including “competencies, credentials, and artifacts” (Malaby 2006, 148) and defined as “the realization of what a given cultural group finds to be meaningful or important in bodies, objects, and offices” (Malaby 2006, 155), therefore is also present in these “synthetic worlds”. Not only is it generated, but it can be parlayed. In the case of the market in WoW, various players may have the skills and prestige to find players to help them find and create expensive items, that then can be seen as a commodity in terms of market capital. Cultural capital is all about the value and importance people give to things or to other people, which in the case of games, there is no lack of.

Competencies, perhaps the most clear form of cultural capital, result from learning and experience, which are aspects certainly not devoid from “synthetic worlds”. It may be hard to separate these from the avatar in the world, but Malaby suggests we should consider thinking about these competencies as not separate from those individually developed in other human domains. This can apply in the form of credentials as well, where an example of a notary in Second Life is provided, as what distinction really exists when this “virtual” notary must be trusted by those using their services? As for artifacts, these can exist in game but more tangible items that transcend the borders between human domains exist as well. Malaby provides the example of Linden Lab’s Second Life trading cards to illustrate this.

These cards highlight details of a person and their creation, pointing to the inherent capital that person’s actions generated, even in relation to their life in the “real world”. Tringo, a game created by Kermit Quirk within Second Life, was the topic of the specific trading card highlighted by Malaby. We can see the game’s market capital transcending boundaries, as the card highlights that the game was sold in game but also the rights for the game outside of Second Life were bought. This all started with the cultural capital, where Kermit used his skills as a systems analyst and programmer to become a sort of game developer in Second Life.  Social capital took over after that, with knowledge of the game spreading by word of mouth. From this “synthetic world”, Quirk gained market, social, and cultural capital from his creation. Then, the card documenting all of this, is a cultural artifact in its own way, drawing value from the context of its contents as cultural capital.

Overall, Malaby in this article succeeded in presenting a framework, based around the interplay of human actions between boundaries, that allows researchers to see these “synthetic worlds” as not necessarily distinct from our lives in the “real world”. The capital generated and parlayed is real and it’s not necessarily stuck in one world or limited to market value and social connections. He admits there are challenges in this analysis, due to “the increased scope these domains afford” (Malaby 2006, 160), but proper tools and frameworks like he laid out here will help bridge that gap between “synthetic worlds” and digital society as a whole.

---

Thomas Malaby, “Parlaying Value,” Games and Culture 1, no. 2 (April 1, 2006): pp. 141-162, https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412006286688.